Complex Computer System for the Polish Social Insurance Institution (KSI ZUS)

Before the pension reform, the only payers of social security contributions whose accounts were handled by the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) were companies and no individual accounts were maintained. Each employer paid a single monthly contribution computed globally on the basis of the total payroll. Every year, payers submitted approximately 18m settlement documents. Before 1999, every person seeking to be awarded a pension in Poland had to gather documents to confirm their entire employment history and submit them to ZUS. Thus, to receive a pension one was obliged to compile reliable documentation, which was difficult and often necessitated searching through archive files of no longer existing employers. Thanks to the reform, since January 1999, every insured has had an individual account for ongoing collection of information on social security contributions made on behalf of the insured. Each employer is obliged to notify ZUS of each new employee and to settle individual contributions for each employee once a month. Contributions are made to four social security funds (to finance old-age pension, work-disability pension, sick benefits, as well as accident benefits) as well as the health insurance fund. A part of the contribution is managed and invested by financial institutions selected by the insured - Open-End Pension Funds (OFEs). Every year, more than 260m settlement documents are filed with ZUS, more than thirteen times as many as before the reform. As a result, all insured receive annual information on the amount of contributions accumulated in their individual accounts. It would have been impossible to launch and operate the post-reform social security system without innovative IT support. The KSI ZUS - comprehensive IT system developed by Prokom Software SA for ZUS - allows to settle over EUR 30bn in accounts of approximately 20m insured. ZUS, as the first public institution in Poland, made it possible for the payers to use the public key infrastructure and submit their documents by e-mail. Meanwhile, small enterprises may still use traditional hard copy. Today, thanks to the legislative solutions and the growing popularity of the Internet, approximately 75% of the employers file documents via e-mail (which accounts for 90% of all the submitted documents).

Main results, benefits and impacts

In the implementation of the KSI ZUS system, ZUS was the first institution in Poland to use electronic means of communication with the employers on such a large scale. It quickly turned out that the use of electronic documents and signatures benefited both parties. Lower labour intensity of the document preparation process reduced the need to contact ZUS in person and facilitated error detection and elimination - all these elements make the solutions implemented by ZUS an attractive model to be followed by other public institutions.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Lessons learnt

The experience gained with the use of the KSI ZUS system may prove attractive for every public institution which has to exchange and process data in the form of both hard copy and electronic documents. Given its proven large-scale performance, the KSI ZUS system may turn out to be a source of particularly valuable experience for entities serving millions of clients, such as tax offices and specialist funds or financial institutions. The communication solutions implemented in the KSI ZUS system are easily transferable to other public institutions; especially that they are used by approx. 75% of the 1.5 million employers in Poland. The current strategy of ZUS operations assumes publishing relevant protocols and ensuring compliance of the implemented solutions with the legislative regulations with respect to the public key infrastructure. Adaptation of solutions used for settlement automation to the needs of other public institutions requires a case-by-case approach. The execution and implementation of the KSI ZUS system has created appropriate conditions for many Polish institutions to discharge their tasks following from the pension system reform. The system is one of the largest of its type in the world. It is also the first solution of its class in Poland featuring large-scale electronic communication between the employer and the office as a strategic tool of goal implementation.