Proposal of an Interoperability Model for Social Security
Information Systems
Francisco Delgado
1
, Salvador Otón
2
, Raúl Ruggia
3
, José R. Hilera
2
, and José M. Gutiérrez
2
1
National Institute for Social Security, Madrid, Spain
2
Department of Computer Science, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain
3
International Social Security Association, Geneva, Switzerland
Keywords: Interoperability, SOA, Social Security.
Abstract: The paper presents the most important concepts of interoperability and analyse the problems to apply
interoperability in Social Security information systems. A model for apply interoperability between Social
Security Institutions is presented and is proved in some scenarios. The goal is to develop standardize
specifications promoting reusability and enabling to address the issues of cost and complexity in social
security systems implementation. The main contributions of this paper are the proposition of an
interoperability model based on the EIF’s model and taking into account characteristics and application
scenarios of the Social Security domain.
1 INTRODUCTION
Interoperability techniques for the integration of
computer and information systems play an
increasingly important role in the implementation of
social security systems. Institutions need to use
interoperability techniques to integrate the
information systems of individual social
programmes if they are to put into practice current
trends towards the integration of social policies and
programmes now appearing in all areas of social
security, as well as to construct information services
and systems to be shared between the different
institutions or bodies which operate social policies.
In the same way, applying these interoperability
techniques internally within institutions can bring
improvements in the quality of their internal
management.
A number of attempts have been made to classify
and define the models applicable in the area of
interoperability, in order to categorize and also
measure the impact of the different environments
where interoperability can be established. This
report describes a specific model designed for social
security information systems.
The model is generic in the sense that it is
applicable to the provision of public services at any
level, from local to international. The model can also
be used to clarify and rationalise the relationships
among entities that work together (in the various
levels of government, in different sectors or both) to
deliver better public services.
To summarise, the aim of the model is to
introduce practical benefits by establishing public
services in such a way as to clearly define the
functions of the services and their interfaces and
thus enable their reuse. In this way we can avoid
duplication of work and try to use the existing
services to the best advantage, automating a wide
range of basic practices and their use.
This proposal has been developed in the context
of a project developed by the International Social
Security Association (ISSA) aiming at supporting
social security institutions worldwide to improve the
effectives and efficiency in implementing
interoperable systems (ISSA, 2012).
The paper is organized as follows. In section 2
the more important concepts of interoperability are
explained, section 3 describes the interoperability in
Social Security information systems, section 4
describes the model for the implementation of
interoperability in social security, section 5 expose
some application scenarios of interoperability in
Social Security. The paper finishes with some
conclusions and future work.
451
Delgado F., Oton S., Julian Ruggia R., R. Hilera J. and M. Gutiérrez J..
Proposal of an Interoperability Model for Social Security Information Systems .
DOI: 10.5220/0004438204510458
In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2013), pages 451-458
ISBN: 978-989-8565-60-0
Copyright
c
2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
2 INTEROPERABILITY
CONCEPT, DIMENSIONS
AND MODELS
The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) for
Pan-European e-Government Services (European
Commission, 2004), a reference document for the
development of the common standards and
infrastructures required for the implementation of
interoperability in the field of European electronic
administration published by the European IDABC
programme (Interoperable Delivery of European e-
Government Services to public Administrations,
Businesses and Citizens), considers that
“interoperability is the ability of ICT systems and
the business processes they support, to exchange
data and to share information and knowledge”.
Interoperability can be approached from different
angles which determine the types, aspects, focus and
dimensions of interoperability.
Interoperability, whether applied to e-
government as in defence and strategy systems, or in
digital libraries and information services, is
characterized by the following dimensions:
Political: Collaborators must have visions
which are compatible, priorities which are in
line with each other and must focus on the
same objectives.
Legal: Adequate synchronization of the
legislation in collaborating countries must
include the fact that the electronic data
generated in one country must be properly
recognized when used by the receiving
country.
Organizational: This refers to the definition of
business objectives based on business
procedures and tries to facilitate collaboration
between administrations or institutions which
wish to exchange information and which may
have different structures and internal
procedures.
