THE SOCIAL Security System said it is acquiring digital infrastructure. — BW FILE PHOTO

STATE-RUN Social Security System (SSS) said it is in the process of digitizing its processes to improve transactions after President Rodrigo R. Duterte in his State of the Nation Address included the pension fund in agencies that need improvement.

In a press release on Thursday, SSS President and Chief Executive Officer Aurora C. Ignacio said the pension fund has started acquiring new digital infrastructure “to fast track the full transition of SSS core and business processes to digitalization.”

“As mandated by our Social Security Commission ex-officio Chairperson Carlos G. Dominguez in his first order of business when he took office last March, he instructed to speed up the transition to the digitalization process. This is one of his priority policies under the new charter of the pension fund,” Ms. Ignacio said.

Mr. Duterte, in his SONA last Monday, said the SSS and the Land Transportation Office (LTO), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Land Registration Authority (LRA) and the Home Development Mutual Fund or Pag-IBIG need to improve their services.

Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez said in a briefing on Tuesday that the slow service of SSS is “costing the public money” and ordered the agency to develop a system using technology instead.

“I told them (SSS), you know the way you’re doing your business, our estimate is it cost you seven pesos to deliver P100. Now, that is too expensive. Other countries…if I remember right…Japan, 50 centavos to deliver a hundred pesos worth of benefits. We [in the Philippines] cost seven pesos. I said you cannot continue like that. That is not government money, that is the money of the people,” Mr. Dominguez said.

“So if it cost me seven bucks to deliver you a hundred…that means to say that seven bucks less I can give to somebody else… Your inefficiency is costing the public money, directly. So I said the first thing you do, you digitize, you do it, you develop a system that you can communicate with your clientele through modern technology, use the cellphone, you know, the smart app,” he added.

“Other countries can do it, why can’t we? You do it through computer and then we can…actually expand the benefits and make it easier for them to get the benefits,” Mr. Dominguez said.

At present, SSS’ online services include online applications for social security number issuance, payment reference number inquiry and generation, employment report submission, submission of contribution and loan collection lists, salary loan applications, certification of salary loan applications and filing for maternity and sickness notification.

Other electronic channels of SSS are My.SSS, SSS Mobile App, Self-Service Express Terminal, Interactive Voice Response System and Text-SSS.

The pension fund said in the same statement that out of 6,609 SSS-related concerns referred by 8888 and the government’s Contact Center ng Bayan, it resolved 99.55% or 6,554 cases. — B.M. Laforga

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