Beirut bustled with Social Security specialists from all around the world on June 22^nd and 23^rd as The International Social Security Association (ISSA) together with The Lebanese National Social Security (NSSF) co-hosted the Technical Seminar on Information and Communication Technology in Social Security.

The event aimed at the identification of trends in the ICT aspects of Social Security as well as the exchange of know-how and experiences among ISSA members. Experts around the globe shared insightful case studies of their accomplishments in the fields of e-services, virtual front desks, ICT platforms, virtualization, social computing, mobile technologies and others.

Within that framework, Mr. Mohammed Yassine, the ICT Consultant of the General Director of the NSSF, shared Lebanon’s accomplishments in the automation processes of social security operations. With around 1,200,000 insured citizens across Lebanon it was essential to link all the 35 branches of the Social Security Fund and upgrade its operational software and hardware. The project was launched at the end of 2007 and the benefits reaped from this project where directly tangible in terms of performance, whereby there were four million executed operations in the first 18 months. Significant improvement in citizen servicing as well as operational cost savings was also directly apparent.

Nevertheless, the Lebanese NSSF is looking into further enhancing its citizen reach and servicing, revealed Yassine. He elaborated that the NSSF is planning to link its systems to pharmacies and hospitals as well as other government bodies and entities on the one hand, and utilizing e-payment and online banking for settling payments on the other hand. Another aspect of it would be in providing e-services to companies improving operational efficiency.

The General Director of the NSSF, Dr. Mohammed Karaki also said that a great milestone has been achieved in Lebanon, whereby the good results started to attest themselves by mid 2008 with the decentralization of services across all NSSF branches which provided great benefits to the citizens. Dr. Karaki concluded that “The Lebanese NSSF looks forward to improving its interactions with citizens through advancing its ICT platforms.”

As Integrated Digital Systems were the main system integrators of the IT platforms at the NSSF during the project, IDS General Manager, Jamal Anouti commented, “It is definitely exciting that our Lebanese experience was duly acknowledged at the event, revealing the satisfaction of the main stakeholders with the services we have provided to the NSSF. Nevertheless, we are inspired by the other remarkable case studies presented here and looking forward to the next phases in the NSSF ICT automation.”