One of the main strategic objectives of the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) of Saudi Arabia, which is reducing and lowering the probability of its exposure to risks, resulted in an approved initiative to establish the Risk and Compliance Department in 2017.

The pensioners of the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) are entitled to receive interest-free loans. Previously, they had to show up in-person in the ISSO insurance branches to be introduced to the banks for performing the relevant official procedures of getting a loan. The COVID-19 pandemic obliged the ISSO to establish an online system.

Such an online application platform was implemented by the ISSO in collaboration with Bank Refah Kargaran.

In 2014, the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) of Saudi Arabia aimed to have a performance-oriented culture that relies on key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the deviation from achieving its strategic objectives. Thus, Strategy and Performance Management Department (SPM) was assigned to establish the KPIs and conduct performance review meetings with all other departments across the organization.

In accordance with relevant requirements of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China, Shanghai will further streamline government administration and optimize the “do business” environment in the city. For this purpose, Shanghai Municipal Administration Centre for Social Insurance Affairs implements the “Guiding Opinion of the General Office of Shanghai Municipal People’s Government on Reengineering Service Processes in Order to Do “One Thing at One Time” for Enterprises and People Efficiently”.

Each year in June (as required by law), the Board of the Fiji National Provident Fund (FNPF) makes two determinations:

• Determining a crediting rate for the financial year just ended, which would adjust member balances accordingly on 30 June.
• Determining a pro-rata crediting rate (or interim crediting rate), which will apply to full withdrawals during the financial year ahead.

A Distribution Policy was developed to guide the Board’s crediting rate determination process and which was built on the following principles:

The year 2020 posed unprecedented challenges to organizations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it offered the Philippines Social Security System (SSS) opportunities to execute new measures to fulfil its mandate and address the needs of its members during the difficult period.

The National Pension Service (NPS) of the Republic of Korea developed a credit rating model that reflects national pension payment information to support the economic activities of the financially marginalized who lack financial transaction experience such as the young generation, providing financial benefits such as lowered interest rates on loans to honest national pension payers.

The General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) of Saudi Arabia is always seeking to enhance its capacity in information technology (IT). It wants to optimize product development cycle in order to deliver the optimum business-value. Therefore, GOSI is starting an initiative called “Agile transformation programme” which is a key milestone to transform our operating model from “project-centric” to “product-centric” delivery model. This means that it will bring in cross-functional teams covering all the disciplines and resources needed for end-to-end delivery.

Sharoushi is a unique professional in Japan, specializing in social security and labour relations.

Contribution collection is a vital aspect in the implementation of the social security for health programme in Indonesia. Since it was implemented in 2014 until the end of 2018, contribution collections from the informal sector have continued to decline, with the collecting ratio in the range of 60 per cent.

The Social Security Administering Body for the Health Sector (BPJS Kesehatan) is a public legal entity that reports directly to the President and is assigned to administer national health insurance for all Indonesian citizens. Its organizational structure consists of 24 Departments, 13 Regional Departments, 127 Branch Offices and 365 Regency/City Offices.

One of the biggest challenges in managing social healthcare in Indonesia is low awareness and willingness of informal members to pay their premium contribution regularly. This condition was further worsened by the fact that in 2020, 91.3 million people were unbanked (have no bank accounts. Data source: Central Bank of Indonesia).

As mandated by the constitution, the Social Security Administering Body for Health Sector of Indonesia (BPJS Kesehatan) of Indonesia has the authority to examine the compliance of employers to the social security for health programme. Some of their responsibilities include registering all workers in the programme, updating workers’ data including wages as the basis for deducting contributions, and paying monthly contributions for their workers.

Employers are obliged to submit monthly reports to BPJS Kesehatan as the basis for inspecting compliance.

Back Protection and Rehabilitation Programme (BPRP) is a dynamic and proactive solution to control and manage the commonest musculoskeletal disorders at the workplace, which is backache or low back pain. The main objective is to reduce the incidence and impact of back pain, prevent worsening of disability, reduce the disability period, and finally retain skilled workers affected in the workforce.

