15 Feb 19 Feb 2027
Lisbon, Portugal
HF Fénix Lisboa, Praça Marquês de Pombal
31 Dec 2026
Digital Social Protection Training in Lisbon designed for government institutions and development projects ready to modernize how social protection is delivered. Bring your system. Diagnose its bottlenecks. Redesign the delivery architecture. Test integrated case management. Examine where AI should, and should not, be used. Benchmark international approaches. Leave Lisbon with a practical 90-day institutional transformation roadmap.
Social protection systems are undergoing a fundamental transformation. Governments are moving beyond fragmented benefit administration and stand-alone databases toward integrated digital ecosystems capable of identifying vulnerability, coordinating services, managing complex cases, responding to shocks, and connecting individuals and households with the support they need.
Artificial intelligence, digital public infrastructure, dynamic social registries, interoperable government databases, digital identity, automated eligibility mechanisms and advanced analytics are creating real opportunities to make social protection more proactive, responsive, efficient and inclusive. But technology alone does not create an effective social protection system. Successful transformation requires governments to integrate policy, institutions, people, processes, data, technology, case management, safeguards and frontline service delivery around the needs of citizens.
This program is built for government institutions and development projects that are modernizing social protection delivery and want to move from fragmented, reactive systems toward integrated, proactive, data-driven and people-centered models. It goes beyond the classroom: participants examine their own institutional systems, diagnose delivery bottlenecks, work through complex beneficiary cases, explore interoperable system architecture, assess the opportunities and risks of AI, benchmark international approaches, and leave with practical institutional transformation priorities they can implement immediately.
Lisbon provides a highly relevant international learning environment. Portugal is advancing integrated, people-centered digital public services, proactive service delivery, digital identity, omnichannel citizen services and AI-enabled public administration. Its Digital Mobile Key already provides a common authentication mechanism for accessing multiple public and private portals, while social-security services continue to operate through digital, video, telephone and physical channels side by side.
Across many countries, governments have invested significantly in social registries, management information systems, digital payments, social assistance programs, employment services, disability services and digital government platforms. Important implementation challenges remain.
Social protection systems may still operate through disconnected databases and institutions. Vulnerable households may repeatedly provide the same information to different agencies. Caseworkers may lack an integrated view of household needs. Referral mechanisms between social protection, employment, health, education and disability services may remain weak. Digitalization itself can create new forms of exclusion when systems are designed without sufficient attention to accessibility, digital literacy, gender, disability, connectivity, privacy or human oversight.
Meanwhile, AI introduces a new generation of opportunities, and risks. Governments are beginning to explore AI-supported vulnerability analysis, fraud and error detection, beneficiary communication, case prioritization, forecasting, service personalization and decision support.
The World Bank is currently scaling digital social-protection delivery through ID, social registries, payment platforms and management systems; as of January 2026, its Social Protection Response program reported 14 grants across 11 country teams supporting the digital transformation of social protection systems.
The central question is no longer simply: “How do we digitize social protection?”
It is increasingly: “How do we build an integrated, proactive and trustworthy social protection system in which digital technology and AI improve human decision-making without excluding the people the system exists to protect?”
This is not an introductory course in social protection, case management or digital transformation. Online programs, including well-established options such as the ILO/ITCILO and ISSA courses on social-security digitalization, strategy and big data, already give practitioners access to the underlying concepts. Participants are not expected to spend five days in Lisbon simply listening to material they could obtain through a report, a webinar or an AI tool.
This program is built around institutional application. Participants work with real-world social protection challenges, ideally their own, and develop practical responses through guided transformation labs, simulations, comparative case analysis, peer exchange and institutional action planning.
An online course teaches concepts. This program produces six institutional work-products, a readiness diagnostic, delivery map, integrated case management model, digital architecture blueprint, responsible AI governance matrix and 90-day transformation roadmap, developed against participants’ own institutional systems and stress-tested through international practice and peer exchange.
Participants use this framework throughout the five days to examine their own institutional environment. It is structured around six interconnected functions:
Understand vulnerability dynamically through outreach, registration, social registries, administrative data and appropriate analytics.
Connect institutions, databases, digital identity, payments, employment services, health, education, disability services and other relevant systems.
Move beyond benefit eligibility toward multidimensional assessment of individual and household needs.
