Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale

http://www.inps.it/

European Social and Health Policy focus

1. INPS acts as Forwarding Point and Competent Institution regarding the pensions in Italy.
2. INPS is the Designated Body by the Labour Ministry for the implementation of Dec. 117/82 and Dec. 118/83.
3. INPS participates to European Projects funded directly by the Commission

Aim, structure and tasks of the organization

INPS (Italian National Social Security Institute) is the largest and most important public Institution of social insurance in Italy (with 33.000 employees), and one among the biggest in Europe. It has a cash flow (both revenues and expenses) of about 400 billion Euro per year, which is second only to that of the State. All the employees of the private sector, part of the public administration and self-employed workers (in total more than 19 million people) are socially insured at INPS. Also all the firms established in Italy (about 1.5 million) are registered with the Institute. INPS pays pensions to about 14 million citizens. INPS duties include the payment of several types of benefits: social insurance benefits (old age, service, survivor and disability pensions), financial aid benefits (pension increases, social allowance, civil invalidity pensions, etc.), benefits for workers and citizens, such as: unemployment allowance, redundancy pay funds, maternity indemnity, sickness indemnity, family allowance. In order to ensure a continued improvement to the services provided to its users, and to rank at the top of the Italian Public Administration, INPS has always kept up with the latest technology, implementing advanced information systems and pursuing innovation at many organisational levels. In particular, the Institute has always made available its data banks to public and private research and statistics organisations, in order to exploit its data patrimony. Indeed, the content of the archives provides a significant view of the Italian economic and social situation including the labour market dynamics, the structural changes of companies, the mobility of workers, the phenomena of poverty and social exclusion. Furthermore, also public health aspects (morbidity, invalidity, inability of the population) can be studied by analysing INPS data.