The institution regularly gathers news and information and selects those that may have an impact on its operations and its stakeholders.

Effective external communication with the client, the most important stakeholder, is essential, as is dialogue with external groups and individuals.

The specific guidelines in this section are:

• Informing the citizen/client about benefits and services
• Relations with the media and the press
• Developing a social security culture

The institution establishes a strategy to ensure that contributions always fulfil the requirements of the corresponding benefits and that members’ rights are respected.

In order to improve information capabilities, the institution implements data exchange with organizations related to social security contribution collection and compliance but which do not have a formal mandate in this regard.

Examples of such organizations include national statistical institutions, and agencies providing business registration and establishment authorization (e.g. industry bodies, ministries, local authorities).

The principle of accountability is at the heart of good governance. At a political level, it means making rulers accountable to the ruled. To enforce accountability, governance structures and mechanisms are needed to enable the principals to hold their chosen trustees legally responsible for their acts and decisions.

Members are informed about the benefits due to them under the social security programmes.

The Head of Management is suitable and competent to fill the position in the social security institution. The term of office of the Head of Management and the basis for its renewal (if it is renewable) are clear and well defined.

The management establishes an information and communications system to provide accurate and up-to-date information to the stakeholders of the social security programme. The goal is to empower stakeholders with a full understanding of the programme and how it is being governed, to enable their effective participation.

To manage or prevent risks in real time, there is ongoing monitoring of the institution’s internal and external environment. Risk scenarios are analysed to keep the institution constantly alert and ready.

The investment unit of the institution efficiently implements the investment policies set out by the board or management.

The board and management continually aim to improve and to develop new services for members and beneficiaries.

The growing extent of ICT application globally has motivated the development of standards and frameworks, notably by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT®), IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®), Data Management International (DAMA), Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Object Management Group (OMG), Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMM/CMMI).

The institution establishes a systematic and standardized framework for developing and managing its software applications throughout their life cycle, including requirements, design, the build, deployment, operation and optimization.

The institution defines a service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based model to guide the application of interoperability in the implementation of integrated social security systems.

In order to provide practical benefits to implementation, the model comprises key components such as basic registries and interoperability services.

The institution establishes a legally valid, efficient and secure means of maintaining an association between a user and a mobile device when a transaction is performed.

Such user identification will be required for several intermediate and advanced services.

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, in coordination with the other participants in the agreement, defines semantic interoperability resources at the international level in order to improve the automatization of data exchange operations among institutions involved in the agreement.

Using semantic interoperability in the implementation of international agreements would provide unambiguous definitions of the concepts used by the institutions involved. These mechanisms would be mainly based on metadata systems and vocabularies related to the exchanged data types.

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 investment assumptions used in determining the investment strategy of the social security institution are fit for purpose. These assumptions will include assumptions for return, risk and correlation, and other factors as appropriate. Assumptions are considered over a suitable time frame (typically long term) to ensure the output of any modelling is consistent with the time horizon of the mission and goals of the social security institution.

The guidelines set out in this section refer to the situation where part or all of investment management is carried out by an internal investment unit. In such cases, the investment process will be the responsibility of employees of the social security institution and, although there may be external advice and support provided, the ultimate responsibility will lie with those employed directly by the institution.

The following guidelines are organized in two parts:

Part A, Basic Conditions for Prevention Programmes, deals with the structural issues that need to be addressed if social security institutions are to be able to support and facilitate the development of preventive approaches with and for enterprises.

Part B, Prevention Activities and Services, deals with specific prevention activities and services that can be offered.

The institution encourages enterprises to participate in prevention programmes by offering financial incentives.

Examples of financial incentives include “bonus-malus systems” or reward schemes that are applied in addition to risk-related contributions.

The figure below provides an example of a systematic approach to occupational diseases, starting from individual suspicion of an occupational disease and notification to the final decision on whether or not the diseases will be recognized by the social security institution. The decision on such recognition depends on causality between the disease and the workplace in order for the disease to be classified as occupational.

The institution develops its own in-house training centre in order to better meet participants’ expectations of training quality, effectiveness and efficiency.

A broad range of institutional and individual stakeholders help promote and support effective social security and return-to-work programmes and improve employability.