DIGITALIZATION AND SOCIAL PROTECTION IN PAKISTAN: ADDRESSING DIGITAL WELFARE EXCLUSION AND EMERGING CHALLENGES FOR SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE

Abstract

Digitalization is transforming social protection delivery in Pakistan through digital registration, biometric verification, social registries, data-driven targeting, and electronic payment mechanisms. While these innovations have the potential to improve efficiency, transparency, accessibility, and accountability, they may also generate new forms of welfare exclusion among populations with limited digital literacy, inadequate documentation, poor connectivity, restricted access to technology, and difficulties navigating increasingly technology-dependent welfare systems. This study examines the relationship between digitalization and social protection in Pakistan, with particular attention to digital welfare exclusion and its implications for professional social work practice. It explores how socioeconomic status, gender, age, disability, geographic remoteness, digital literacy, documentation barriers, and access to digital infrastructure influence vulnerable households’ ability to register for, access, and continuously receive social protection benefits. The study adopts a mixed-methods design, combining a survey of social protection beneficiaries and potentially excluded households with semi-structured interviews involving social welfare professionals, programme officials, community workers, and representatives of relevant social protection institutions. The research further examines the emerging role of social workers as facilitators between vulnerable citizens and digital welfare systems through outreach, case management, digital assistance, referral, grievance support, and identification of households at risk of exclusion. The study argues that successful digital transformation of social protection should be assessed not only through administrative efficiency and technological modernization but also through its capacity to ensure equitable and inclusive access for socially and digitally marginalized populations. It proposes a human-centred digital social protection framework in which technological innovation is complemented by professional social work interventions and community-based support. The study seeks to contribute to social work and social protection scholarship by positioning digital welfare exclusion as an emerging field of professional practice in Pakistan and by providing policy recommendations for building an inclusive, accessible, and responsive digital welfare system.