Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service Helps Citizens Plan for the Future

Throughout this project, Capgemini has been proactive, open and collaborative, which resulted in gaining the trust and respect from NAV and competitors. Jorun Kongerud, Program Director, NAV Pension Program

The Situation

The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service (NAV) plays a prominent role across the fields of employment and social security, and contributes to the financial wellbeing of all Norwegian citizens. NAV administers the most important welfare benefits and social security schemes in Norway. The national insurance system in Norway has been stable since the introduction of public pension plans in 1967. Since then, life expectancy has increased, and the average retirement age has fallen. From 2005 to 2020, the number of pensioners is expected to increase by up to 40%. Against this background the Norwegian parliament legislated to reform the pensions system and transform the way in which Norway administers pension benefits. To deliver the pensions reform, a $500 million Pension Program was established, comprising multiple projects of which IT represented a significant part. NAV’s IT systems were not sufficiently flexible to introduce the new legislation, and solutions for this were not part of NAV’s long-term IT strategy.

Capgemini was engaged in 2007 to help implement the IT solutions necessary to support major organizational reform. Capgemini’s main responsibility was to develop a self-service solution, Your Pension (Din pensjon), and a new centralized casework system based on a secure Service-oriented Architecture (SOA).

The Solution

Today, the new self-service solution is used by every citizen in Norway to estimate, plan and apply their future pension timeline and benefits. A new national contact center has also been established to support citizens. Additionally, there are five dedicated production centers to centralize case work. The solution automates case procedures to give better and faster services to the public. Your Pension can handle a pension application in less than a minute without any manual interference. In comparison the previous, more manual procedure took up to three months from sending an application to completion of the case.

Citizens can use Your Pension to monitor the application process, communicate electronically with NAV, view their payments and pension fund, and simulate different pension scenarios. NAV’s caseworkers also use the simulation functionality to help the public plan and optimize their pension and their point of retirement. The main characteristics of the new flexible retirement pension are that:

• working for longer will be profitable
• it is possible to combine earned income and retirement pension freely
• it is possible to draw a retirement pension from the age of 62 if enough pension rights are earned
• the retirement pension will be adjusted according to life expectancy
• every working year will impact the pension.

The system solution is based upon the use of open source frameworks and tools. It is one of the largest SOA solutions in Norway. It is programmed in Java and based on several open source frameworks such as Ajax4JSF, JSF, Spring Web Flow, Spring and Hibernate.

The Result

With Capgemini’s help, the objectives of the pensions reform have been reached. New IT solutions handling new retirement pension rules are in production, serving both working and retired citizens. Norwegian citizens have been given a fantastic tool to help plan their retirement, to simulate different retirement schemes and make informed choices about their pensions. Through Your Pension, every citizen has a general overview of all his or her pension funds.

NAV has introduced one of the leading self-service solutions in the public sector, automated every step of the casework procedure to ensure quality and efficiency, and centralized casework to five special units. This has been achieved without reduced human resources. NAV is now better able to meet today’s demands for rapid processing, respond to pensioners’ needs quickly and efficiently, and provide the correct benefits at the right time. Case managers now access one modern, centralized system instead of numerous legacy systems. As a result, staff in local NAV offices have more time to spend with their customers.