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:
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:
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.
