SEWA Social Security’s Information & Communication Technology (ICT) Programme

SEWA Social Security unit has an in-house IT department, which develops, implements, maintains and upgrades the software infrastructure required to run various programmes under social security plan. Further, the software is tailor-made according the needs of the programmes resulting in efficient data management and excellent decision making outputs.

For the micro insurance programme of SEWA (VimoSEWA) which is now a National Cooperative, the team has developed integrated software module which links membership database with claims services. Data being the key ingredient in the field of micro insurance, effective use of data provides the competitive edge in the market place. Consequently the Monitoring & Evaluation (M & E) team at VimoSEWA is able to manage the data in terms of completeness, transparency and accuracy. We have tools and technologies to manage and analyze data in relation to multiple products and schemes which are in association with other sister concern of SEWA, namely, SEWA Bank (Loans and Fixed Deposit schemes). A step forward in this direction would be the grass root insurance agents of VimoSEWA, called as ‘Aagewans’, creating receipts of policies in the field with the use of Net Books.

For claims-servicing, the team has a centralized claims-processing approach. The technology used at present is Client-Server technology, however; however in the near future the team aims to integrate Web -based technology - MS-SQL that makes data management self-tuning, self-organizing, and self- maintaining databases. As an expansion exercise of the National Insurance Vimosewa Cooperative, insurance services of SEWA will be now made available in five other states of India and thus Virtual Private Network (VPN) is the need of the hour. All these centres of VimoSEWA across these states will be linked with VPN and the membership data will be decentrailzed.

For SEWA’s health work, the IT team has developed customized software, as part of an integrated monitoring and evaluation system, that tracks outputs and outcomes for community health work.  For example, SEWA’s team of grassroots health workers tracks pregnant women’s access to care over the course of her pregnancy and postnatal period.  Quarterly data analysis allows SEWA’s team to identify women who have not accessed care, and those who may be in need of referrals, to ensure timely intervention.  Using a computerized MIS has emerged as particularly useful in identifying illness patterns and primary health care needs, through tracking referrals, sales of medicines and outcomes from health camps.  The health team then develops area-specific, seasonal interventions based on evidence presented through the MIS.  The software was developed through a participatory process, to ensure that data outputs match community health workers’ capacities and needs. We thus use technology to its fullest capacity, to improve women’s access to health care.

In addition to software for health programs, the MIS has developed software for Lok Swasthya Mandali’s Ayurvedic medicines business. Enterprise resource planning (ERP), an integrated software has been developed which takes into account all the core operations involving production, sales, purchase, inventory and accounts. Tailor-made software technology has also been developed for ‘low-cost drug shops’, also a major component of Lok Swasthya Mandali’s activities, incorporating sales and purchase modules, inventory and accounts. Both these software modules facilitate well-controlled Management Information System (MIS) and thus effective decision making processes for the success of the enterprise. 

A special feature of the SEWA Social Security team is that the IT and MIS teams in the above-mentioned ventures are constituted by the people with whom SEWA works. Interested members and their daughters are trained in the Indian Academy of Self-Employed Women, another sister organization of SEWA, and are employed in the various teams of Social Security IT unit on a regular basis. Frequent refresher trainings on data security, claims-processing, data analysis and a number of related topics are also arranged for these MIS team members leading to their continuous capacity building.

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