The institution, in coordination with the others participating in the agreement, establishes an interoperability framework to implement international agreements.

Interoperability techniques enable the connection of the systems of different institutions, particularly at the international level; they are therefore among the essential technologies for implementing international social security agreements. The specific guidelines in this section are:

• Interoperability framework for international agreements
• Semantic interoperability
• Interoperable services

The institution defines an institutional architecture specifying the mechanisms to perform an effective and secure interaction between the institution’s systems and those at the national and international levels.

If several national institutions participate in the agreement, they define an architecture covering national exchanges.

The national architecture focuses on the coordination between the liaison agency and the competent institutions in the country, enabling exchanges with cross-border institutions through the international architecture.

The institution, in coordination with the other institutions participating in the agreement, defines an architecture enabling it to perform international data exchanges in an efficient and secure way.

In the case of multilateral agreements, the international architecture may include a “trusted third organization” storing key common information, such as a log of transactions, digital signatures and certificates.

This section addresses the definition of architectures, specifying the main ICT components that enable the implementation of interaction between institutions putting into practice international social security agreements.

The implementation of agreements involves three architectures:

The institution defines administrative principles to manage the main operations and resources of the international agreement.

The main operations include data exchanges based on requests/responses, notifications of changes and relevant information about persons covered by the agreement. The main resources comprise information models of the data exchanged, digital certificates and signatures, and the software systems to be used for the implementation.

The institution establishes a strategy and an action plan to implement the international social security agreements.

The institution defines its mission, roles and governance structure to implement the operations of the international social security agreements under its mandate in order to protect the social security rights of migrant workers.

If applicable, the institution participates in defining the governance structure for the international and inter-institutional levels.

The specific guidelines in this section are:

• Governance and management of the ICT-based implementation of international agreements
• Strategy and action plan
• Administrative principles for the main operations and resources of the agreement