The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the American Legal Social Commission (CAJS) will have its XXXI Technical Meeting from October 14 to 17, 2008 with the main subject: “Good Practice on Social Security”, this meeting will take place in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico with the sponsorship of the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE), since this Institution chairs the Commission.

The objective of the meeting is to exchange experiences of legal, social and economic problems among the social security institutions of America.

We hope you can join us, in case of needing more information of the event, we kindly ask you to contact M.A. Abigail Diaz de Leon Benard, Chief of the Unit of International Affairs of the ISSSTE at uai@issste.gob.mx or Brenda Pequeño Vargas of the General Coordination of the Inter American Conference on Social Security at brenda.pequeno@ciss.org.mx.

Enclosed please find the hotel and event information. The registration form is available at the website www.ciss.org.mx. We request participants to pre-register for the meeting via fax or e-mail.

Thank you for the attention, and we hope you can join us in this meeting.

Sincerely,

Gabriel Martinez
Secretary General

The object of this Technical Meeting is to gather a group of leading specialists on topics related to pensions, health, and older adults along with executives from social security institutions to share experiences on topics that will be covered in the agenda. Among the topics that will be addressed during this conference include:

• Reforms and perspectives of health systems and health insurances: the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico.
• The future of social security in the Caribbean
  • Actuarial projections in the region
  • Demographic projections of the region
• Older adults and health: self-care manual
• Pensions
  • The extension of pension coverage
  • The future of mixed pension subsystem
  • Progresses in CISS Pensions Report

Enclosed please find the meeting registration form. Soon we will send you information concerning hotel accommodations, the preliminary agenda and a general information fact sheet, information that will be available at the CISS website www.ciss.org.mx. We request participants to pre-register for the conference through fax or online by visiting the CISS website.

We thank your attention and we hope to see you soon at La Habana. Sincerely.

Registration Form

The Banco del Ahorro Nacional y Servicios Financieros (BANSEFI), the Inter-American Conference on Social Security (CISS), the Fundación Alemana de Cajas de Ahorro para la Cooperación Internacional, UNDP Mexico and the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA) are jointly organizing the conference “Towards Greater Financial Inclusion in Latin America: Results and Challenges”.

The aim of this conference is to gather a group of scholars and policy makers to discuss how to achieve higher financial inclusion. We encourage papers that deal with: a) the impact of programs carried out in the region’s different countries to achieve greater financial inclusion; b) the potential problems that financial inclusion may bring about (arrears and over-indebtedness); and, c) legal and institutional issues that may help foster financial inclusion (for example supervision and regulation). Further, we are also interested in knowing the role that financial education may play in achieving a more sustainable and complete inclusion.

The organizers will pay economy class airfare, meals, and lodging during the conference for participants whose papers result selected. Proposals should be emailed to the members of the organizing committee: bienestar.politicasocial@gmail.com.

After a peer reviewed process, the conference papers will be published in Well-Being and Social Policy (Bienestar y Política Social) a CISS-PNUD-UIA bilingual joint publication which is widely distributed among policy makers and scholars in Latin America, This journal is listed in different journal indexes such as Clase and Latindex. More information about the journal and its contents can be found at http://well-being.ciss.org.mx/

Key Dates:
August 15, 2008 Submission of proposals
August 30, 2008 Acceptance decision
September 25 - 26, 2007 Conference
December 10, 2008 Final versions collected

Organizing Committee:
Pablo Cotler, Invited Editor, Universidad Iberoamericana.
Rodolfo de la Torre, Editor of Well-being and Social Policy, PNUD México.
Eduardo Rodríguez-Oreggia, Associate Editor.
Nelly Aguilera, Inter-American Center for Social Security Studies.
Ursula Heimann, Fundación Alemana de Cajas de Ahorro para la Cooperación Internacional.
Beatriz Vaca, Banco del Ahorro Nacional y Servicios Financieros, SNC.

 Making Impact Evaluations of Social Programs Work

October 16-17, 2008 Mexico City

The Inter-American Conference on Social Security (CISS), the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA), the Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (CONEVAL) and UNDP Mexico, are jointly organizing the conference “Making Impact Evaluations of Social Programs Work”. The main objective of the conference is to present how researches and teams in charge of managing successful impact evaluations have overcome the enormous political, technical, budgetary, and operative hurdles that a rigorous impact evaluation of social programs involves.

Even though new and better statistics and econometric techniques to measure the impact of social programs have been recently developed, still we lack sufficient rigorous evaluations to improve social policy-making. Most of the time it is clear which evaluation methodology should be applied to an evaluation, yet evaluations rarely get to an end or its implementation fails because of political, budgetary, operative, or other problems interfered, and the challenges were not surmounted.

