Data Infrastructure and Indicators for Fast Monitoring of Social and Labour Market Developments in Belgium – BE-FAST (BE-FAST)

The project will pursue the research objectives by means of the following seven research activities (RA):
1. We conduct a detailed review of existing, administrative data sources for the purpose of rapid socioeconomic monitoring;
2. We provide an overview of the potential indicators needed to cover all groups at risk, drawing on the expertise of the Combat Poverty Service in identifying groups at risk during the Covid-19 pandemic, in close collaboration with frontline and grassroots organizations and civil society stakeholders;
3. We conduct interviews with public and private data brokers to identify potential yet underused data sources, including high-frequency corporate and online data;
4. We evaluate and calibrate existing tools that have been developed before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, including nowcasting tools, and we examine to what extent they are reliable and useful for monitoring purposes;
5. We develop a dashboard of indicators to monitor changes in employment and transitions in and out of social security benefits, the use and take-up of social protections measures, and the share of individual not being entitled to any existing measure;
6. In close collaboration with representatives of social security institutions and data providers we provide a blueprint and a step-by-step guide on how to construct these and new indicators for future monitoring purposes; 7. We identify data gaps and ‘red flags’, and examine to what extent new data collection efforts can be carried out in the future to fill these gaps, including an assessment of the potential of the forthcoming Belgian online probability panel ACTS-OPP.
All these activities will result in a socio-economic monitoring toolbox (monitoring of vulnerable groups in society) that will guide future policymaking and support academic research.