When Technology Fails the Poor: Administrative Exclusion in the Digital Delivery of Pakistan's Social Safety Nets

Pakistan’s digitally-driven Social Safety Nets (SSNs), notably BISP and Ehsaas, have been instrumental in decreasing poverty rates by 7 to 9% and promoted greater gender inclusion. However, this study identifies a critical paradox: the very technological tools designed to include often systematically exclude the most vulnerable. In practice, these programs suffer from serious flaws with 22% of the exclusion rate for those who qualify and 15% leakage of funds going to ineligible recipients, revealing a systemic failure in reaching the most vulnerable.

This study investigates this paradox by shifting the analytical lens from state-level efficiency to citizen-level experience. By using the theoretical framework of "administrative exclusion", we contended how the mechanisms intended for efficiency often inherently encode barriers that sideline the most disadvantaged. Using a qualitative case study, we examined how exclusion operates, categorizing it into three costs: learning costs of digital literacy, compliance costs from biometric failures and travel to distant payment points, and psychological costs stemming from opaque and non-responsive grievance mechanisms.

Initial results reveal that the burden of administrative exclusion falls disproportionately on marginalized groups including women, the elderly, persons with disabilities, and residents of conflict-affected or hard to reach regions, effectively cementing existing inequities under the facade of digital innovation. Furthermore, the short-term, relief-oriented design of programs, often influenced by political cycles, compound these digital barriers, limiting their ability to break intergenerational poverty cycles.

This study concludes that technocratic efficiency alone is insufficient. It calls for a fundamental, citizen-centric redesign of delivery mechanisms, including more robust digitized targeting, inflation-indexed benefits, and institutional reforms for greater coordination. By integrating these reforms into broader development agendas, Pakistan's SSNs can evolve from temporary aid into a system of genuine empowerment and equitable public value creation.