The Republic of Korea’s workers’ compensation supports the return to work of injured workers, as a social safety net protecting national human resources. The Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service (COMWEL) is an organization operating “Customized Integrated Services (CIS)” that establishes a rehabilitation plan for injured workers since 2011, while implementing systematic rehabilitation services according to the established plan, helping the successful rehabilitation of workers.

In order to achieve universal coverage for the Employment Social Security Programme, the central government continues to encourage local governments and businessmen to protect all workers through it.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 in Indonesia, a number of health-related problems have arisen, including the uncontrolled increase of cases in hospitals, the lack of pre-existing facilities for handling COVID-19, the availability of budgets for handling those cases, and the increasing number of health workers infected.

Sichuan Province is located in western China and is the hometown of giant pandas. It is a large province in terms of resources, population and economy.

The Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) nominations allow members to bequeath their CPF savings according to their wishes without hassle and cost. A major hurdle in nomination making was the cumbersome hardcopy process where the member and two witnesses need to be physically present to sign the nomination form together.

During the pandemic, the Government of Brunei Darussalam introduced measures to address the impact of COVID-19 in the country. This was carried out with a “Whole of Nation Approach” – United in addressing the impact and challenges arising from the spread of COVID-19 in Brunei Darussalam. The steps undertaken are focused on three main components, namely, maintaining the well-being of the public, protecting jobs, and providing support for individuals as well as supporting and assisting businesses.

The General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) of Saudi Arabia has an important and critical objective regarding its operational excellence. One of the main aspects to achieve this objective is to manage the business processes within GOSI. To do so, GOSI launched in 2016 the initiative of business process management (BPM).

The Social Security Corporation (SSC) of Jordan constantly seeks to provide social protection programmes for working women. This is evident in the Corporation’s endeavour to amend its legislation to allow working women to benefit from the childcare allowance, relieve the burdens and reduce the obstacles facing working mothers, and enhance their chances to stay longer in the labour market.

The Civil Service Employee Pension Fund (CSEPF) vision is to achieve excellence and leadership in providing the best services to Omani nationals employed in the government sector covered by the Law of Pensions and End of Service Benefits, and investing its fund using the latest technologies. Therefore, CSEPF decided to implement online services (e-Services) through its portal, which is integrated with the existing core systems.

The Social Security Law of Iran came into force in 1977, and since then, it has been subject to different changes and amendments in the form of law, instruction or circular. However, the current circulars are very fragmented and of great volume. The multiplicity of directives during past years has caused ambiguity and disunity of procedures, leading to different or sometimes contradictory interpretations by administrative units and insurance branches, which caused dissatisfaction of staff and clients.

This good practice was submitted by the Public Pension Agency (PPA) that is now part of General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI).

While dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and cancelling attendance at workplaces to implement the social distancing rule and the application of the remote working system, the problem of communicating with clients arose. Thus, the Public Pension Agency (PPA) of Saudi Arabia decided to launch a number of new ways to enhance communication with clients and external parties, in addition to developing the current digital means.

The consolidated collection system for five major insurances was implemented in January 2011 by the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) in the Republic of Korea. To complete the task, six legal amendments were made, which involved two ministries, two standing committees of the National Assembly, and three organizations. With the consolidated collection system, methods of collection (notification → collection → compliance) that used to be different for each organization were redesigned in terms of procedures, standards and forms.

The Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) adopted in 2021 innovative measure to accommodate the need to complete the past monthly contribution records for the insured who are half-time employed.

The Civil Service Employees Pension Fund (CSEPF), Oman decided to create a Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) site to safeguard CSEPF business from all sorts of threats and crises. CSEPF considered all the criteria applicable for a business continuity site, which includes location, data centre infrastructure, communication infrastructure, workspace and accessibility, and the use of virtual machines (VM) and NetApp – Storage Brand – replication technology to guarantee the availability of the data.

