WFP Iraq partners with the Department of Information Technology at the Kurdistan Regional Government towards improving social protection for the people

The LoU aims to drive efforts to ensure that vulnerable groups, including children, youth, women, the elderly, the disabled and internally displaced people inside Iraq will benefit from fair access to a comprehensive and inclusive Digital Social Protection systems that is more responsive shocks.

The partnership will include focus on supporting the digitalization of the national Public Distribution System (PDS) for food rations which, which will integrate with the National single registry; improving public awareness on the newly digitized processes; strengthening the capacity of KRG-DIT staff on e-governance; establishing data infrastructures at the KRG-DIT to improve administration  of social protection schemes and reviewing  and ensuring that social protection schemes are aligned with the government’s strategies.

“The collaboration between the World Food Programme and the Kurdistan Regional Government Department of Information Technology is an important step towards making meaningful change to improve the social protection systems in the region. Through this partnership we will jointly scale up digitalization of the social protection programmes and further support e-governance in the KRI to enable more efficient delivery of services to the most vulnerable families and improving their lives,” said WFP Iraq Representatives, Ally-Raza Qureshi.

“Data governance is one of our core strategic directions where trusted data from various sources need to be consolidated, managed and shared with the right internal and external entities empowering them to execute their functions. We are committed to make our systems and databases such as population information system and identity management system securely available to Social Protection System and are grateful to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) for their commendable coordination and tireless efforts,” said KRG-DIT Head, Mr. Hiwa Afandi.

WFP in Iraq is committed to supporting digital transformation as a vehicle for Social Protection reform in Iraq. The cooperation with KRG-DIT will ensure that digitalization initiatives are aligned with the KRG digital transformation objectives, and that social protection systems are interoperable with other government technology platforms..

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The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change. 

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