INSS replaces employees with robots in retirement resources

The INSS (Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social) will soon use robots in the initial phase of the processes of appeals for benefits denied to the insured, such as retirements, pensions and aid. The technology will be used after the end of the temporary contract of employees of the Diligence Crisis Office, linked to the CRPS (Council of Social Security Resources).

The measure is included in a joint ordinance published on Monday (16), involving, in addition to the CRPS, the Secretary of Social Security and the Ministry of Labor and Welfare. The document creates a working group to implement the use of artificial intelligence.

The measure, according to the publication, should increase individual productivity and reduce queues.

Resources are instruments used by policyholders when they have a request denied by the INSS. There is a period of 30 days to appeal a negative decision of the body. When filing the appeal, the worker must present the documentation that guarantees his benefit.

In addition, documents that have already been used in the initial analysis of the request and are in the so-called INSS administrative process must also be included in the new process sent to the appeals council. In these cases, the work of checking and sending the documents necessary for the analysis of the resource was done by servers and, now, will have to be carried out by robots.

As the INSS and CRPS systems are not integrated, when appealing the negative decision through Meu INSS, only the initial petition of the insured goes to the council, leaving behind all documents already presented at the stage in which the request was being processed. analyzed by INSS servers, who are in the benefit administrative process.

Without the documentation in hand, the counselors returned the insured’s application and asked the office for the necessary documents to analyze the right to the benefit. Temporary workers searched for the administrative process, located the documentation, and only then, manually, sent it back to the council, making the appeals take even longer to be judged.

Documents will be sent automatically

With the novelty, the collection of documentation and the connection between the INSS and CRPS systems will be made using artificial intelligence.

“What was done with this ordinance was the robotization of this procedure, to instrumentalize the process in the appeal phase so that it can be sent completely. Everything that is on the Meu INSS platform related to that process will be forwarded so that the counselor can do the proper judgment, with all the documents”, explains Adriane Bramante, president of the IBDP (Brazilian Institute of Social Security Law).

Artificial intelligence could also identify whether there are other actions by the same person with the same object being processed in court and reduce the number of duplicate requests.

Lawyer Roberto de Carvalho, president of Ieprev (Institute for Social Security Studies), points out that another possibility for the robot would be the agreement with other bodies to collect and check information in other systems, such as CadÚnico (Cadastro Único) and DataSUS, for example.

Among the documents that the robot can automatically send from the INSS system to the Social Security resources are a technical opinion from the federal medical expertise on the analysis of the time exercised under special conditions, social and medical assessment on disability, a summary extract from the Cnis (National Registry of Social Information) in social security and accident disability benefits and reports from Sabi (Disability Benefits Administration System), among others.

Analysis of the resources is the responsibility of the Social Security counselors

According to Carvalho, with this, the counselor’s job will be to check the documentation gathered by the robot and judge the appeal, without replacing the human decision on the insured’s process. “I think it’s fantastic to use artificial intelligence for this, because they really are repetitive acts,” he says.

For lawyer Rômulo Saraiva, columnist for Sheet, there needs to be artificial intelligence programming to handle the variety of resources and situations. “There are very peculiar demands, very artisanal, that require a more accurate analysis. Sometimes even a server that doesn’t have that much experience faces difficulties.”

Saraiva and Carvalho state that some practical aspects should be more specified in the ordinance, such as, for example, if, in case of lack of documentation, the robot can open diligence for the insured to complete his appeal. Otherwise, it is not clear whether cases in which documents are missing will be automatically rejected.

The use of robots has generated controversy

The use of artificial intelligence by the INSS (National Institute of Social Security) in the granting of social security benefits has failed and increased the negative responses to the insured, according to the Sinssp (Social Security and Social Security Workers Union in the State of São Paulo), which criticize the measure.

The technological novelty began to be used in 2000, when, around 2008, the institute began to use technological means to identify the right to retirement by age. At that time, the insured who reached the minimum age and had the minimum grace period (15 years of contribution) received a letter informing that he could now apply for retirement.

In 2018, the automatic granting of benefits was started, through artificial intelligence. Retirement could take up to 30 minutes after the request in the case of citizens with all documents up to date and with a request for benefits that did not require further analysis.

“The logic of the automatic concession was to recognize the insured’s right. Not today. Today, the goal is to end up with the stock. The system is scanned, checks if you have the right and, if you don’t, reject it. automatic rejection”, says Vilma Ramos, director of the union.