Service: SyRi - Detect welfare fraud

Responsible organisation: Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (Central-Government)

Municipalities in Netherlands have been using the SyRi system to detect welfare fraud more effectively, developed by the Dutch government. It uses various risk indicators from existing governmental systems such as taxes, health insurance, residence, education and many more, to detect which addresses hold a higher risk of fraud or misuse of welfare benefits. SyRi was developed in 2014 after multiple municipalities had been creating their own systems to detect fraud. The system does not make any decisions itself, but provides recommendations for civil servants to conduct further investigations. Various organisations have opposed the usage arguing it causes too many privacy infringements and is discriminatory towards the poor and vulnerable citizens. The lack of transparency on the inner working of the system and the inability of the people affected to get to know their data have been used, has been criticized as well. Following a court case, the Dutch court decided in early 2020 that the use of SyRi did not comply with Article 8 of the ECHR thus its usage has been cancelled.

Additional information

Source Open Innovation Regione Lombardia
Web site https://algorithmwatch.org/en/syri-netherlands-algorithm/
Start/end date 2020 -
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