Compliance of formal sector to register and pay for the contribution of workers is an on-going problem for Indonesia’s National Health Insurance Programme. To ensure optimal supervision and compliance check in the midst of the pandemic, Indonesia’s Social Security Administering Body for the Health Sector issued a technical guideline on compliance supervision and inspection of non-government employers in the new normal. The new Compliance Express for Companies (CoEx) is an innovation that does not change the business process but shortens the time required for compliance checks.

Technology is rapidly transforming the way that the financial sector is operating, and the management and delivery of pensions is not an exception. Therefore, the Civil Service Employees Pension Fund (CSEPF) of Oman decided to adopt electronic payments (e-payments) solution through local banks’ Business-to-Business (B2B) solution to help speed up the payment cycle and boost security and compliance.

One of the most important strategic objectives in the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) of Saudi Arabia is to improve customer satisfaction and provide high-quality social insurance benefits and services. Since all of these strategic objectives rely on having an accurate, updated, and secure data infrastructure, GOSI realized that adopting best practices and improving our data related capabilities is a must.

The first case of COVID-19 in Fiji in March 2020 followed by the closing of its borders had widespread impact on the Fijian economy. The pandemic triggered one of the worst job crisis that Fiji has ever seen, bringing with it massive unemployment and pay reduction. Without a coherent national social security system and lack of government funds, government relied on Fiji National Provident Fund (FNPF) for assistance and as its reliable arm for cash distribution to affected workers.

The list of declarations and payrolls includes different columns requiring a variety of data to be processed. The complexity of data entry, as well as lack of knowledge of some of the employers, lead to some unintentional errors or contribution evasion, which are the roots of distractions between the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) and the employers. The organization implemented a smart system, enabling the employers to find, supervise and correct the errors at the time of filling the digital forms.

Traditional procedure of financial transactions between the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) and the contributors (covered independent insured population and employers) was not only paper-based, but also bank-based. There are more than 80 million transactions in a year, which, considering 48 hours for each to be concluded, constituted a huge waste of time and paper brought challenge to the organization.

The pension reforms carried out by the Fiji National Provident Fund (FNPF or the Fund) in 2011 ushered in a new legislation that changed the dynamics of the Fund. The new law was introduced to address the increasing pension burden, which was flagged as a financial and solvency risk and, given the Fund’s position in the financial sector, an imminent systemic risk.

Before July 2018, the drug billing system of Social Security Administering Body for the Health Sector (BPJS Kesehatan) of Indonesia was an offline system, which made it possible for members to be prescribed with the same drugs at different health facilities. This fraudulent behaviour cost BPJS Kesehatan around 382 million Indonesian rupiahs (IDR) from August 2017 to July 2018. The system made it possible for the health facilities to reimburse non-covered drugs of around IDR 10.8 billion.

Due to its coverage of more than 42 million people, the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) strongly needs a comprehensive system to share the information with its beneficiaries. The covered population is varied in terms of social, economic, education and vocational aspects. This made the communication plan a challenge for the ISSO Public Relations Department (PRD) which needs a comprehensive approach and system to produce context and select the right channel to inform the beneficiaries.

The Public Authority for Social Insurance (PASI) of Oman strives to develop its collection mechanisms and provide a variety of methods and means for individuals and companies to pay the monthly contributions easily and on time. It keeps studying the mechanisms available and does researches and meetings with its stakeholders to come up with new mechanisms that help PASI to collect the monthly contributions in an effective way.

“Untact” (meaning “contactless”) is one of the high-trending new terms in Korea’s post-COVID-19 era. The global pandemic in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak created new standards that have come to be known as the “new normal”.

The National Pension Service (NPS) of the Republic of Korea developed a digital consultation channel, converting various reports and forms that were previously filled out by hand by customers visiting branches into digital electronic forms. This reduces costs related to creating and processing paper documents, while customers can complete filling out forms using electronic signature on a touch screen. The NPS creates a paperless office environment, while providing digital administration service to customers that minimizes contact time between employees and customers.

