The institution ensures it has the required authority to pursue the innovative administrative solutions it has identified.

The institution is aware of the strategic importance of the enabling environment required to support the extension of social security coverage to difficult-to-cover groups. It identifies the elements that it could leverage and the gaps/weaknesses in coverage that should be mitigated.

Through measures that ensure the necessary legal framework, social security institutions are encouraged to take a proactive role in extending coverage.

The specific guidelines in this section are:

• Assessing the enabling environment
• Securing the required authority for coverage extension

The Guidelines are organized in six parts.

Part A, Assessing and Contributing to the Enabling Environment, addresses various measures to gauge the extent to which the necessary external building blocks are in place.

Part B, Ensuring Institutional Readiness, points to the key capacities enabling social security institutions to work towards extending coverage to difficult-to-cover groups.

The ISSA Guidelines on Administrative Solutions for Coverage Extension aim at strengthening the capacities of social security administrations to deliver effective contributory programmes and to work towards the extension of coverage to groups that are typically difficult to cover.

The challenge of extending full access to social security coverage to all those who have a right to it is an issue across all branches of social security, and permeates all institutions to various degrees. These guidelines identify administrative solutions to improve access to contributory social security programmes for populations that are difficult to cover; the so-called hard to reach.

The Guidelines on Actuarial Work for Social Security have been produced jointly by the International Labour Office (ILO) and the International Social Security Association (ISSA). They were written by Assia Billig and Jean-Claude Ménard from the Office of the Chief Actuary – Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Canada, Simon Brimblecombe from the ISSA General Secretariat, and Hiroshi Yamabana, André Picard, Cristina Lloret and Anne Drouin from the ILO.

An actuary and/or other social security professional performing actuarial work for a social security institution develops and maintains the high level of professional expertise necessary to perform required actuarial work. In the case of using internal resources to perform actuarial work, the social security institution ensures that actuaries and/or other social security professionals are provided with sufficient opportunities to maintain technical knowledge, professional expertise and appropriate behaviour including the managing of potential conflicts of interest.

In the case where internal resources are used to perform actuarial work, the social security institution maintains adequate staffing levels and provides the actuarial department with the necessary resources to ensure that tasks can be carried out effectively.

This guideline should be read in conjunction with Guidelines 49 and 51.

Actuaries and other social security professionals providing actuarial services for social security schemes possess appropriate qualifications and expertise necessary to fulfil their responsibilities. A qualified actuary is a member of a national (or international) professional actuarial association (or working toward fulfilling requirements to become a member) and follows applicable professional standards, rules of professional conduct and continuing professional development requirements.