Semantic: Ensures that the precise
significance of the information exchanged is
comprehensible for any other application not
initially developed for this purpose.
Technical: Addresses critical aspects of
linking computer and service systems.
In particular, this is the approach of the European
ISA Programme (Interoperability Solutions for
European Public Administrations) and thus the
approach of electronic public administrations. The
following diagram, Figure 1, is taken from the
reference document European Interoperability
Framework v 2.0 (EIF) (European Commission,
2010).
Figure 1: Interoperability Dimensions EIF v2.0.
A number of attempts have been made to classify
and define the models applicable in the area of
interoperability, in order to categorize and also
measure the impact of the different environments
where interoperability can be established. For
example, the Software Engineering Institute of the
Carnegie Mellon University has provided us with an
article entitled “Interoperability in the e-Government
Context” (Novakouski, 2012) in which they propose
a model to understand interoperability in the area of
e-government. The model they propose is based on
models such as LISI, OIMM, LCIM, NATO C3, EIF
and GIF, which lead them to the conclusion that all
of them can be defined in terms of objectives, types
and levels of interoperability. The starting point of
the model they propose is the definition of the
general objectives of interoperability and they go on
to locate them in given levels of interoperability and
finally add a series of influencing factors.
3 INTEROPERABILITY IN
SOCIAL SECURITY
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
The implementation of Interoperable social security
programmes, like integrating social programmes
managed by different institutions, usually has
institutional implications. Therefore, the application
of Interoperability requires strong political support
in favour of cooperation, and the generation of
compatible institutional approaches focusing on
similar objectives in terms of the implementation of
social security programmes.
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Legal interoperability must be used wherever
possible to give formal structure to the political
approaches which affect the application of
interoperability in the implementation of social
security systems.
As social security programmes are strongly
based on laws and regulations, addressing the Legal
dimension implies adequate synchronisation of the
standards on which cooperation is based to ensure
that the jurisdictions, competencies and
responsibilities of the organisms participating in
projects involving interoperability are clearly
defined, and that the electronic data from any one of
them is given its proper legal weight and
recognition.
Organizational interoperability refers to the
definition of compatible administrative and
procedural models, in order to create collaboration
between the parties who propose to exchange or
share information and services, regardless of their
internal organization and structure. Aspects of
organizational interoperability is understood to mean
those elements that make it possible to know and
understand policies concerning access to data and/or
services and their use, personal and institutional
responsibilities, and the objectives and aims pursued
by the organization in creating data or providing a
service.
In Social Security community, business process
lack of standardisation and similar administrative
functions may be carried out in very different ways.
Moreover, formal process modelling is not yet a
generalized practice. In order to address these issues,
carrying out Organizational interoperability in this
domain should include flexible tools and practices
capable of coordinating heterogeneous processes.
The fact that the information generated by a
computer must be processed by another system
which must interpret its meaning correctly, leads to a
series of additional complications which affect both
the source of the information and its recipient, and
constitutes the central theme of semantic
interoperability. Achieving it requires agreement, for
example, on the way in which information is
represented and its context. This is what will enable
automatic tools to share and process the information,
even when it has been registered independently. The
objective of semantic interoperability is not only to
enable the interconnection of information resources,
but also to enable them to be understood
automatically and as a result to be reused by
computer applications not involved in their creation.
In the context of Social Security systems,
semantic interoperability is fundamental in the
development of joint definitions and interpretations
concerning the data which is to be processed by
various organisms. Social security operations
involve a wide range of concepts which in spite of
having the same name, may be interpreted
differently (e.g. family group, members of the same
household, unemployed person, old age pension,
health benefits, social security contributions, etc.).
Thus, in order to improve understanding of the
concepts it is useful to be able to represent the
relations between them, principally those of “sub-
groups” (e.g. rural workers are a sub- group of
workers, etc.).
