Context
Belgian social security has achieved a very high degree of digitalisation in recent decades. Almost all information is available and exploitable electronically: identification data of employers and employees, data on wages and working hours, and so on. But the social inspector who went to carry out an inspection somewhere, in a muddy yard or in a busy café, could not yet make full use of it. My Digital Assistant (MyDIA) is changing that. This application gives inspectors real-time access to social security databases via their smartphone, so inspectors always have the latest declaration data at their disposal. It also gives access to the national register, making it much easier to identify workers quickly and unambiguously. Inspectors can see in the application which colleagues participate in inspection assignments and who has inspected which person. The application automatically generates a tabular synthesis of the inspection results. This communicates the findings to the participants. Thus, after an inspection, the elements are available to complete an investigation. MyDIA is a mobile application that the federal social inspection services (National Social Security Office – NSSO, National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance INAMI-RIZIV, National Employment Office ONEM-RVA, Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue) have jointly developed to make their field inspections streamlined and efficient. The application also helps the services to collaborate across institutions. MyDIA has been available to a limited group of test users since 2020 and to all inspectors since 2021.
Objectives
The project MyDIA seeks to make authentic government data available on a mobile device. This has important implications. The inspector can now access databases quickly and easily even in physically difficult or chaotic investigation situations, such as construction sites.
Implementation
The app has been very well received by inspectors. It is now being used within five social inspection services
(ONEM-RVA, INAMI-RIZIV, NSSO, FPS Work, National Institute for the Social Security of the Self-Employed INASTI-RSVZ). In the first six months of 2023, inspectors checked 36 500 elements (people, companies, worksites), during 2 038 inspections. Every month, about 400 inspectors use MyDIA. All these inspectors also have the same view during joint inspections, which prevents confusion and duplication of inspections. Experienced inspectors report that using the app can reduce the time of an inspection by up to half. An additional feature is currently being developed, allowing inspectors to send some forms electronically via MyDIA to a statistical database. Now, these forms are largely filled in on paper during field inspections, then the data have to be manually entered into the database. Thanks to the new development, inspectors will be able to enter the data directly into the app, with as much as possible being entered automatically. By feeding the database electronically, time is saved and the error rate is much lower.