The pilot study, initiated in France, was undertaken to assess the feasibility of collecting comparable data in order to develop key performance indicators. For practical reasons, the pilot limited its questions to administrative arrangements for old-age pensions only.

The chosen indicators, focusing on four key axes of governance (HRD and ICT resources; investments; benefits and service delivery; and financial sustainability) will enable social security organizations to monitor their own evolution as well as to observe this evolution in line with other organizations in the database.

With such comparative indicators previously not available, there were calls for the ISSA to fully embrace and support this work-in-progress. It would help organizations learn about what was efficient and effective, and would promote good practice and inspire progress.

Mr. Ramon-Baldé, Director of Research and Development at the French National Social Security School underlined that there was no intention at present to use the indicators to rank the performance of social security bodies. To this end, the responding organizations in the data set were assured anonymity. Neither was there any likelihood that such indicators be used to influence policy-making, a role that lay outside the mandate of the ISSA.

Specific challenges facing the roll out of a full-scale survey would be to clarify definitions of what constituted “performance”, the terminology to be used, and which indicators should be developed.

There was agreement that further discussion would be required to refine, and add further dimensions to, the questionnaire to be used for data collection. And decisions were also required about the addition of other areas of social security to be scrutinized and the level of information demanded from responding organizations.

The importance of the benchmarking initiative was summarized by Mr. Sørensen of the Labour Market Supplementary Pension Institution in Denmark.

“What gets measured, gets managed,” he said.

Without measurement it was deemed impossible to re-appraise the performance of current operations and to move forward.