An essential requirement for information
exchange is a single language to describe the
meaning and structure of the subjacent data, for
example a mark-up language. In the current
technological and market environment, this language
is XML (W3C, 2008). However, XML alone cannot
guarantee or provide semantic interoperability. It
requires joint semantic development initiatives based
on XML. The subsequent introduction of XML
schemas and related artefacts (metadata, anthologies,
etc.) enables the integration of services developed
using different vocabularies and with different
perspectives on data.
Technical interoperability usually covers the
technical aspects of connection and communication
between teams, computer measures, applications and
services. It includes key aspects such as open
interfaces, interconnection services, the integration
of data and middleware, the presentation and
exchange of data, localization and recovery of
resources, accessibility, security and the integration
of applications and services. Different standards and
extended use specifications can be identified.
Summarizing, all the Interoperability
Dimensions are relevant when implementing
interoperable Social Security systems. Furthermore,
business-oriented staff should have an active
participation in the definition of the aspects
concerning the Political, Legal, Organizational and
Semantic dimensions.
4 MODEL FOR THE
IMPLEMENTATION OF
INTEROPERABILITY IN
SOCIAL SECURITY
In the following sections we present a generic model
for the implementation of interoperability which
suggests ways in which the establishment and
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453
functioning of public services could be organized in
social security institutions. The model is based on
the EIF v2.0 proposal within the European Union
Framework which studies its implementation in the
public services of member states. The model helps to
develop a conceptual model and a common
vocabulary to improve the understanding of all the
member states of the basic principles behind the
implementation of an inter-institutional public
service.
The model uses a "building-block" approach to
setting up European public services, using
interconnecting and reusable service components to
build new services. The model is highly focused on
the implementation of future services, so not all
existing services are included in it.
The model is generic in the sense that it is
applicable to the provision of public services at any
level, from local to international. The model can also
be used to clarify and rationalise the relationships
among entities that work together (in the various
levels of government, in different sectors or both) to
deliver better public services.
4.1 Key Concepts
The model promotes the reuse of information,
concepts, models, patterns, solutions, and
specifications in each one of the social security
institutions. Their public services are based on
information from various sources located at different
levels of the administration in different states. We
should be able to combine basic public services
which are constructed independently by social
security institutions in different states.
The model highlights the need for a modular
infrastructure with loosely coupled service
components which can be interconnected to deliver
European public services. It calls for the adoption of
service orientated architectures (SOA) for the design
and development of institutional systems in order to
package business processes as services.
The social security institutions should
reconfigure their systems and applications in order
to increase reuse and satisfy new user requirements.
They should also integrate agreements for a
component-based model at the service and
operational policy level, which will also require an
agreement for a joint scheme to interconnect the
loosely coupled service components, and introduce
the necessary infrastructure for the establishment of
their public services.
4.2 Model Layers
The model (Figure 2) has been divided into three
layers: Basic public services, secure data exchange
and aggregate public services, as shown in the figure
below.
Figure 2: Conceptual model for social security
interoperability
4.2.1 Layer 1: Basic Public Services
The lowest layer of the model deals with the most
basic service components from which social security
public services can be built. It groups three types of
components, namely services based on base
registries, interoperability facilitators, and external
services.
Some basic public services have been developed
primarily for direct use by the public administration
that created them or their direct customers, i.e.
businesses and citizens, but are made available for
reuse elsewhere in order to provide aggregate public
services. Others are generic and/or infrastructural by
nature, while the remainder represent external
services, i.e. services provided by third parties. The
following sections describe each type of basic public
service in more detail.
Base Registries or Shared Data Sources.
The basic registries or shared data sources (reliable
sources of basic data) represent the “core” data of
the social security sector. Such registries are under
the legal control of the social security institutions
and are maintained by them, but the information
could be made available for reuse with the
appropriate security and privacy measures.
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The basic registries can take various forms, but
their main characteristic is that they validated and
authorized by the corresponding administration. This
means that such data registries contain pertinent
reference data (not necessarily all the data)
concerning citizens, businesses, beneficiaries etc.
which is considered valid. Generally speaking their
content is not static; they reflect the information
lifecycle which in the context of shared data,
represents a challenge.
