Digital expense refund service portal launched

MAKE IT FAST: The portal would make it easier to file for reimbursements of welfare subsidies, with the system expected to be fully digitalized by 2028

• By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

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The Ministry of Digital Affairs yesterday launched a digital expense reimbursement service portal to reduce the time needed to process reimbursements of social welfare subsidies.

Ministry data showed that the government processes about 4,000 requests from 1,300 social welfare groups for reimbursement of social welfare subsidies a year, with the amount of funds involved topping approximately NT$1.5 billion (US$47 million).

Under the traditional system, applicants must submit paper documents, invoices and receipts, all of which have to be manually sorted, attached and checked item by item.

Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching, fourth right, Administration for Digital Industries Director-General Lin Jiunn-shiow, third right and other officials hold placards at a press conference in Taipei yesterday.

Photo: CNA

“Taiwan is known for being a digital nation, but social welfare groups still have to manually attach supporting documents to application forms for reimbursement of subsidies. As such, the government has decided to digitize the administrative process to meet the needs of social welfare workers,” Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) said in a news conference in Taipei.

The portal allows applicants to upload images of invoices, uses artificial intelligence to identify information on the receipts and automatically enters the information to their respective fields, reducing data entry time and errors, the ministry said.

The digital expense reimbursement service portal is only the beginning of the digitization of administrative procedures, Lin said, adding that the ministry could use similar models in other government systems that also need fund reimbursements.

With the newly developed portal, the processing time for a reimbursement request for welfare subsidies could be reduced from 10 days to one day, the digital affairs ministry said.

The portal also allows applicants to upload documents missing in the applications and application status, it added.

The digital affairs ministry and the Ministry of Health and Welfare discussed the development of the service portal for two to three years, said Chen Shu-mei (陳淑美), chief secretary of health ministry’s Social and Family Affairs Administration.

“We are planning to migrate to the new system in phases. National welfare organizations that handle reimbursement of subsidies from the Public Welfare Lottery surplus and other welfare programs would first use the portal as a trial operation. We will also test the portal at the local level by working with government officials in Tainan, Chiayi and Yunlin counties,” she said.

“When the portal officially operates next year, both paper-based and digital application processes would remain in place. The goal is to achieve full digitalization by 2028,” Chen said.