The institution develops partnerships with various organizations for the purpose of reaching potential beneficiaries, reducing administrative costs and increasing service quality and integrity.
Guideline code
EXT_00600
Mechanism
Mechanism
- The institution should participate in an assessment of coordination mechanisms with other institutions, government departments, etc.
- Social insurance institutions that administer similar benefits for other population groups are natural partners. The management should strive to combine efforts with them in carrying out certain operations, such as sharing a unique identifier (a unified social security card for both contributory and non-contributory schemes, for example) for registration, and conducting the integrated collection of different social insurance contributions.
- The local administration is another natural partner, notably considering its community-level network, and specific knowledge of local population needs.
- Cooperation with community organizations can play a significant role in reaching difficult-to-cover groups and raising awareness of the new programme(s). Potential partners may include social marketing establishments, religious groups, trade unions and professional organizations whose members are providing front-line services to difficult-to-cover groups.
- Collaboration with community-based insurance schemes, mutual fund schemes and micro-insurance schemes can be of strategic importance as such schemes often have ready access to a significant number of difficult-to-cover people, as well as flexible administrative arrangements that are better adapted to the needs and circumstances of specific population groups.
- Commercial establishments such as banks, post offices, telecommunication companies and insurance companies, as well as convenience stores and pharmacies (with a good network and flexible opening hours) may also help provide effective services in carrying out some of the administration procedures. These arrangements require careful design and robust internal controls to ensure that all transactions are performed as intended and have an audit trail. Protection of privacy is paramount, particularly when involving private sector partners and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
- Service-level agreements (SLAs) should be established to bind relevant partners to ensure that the information on basic operations, such as registration, transfer of collected contributions, investment of social security funds and payment of benefits, is transmitted to the institution in a secure and timely manner and used exclusively for the purpose specified.
- The institution should carry out periodically an assessment of the functions and responsibilities of different social security institutions, so as to make informed decisions on which administrative functions should be carried out at the national, regional or local levels, which ones need to be kept within the social security institution, and which ones should be shared with or outsourced to external partners.
Structure
Structure
- The institution should engage with external partners, and establish cost-effective partnerships with various organizations that interact with difficult-to-cover groups, such as tax authorities, local government, line agencies, commercial entities, non-profit organizations and professional organizations.
- As the protection of data privacy is of critical importance, appropriate safeguarding mechanisms should be designed, implemented and controlled.
Title HTML
Guideline 4. Leveraging partners in administering the scheme
Type
Guideline_1
Weight
8