Four Utrecht municipalities will stop using a controversial fraud scorecard to detect social security fraud. This was prompted by questions that the municipalities received from journalists from, among others, the radio programme Argos to the use of the measurement method, which leads to discrimination and violation of privacy.
Until this week, the municipalities of Nieuwegein, Houten, IJsselstein and Lopik used the card to estimate whether welfare applicants wanted to commit fraud. For example, caravan dwellers, construction workers and people who had had a cleaning company received more points than highly educated people who lived in an ‘expensive’ neighborhood or artists. As a result, they were subject to stricter controls.
Illegal
The card was conceived in 2003 when the fight against fraud was high on the political agenda. The risk profiles used to make the calculations for the map were updated until 2007, after which the subsidies for the project stopped. Nearly 160 congregations continued to use it until two years ago. Then the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) put an end to it, after it became clear that the system was illegal.
But Houten, IJsselstein, Lopik and Nieuwegein continued. Retrieval of Argos they said that the map was only used as a resource and that they trusted that the calculation model behind the map was valid. Now that they also know that the information behind the card is outdated, they stop using it.
The VNG allowed Argos know that there is a municipality that still uses the card, but won’t say which one.
Allowance affair
This case has similarities with the allowance affair at the Tax Authorities. Controversial software was also used there to detect fraud. Applicants with a non-Dutch nationality had a greater chance of having their file assessed manually. The Dutch Data Protection Authority previously ruled that this constituted discrimination.
MP Pieter Omtzigt played an important role in bringing the allowance affair to light. “I want to re-examine how often this fraud scorecard has been used and why it wasn’t discontinued in time for everyone if it didn’t comply with the law,” he said in a statement. Argos† “And how have people noticed the consequences of that?”
According to Omtzigt, people may have been “extremely bothered” by the assessment for no reason.
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