By putting the interest of the pensioner first, Abu Dhabi Pension Fund (ADPF) comprehensively redesigned its approach to serve its client base of over 91,639 active members, including 12,941 pensioners and 7,805 beneficiaries.

With a renewed focus on the client and by harnessing the power of digital transformation as well as adopting a product-based approach (versus project-based), ADPF has not only significantly improved how the services are orchestrated and offered to customers, but also achieved a satisfaction rate of over 83 per cent.

This good practice was submitted by the Public Pension Agency (PPA) that is now part of General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI).

For the Public Pension Agency (PPA) of Saudi Arabia, digital transformation was one of the most important items on the top management’s agenda. This focus on technology adoption and the concept of digital disruption is not new, but the COVID-19 pandemic altered priorities and put the spotlight on it.

As one of the biggest social security institutions in the world, the Social Security Administering Body for the Health Sector (BPJS Kesehatan) of Indonesia is part of a large ecosystem that involves many institutions. Most of the inter-institutional correspondence used to be carried out through the exchange of formal letters.

Due to the enormous interactions, organizing correspondence documents constitutes a great challenge. Documents that are carried everywhere will have an impact on data security and confidentiality.

Singapore’s Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) is the Centre of Excellence for Citizen Disbursement (CD) in administering Government social transfer schemes to support Singaporeans in need with emphasis on customer centricity, operational efficiency and agility as core operating principles.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pension Services Sector at The Public Institution for Social Security (PIFSS) of Kuwait required the in-person attendance of anyone requesting official certificates and documents. Thus, PIFSS is keen to keep pace with ongoing developments and provide its services by utilizing the best available technology.

In the light of the increasing number of insured persons in the Social Security Corporation (SSC) of Jordan and the increase in the number of daily service recipients that visit all the corporation’s branches, SSC intended to develop an integrated plan for digital transformation for the years 2018–2022. It is based on the corporation’s objectives for electronic transformation, in order to provide added value to service recipients and to reduce operational costs.

ELYA, abbreviation for “EPF Loves You Always”, was invented to reduce drop calls at Employees Provident Fund (EPF) Contact Centre of Malaysia and to empower customers with self-service facilities in a conversational approach. This is the first bilingual Virtual Assistant (VA) for social security organisation powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and supported by Live Chat. The inspiration to create ELYA’s outgoing persona is a culmination of EPF staff’s personalities and passion to help customers from different walks of life.

This good practice was submitted by the Public Pension Agency (PPA) that is now part of General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI).

Our major challenge at the Public Pension Agency (PPA) of Saudi Arabia was to raise the quality of data and pension request outputs, and complete the insurance operations for clients on time. There were also some challenges regarding the overpayments to clients due to lack of accuracy and poor data quality, and moreover its availability on time.

Through this project, the Public Authority for Social Insurance (PASI), in cooperation with academic and educational institutions in Oman, has sought to enrich the knowledge of social protection and its importance for children, students, job seekers and parents.

In Malaysia, private sector employers are mandatorily required to make retirement contributions on behalf of employees to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF). However, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have failed to comply with the law since they do not have a proper payroll management system in place.

The EPF has developed a free basic payroll solution that is available to all private sector employers:

The aim of the digital transformation Social Security Corporation (SSC) of Jordan is to provide added value to service recipients and reduce operational costs. The COVID-19 epidemic led the Corporation to stop receiving people and the firms’ liaison officers in all its branches.

This good practice was submitted by the Public Pension Agency (PPA) that is now part of General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI).

For the Public Pension Agency (PPA) of Saudi Arabia, good and effective public pension compliance is an important component for the efficient functioning of its pension schemes, ensuring its social and political sustainability, as well as strengthening its authenticity of social security as a public organization.

The Civil Service Pensions Fund (CSPF) of the Islamic Republic of Iran launched a communication centre for its beneficiaries with the goal of increasing the satisfaction of covered retirees and using international standards, Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), in order to seamlessly manage all communication channels with retirees, including telephone, web, mobile applications, etc.

