INSS extends service term in case of failures in Meu INSS; see rules

The INSS (Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social) will extend the deadline for electronic requests by up to one business day in cases where the system fails and prevents the insured from meeting the deadline. According to the institute, the deadlines will be automatically extended in cases of technical unavailability communicated by the agency.

The change appears in an ordinance published in this Tuesday’s edition (7) of the Official Gazette of the Union. According to the resolution, in the event of unavailability of remote channels, such as the Meu INSS app or website, the deadline will be extended until 11:59 pm on the first business day following the resolution of the problem.

Also according to the text, failures that prevent the insured from making requests, fulfilling requirements and consulting requests on the Meu INSS application or website or in the systems of partner entities are considered as unavailability of the system.

“Data transmission failures between external public workstations and the public communication network, as well as technical impossibility resulting from failures in equipment or user programs will not characterize unavailability”, says an excerpt from the ordinance.

The unavailability of the system or technical impossibility on the part of the INSS will be recorded in the report of interruptions of operation. According to the OAB (Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil), in May alone, 14 certificates of unavailability of INSS digital services were recorded.

According to the INSS, the report will contain information such as the date, hour and minute of the start and end of the unavailability. The document will also disclose the total period of unavailability that occurred on the day, and which services or applications were unavailable.

Faults greater than three hours must be reported

Also according to the text, the extension in case of unavailability of the system for a period of more than three hours (180 minutes) uninterrupted will not be done automatically by the system. According to lawyer Roberto de Carvalho Santos, president of Ieprev (Institute of Social Security Studies), this applies to cases in which there is no disclosure of a statement about technological failures.

It will be up to the server responsible for analyzing the expired service to manually extend the period, after identifying the occurrence record of system unavailability or technical impossibility on the part of the INSS.

“In this case, INSS certificates will not be published, the beneficiary must check the system manually. The ideal thing for the insured, or lawyer, is to take a printout to prove that the system was unavailable and, therefore, not managed to meet the requirements”, says Santos.