ANP
NOS News•today, 06:32•Changed today, 06:51
Joost Schellevis
editor Tech
Joost Schellevis
editor Tech
The UWV will re-investigate 460 closed fraud cases, because they were at least partly due to a controversial fraud algorithm. The data of all visitors to UWV sites was illegally collected for the algorithm, according to previous research by NOS.
This concerns 460 cases in which a sanction has been imposed, such as a fine, discontinuation of benefits or having to repay part or all of it. Initially, the UWV (Employee Insurance Administration Institute) did not want to review these cases, even though it turned out that the data had been collected illegally; However, all ongoing investigations were halted.
The UWV has now decided to review these matters, writes outgoing Minister Van Gennip of Social Affairs to the House of Representatives. It will be examined whether the data used for the research was obtained lawfully, a spokesperson for the UWV said.
“We do this partly as a result of discussions with the ministry, advice from the Dutch Data Protection Authority and because of equal treatment,” the spokesperson said. This concerns the equal treatment of benefit recipients who have or have not requested a review.
Three benefit recipients submitted that request to the UWV themselves. In one case, the decision has already been revised, because illegal data collection “very likely played a substantial role”. That is why the UWV will now reassess all 460 cases. The potentially affected benefit recipients are approached for this purpose.
Fraud algorithm
In July, the NOS reported that the UWV illegally entered data from benefit recipients into a fraud algorithm. The benefits agency wanted to investigate whether they were staying abroad while receiving unemployment benefits; this is only allowed in certain cases.
Ultimately, it turned out to include the IP addresses of all visitors to UWV.nl and Werk.nl. If people logged into one of those sites on a given device once, all their visits could be linked to them. This way, the UWV could also see that they were abroad if they only looked for information on the UWV site and did not even log in. The State Attorney warned that this is not allowed at all, after which the system was shut down.
Nevertheless, all collected information has not yet been removed from the UWV systems, Van Gennip wrote to the House. The UWV is willing to do this, but some of that data is needed again to reassess the 460 cases, she writes.
Public
Members of Parliament Dekker-Abdulaziz (D66) and Van Baarle (Denk) also asked the minister to make public what exactly the UWV’s fraud algorithms select for, but Van Gennip does not want that. This would jeopardize the investigation. However, she does want to inform the House of Representatives about it confidentially.
Dekker-Abdulaziz calls it good news that the 460 cases are being reviewed. “But it remains worrying that the UWV does not want to provide transparency about the algorithms used.” According to her, organizations must clearly explain what data they collect about someone. “A law will soon be introduced that will oblige governments to do this,” she says.
The answers also show that the UWV has not informed the Client Council in advance about the use of the algorithms, while it should have done so. The directors of the UWV have apologized to the Client Council for this, the minister writes.
2023-10-19 04:32:33
#UWV #reopens #fraud #cases #illegal #data #collection