Coordinate benefits, services, referrals and case interventions through integrated delivery mechanisms.
Track beneficiary journeys, case progress, service quality, grievances, outcomes and system performance.
Use evidence, emerging technologies, feedback and changing vulnerability patterns to continuously improve the system and respond to shocks.
For nominating institutions, the program is structured as an implementation engagement rather than a study visit. Each delegation works on a live institutional challenge and returns with six usable outputs, a 90-day roadmap, and a 30-day follow-up clinic. This strengthens the business case for participation by linking international exposure directly to institutional reform priorities, project implementation and measurable next steps.
The program is specifically designed for officials and professionals responsible for designing, managing, modernizing, financing or implementing social protection and related public-service systems.
The program is particularly valuable when institutions nominate multidisciplinary teams, enabling policy, program, digital, M&E and service-delivery personnel to work together on a shared institutional challenge.
One of the distinctive components of the program begins before participants arrive in Lisbon. Participants are invited to complete a structured Digital Social Protection Readiness Diagnostic, examining institutional maturity across:
The diagnostic helps participants identify strengths and weaknesses in their current environment and provides a practical baseline for the work undertaken during the program. Participants are encouraged to bring a real institutional challenge to Lisbon.
Social registries are increasingly cross-sector digital platforms rather than simple targeting databases. The World Bank reports that 62 countries had operationalized social registries as of 2024, covering approximately 1.1 billion people, with growing use across employment, health, education and other services.
Day 1 Output: Institutional Social Protection Delivery Map & Bottleneck Diagnostic
Complex Case Simulation – Participants work with a simulated vulnerable household facing interconnected challenges, unemployment, disability, childcare, elderly dependency, housing insecurity, financial vulnerability, health needs and protection risks, assuming different institutional roles and developing a coordinated response.
Day 2 Output: Integrated Case Management & Referral Model
Understanding how reusable digital foundations – Digital ID + Payments + Trusted Data Exchange, can support multiple social programs. The World Bank increasingly treats interoperable digital ID, payments and data-sharing infrastructure as reusable foundations that can enable services across social protection, health, finance and other sectors.
Architecture Lab – Participants construct a conceptual architecture connecting Citizen/Household → Digital Identity → Dynamic Social Registry → Eligibility & Assessment → Integrated Case Management → Employment / Health / Education / Disability / Local Government → Benefits, Services & Payments → Grievance & Feedback → Monitoring & Analytics.
Day 3 Output: Digital Social Protection Architecture Blueprint
The critical question: What should AI decide, and what must remain a human decision?
AI Governance Lab – Participants analyze real-world scenarios involving eligibility, vulnerability, fraud alerts, case prioritization and service recommendations, and classify each decision into: Automate | AI-Assisted | Human Decision Required | Prohibited / High-Risk.
Day 4 Output: Responsible AI Use-Case & Governance Matrix
Portugal itself combines online, video, telephone and physical channels for accessing social-security services, illustrating why digitalization does not necessarily mean eliminating human or assisted channels.
Institutional Transformation Clinic – Participants return to the diagnostic completed before the program and determine: What should we STOP? What should we REDESIGN? What should we INTEGRATE? What should we DIGITIZE? Where should we use AI? What must remain human? What can we implement within 90 days?
Day 5 Output: 90-Day Digital Social Protection Transformation Roadmap
The emphasis throughout is on application rather than passive instruction.
Together, these outputs give nominating institutions practical value beyond attendance: participants return with tools that can support internal planning, coordination and implementation.
Participants will leave the program with practical tools, internationally recognized approaches and implementation strategies to strengthen social protection delivery, institutional coordination, digital inclusion and people-centered public services.
Across these regions, governments and development partners increasingly require professionals capable of building integrated, proactive and trustworthy social protection systems — not simply digitizing existing bureaucracy.
Portugal is advancing one of Europe’s more integrated approaches to people-centered digital public services. Its current Digital Strategy targets public services that are integrated, efficient and people-centered, alongside an inclusive digital transition of public administration, including a National Artificial Intelligence Agenda and a drive toward streamlined public services.
