The BE-FAST project was initiated to evaluate and enhance Belgium’s preparedness to monitor and respond to future socio-economic crises. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed critical weaknesses in the country’s data infrastructure, particularly in long delays, data fragmentation, and blind spots. Specifically, tracking vulnerable populations and the impact on households seemed difficult. The project aimed to map administrative data sources, assess the accuracy of the nowcasting tools used during the pandemic, and identify data gaps and opportunities for improvement. The findings show that, while some labour market and social protection data (e.g. unemployment and working time) is available in the short term, other crucial information, especially on the self-employed, faces delays of up to three years. While nowcasting models largely aligned with observed data and proved useful, they struggled to reflect the nuanced realities experienced by specific groups. The project concludes that Belgium’s socio-economic monitoring capacity could be significantly improved by faster and more flexible data sharing and by integrating alternative data sources, such as bank transactions data, subjective indicators and data on local support initiatives.
