Jobseekers will be off dole in year, says study
Under the pilot scheme being run at the Dun Laoghaire social protection office, claimants are profiled as to their educational qualifications and work history.
The Department has revealed that so far some 1,200 people have been profiled and according to the findings, “a large proportion of the profiles indicate that, all else being equal, the people concerned have a high probability of exiting from the live register within a year”.
The profiling pilot scheme will be extended in the coming weeks to three other areas: one in inner city Dublin, one in the Midlands and another office in the North West.
A Departmental spokesperson said: “Once the pilot is completed, the new system will be rolled out across the country in a series of phases.”
The profiling scheme quantifies each person’s “Probability of Exit” (PEX) from the live register within 12 months and allows for the selection of customers, based on their PEX, for referral to appropriate supports.
“The profile information can be collected either online, when a customer makes a jobseekers claim using that medium, or manually by the Department of Social Protection’s claim-taking staff in the Social Welfare local office,” the spokesperson said.
The IT programme uses a set of characteristics to calculate the probability of an unemployed person finding work early or alternatively becoming long-term unemployed.
The spokesperson said that the specific profiling model being deployed in the Department of Social Protection has been developed following years of research and testing by the ESRI.
“It has been found to have a high level of accuracy [predictive capacity] by international standards,” said the spokesperson.
Earlier this week, the Minister for Social Protection, Joan Burton, said she was keen to avoid unemployment becoming a lifestyle choice for some social welfare recipients.
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