Access to authentic data sources between
different administrations will be facilitated if the
interfaces to these sources are published and
harmonised at both the semantic and technical
levels. This data may come from legacy systems,
which may constitute an obstacle to adopting the
model since these systems, and their data
repositories have specific characteristics limiting the
possibilities for reuse (e.g. lack of published
interfaces), and they may require extensive
reengineering in order to make their information
available for public services.
In order to construct this type of information
source, the institutions must evaluate their existing
services (and the associated business processes) in
order to identify and document the existing service
components or business processes, including the
business functions provided by the applications; the
data used by the processes, the services provided by
the systems and the functions carried out by
individuals.
Adopting the modular approach described in the
model for the construction of services means the
implementation of building blocks and implies the
establishment of secure levels of confidence for
specific interactive activities, alongside the
introduction of negotiated agreements between
administrations which may take the form of
memoranda of understanding and SLA (Service
Level Agreement), associated with the concept of
well-defined interfaces in which other components
(users of the service) can have confidence.
Interoperability Facilitators.
These are the basic mechanisms which provide
services or act as information brokers to meet the
needs of interoperability. In concrete terms, they
consist of: service interconnection protocols (e.g.
SOAP Web Services, REST, and RMI), protocol
translators (gateways), format translators (e.g.
XSLT), integration platforms (e.g. Integration
Brokers, Queue management systems and Enterprise
Service Bus) and using databases as data exchange
mechanism, among others.
External Services.
These include services provided by external parties
such as businesses or organizations which may be
included in the provision of services such as: at
information level – data concerning the civil status
of individuals provided by other state departments;
— at business level — payment services provided
by financial institutions; or — at infrastructure level
— connectivity services provided by
telecommunications providers.
4.2.2 Layer 2: Secure Data Exchange
This layer is central to the conceptual model since
all access to basic public services passes through it.
From a business point of view, administrations
and other entities exchange official information that
may involve access to base registries. This should go
through a secure, harmonised and controlled layer
allowing information exchanges between
administrations, businesses and citizens that are:
signed and certified – both sender and receiver
have been identified and authenticated through
agreed mechanisms,
encrypted – the confidentiality of the
exchanged data is ensured,
logged – the electronic records are logged and
archived to ensure a legal audit trail.
In the proposed conceptual model, these functions
are grouped in the 'secure data exchange' layer. This
layer should allow the secure exchange of certified
messages, records, forms and other kinds of
information between the different systems. In
addition to transporting data, this layer should also
handle specific security requirements such as
electronic signatures, certification, encryption and
time stamping. Security is potentially one of the
main barriers to interoperability if it is not applied in
a harmonised and agreed way among organisations.
The conceptual model calls on all service
providers to: consider the security questions;
cooperate on a common framework to meet their
respective security needs via compatible
mechanisms and commonly agreed specifications;
reach a common understanding on essential
characteristics such as levels of protection and levels
of authorisation and authentication. Therefore,
public administrations should agree on a common
security framework when establishing a public
service.
One of the key prerequisites for implementing
the functionality expected in secure data exchange
involves leveraging national identification and
authentication infrastructures within the
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455
administrations. This scheme should establish which
ICT architectures and data are needed in an
interoperable context to make existing electronic
infrastructures interoperable.
4.2.3 Layer 3: Aggregate Public Services
Aggregate public services are constructed by
grouping a number of basic public services that can
be accessed in a secure and controlled way. They
can be provided by several administrations at any
level, i.e. local, regional, national or international.
A typical aggregate service should appear to its
users (administrations, businesses or citizens) as a
single service while transactions may be between
different administrative units. Aggregation is
accomplished via mechanisms tailored to specific
business requirements, for example through
orchestration or workflow engines.
Nowadays, users expect to access public services
not solely through government portals or websites
but also via intermediaries with whom they are in
contact on a regular basis. Therefore, public services
should be developed in such a way that they can
easily be integrated in intermediaries’ websites
through mechanisms such as mash-ups and widgets,
without government losing responsibility for the
services themselves and with clear indications
enabling users to tell the difference between private
and public services.