Portugal operates the Chave Móvel Digital (Digital Mobile Key), a common digital authentication mechanism for accessing public and private portals that can also support legally recognized digital signatures. Its government-services strategy explicitly goes beyond putting existing procedures online, aiming instead for proactive, simplified and integrated service experiences that anticipate citizen and business needs.
Social-security services in Portugal continue to operate through digital, video, telephone and physical channels side by side, a practical illustration of omnichannel delivery that keeps assisted and offline routes open even as digital channels expand.
Lisbon therefore offers a highly relevant, currently-in-motion example of a government moving from fragmented to integrated, from reactive to proactive, and from digitalization to intelligent service delivery, exactly the transition this program is designed around.
Where feasible, the program may include an institutional briefing, technical exchange, expert presentation or relevant public-service exposure activity. Any specific institutional visit is subject to confirmation and the availability of the host institution.
This creates a benefit that cannot be replicated through self-paced online learning.
Comparative examples may be drawn from relevant international experience including Portugal, Estonia, Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Rwanda, South Korea, Singapore, selected EU systems, and World Bank-supported social protection modernization programs. Cases are selected according to participant composition and current reform priorities.
Modern social protection should not operate as an isolated benefit system. The program examines how social registries and integrated case management can support pathways from assistance toward greater economic resilience:
Social Protection → Employment Services → Skills → Financial Inclusion → Entrepreneurship → Economic Participation
The World Bank increasingly promotes this type of integration, including links between registries, public employment services, skills programs, financial inclusion, health and education.
This turns the program from a one-time training event into an implementation-oriented capacity development engagement.
Government institutions and development projects are encouraged to nominate small multidisciplinary delegations. A particularly effective delegation combines representatives from:
This enables the institution to work collectively on its own transformation challenge during the program. Customized institutional clinics may also be incorporated for participating groups.
The program is particularly relevant to government institutions and PIUs/PMUs implementing reforms supported by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Union, UNICEF, ILO, UNDP, bilateral development partners and other international development institutions. Relevant project areas include Social Protection Modernization, Digital Government, Human Capital Development, Social Registries, Economic Inclusion, Employment Services, Disability Inclusion, Social Service Reform, Adaptive Social Protection, Digital Payments, Government Interoperability, Institutional Strengthening, and Social Protection Information Systems.
This is a statement of relevance to the types of reforms these institutions finance, not a claim of donor endorsement, partnership or sponsorship.
Participants will enjoy a full-service experience that covers everything needed before, during, and after the program.
Before the Program
During the Program
After the Program
Participants build a conceptual architecture connecting digital identity, social registries, case management, payments and other government systems, using their own institutional context as the working example, not a generic template.
Day 1 examines continuous updating, administrative data integration, inclusion/exclusion error management, and how registries function as gateways to multiple public services rather than single-program targeting databases.
The Day 2 complex case simulation puts participants in different institutional roles around one simulated household, forcing exactly the multi-agency coordination that referral mechanisms are meant to achieve on paper.
The Day 4 AI Governance Lab has participants classify real decision types into Automate / AI-Assisted / Human Decision Required / Prohibited, producing a governance matrix they can defend to oversight bodies and procurement teams.
Day 5 addresses digital exclusion directly, using Portugal’s own multichannel model, digital, video, telephone and physical, as a live example of keeping assisted and offline channels open.
Day 3 covers data ownership, minimization, consent, access controls, cybersecurity, data-sharing agreements and audit trails as integration expands across agencies.
Adaptive and shock-responsive social protection is addressed directly on Day 5, dynamic registries, rapid enrollment, emergency payments and data-driven early response.
A dedicated session examines the pathway from registries and case management through employment services, skills, financial inclusion and entrepreneurship.
An online course teaches concepts. This program produces six institutional work-products, a diagnostic, a delivery map, a case management model, an architecture blueprint, an AI governance matrix, built against your own system and stress-tested against international practice and peer critique.
Participants who successfully complete the program receive the Professional Certificate in AI-Enabled Social Protection & Integrated Case Management, issued by Risalat Consultants International. The certificate recognizes completion of the executive implementation program, transformation labs, international benchmarking activities and institutional action-planning exercises.
Rather than treating technology, institutional reform and human service delivery as separate subjects, RCI’s approach examines how they interact within complex government systems. The program is built around one central objective: helping institutions translate digital innovation into better outcomes for people.
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