Masterprüfung mit Defensio, Stadler Emanuel

26.02.2021 14:00 - 15:30

SOCIAL: A Social Welfare Calculator Adaptable to Varying Legal Frameworks

In 2019, 267,683 persons in Austria45were supported by social welfaresubsistence payments. There are more than nine different laws46regulatingthese social welfare payments in Austria, differing in each federal state. Thelegal frameworks are complex and to understand them in detail requiresthorough knowledge of the intricacies of the respective laws and policies.The decision-making process for social welfare experts working with clientson their social welfare payments mostly consists of two steps: determiningthe eligibility in general and calculating the amount of social welfarepayments for an individual. This is a complicated procedure and currentlyinvolves manual calculation, consultations with experts, studying the legalframeworks or a combination thereof. The regulations also changefrequently, making adjustments necessary.Eligible citizens as well as experts working at social organizations couldbenefit from a system that simplifies this process. Therefore, this thesisproposesSOCIAL. SOCIALenables the modeling and adapting of socialwelfare calculators as well as questionnaires. Moreover, users can prototype,edit, adapt and automatically generate web applications based on thosemodels.SOCIALconsists of two major parts: the model editor and the applicationsthat are generated based on the individual models. The model editor allowsthe modeling and editing of calculators and questionnaires using aGUIanda DAG, which makes frequent changes to the model easier. It is based onDAGitty[26, 27] byTextor et al., which is modified to enable domain-specificmodeling. The web applications can then automatically be generated from themodel using an intermediary Parser, which is also described in this work.For the development process ofSOCIAL, the methodology frameworkdescribed inSoftware Engineering for ‘Social Good’[7] byFerrario et al.isapplied. It involves rapid prototyping and agile development methods toimprove the development of software within social contexts. Furthermore,SOCIALis evaluated and continuously optimized based on the feedbackfrom experts and social workers at Diakonie Österreich, who are activelyusing a web application generated withSOCIALduring their daily work.SOCIALwas also presented to experts working at and withNGOsat theArltSymposium 2020[2]. Additionally, the application is evaluated using theSUSas described inSUS: A ‘Quick and Dirty’ Usability Scale[64] byBrooke et al.

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