Saba Centre with capacity of 77 experts in each shift is a 24-hour, seven days a week active centre.

The Civil Service Employees Pension Fund (CSEPF) is a service organization providing social protection to Omani citizens working in the public sector in Oman, the Gulf Cooperation Countries and elsewhere.

CSEPF established its Risk Department, which led to:

To apply modern scientific methods for recruitment, selection and promotion policies for human resource, identify managerial talents and competencies of the staff, standardize managerial assignments, exploit maximum managerial capacity, develop motivation levels and meritocratic organizational culture, and to ensure that evaluations are based on merit and protected from lobbying or influence, the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) has taken measures to prepare competency models besides training expert assessors since 2014.

Village is the smallest governmental unit in Indonesia managed by village officials known as KP Desa. Recruitment of KP Desa is challenging since they are scattered in 74,957 villages across Indonesia. Thus, it is hard to inform them about enrolment to the national health insurance (JKN) considering the limited resources owned by the Social Security Administering Body for the Health Sector (BPJS Kesehatan), 127 branch offices and 389 district offices.

Given the growth of the community of the Civil Servants Pension Fund (CSPF) and the numerous needs of this community in various areas such as social, economic, healthcare, etc., designing products and services, providing economic and customized start-up-based solutions are considered as a fundamental necessity. Therefore, the CSPF has established the Saba Innovation Centre (Saba) with two goals:

The increasing costs of the healthcare system inflicted by bringing in new technologies, the growing number of elderly population and chronic diseases, along with increasing demands for quality services on one hand, and the limited public resources available for the healthcare system on the other hand, have made optimization of healthcare system irresistible more than ever before.

In general, illnesses cause heavy and sometimes prohibitive costs to families in addition to inflicting pain on patients. A number of chronic and often incurable diseases impose higher costs, some of which are mainly incurable; and fall under the category of special diseases in Iran, which includes thalassemia, haemophilia and dialysis patients.

In accordance with our organization’s strategic plan to provide pensionable services that enrich the customer’s experience, the Abu Dhabi Pension Fund (the Fund) launched in 2018 an initiative to provide all the customers’ informational and transactional services on mobile application. In line with ISSA Guidelines on Service Quality, Guideline 7.

Fund Pulse is an institutional structure in which all the departments’ operational processes are grouped and linked to the requirements of the best practices, policies and methodologies, such as identifying the competencies required to implement the process, operational risks, performance management, business continuity, etc. This method provides a database that facilitates the decision-making processes for continuous improvement of operations. When a change is requested, it is easy to know the affected processes and the individuals affected by the change.

The General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) has proactively worked on avoiding any risks to business continuity, when the pandemic reached Saudi Arabia at the beginning of March 2020 and the government applied new restrictions regarding health matters. These factors affected GOSI’s operations and services and made business continuity more important than ever.

A number of effective measures have been implemented to ensure the services related to the pension and social insurance operations work as planned.

An electronic platform was created to serve the customers of the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) of Saudi Arabia. The main benefit of the service is to facilitate the application process without the need to visit the branch in person. This was done by designing a detailed form for GOSI’s customers to submit their applications electronically.

The General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) of Saudi Arabia, since its foundation in 1973, has experienced strong growth and development. It has worked remarkably to achieve its strategic objectives by emphasizing on the application of the governance practices in the organization. Because of that, it has set a dedicated objective for enhancing governance model.

In 2016, the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) of Saudi Arabia decided to implement the risk management function by adapting good practices and international standards to identify risks, and act in a proactive way to achieve its strategic goals and serve its customers.

The National Social Security Administering Body for Employment (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan), as one of the biggest public institutions in Indonesia, is managing social security funds of more than 30 billion US dollars (USD) and has more than 50 million members nationwide.

With its large funds and many stakeholders, BPJS Ketenagakerjaan must be able to maintain the trust with an integrated fraud control system to prevent fraud and corruption inside the institution.

The mission of Singapore’s Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board is to enable Singaporeans to have a secure retirement.