If aggregate public services are provided by
intermediaries, public administrations should
establish:
an authorisation procedure to determine which
basic public services may be disclosed to
which intermediary, and
a procedure for certifying intermediaries to
establish trust between users and service
providers.
5 APPLICATION SCENARIOS
5.1 Overview of Application Scenarios:
Integrated Social Security Systems
The implementation of large-scale and integrated
social security programmes has become a key trend
worldwide. By integrating social security
programmes, the effectiveness and efficiency of
social policies can be improved and the scope of
programmes covered can be expanded. Some
relevant examples are the conditioned benefit and
household centred programs, the integrated health
systems, the integrated contribution collection
systems and the implementation of social security
international agreements (Duran, 2012) (Kounowski,
2012).
Interoperability techniques constitute a key
element to implement integrated social security
systems. This section summarizes some main
findings, a complete description can be found in
(Kounowski, 2012).
In Integrated Health Insurance systems,
interoperability application includes the integration
of different information systems involved in the
determination of eligibility to health benefits.
Similarly to the previous scenario, it strongly relies
on Basic Registries with beneficiaries’ data and Web
services as “interoperability facilitator”. In addition,
Secure Data Exchange is required to comply with
data protection regulations.
The implementation of compliance and
contribution collection systems involves
interoperability operations consisting of data
exchange and access to external services (based on
Web services). The main interactions are with
employers (to receive declarations, payroll data and
payment), with taxes authorities (data exchange and
sharing); and with banks (to receive payment
conformations).
International social security agreements
generally have a dual focus. First, they seek to allow
workers to total up their periods of activity in
different countries when calculating their pension
entitlement. Second, the agreements establish
favourable conditions so that workers on temporary
assignment in a country that has signed the
agreement with the worker's country of origin may
be covered by the host country's social security
system without a waiting period. The agreements
also provide for the payment of pensions
independent of the beneficiary's country of residence
and ease the formalities associated with obtaining
and managing benefits.
Implementing these agreements involve an
intensive application of interoperability techniques,
mainly data exchange. Section 5.2 describes the case
of the European Union social security agreement.
Finally, interoperability frameworks and
platforms have been implemented in some countries
to improve effectiveness and efficiency in social
security operations.
France has developed an interoperability
standard (INTEROPS) (OPS, 2010) for all French
social protection organizations. INTEROPS provides
two modes of exchange: (i) application-to-
application, or exchange via Web services, which
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allows a client organization's application to request
services from a supplier organization; and, (ii)
portal-to-portal, in which the client organization's
staff may consult a supplier organization's Web
applications after identification/authentication in
their local infrastructure.
INTEROPS is based on international technical
standards: SAML, for the input of identification and
authorization data into an identification vector;
SSLV3, to secure the transport layer and ensure the
integrity and confidentiality of the exchanges; SOAP
and WS-Security for Web service exchanges; and,
XML, to describe interoperability agreements and
the trace interchange format.
In Belgium, Crossroads Bank for Social Security
(CBSS, 2012), serves as an "integrator" for Belgian
social security. This institution is at the centre of a
system that exchanges data among all institutions,
employers and foreign institutions and manages the
receipt and routing of the data transmitted, which are
coded in XML using standard schemas (XML
schemas). The data exchanged involve all functions
related to social security affiliation, return-to-work
statements and changes in circumstances that affect
beneficiaries.
5.2 The Case of the European Social
Security Agreement
In the European Union social protection is one of the
elements of the right to free movement of persons.
When a person who has worked in various Member
States of the European Union applies for a pension,
indicating that he/she has worked in various
countries, it sparks off an exchange of information
between social security institutions.
The application is normally submitted to the
appropriate institution in the home state. The first
task of this institution is to compile the necessary
data to complete the application and initiate an
inquiry. An inquiry will then be carried out into the
insured member’s rights, based on contribution
periods in the state to which the institution belongs.
