Questions/Answers

The initiative introduced is aimed to end queues and long waiting times (30 minutes on average) at the Social Security Customer Services. It is also aimed to adapt the services to the citizen’s needs and expectations. Considering these objectives, Social Security has promoted deep paradigmatic changes in terms of its relationship with customers. Some of these changes are the following: • The procedures’ dematerialization and the Social Security Online service as the privileged channel for access to the Social Security system; • The development of new functionalities so that citizens may consult their contributory careers and the history of benefits received, make a forecast of the pension amount and submit their applications; • The combination of the Social Security Online service with telephone services in order to provide an effective response capacity; timetables adapted to the citizens’ needs; customer services with adequate territorial coverage, focused on people with more difficulty in accessing the other channels; • The strengthening of a permanent interaction between Social Security and contributors/beneficiaries through notifications sent to personal accounts on Social Security Online, or by post, email or SMS; • The launching of the Communication Modernization Strategy, called CONSIGO (http://consigo.seg-social.pt/), based on strategic values: Trust, Simplification, Transparency, Proximity, Efficiency and Innovation.

The main goal of public services is to meet the citizens' needs and ensure their rights. Hence, a strategy based on this relationship ensures the construction of a more effective Administration. The use of public and private partnerships ensures a more efficient management, as each partner's key competences are capitalized. Also the transparency brought by the CONSIGO Portal - with clear communication and a roadmap of the changes - makes this strategy absolutely in line with Category 3 purposes. It strengthens the access to Social Security for all citizens, through a simpler, more sustainable, fairer and more transparent Social Security.

The change of the Social Security customer services’ paradigm is aimed to provide quality services adjusted to the fringes of the population with less resources and more difficulties in the access to public Administration, thus ensuring a more equitable and fair access to information and citizenship rights. This approach goes beyond the elimination of discriminatory laws as it reduces inequalities in the access to public services. In addition, a more transparent sharing of information between the public Administration and social security contributors/beneficiaries improves the quality of the data provided and strengthens the citizens’ trust and responsibility towards Social Security.

Citizens' trust in the Social Security system is based on proximity and on the easy access to information about their rights and duties. Therefore, this initiative is aimed to promote more transparency in the services provided, adjusting them to the needs of the economic agents and reducing inequalities in terms of access to information and services. The aim of this strategy is to strengthen the services’ effectiveness and efficiency, as well as to promote inclusion. This is being achieved with the increased use of Information Technologies, leading to (i) reduction of the need to go to customer information services; (ii) clustering of social responses; (iii) promotion of customers’ engagement in the validation of data and accountability for the quality of data; (iv) provision of social responses adjusted to the specific needs of customers; (v) customer information services adjusted to the customers' schedules, personalized and in-time; and (vi) reinforcement of the social security services accessibility conditions for people with special needs. All population groups strongly benefit from these gradual but substantial changes in the social security customer services’ paradigm, including people with schedule restraints and especially the most vulnerable people, namely those with communication skills deficit and people with disabilities.

The change of the social security customer services’ paradigm started with the creation of a knowledge management data base, in which the social security services, products, problems and/or requests concerning these issues have been classified and the social responses customized, leading to the construction of a common platform, available to all customers and services. This starting point made it possible to re-evaluate and recreate all the social security customer services/channels by taking into account the social responses most required by the citizens, i.e., according to the citizens’ needs, which are the engine of the whole strategy.

This initiative has identified more effective solutions, which resulted in: • decrease of waiting times, • increase in the use of services more convenient to customers, • improvement of the quality of the services provided, adjusting them to the needs of the customers, and • increase of the effectiveness and efficiency of social security customer information services. However, the innovative factor of the initiative is not based on the creation of absolutely new approaches or solutions, but on the combination of all approaches and solutions, including the redefinition of the paradigm towards a common purpose: to meet the needs of the Social Security system beneficiaries.

The Social Security Institute (ISS - Instituto da Segurança Social, I.P) is a public institute, with 7.755 workers, spread nationwide and present in all municipalities. Since these changes were implemented throughout the territory, the internal transferability was immediate. The ISS is also one of the largest Portuguese public organizations. All companies and citizens have a relationship with this Institute; therefore, any change in the ISS services ends up having a huge impact. For example, there were significant cost reductions due to the online services available.

