The System for the Identification of Potential Beneficiaries of Social Programs (Sisbén) is Colombias main instrument for targeting social policies. To date, Sisbén has gone through four versions and uses statistical tools and techniques to identify and rank the population according to their socioeconomic situation. Recently, Colombia began the transition from Sisbén to the Social Registry of Households (Registro Social de Hogares, RSH). This transition entails moving from a tool based on socioeconomic surveys to a system that seeks to capture the socioeconomic situation of the entire population through interoperability with administrative records (CONPES 2016) and to integrate an analysis of the social service supply (Decree 812 of 2020, Article 2). From its beginnings in 1994 to the present, Sisbén has progressively strengthened its methodology, operations, and technology, enabling the transition to a more ambitious instrument such as the RSH.
In its first version, Sisbén embodied the spirit of decentralization enshrined in the 1991 Constitution and developed through Law 60 of 1993. It was conceived under a decentralized municipal scheme, with limited monitoring by the central government and significant challenges related to data quality. The second version arose from the evident need to centralize certain operational processes, but within a framework of high territorial autonomy that allowed municipalities to complyor notwith national guidelines regarding data submission and the application of quality controls in their local databases. In the third version, the recentralization of processes related to the database was consolidated, and operations were strengthened through the standardization of processes and definitions. Conceptually, this third version marked a shift toward a new vision of poverty based on a capabilities approach. However, due to the high cost of data collection, the records gathered in 2011 gradually became outdated, posing challenges for the targeting of social programs. Finally, a new survey round began in 2018, involving conceptual changes and a methodology that incorporates an approach based on productive exclusionthat is, the ability to capture not only living conditions but also income-generating capacity. This latter approach corresponds to Sisbén IV, which is currently in force.
The Social Registry of Households (RSH) was created through Decree with the force of law 812, approved at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (June 2020). This marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of targeting in Colombia. The RSH is an information system designed and administered by the National Planning Department (Departamento Nacional de Planeación, DNP) for targeting purposes, public policy design, and the monitoring of Colombian households living conditions. Unlike Sisbén, the RSH includes all citizens and residents in Colombian territory and is in the process of integrating information from public and private entities related to population and territorial socioeconomic characteristics, as well as records of beneficiaries of national and local social programs.
Today, the RSH covers the entire Colombian population through the master identification database and is working on integrating new sources of supply- and demand-side information. The RSH has four general objectives (DNP 2025):
to have updated and validated socioeconomic information to improve the targeting of social spending;
to monitor the social programs received by households;
to coordinate, articulate, and rationalize the social service supply; and
to generate traceability for households in situations of poverty and vulnerability.
Although the RSH is relatively new, it has a short- and medium-term plan that will allow progress toward these objectives. Central to this plan are the creation of the Single Income Registry (Registro Único de Ingresos, RUI) as a new targeting modelwhich will enable the construction of an income function for the entire populationand the Single Window (Ventanilla Única), which will integrate the full range of services offered to citizens.
After 30 years of Sisbén implementation and nearly three years of the RSH, a series of contributions of Colombias targeting system have been identified. The main ones, as detailed throughout the text, include:
increased transparency in targeting processes;
reduced response times; and
strengthened monitoring and evaluation in the social sector, thanks to the availability of data on both supply and demand within the RSH.
Colombia has succeeded in building a robust and sustainable targeting instrument over time. This achievement is due in large part to certain continuity factors, including the capitalization of lessons learned, early mandates from strategic social programs such as health, collegial decision-making, the centralization of technical and quality guidelines, and the institutional separation between the targeting instrument and social programs.
Finally, the following challenges have been identified in order to continue enhancing the value of Sisbén and the RSH:
the interinstitutional coordination required for data updating, as well as the availability of the human resources needed to carry out these processes;
technical challenges related to personal data protection, information quality, and the identification of populations not captured by existing databases; and
the legitimacy that the RSH will achieve with citizens in the future and the reconciliation between the concepts of universality and targeting.