The next step consists of what is called the
interconnection phase: compilation of a list of the
appropriate institutions in the states where the
insured says he/she has worked.
The definition of rights is based on the exchange
of a significant number of data. In accordance with
new Regulations (883/2004 - 987/2009), paper is no
longer a valid support for such exchanges, and
electronic data exchange is in the process of
becoming the only recognized medium. Structured
electronic documents (SED) have been introduced
for this purpose and architecture is being created to
provide a basis for the electronic exchange of social
security information (EESSI) (European
Commission, 2012). The implementation of this new
scenario in all the social security institutions of the
European Union means solving a series of
interoperability problems which we will use as an
example of the application of the guidelines.
The Model for Social Security Interoperability
enables to specify and to implement the different
interoperability requirements involved in this case.
In Layer 1, interoperability facilitators play a key
role by providing the basic mechanism to exchange
and transform data formatted in XML. They consist
of: (i) SOAP Web services to implement
interoperability with institutions, (ii) a central
Integration Broker platform that interacts with the
institutions and provides message translation
services.
Using External services to obtain information
about the civil status and living situation of the
individuals is currently under discussion in the
EESSI working group.
Unlike national scenarios, using Basic Registries
and Shared Data Services is limited to a Master
Directory of institution’s contact data. Basically, it
consists of a centrally maintained data base (with a
coordination hub in Brussels) which issues local
replicas at the points of access. In this way all the
institutions share the information used to address
messages. The transfer of messages is guaranteed
through a Master Directory which contains the codes
of all the institutions.
Layer 2 (Secure Data Exchange) also plays a key
role by providing the means to comply with data
protection and data security regulations when
exchanging data between different countries. All
information messages are signed and encrypted
using Digital Certificates delivered by EESSI. In
addition, the networking is based on s-Testa, which
is a private European Union network.
Layer 3 (Aggregate public services) in the EESSI
consists of the implementation of the business
processes described above, which carry out the
administrative operations starting with a benefit
claim and finishing with the benefit delivery or
refusal decision. However, institutions with a lower
development level may use a common system
(called “WeblC”), which consists of a presentation
layer and a data base already installed at the point of
access and provided by the European Commission as
an additional component of EESSI.
Summarizing, the proposed model for
Interoperability in Social Security matches with this
ProposalofanInteroperabilityModelforSocialSecurityInformationSystems
457
very large and complex project.
6 CONCLUSIONS
This paper presented a conceptual model for
applying interoperability in social security systems.
While the benefits of building more integrated and
interoperable social security systems are widely
recognized, the cost and complexity of social
security systems pose serious challenges to
institutions. This proposition aims at providing a
standardized tool to facilitate the implementation of
interoperable social security systems.
Following the European ISA Programme
recommendations, institutions should establish their
interoperability framework and define a model to
guide the application of interoperability for
implementing integrated social security systems.
The here presented proposition follows the same
approach.
The generic model proposed in this article
includes pre-defined components, aims at reducing
the complexity of developing the institutional model
as well as providing a common tool for social
security institutions all over the world.
It is important to highlight that this model aims
at promoting the development of standardized
specifications and practices, but leaving
implementation flexibility to institutions.
The feasibility of the approach is shown through
the presented application scenarios. On one hand,
the analysis of scenarios describes the
interoperability requirements of a wide variety of
applications in social security. On the other hand, a
number of proposed techniques have been applied in
different countries worldwide.
The main contributions of this paper are the
proposition of an interoperability model based on the
EIF’s model and taking into account characteristics
and application scenarios of the Social Security
domain.
Current and future work consist in the ISSA
project for developing Guidelines and further
technical support to assist Social Security in the
implementation of interoperable social programmes
through the application of this model. The
development of software packages, jointly with IT
industry, following these specifications was
proposed during the Conference of Brasilia 2012.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is funded by the University of Alcalá
(grant UAH49/2012). Authors also want to
acknowledge support from the Master in Software
Engineering for the Web and the TIFyC research
group.
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