- Digital infrastructure is a fundamental prerequisite for social protection systems to anticipate and respond to crises.
- Latin America and the Caribbean has made important progress (with an average adaptive social protection maturity score of 54%), but significant gaps remain in information systems, interoperability, and the use of real-time data.
- Countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic demonstrate how dynamic, interoperable social registries make it possible to identify vulnerable populations and respond more effectively to shocks.
When a shock such as a hurricane, drought, or economic crisis strikes, governments face a critical question: Who needs assistance, and how can support reach them quickly? Yet long before a shock occurs, there are equally important questions to answer: Who is at risk? Where are they located? What kinds of impacts are they likely to face? Which instruments are available to respond?
The ability to answer these questions in advance is what distinguishes truly adaptive social protection systems. Recent crises have tested these systems and revealed a fundamental lesson: having programs in place is not enough. Governments also need systems that can adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
Up-to-date social registries, interoperable digital platforms, and digital payment mechanisms form the backbone of adaptive social protection. Without this foundation, programs struggle to respond rapidly and reach the populations that need them most. Digital infrastructure is therefore a prerequisite for effective crisis response.
At the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), we have supported countries across the region in designing and implementing adaptive social protection strategies. This experience has generated valuable lessons on the institutional, technological, and operational capacities required for timely and effective responses to shocks. Below, we highlight some of the key lessons that have emerged from this work.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, social protection programs across Latin America and the Caribbean became the primary channel for delivering emergency transfers in most countries, confirming their potential as an effective shock response mechanism. At the same time, the crisis exposed important structural limitations.
More than 80% of countries relied on their social registries to manage the emergency, yet most did so without pre-established response protocols. The information existed, but it was not organized in a way that allowed it to be mobilized quickly when it was needed most.
The report Building Resilience: Progress and Challenges in Adaptive Social Protection (available in Spanish) shows that the region has made significant progress in adaptive social protection, reaching an average maturity score of 54%. However, some of the largest remaining gaps are concentrated in information systems, interoperability, and the capacity to use real-time data.
Closing these gaps requires investments in digital architectures capable of translating growing political and institutional commitment into timely and effective action. This means modernizing social registries, expanding digital payment systems, strengthening interoperability across sectors, and building the capacity to make smarter use of data.
Digital infrastructure is built around at least five essential components:
- Digital identity. This is the gateway to the system. Without reliable identification, it is impossible to determine who is eligible for support or ensure that benefits reach the intended recipients.
- Dynamic social registries. These consolidate household socioeconomic information to identify vulnerabilities. Their effectiveness depends on being regularly updated and capable of integrating data from multiple sources.
- Digital payments. These enable fast, secure, and traceable transfers while reducing leakage and operational costs compared with cash-based delivery systems.
- Interoperability. This allows systems to communicate with one another. Today, data exchange between social protection, disaster risk management, and health systems remains fragmented, creating gaps in coverage and limiting coordinated responses.
- Smart use of data. Combining socioeconomic, geospatial, and climate data makes it possible to anticipate which households or territories are likely to face the greatest impacts from a shock.
When these components work together as an integrated system, governments can shift from simply reacting to crises to anticipating them.
Digital infrastructure also requires:
- Clear rules for data governance and data protection.
- Information-sharing agreements across institutions.
- Stronger capacities at both the national and subnational levels.
- Measures to ensure digital inclusion.
Without these elements, digital divides risk reinforcing—and even widening—existing inequalities.
Several countries across the region are already making important advances. Chile integrates multiple administrative data sources through its Social Registry of Households (RSH); Costa Rica connects data from more than 30 public institutions through SINIRUBE; and the Dominican Republic incorporates household-level climate vulnerability indices into SIUBEN.
Table 1. Summary of Country Progress and Capacity to Respond to Shocks
| Country | System / Platform | Key Advancement | Capacity to Respond to Shocks |
| Chile | Social Registry of Households (RSH) | Integrates data from multiple administrative sources; coverage expanded to nearly the entire population following the pandemic. | Enables the rapid expansion of benefits and played a critical role in the country's COVID-19 response. |
| Costa Rica | SINIRUBE | An interoperable platform that connects data from more than 30 public institutions. | Facilitates beneficiary identification and real-time cross-checking of information. |
| Dominican Republic | SIUBEN | Incorporates household-level climate vulnerability indices related to hurricanes, floods, and other climate risks. | Enables governments to identify populations at risk before a disaster and assess impacts after a shock occurs. |
| Colombia | SISBÉN IV | Expanded during COVID-19 and updated through a multidimensional vulnerability methodology. | Used to channel emergency cash transfers during the pandemic and has advanced the use of digital payment systems. |
| Peru | SISFOH / General Household Registry (PGH) | Managed by the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion (MIDIS); serves as the targeting platform for programs such as Juntos and Pensión 65. | Used to deliver emergency cash transfers during the pandemic and in response to droughts. |
Source: Authors' compilation based on their own data.
Building adaptive systems that can anticipate, identify, and respond to shocks in a timely manner has become a priority across Latin America and the Caribbean. Achieving this objective depends, to a large extent, on investing in digital infrastructure as the core enabler that connects social registries, data, payment systems, and institutions.
The resilience of tomorrow's social protection systems begins with the investments countries make today. Read the IDB publication (available in Spanish):