Since 1996, the Members Investment Scheme (MIS) has provided an option for members of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) of Malaysia to divert retirement savings to investments outside EPF for the purpose of maximising their retirement savings. These investments are managed by third-party Fund Management Institutions (FMIs), and promoted through their agents.

The Business Continuity Management System (BCMS) aims to manage the operations that identifies the potential threats on the Public Authority for Social Insurance (PASI) of Oman. Considering the core operations in relation to assets, people and operations, there must be plans to build flexible ways to protect the interests of the main stakeholders and the reputation of the Authority.

The project works on providing sustainable plans and updating them to enable the Authority to achieve goals related to business continuity (BC), as follows:

This good practice was submitted by the Public Pension Agency (PPA) that is now part of General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI).

The Public Pension Agency (PPA) of Saudi Arabia is keen to ensure business continuity in cases of emergencies, disasters and sudden events that may occur at any time. A business impact analysis on key services was conducted, and a Business Continuity Programme was developed through the preparation of an enterprise-wide strategy, policy, plans, and agreements that would enable it to deal effectively with various crises and disasters.

Changing the Social Security Income Assessment Model (CAM) was announced in the 2019–20 Budget as part of the Social Security and other Amendments (Simplifying Income Reporting and Other Measures) Bill 2020. Legislative amendments were enacted to allow customers to report the gross employment income paid to them during their reporting period, as shown on their payslip, rather than calculating what they expect to earn. The changes were successfully implemented on 7 December 2020.

In order to achieve the goal of “completely building a social security system that covers urban and rural residents”, the Chinese government has formulated and implemented a universal plan to see that everyone has access to social security.

By optimizing policies, enhancing the publicity, improving services, registering per person and per household, the coverage of insurance has been vigorously expanded. By the end of 2020, the full coverage of statutory social insurance personnel has been basically achieved, and the world’s largest social security system has been established.

Organisations may face conditions that create uncertainty in attempts to achieve their goals. Risk management is one of the best ways to obtain certainty from an existing phenomenon. An organisation prepares a measurable risk strategy to be implemented by all units in accordance with the principles of good governance. The strategy is to use an operational framework as a reference for work units in managing risk.

Establishing a two-way relation between the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) and social partners, especially the employers, and responding appropriately to their requests and problems with the aim to improve their participation and level of satisfaction has always been one of the major missions of the ISSO’s Socio-Cultural Department. To achieve this, designing and implementing special programmes seems necessary. One of such programmes is the organization of tailored training and consultation to respond to the employers’ questions and problems.

The adoption of data driven communication approach proves to have a great impact on performance and results in the private sector over the last decade. In contrast, most of the public sector organizations still depend on the traditional methods of communication even on the new online mediums like social media and mobile.

Indonesia is among the countries with very high number of traffic accidents. Benefit service for traffic accidents was slow because of overlapping benefits between two insurers, namely, the Traffic Accident Insurance Agency (Jasa Raharja) and the Social Security Administering Body for the Health Sector (BPJS Kesehatan). The process is still manual and is not coordinated.

Integrated System for Prosthetics and Orthotics, Inventory and Rehabilitation (INSPIRE) was introduced to manage the rehabilitation facilities of the Social Security Organization (SOCSO) of Malaysia through a web-based platform to ensure continuity and provision of rehabilitation benefits to SOCSO insured persons.

It is more than a year now since we started applying preventive measures to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2, working from home, distancing in the offices, wearing masks in common areas, and all the other restrictions we applied like most other organizations globally.

This good practice was submitted by the Public Pension Agency (PPA) that is now part of General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI).

China, as the most populous country in the world, is facing the great pressure of demographic change and the sustainability of old-age insurance system.

In recent years, the Chinese government has taken various measures to promote the market-oriented investment and operation of the basic old-age insurance fund (hereinafter referred to as the fund). The investment scale has increased year by year, and its income has steadily increased, providing support for the sustainable development of the old-age insurance system.

