At the start of the beneficiary administration process for primary transfers, it is useful to access other data that can help determine the status and / or whereabouts of beneficiaries.
This provides advance warning of the likely challenges that will emerge during the process, and can be useful for resource planning and contracting with conveyancers and other third parties.
It is also critical to validate data obtained from respondents interviewed during occupancy surveys.
There are two key data sources:
Another key data set is deeds data which will allow officials to identify beneficiaries who own or have owned properties, the location of the property, the seller of the property and the date of transfer
This data is useful as a cross check in case beneficiaries were allocated a property in another project
Beneficiaries may have come to own property after receiving a subsidy. In this case, that they own a property should not disqualify them from transfer.
Maturity Roadmap: suggestion for improvement
At present, municipalities and provinces purchase deeds data from private sector providers at significant cost. Ideally, housing authorities should have access to this data directly from the deeds registry via an API that would allow data to be requested and extracted in a specified format. This would enable automated uploading of the data into a database.
A key data source is population register data from Home Affairs which includes data on the status of beneficiaries.
HSS beneficiary data can be cross referenced against Home Affairs data to determine whether beneficiaries are alive, what their current marital status is and in some cases, access data on children.
At present housing authorities do not have access to Home Affairs data and must purchase this data from credit bureaus or other third parties.
Maturity Roadmap: suggestion for improvement
The NDHS should negotiate an MOU with Home Affairs to enable all housing authorities to access Home Affairs data through an API. This will allow the housing authority to request and extract required data on beneficiaries in a specified format, and facilitate automated uploading of the data into a database.