International social security agreements make possible the portability of benefits for millions of insured people and generate the export of billions of dollars in cash benefits around the world among signatory countries. This involves significant cross-border data exchange and back-office information processing. The effective and reliable implementation of agreements therefore requires an intensive application of ICT to ensure the integrity of the process.

The institution carries out ICT operations to enable the use of the master data system in compliance with the corresponding service-level agreements (SLAs).

The institution continuously monitors the availability and performance of the master data systems. Interruptions and malfunctioning of the master data systems should be prevented by setting up alarms that would warn the ICT team of an SLA violation (i.e. event, incident or problem).

The ICT operations of master data systems comprise the system administration activities that enable the use of the master data in the institution.

Given the critical nature of the master data system, the corresponding ICT operations have to ensure the service quality levels (e.g. availability, performance, etc.) required to carry out the social security operations using these data. Such quality levels are established in a service-level agreement (SLA).

The specific guideline in this section is:

The institution establishes a framework for the management of the security and privacy of the master data based on the relevant regulations.

The institution implements effective and quality-preserving interoperability mechanisms not only with other systems within the institution but also with external systems.

In addition to providing the means of interaction with other systems, interoperability mechanisms should keep track of the provenance of data obtained from other institutions.

The institution puts into practice specific processes to manage change, maintenance and the evolution of the master data system.

As the master data system is at the core of the institution’s information systems and is used by a large number of systems, change and evolution have to be managed so as to minimize impacts and service disruptions. Therefore, the information model of the master data system should reflect the concepts used throughout the institution.

The institution implements the master data systems taking into account the functional requirements of all involved business areas of the institution.

The institution defines architectures for the master data system, the master data governance system and the master data management system.

These three information systems should be adequately defined and conveniently integrated into the institutional architecture in order to better support the master data operations through the master data life cycle. This implies designing adequate architectural styles for the master data systems and the management information system in order to leverage maximum value for the institution’s master data.

The specific guidelines in this section are:

• Architectures for master data systems
• Implementation of master data systems
• Management of master data system evolution
• Master data system interoperability
• Security and privacy of master data

The institution implements measures to ensure adequate quality levels in the master data and to improve the quality when necessary.

These measures, which are based on data quality goals and indicators, typically consist of corrective master data profiling and master data cleansing operations. In order to be cost effective, the data quality goals have to be clearly defined.