These guidelines are consistent with the ISSA Guidelines on Good Governance, a comprehensive set of guidelines covering a range of internal governance processes required in the administration of social security institutions.

For these guidelines, the definition of investment governance begins with describing the key elements of a system of decision-making and oversight used to invest the assets of a fund. Thereafter, the definition extends to define investment governance as this relates specifically to the management of reserve funds of social security institutions.

The ISSA Guidelines on Investment of Social Security Funds allows members to follow a progressive process of governance. This starts with the setting up of the various structures involved in the process and includes defining roles and how these interact with the processes to be set up in order that governance objectives are met. These processes include defining and monitoring an investment strategy, monitoring performance and reporting.

The guidelines presented here are applicable to the board, management, investing institution, investment committee and investment units. While recognizing that some social security institutions carry out investment management internally while others use external managers, they aim to allow institutions to follow a progressive process of governance.

The ISSA Guidelines for Social Security Administration were prepared by the ISSA General Secretariat with the ISSA technical commissions.

The institution puts into practice the ICT operations to implement international agreements complying with the corresponding SLAs. This is carried out in the context of the institution’s ICT operations, starting with an evaluation of the implications and requirements generated by the systems implementing international agreements.

The institution, in coordination with the other participants in the agreement, defines service quality indicators and goals for the main operations in the agreement at the international level. In addition, the institution defines corresponding indicators and goals for its internal systems with the aim of ensuring the fulfilment of the goals established at the international level.

The ICT operations of the international agreements comprise the system administration activities that enable the use of ICT systems to perform specific case transactions of the agreement.

Managing the ICT operations for the agreements involves the following main aspects:

The institution, in coordination with the other institutions participating in the international agreement, specifies information models for data exchange according to requests, administrative communications and notifications.

These models, which correspond to the usually defined “forms” to exchange data, may include: personal data, labour records, death, marriage, separation, birth, other benefits received in the host or origin country, income declarations, expenses related to procedures on individual cases, etc.

The institution, in coordination with the other institutions participating in the international agreement, specifies processes to notify changes and other relevant information related to individuals covered by the agreement.