To carry out its mandate and mission on contribution collection and compliance, the institution establishes a strategic plan covering at least a medium-term period.

The institution implements systematic and standardized data exchange to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the contribution collection and compliance system.

This data exchange must be controlled in order to protect people’s privacy, and balanced by a right to access and modification under the surveillance of an independent authority.

The board is the group of persons who, under the legislation or by-laws establishing the entity, is given the responsibility to govern the social security programme and to exercise oversight on its administration. The entity could be a government ministry or department, a statutory body or a private entity.

The 21 guidelines for the board support and promote the following five principles of good governance, as applied to social security institutions:

1. Accountability

2. Transparency

The board regularly, accurately and in a timely manner informs the stakeholders and the general public on the status of the social security institution and its operations.

Legislation, policy or decree provides for the independence of the Head of Management from political interference by prescribing the selection process and by defining the grounds for removal from office solely for just cause.

Members and beneficiaries are regularly and periodically informed of their rights and privileges.

A process model is developed for each administrative area to identify the potential points of failure, the internal or external events which can trigger risk, and the corrective measures to be implemented. There is ownership of responsibility for the potential points of failure.

The investment unit follows the prudent person principle in managing the funds of the institution. The prudent person principle is integral to the fiduciary duties of the board and management in administering and managing the funds of the institution.

The institution provides its members with quality service in the distribution of programme benefits.

There are three main aspects to corporate use of ICT) in social security institutions:

This set of guidelines addresses the delivery and support of ICT services, covering the aspects related to the overall software and service life cycle (planning, development and software construction, operations and maintenance). The purpose of ICT service delivery is to provide agreed levels of service to users, and to manage the technology that supports the application of administrative procedures implemented by the institution.

The institution has a workplan to manage the overall implementation of interoperable social security programmes.

Implementation may depend on prior steps having been achieved, such as developing supporting information systems, signing agreements with other organizations and installing enabling technologies. The workplan should cover all required information resources and products and facilitate economies of scale in implementation.

The institution develops mobile-based services according to institutional plans, taking into account the main types of user interaction and system integration approaches.

The institution implements the master data systems taking into account the functional requirements of all involved business areas of the institution.

The institution, in coordination with the others participating in the agreement, establishes an interoperability framework to implement international agreements.

The guidelines presented here are applicable to the board, management, investing institution, investment committee and investment units. While recognizing that some social security institutions carry out investment management internally while others use external managers, they aim to allow institutions to follow a progressive process of governance.

In setting the objectives of the social security institution, the board considers the role of socially responsible investing (SRI) and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) to ensure the investment policy and strategy are consistent with the mission (where the mission includes elements of SRI and ESG).

This objective applies to both an internal investment institution and an external investment manager.

This part of the guidelines refers to investment processes carried out by internal and external investment management units respectively.

Although there are many common areas between the processes for internal and external investment management, there are a number of governance requirements that apply solely or differently to either internal or external investment management.

The following guidelines are organized in two sections:

Section D.1, Internal Investment Management

Insurance covering occupational diseases is an important pillar of social security. This is particularly true in latency diseases such as cancers, which may occur many years after the occupational exposure.

Appropriate insurance cover for workers should therefore be independent of the existence or economic performance of the employer. It is important for employees that the handling of their work-related health problems is not dependent on litigation or the solvency of their employer.

The institution applies a risk-based approach by linking each employer’s insurance contribution to the probability of incidents (occupational accidents and occupational diseases) in their workplace.

The probability calculation takes into account the frequency, severity and cost of insurance cases within the sector of economic activity in which the employer operates.

The institution operates a mobile examination unit for on-site medical screening which conducts high-quality, cost-efficient examinations and provides comprehensive documentation of results.

The institution ensures that both in-house and external trainers are properly qualified and have professional occupational safety and health and industry experience.

The success of training activities depends not only on the content and infrastructure of training but also, and above all, on the competence of the trainers.

It is essential that social security institutions engaged in the design, delivery, promotion, advocacy and support of effective employment programmes include a broad range of institutional and individual stakeholders in the process. While they are often constrained through their respective legislative frameworks, this should not prevent them from seeking to improve access to employment and to obtain better retention or return-to-work outcomes by learning from a broad range of national and international experiences.

A worker’s need for support is identified as soon as possible after an individual or mass lay-off is announced and before the worker becomes unemployed.

Competent institutions promote the disclosure of work in order to reduce informality, avoid unfair competition and ensure that workers are covered by social security.