The ISSA Guidelines represent internationally recognized professional standards in key areas of social security administration, and today a new generation of guidelines is being presented and discussed at the World Social Security Forum in Marrakech, Morocco. While the ISSA Guidelines on Human Resource Management in Social Security Administration and ISSA Guidelines on Continuity and Resilience of Social Security Services and Systems are new, other ones have been updated based on new realities.

“The new ISSA Guidelines on human resource management and on the continuity of services and resilience of social security institutions will help ISSA members address key challenges of our time, that will help deliver more and better social security in the years to come,” said ISSA Secretary General Marcelo Abi-Ramia Caetano.

Even though human resource management (HRM) and institutional resilience have always been important for social security institutions, COVID-19 accelerated developments in this area. The ISSA report Rebooting the social security workforce, published in June 2022, focussed on the need to reimagine HRM to facilitate and embrace the digital transformation of social security institutions. The new set of guidelines addresses how to deal with human resource management in a digital world, hybrid work environments, along with staff development, retention and succession.

The agility, capacity to ensure continuity of services, and resilience of institutions were crucial for social security responses during the pandemic. Today, economic uncertainty and climate change have made the issue of continuity and resilience of social security services and systems even more acute. The new guidelines provide valuable guidance on institutional resilience against crisis and incidents, continuity of services and deployment of responses.

The ISSA Guidelines that have been updated were:

• The ISSA-ILO Guidelines on Actuarial Work for Social Security now cover microsimulation actuarial input into the understanding of catastrophic risks, and social security principles and minimum benchmarks.
• The ISSA Guidelines on Administrative Solutions for Extending Coverage includes new aspects on health coverage and coverage of the missing middle.
• The ISSA Guidelines on Communication by Social Security Administrations includes new aspects on information and communication technologies, crisis communication and visual identity
• The ISSA Guidelines on Information and Communication Technology includes a new chapter on Master Data Governance  and Master Data Management
• The ISSA Guidelines on Promotion of Sustainable Employment now addresses new labour market challenges, new forms of work  and labour market resilience

The production of the new and revised Guidelines is the result of close collaboration between the ISSA General Secretariat and the ISSA Technical Commissions. A number of articles on the work of the technical commissions were published running up to the World Social Security Forum. The technical commissions will continue to play a key role in bringing forward knowledge development, products and reports in the ISSA.