The lack of human resources working at the social security customer information services, due to budgetary restrictions, was a constraint in the implementation of the initiative as it was necessary to increase the quality of the services provided but with less human resources (between 2011 and 2017, the available HR at the social security customer information services decreased by 18%; 2011: 1.231 to 2017: 1.006). Therefore, the priority was given to the technological resources, namely through the development of new functionalities in the Social Security Online service (Segurança Social Direta) and the development of a solution for the prior scheduling of appointments at the customer information services.

The change of the social security customer services’ paradigm was based around the creation and development of a knowledge management data base, which began in 2011. This data base is permanently updated with new information and supports all activities concerning the relationship between the social security system and its customers, through detailed information of the products available, including Guidebooks. This data base also provides for standardized information to be used by the social security customer information services (face-to-face services, telephone services or on-line services). This commitment in the standardization of information has had the following results: (i) a central knowledge data base that is transversal to all social security services, resulting in the rationalization of resources; (ii) the reinforcement of online communication with the reduction of environmental impact, (iii) Increased productivity in the services provided by social security workers; and (iv) the customization of social responses aimed at the citizens, according to their availability and specific needs. Considering the above mentioned results, we consider this to be a long-term sustainable strategy that Social Security will continue to implement.

Yes

Since this initiative is not an ad-hoc project, but rather a project based on measures aimed to progressively change a central Social Security business area, with expected results on its business indicators, the evaluation of the results is made through the measurement of the specific business key indicators of this specific area. Therefore, the customer information services’ Activity Reports are the instruments used to evaluate the results of the measures implemented.

The main indicators used were: - total number of customer information services provided, particularly the number of face-to-face customer information services (which were expected to decrease); - number of customer information services with prior scheduling (which were intended to increase); - average waiting time in the face-to-face customer information services (which was expected to decrease); - number of accesses to the Social Security Online service and to the Website (which were intended to increase); - and finally, number of face-to-face customer information services of the Inclusion Desk (Balcão da Inclusão) created for people with special needs (which was intended to increase).

Face-to-face customer information services decreased by 35%, from 16.199.910 in 2011 to 10.529.377 in 2017. The average waiting time decreased by 60%, from 27:55 minutes in 2013 to 11:15 minutes in 2017. The scheduled appointments increased by 59%, from 93.441 in 2013 to 371.125 in 2017. Accesses to the SSD (Social Security Online) increased by 215%, from 11.374.568 in 2011 to 35.796.646 in 2017. Face-to-face customer information services of the Inclusion Desk increased by 109%, from 4.630 in 2016 to 9.680 in 2017. The results for all the years are in the on-going Activity Reports presented in Evaluation Report.

A transformation of this nature - by deeply changing the management paradigm, the organization of work, the channels and times of occurrence - had to be co-constructed. Firstly, by actively listening to the customers’ needs, constantly re-evaluating the impact of each change and always measuring their opinions about the services provided. Then, by mobilizing the know-how of our institutional partners whose key competences in their business areas were central to the development of this change. In what concerns this aspect, we emphasize the role of the Financial Management Institute (Instituto de Gestão Financeira, IP) with whom we share the direct relationship of the Social Security system with the clients and of the IT Institute (Instituto de Informática, I.P.), our technological partner. We also emphasize the role of the Agency for Administrative Modernization (Agência para a Modernização Administrativa), which, apart from its authority in terms of administrative modernization has a relevant know-how in terms of services aimed at the citizens. The role of these two institutions and their assessment of the change under evaluation are well expressed in the letters of reference attached to this application.

The experience of the last years, together with the constant new demands from our customers, the new opportunities and solutions that the technological advance has brought us, also oblige us to be in permanent change. Hence, we emphasize that the main lesson learned is the need for continuous improvement, in order to introduce new, more balanced and sustainable changes; always ensuring – as it is our main business - that the most vulnerable population groups always have an adequate response from our services.