Evaluation authorities in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as researches of the region are willing to know how an impact evaluation can become a reality in practice and how to cope with the most common problems. This valuable information is not available in traditional scientific journals. The articles in this issue are intended to answer the following questions: Who demanded the evaluation? Where did the funds come from? What where the problems that surged when selecting the methodology for evaluation? How was the information necessary for the powerful calculations obtained? What were the problems faced when implementing the base line? Were control groups respected? How were the evaluation’s results used? Were there political pressures for the implementation of the evaluation and to accept its results? Preference will be given to papers dealing with the institutional design to make operative evaluations rigorous analysis.

After a peer review, selected articles will be published in Well-being and Social Policy, a new academic publication that is jointly coordinated by the CISS/PNUD/UIA and that is widely distributed in the American Continent among policy decision-makers and researches, and that is published in both, English and Spanish, listed in journal indexes. The journal is directed towards academics, students, and decision-makers of the public sector who are not necessarily specialists in the field. For more information on the journal and its content, see http://well-being.ciss.org.mx

The conference presenters should be scholars internationally recognized for their contributions to the field. Organizers will pay their airline tickets in economy class, meals, and lodging during the conference for those submitting to the journal. Proposals should be sent to the members of the Organizing Committee.

Key dates:

Organizing Committee: Presidente: Gonzalo Hernández Licona, Guest Editor, Consejo Nacional de Evaluación Rodolfo de la Torre, Editor de Bienestar y Política Social, UNDP Mexico Eduardo Rodríguez-Oreggia, Associate Editor, Universidad Iberoamericana Alejandro Rodríguez-Arana, Universidad Iberoamericana Nelly Aguilera, Inter-American Conference on Social Security

Submit to: bienestar.politicasocial@gmail.com

Activities will begin with an International Seminar where The Americas Social Security Report 2008, will be presented. The agenda will include:

• XXIII General Assembly.
• Statutory Meetings of the CISS.
• International Seminar: Innovation of Social Insurance Models: Determining Actions to face the XXI Century.
• Regional Technical Seminar of ISSA: Regulation of the Social Security Law in the Social Agenda of the States.

The meetings will take place at:

Centro de Convenciones de COMPENSAR
Avenida 68 # 49 A - 47
Bogotá, Colombia
www.compensar.com/eve/cenConCom.aspx

El hotel sede es:

Hotel Sheraton Bogota
Avenida Eldorado # 69 C – 83
Bogota, Colombia
www.ghl.com.co

We are looking forward to welcome a delegation from your institution and to share their precious experience of Social Security with professionals from different countries.

Sincerly,

The Inter-American Conference on Social Security (CISS) prepares The Americas Social Security Report annually. The goal of this Report is to become a tool to improve the understanding of the status of social security programs in the Americas, through the evaluation of topics that the General Assembly selects every year. This Report is addressed to the social security community, including governments, agencies, social groups, employers, users, and anyone interested in the improvement of social protection in contemporary society. The Permanent Inter-American Committee on Social Security approved the topics selected for the 2008 Report during its 22nd General Assembly held in Cancun, Mexico. The title of the Report is Innovating Models of Social Insurance. The Report was written under the hypothesis that the potential for large gains in the efficiency of social protection programs is great, and that some of the problems programs face can be solved only after a proper focus is given to administrative and organizational issues. This Report provides information about the best operational and organizational practices, and highlights what the role of the regulators should be in increasing the productivity of the programs. The Report is only a first step in the CISS research agenda to understand best practices in the management of social programs. Operational design is a constant and dynamic process, because implementation of best practices should be done in a step-by-step fashion, and IT is improved over time. The Report provides best practices of general application. Answers to detailed situations should be addressed by each agency and national system. However, one of the main recommendations of this Report is that even the most specific organizational change should conform to an overall strategy and organizational architecture. We hope that the information contained in this Report will increase the interest in improving productivity of social programs. We believe that it is possible to deliver more to the beneficiaries of social programs, even without major legal reforms on the benefits and taxation issues that are usually the primary material of debates on social security.

Gabriel Martinez
Secretary General

General Balance

Incomes

Expenses

Operating expenses

Behavior of authorized budget

Comparative with last period

General Balance

Incomes

Expenses

Operating expenses

Behavior of authorized budget

Comparative with last period

• The Role of Performance Management in Achieving Efficiency and Effectiveness
• Creating Value through Performance Management in Social Security Organizations
• World Class Performance through Better Tools and Staff: Best Practices and Lessons
• Technology and Transformation: Integrating Processes and Systems

Boca Chica Santo Domingo

Dominican Republic

Tel: 8809-523-4611. Ext. 6026

Date:
June 26 thru 29, 2007. Santo Domingo.

 Brochure Only in Spanish / Register Only in Spanish / General Information Only in Spanish / Hotel Reservation Only in Spanish