Public Authority for Social Insurance (PASI) of Oman has strived to proceed with the strategic core of social security culture and responsibility. PASI aims to improve the level of social security implementation for individuals, families and the society.

PASI seeks to improve the authority’s applied processes, and to provide sustainable services that meet the requirements of customers with high quality and efficiency, and in line with the objectives for which the authority was established.

Typically, the insurance funds need financial balance evaluation between their revenues and expenditures in different schemes according to certain upstream fund regulations. In the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO), though the long-term benefits have been actuarially assessed several times, the actuarial valuation on healthcare sector has not been performed.

Budget clarification and accessibility is the key factor for the top management to allocate it to the organization’s sectors. The Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) lacked a web-based Centralized Budget System (CBS). So, it was decided to design and launch CBS, based on the international accounting standards. Fully launched in 2018, it is now providing the management with updated data.

The Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO), as an accountable institution, uses an interactive customer relationship management system (collaborative CRM) that is in line with its customer-oriented plan aimed at providing the simplest way to address the requests and complaints of its members. This approach benefits from new technologies and knowledge management concepts besides the managerial procedures subsequent to compilation of regulations and a related 2016 strategic document.

The traditional method for debt instalment lacked the validation possibility of the debtors. The experts of the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) applied a smart system with the capability of reviewing the debtor’s previous behaviour and transactions. This enables the authorized official to propose a certain number of instalments according to the debtors’ level of financial status. The new method has dramatically improved the contribution collection procedure.

Rising number of different kinds of debt notification annually which exceeded 3 million papers, besides considering the rules and regulations emphasizing official and legal communication to the employers – whom were sometimes inaccessible – brought challenges to the executive procedures of Contribution Collection Department of the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO), especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. So, it was decided to gradually replace the traditional process with the electronic method.

The traditional method to receive the employers’ objection to their announced debt by insurance branch was troublesome, both for the employer and the staff of Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO), in terms of being in-person, time consuming and unknown date for next meeting. The prolonged process for revising the announced debt, which included six phases, was a barrier to contribution collection. So, it was replaced by an electronic transparent process of two phases during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO), as the largest insurance provider throughout the country, while being responsible for the implementation, generalization and coverage extension of various social insurance programmes, plays a key role in supporting and protecting the most important capital for production in the country, namely human resource.

The Information security management system (ISMS) is a unified management framework consisting of a range of security controls to protect confidentiality, availability, and unification of the information against potential threats, losses and vulnerability.

In order to extend social security coverage to all groups of the society, university students by presenting valid student cards are eligible to contribute to the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO). Reference earning as a basis for calculating contribution level is not less than the minimum wage approved by the Supreme Labour Council. Students are subject to the Self-employed Law as of 28 September 2018.

Previously, the contribution collection process of the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) used to be handled in each insurance branch in a decentralized and fragmented manner, and due to the lack of linkage between the branches, establishment of benefits based on total contribution payment record, required several correspondences between different ISSO branches. By designing and launching of the integrated database for contribution payment record, collecting and gathering records from different branches to provide benefits is not required any longer.

The traditional method for tracking the employers’ debts to the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) was an islanded mechanized micro system with a remarkable failure in tracking debts in a unified manner. It was a serious challenge to financial sustainability of the organization and collecting debts on time. Therefore, an integrated system to track and follow up the indebted employers was designed, enabling the organization to find the debtors.

Using technology in providing high quality medical services and creating electronic health profile is one of the goals of governments to control the burden of medical expenses and prevent medical errors.

Non-integrated payment of pensions caused many problems such as risks of error, corruption, and collusion, different time schedule in payment, and difficulties in expenditures reporting for the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO). Establishment of integrated pension payment system, with the possibility of further monitoring the process, has largely removed the above-mentioned problems.

All of the organizations and institutions around the world have experienced a massive and unprecedented transition from traditional interaction to online communication. In a short period of time, the spread of COVID-19 worldwide caused profound changes and created alternatives, which were previously used, but on a smaller scale, such as videoconferencing.