Poland wins the ISSA Good Practice Award for Europe

16 April 2024

The Social Insurance Institution (Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych - ZUS) of Poland wins the ISSA Good Practice Award for Europe for its programmes providing crisis support for Ukrainian citizens.

The International Social Security Association (ISSA) organized the Good Practice Award competition in connection with the Regional Social Security Forum for Europe, which takes place in Porto, Portugal 16-18 April 2024. A record 119 good practices from 41 ISSA member institutions in 26 countries were submitted to this year's European competition, with ZUS from Poland being the winner.

As a neighbouring country to Ukraine, Poland has received close to 1 million refugees since the escalation of armed conflict in February 2022. Poland has made major efforts to ensure safety, proper living conditions and integration into society for Ukrainian citizens, and ZUS has made a major contribution to these efforts.

"I congratulate ZUS on being awarded the ISSA Good Practice Award for Europe. The key role played by ZUS in national efforts to provide support to Ukrainian refugees demonstrates how institutional agility, resilience and innovation can help societies respond to exceptional challenges", said Marcelo Abi-Ramia Caetano, Secretary General of ISSA.

As described in the good practice of Crisis support for Ukrainian citizens, ZUS has ensured financial support for refugees from Ukraine through a number of government programmes, including Good Start 300+, Family 500+, Family Care Capital, and Co-financing of Nursery Fees. The rapid and massive influx made it necessary for ZUS to take quick and efficient measures comprising effective inter-institutional cooperation with several authorities.

Among the measures taken, ZUS implemented technological solutions enabling registration, claims application and their automated processing, as well as interconnection with other national systems and registries, which were instrumental in developing the multichannel approach and achieving the efficiency goals. Not least, ZUS focussed on ensuring that the Ukrainians were well informed through benefit claim forms, brochures, information sheets, websites in Ukrainian, supporting translators and interpreters, a new helpline and e-visits in Ukrainian.

Relevance of the ISSA Guidelines

In the implementation of this project, ZUS made use of various sets of ISSA Guidelines, notably on: Continuity and Resilience of Social Security Services and Systems; Information and Communication Technology; Service Quality; Administrative Solutions for Coverage Extension; and Error, Evasion and Fraud in Social Security Systems.