The concept of social treasury and the underlying integrated data base: international best practices and lessons for Russia
Introduction. The paper presents the concept of social treasury - an agency that accumulates information to support decision making in the area of social welfare and manages the disbursements of social benefits. Sources and Methods. The sources of data analyzed in the paper are country cases: the authors analyze international practices of setting up unified social registries. The methods used include structural description of cases and comparative analysis of international experience of developing integrated data bases of social information and plans for creating a unified social registry in Russia. Results and Discussion. The authors describe two models of creating the database that would serve as the foundation of the social treasury. One approach is to collect the information on the actual and potential beneficiaries of social transfers by conducting a survey. The other is to integrate the information on the participants of the existing social support programs that is already available in the databases of line ministries and other government agencies. Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses, and since the integrated database approach is the one that is being currently implemented by the RF Pension Fund in an on-going project to form a single registry of the beneficiaries of social assistance in Russia, the authors discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this approach and suggest ways to reduce the risks. They also describe the single social registry in Turkey that implements the concept of the social treasury as described by the authors. Conclusion. The plans for creating a unified social registry in Russia do not cover all the possible risks that arise in connection with creating a virtual integrated data base that uses remote data management function and has multiple operators/ The use of efficient solutions suggested by international experience will contribute not only to successful implementation of a unified social registry in Russia, but will help promote the concept of e-government as a whole.