ABSTRACT
The present chapter seeks to present a new initiative in public policies in its historical, legal, conceptual, methodological and strategic aspects. It is aimed at demonstrating the execution and results reached in a Brazilian experiment with information and communication technologies (ICTs). For the first time, social assistance was identified in the Federal Constitution (1988) as a state public policy, along with the rights to citizenship and state obligations, which must be offered to every Brazilian who needs it. Since 2004, the National Policy of Social Assistance has been organised in a unified system called the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS), which is decentralised, regulated and present in every Brazilian state and municipality. The system offers benefits and services of social assistance and is carried out by a network of governmental and non-governmental services fulfilling three strategic functions: social protection, safety and access to rights, and a social-assistance monitoring service. All of this is carried out from the perspective of the development of territorial social technologies that reach the entire Brazilian population, which demands social protection and the ability to exercise the basic rights of citizenship. The chapter highlights the basis, guidelines and functioning structure of the SUAS, presenting the characteristics of the social services and benefits of the system, the conception and processes of management of the social-assistance monitoring service, and the technology and communication networking present in the SUAS. In addition, the chapter presents a successful case study, which demonstrates how a computerised system can contribute to the inclusion of the population in social policies. And finally, the results reached in the deployment of the social-assistance monitoring service and how this function responds to the needs of the population in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil are presented.
