Social security institutions should measure and report on activity within their institution, providing key performance indicators (KPI) such as the number of claims received and processed, people coming into service centres, calls to call centres, waiting times and hits on the website. This is valuable and important information, however is it mostly reporting against lag indicators.

Many organizations are not proficient at using data and information to predict the future and plan accordingly. It is more important to accurately forecast likely foot traffic in the service outlets or in call centres over the next six months than it is reviewing what happened over the past six months.

Using data in a predictive context enables resource planning to be adjusted based on the expected demand for services.

For many social security organizations there is a high volume exchange of information with social institutions within the country of operation and also internationally with regard to international social security agreements and convention obligations. The performance of these institutions will impact on service quality and their performance should be monitored and reported on.

Performance management is an organizational capability and it is not the intention of these guidelines to publish a performance management framework. The objective is to highlight the importance of having key performance indicators for the key components of the service quality framework.

Determining key performance indicators requires a systemic approach to collecting operational performance data and participant feedback. Careful analysis of this information can provide an indication of the overall health of the service quality framework.