The conference, entitled ‘Good Governance for Better Social Security Services’, was organised by Việt Nam Social Security (VSS), which has taken the chairmanship of the ASEAN Social Security Association (ASSA) for the 2018-19 tenure.

Maribel D. Ortiz, an expert from the International Social Security Association, said “Good governance is when the exercise of authority provides transparent availability and accessibility to stakeholders about timely and accurate information.”

“Good governance is predictable, participatory and dynamic,” she said, adding that these are factors that social security agencies’ management boards need to have to improve efficiency of governance and create more positive, effective and equal changes, especially enhancing the agency’s prestige to become a trustful partner.

This is very important because public trust is a decisive factor for the success or failure of social security policies. Trust cannot be built with words but through management productivity and efficiency, she said.

Therefore, social security organisations should set targets, standards and rankings to assess their performance. There needs to be mechanisms for organisation members to expand knowledge and hold responsibilities so that all staff, no matter what positions they hold, will strive to make contributions in order to improve the organisation’s operation efficiency, she said.

Philip O’ Keefe, a World Bank expert, said customers’ satisfaction assesses governance efficiency. To gain customers’ satisfaction, the governors need to be active, realise pledges with concrete actions rather than making commitments and interact with customers.

According to a survey of 6,000 managers to learn about decisive factors of successful performance improvement, interaction between governors and customers was mentioned three times more than the other factors, which shows the significance of the interaction.

However, to interact with customers, the governors, especially those working at social security agencies, cannot do it alone. Interacting with staff to make them understand the importance of interaction is the key factor. The governors need to identing the differences between customers’ demands, organisational structure and staff skills in order to make adjustments to meet customers’ demand and improve satisfaction.

“As the private sector goes online, a more connected population wants multiple channels to connect to social security services online and through mobile devices, leading to massive technology changes across society and government."

Technology changes require social security organisations to change and improve their skills to approach and serve customers, he said.
Azirruan Bin Arifin from Malaysia’s Social Security Organisation, who has 20 years’ experience in the banking sector said business governance and social security governance share a number of common features. Building organisational culture is the most important. The decisive factor is human.

A representative of VSS spoke at the conference about experiences of the sector on how to improve governance capacity. Through a national insurance database, the VSS has made big strides.

The sector’s activities have been digitised, simplifying professional procedures instead of using paper like in previous years.

Before digitalisation, it took several weeks for local social security agencies to search for paper documents. Now it takes a few seconds with several clicks.

The digitised documents help procedures to be implemented in a fast, accurate way, saving time and expenses for social security and health insurance card holders./.