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

In time of crisis, the institution maintains public confidence, minimizes disruption in operations and mitigates reputational risks through the provision of timely, coherent, accurate and appropriate communication. Anticipation, timing, and competent response are critical elements of any crisis plan.

The institution proactively develops and maintains a professional relationship with the media and the press.

Social security programmes are often very complex. It is highly desirable that the media understand the programmes so that they can fully play their part in providing accurate information to the public.

The institution develops strategies to maintain and extend the effective coverage of contributory social security, by promoting the exhaustive inclusion in the collection system of all contributors covered by the social security regulations or, if this is not the case, through coverage extension.

The institution implements a strategy to foster a culture of awareness of social security and contribution collection.

Voluntary compliance with contribution policy can be highly dependent on the overall culture of the social security programme in a country. The culture of social security attempts to instil confidence in the programmes and their management by constant education of the public about the programmes and their benefits.

Should the board delegate its functions to a subgroup of the board, to a subgroup of officers at management level and/or to external service providers, such delegated functions are well defined, documented, time bound and subject to review and approval by the board. Legislation, policy or decree provides for the responsibility of the board members for such delegated functions.

Members and beneficiaries are regularly and periodically informed of their duties and responsibilities, as mandated by the legislation, policy or decree that establishes the social security programme.

The management submits for board approval a strategic plan that lays down and spells out the key strategies and plans of action to be implemented by the management in order to realize and perform the legislated mandate of the institution.

Section B.1 provides more guidelines on the strategic planning process, with corresponding structures and mechanisms to facilitate the application of the guidelines.

The management maintains open communications with the stakeholders, to encourage exchange and suggestions on how the institution can be more responsive to their needs and concerns.

The management aligns and coordinates risk management activities across the institution to maximize synergies, avoid gaps and prevent duplication of effort.

The board and management ensure that the valuation of the investment portfolio is in accordance with international market standards on fair market value.

The institution’s human resources policies, rules and regulations are fair, impartial, well defined, documented and widely disseminated to all staff to protect the integrity of the recruitment process, to minimize political considerations and to enhance transparency and predictability. These include a policy of employment equity and protection against harassment.

Structure

The corporate application of ICT in social security institutions requires establishing policies and practices to carry out the wide spectrum of ICT-related activities in a consistent and systematic way. Such policies and practices are addressed by the disciplines of ICT governance and management, which aim to guide organizations (in particular, medium and large ones) to improve effectiveness and efficiency in their application of ICT.

The institution implements systematic and standard technical management practices to ensure the availability of resources to support the service life cycle.

Technical management activities involve planning, implementing and maintaining a stable technical infrastructure and ensuring that required resources and expertise are in place to design, build, transition, operate and improve information technology services and supporting technology.

The institution develops interoperable shared data services (basic registries) in accordance with the interoperability application model.

Shared data services play an essential role in the implementation of integrated social security systems. This includes the sharing of core social security data. Typically shared is data on benefits granted to beneficiaries, beneficiaries’ family links, employees’ worked periods, salaries and contributions, employers and contracted employees.

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, in coordination with the other participants in the agreement, establishes an authentication framework to provide legally valid, efficient and secure means for the transactions carried out in the social security agreement.

This framework replaces that based on handwritten signatures used in paper-based transactions and provides the means to validate the authenticity of the electronically exchanged data.

The following guidelines are organized in four parts:

Part A, Investment Governance Principles

Part B, Investment Governance Structures

Part C, Common Processes

Part D, Processes Specific to Internal and External Investment Management

It may be possible to take advantage of asset market movements and changes in the value of the investing institution’s portfolio to implement a dynamic de-risking or re-risking strategy. The board, management and investment committee consider on a regular basis rebalancing the portfolio so that it is in line with the investing institution’s strategic asset allocation objectives.

Where appropriate and permitted by the board, the investing institution may take a direct equity or ownership stake in a publicly quoted, private or state-owned enterprise.

Such an investment may confer voting rights and permit the institution to influence directly certain activities of the organization in which it has taken part or, when there is full ownership, include representation on the board of a company or organization.

The institution conducts a thorough analysis of the national legal framework, including safety and health regulations, in order to identify its role in prevention and develop prevention activities in line with current legislation. If no legal mandate to carry out prevention services exists, the institution initiates a process to provide an adequate legal prevention framework. The same is valid for the recognition of occupational diseases.

The institution’s prevention experts are in direct exchange with employers and safety representatives to enable the transfer of prevention knowledge and facilitate the implementation of prevention measures at the operational level.

There are manifold reasons for a social security institution to carry out personal consulting activities among its member enterprises. Regular site visits are commonly based on defined frequency rates, which often depend on the specific risk category of the enterprise. Other important causes include the investigation of occupational accidents or a work history of exposures leading to occupational diseases.

The promotion of a prevention culture should be a declared goal of a social security institution. This requires all stakeholders in occupational safety and health, but also in areas related to it, to jointly formulate their prevention targets and contribute to sustainably improving safety and health throughout society and in all aspects of life. Building a prevention culture is the “responsibility of the society as a whole” as stated in the Seoul Declaration.