The institution adopts appropriate measures to facilitate effective registration of difficult-to-cover groups.

The guidelines are organized in five parts:

Part A, Communication Principles, provides guidelines to define the institution’s guiding principles on communication that lay the foundation on the way governance and the management of communication activities will be performed.

Part B, Governance and Management, provides guidelines to establish policies and practices to systematically carry out the wide spectrum of consistent communication-related activities.

The institution communicates effectively its mission and vision, and its abiding commitment to deliver on its mandate.

Contribution collection and compliance constitutes a core function within social security systems. It plays a key role in attaining the financial sustainability of the overall system. The timely and full payment of contributions by and on behalf of insured persons is necessary if they are to achieve the benefits to which they are legally entitled. The sustainability of social security is more than a simple issue of financial sustainability, however, and involves ensuring its social and political sustainability.

The institution provides a means to register contributors that enables it to identify all (e.g. individual persons, legal entities) who are required to contribute to the system and to know their compliance situation.

Building effective and efficient contribution collection and compliance systems involves long-term political and administrative projects. A large number of success and risk factors can be identified only during these processes. Furthermore, experience and institutional capacity are obtained mainly through practical projects. Successful social security systems rely strongly on acceptance and adoption by society overall, whatever the country.

Legislation, policy or decree establishes the legal liability of the members of the board for failure to discharge their functions.

Participation refers to the effective involvement of stakeholders in the institution’s decision-making process to protect their interests and to support the social security programme. It is a way of building partnership between the board and the institution’s stakeholders, allowing better policy-making, improvement of trust among stakeholders and the enhancement of transparency.

For social security institutions that have an investment mandate, the management ensures that it has the technical expertise to manage the investments of the social security institution. In particular, it manages liquid assets so as to guarantee the timely and accurate payment of benefits, in each of the social security programmes run by the institution. Legislation, policy or decree establishes the legal liability of the management and/or its designated agents for fraudulent investments.

The Head of Management motivates and inspires the institution to propose and work on innovations that would increase operational efficiency and improve the implementation of the mandate of the social security programme.

When auditing the institution’s reports, the internal auditor and actuary communicate clearly and effectively. The exchange of information between them neither compromises nor impinges upon their respective independence.

The board and/or management use best practice to select the fund managers for the investment reserve funds of the institution.

The board establishes human resources policies that enable the management to identify, develop and retain talented staff who could take on greater responsibilities in the institution. Policies based on the principles of transparency and merit are fundamental to professional fulfilment, staff morale and personal satisfaction. The work environment and institutional culture, more than monetary compensation, draws and keeps skilled and talented people in the institution.

The institution establishes ICT governance processes linked to its governance objectives, which include evaluating strategic options, giving direction to ICT and monitoring outcomes.

Governance processes ensure that stakeholder needs, conditions and options are evaluated in order to determine and agree upon balanced institutional objectives, set direction through prioritization and decision-making, and monitor performance and compliance against agreed objectives and direction.

The institution permanently monitors, analyses and treats ICT-related events and problems in order to prevent incidents. In turn, incidents are managed in order to restore normal services as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations.

The institution establishes an information security management framework which defines the main procedures, duties and responsibilities in this domain.

The specific guidelines in this section are:

• Master Data Management and Master Data Governance Programmes
• Strategies, policies and roles
• Optimization of master data value

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 establishes ICT-related security policies and measures to protect transactions performed in the social security agreement as well as the digital certificates.

Strong investment beliefs that command institution-wide support, are aligned with objectives and inform all investment decision-making, are agreed and documented.

Investment is essentially about making judgements and decisions in the present, typically with reference to the past, to cope with or exploit an uncertain future. Investors do this by using their underlying beliefs about how the world works. The quality of those underlying beliefs is a major determinant of success in investment.

The investment philosophy and process is framed with reference to the investing institution’s skills, resources and processes.

The guidelines set out in this section cover the governance issues relating to the selection, appointment and monitoring of external investment managers. The choice of whether to use an external investment manager depends on the resources available within the social security institution as well as views on the added value such an external manager can bring.

In establishing a framework for prevention, the institution ensures the full participation of social partners and competent state authorities from the outset.

Positive communication at this level is essential in order to gain acceptance and support. These stakeholders must be kept informed and involved from the very beginning and throughout the process.

The institution’s prevention experts continuously provide information on prevention to member enterprises through various information channels.

The institution systematically and thoroughly assesses occupational accidents and occupational diseases as soon as possible after the event, and documents the results.

The purpose of this assessment is to help enterprises identify problematic conditions, behaviour or practice in the workplace and learn from and avoid similar occupational accidents or diseases at other workplaces. Assessment results are documented to provide statistical data and, where applicable, to form the basis for fair compensation.