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PDA based eSurvey
Ministry Of Social Development
Bahrain

The Problem

Major Issues:
• MS access was one of the legacy systems which were poor in archiving because it was not capable to handle the incremental number of records that leads to inability to track the old record which cause low accountability, adding to that the reusing of the application numbers for the suspended services which has an effect on the data credibility.
• Undeserved applicants were benefiting from the services and vise versa because of unavailability of correct data from sources, an automated process with rules and regulation, and the absence of transparency between services decision makers. For example two different payment systems for financial aids of the social assistance and the one for handicapped with no integration leads to undeserved applicant benefiting for both at the same time and this is against ministry rules.
• Researchers who were long time working within an area became familiar with its residents, which make strong relationships which gives a chance for emotional decisions.
• Unstructured and insecure data and a manual process of a backup. Therefore it was the major reason for system misusing with no security or an automated backup process.
• Retrieving applicant information through different systems with different platforms that prevent online integration also each has different information than others. E.g. CIO, Immigration, Labor, GOSI, CR…etc.
• Poor communication between ministry and stakeholders. For example informing the applicant with his status was done through manual process either by phone call or sending letters consuming long period. In addition, the absence of a complain system causes low transparency and accountability.
• Lake of business rules and conditions which leads to data-entry errors, delay in the process and incorrect decision.
• Duplication of data-entry and Inconsistency of data because it is scattered across many applications.
• The manual processes in field study prevent monitoring and controlling the filed process, in addition it consumes more time and effort but mostly with inaccurate data provided by applicant.
• Unable to audit and measure quality, also the financial auditing was done through manual process with a lot of mistakes.
• Absence the process of following up end-user productivity: task assigning, time required, work schedule.
• Suitable decision cannot be taken because of unavailability of accurate and structured data.



Trends and conditions:

MOSD trends to computerize the case study research processes by adopting the latest technology in the IT industry in order to optimize the performance including: handheld PDA devices, Web technologies, modern communication technologies like GPS, SMS/Email integration, GIS and on-line integration with other ministries (including CIO, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Health).
Also the equity is one of the ministry's values which lead it to the excellence.

Social group affected:
The group who is affected by this solution is a wide sector of citizen in the kingdom who is under poverty line namely the 4 beneficiary groups (children, family including women, handicapped and elderly) adding to that the fire compensation.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
MOSD is proud to be the first Ministry deploying the mobile handheld PDA for field survey of social consultants. The benefits are endless but we can summarize them.
PDA provides the executives a mechanism to follow up the progress of each staff and based on that an evaluation is done and a plan is scheduled. This was affecting the case study that was completed within 2 working days by site visit and data entry, to be now completed within 2 hours each. It was figured out that 180 case studies were completed within the month of implementing the PDA. In addition, this project is serving the "Green IT" concept by eliminating tons of paper based forms every year. On the other hand, tracking the researcher's movement during the site visit promotes the integrity and prevents the miss use of the time visit.
Secondly, the system reduces data-entry errors and enforces the business rules by equipping the user with business rules validation built in the data capturing device to prevent data inconsistency. Also increasing the accountability and transparency done by controlling the process of the case study which is transferring the application in different stages e.g. registration, study, committee and payment sections each with the approval of the previous one.
This system can manage and handle the incremental number of records.
Time consumption was 15 minutes before project completion without family member information or rules and conditions (which was again taking additional 45 minutes at office), but after the project completion it now takes only 15 minutes to do the entire process with a full registration which includes all required data, accurate data through integration system and data based on rules and conditions. Time saving is about 75%.
Decision makers were benefited from the data of PDA which was filling in the DSS. Executives can extract data through reporting system easily by clicking a button, while before those requirements were developed by IT departments and consumed about two working days per report.
Citizen now can apply and benefit from our services and inquiry at any time with limited data entry and an easy process. While promoting accountability was done also by assigning all users with a user name and password based on their role and responsibilities supported by the rules and conditions of each action owner in both the back end system and the PDA. Availability of a complain system assists in providing transparency between top management in decision making and measuring business owners performance.
Insure the circulation of researcher's task to different areas continuously which prevent emotional decision because of a strong relationship with the applicant.
Finally, an automated committee that deals with archived documents will be able to take on spot decisions and the automated payment process insures payment to be done correctly and prevents any wrong action to be done. The decision makers are able to manage services budgets and to set a proper estimated one for each service with the help of the reporting tool.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Ministry of Social Development proposed a reliable and easy to use mobile application developed using the best of the development tools for PDA computing.

The solution was implemented by Al Hilal Group and REALSOFT with a joint team from both parties.

The stakeholder groups include citizens and resident, implementer as REALSOFT Company, MOSD IT development team, Owners and end-users, Finance department, Executives and other decision makers. Adding to that other ministries involved in the integration exercise as Central Informatics Organization or other non governmental organization such as charity fund, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Commerce. Also e-services was done by eGA and GIS by CIO.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
• Applying Parallel payment process where the new and old systems run together in an agreed time to minimize the risk.
• Review the organization's current state and future possibilities using a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat) analysis.
• Identifying strengths and core capabilities in products, resources, people, and customers.
• Defining Leadership and assigned to each critical area of the plan to ensure agreement and commitment.
• Increasing transparency level between ministry and stakeholders
• Alignment the international rules of quality in all areas.
• Development of human capacities in order to achieve specialized expertise in the field of communications and information technology.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The entire Social Information System was implemented over three phases with some degree of parallelism depends on the project contract.

Key development:
o Requirement analysis study with the necessary Re-engineering by doing the AS – IS analysis and conducting Gap Analysis to reach TO – BE situation.
o Creating ER model.
o Creating Functional Hierarchy.
o Designing and building the database backend objects.
o Building J2EE web user interfaces for extranet users.
o Building User interfaces for Handheld and PDA devices.
o Building Backend screen for normal data entry.
o Building Browser based interfaces for intranet users.
o Data conversion and migration by executing ETL processes.
o Scanning existing documents (back log digitization.)
o Building Basic static reports.
o LDAP integration.
o Smart Card, SMS/email integration.
o Journaling and security.
o Defining and studying the infrastructure available for other ministries and departments and deciding on Standard interfaces, for example Web Services, Database Links etc... And building such integrators at MOSD side.
o Defining DDS business requirements.
o Defining off-line Star schema model (if necessary).
o Building Dynamic Reports.
o Building Spatial GIS user interfaces.

The implementation phases and chronology:

The project was implemented over three phases with some degree of parallelism depending on the agreement with the vendor, it was completed within tow years over three phases:
 Building the core system.
 Integration with other ministries and departments.
 Building Decision Support System (DSS) based on Oracle BI beans and Oracle OLAP multi-dimensional database.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
• Requirements gathering: The great challenge of the requirements process is finding a way to uncover and capture the needs of the business and communicate and to defined Rules and regulation for this stage from business owner.
• Using of new technology (PDA): Many new users have the fear technology and some of them misuse or underuse technology.
• Top Management Decisions: procedures for getting the signature of top management or business owner were taking long period to be done and this wasn't helpful during the change.
• Steering committee: Delaying to get the right time manner schedule of completion dates that agreed and listed of following up tasks that are expected to be completed within schedule.
• Integration Process: Integration part was done in late stage by CIO which effect the data migration and project duration deadlines.
• Data cleansing of legacy systems : No availability of data cleaning tools, depending on manual effort of human resource based on rules and regulations
• Scattered system with no integration: Multiple operational data sources has done to be consolidated in a single query able system that’s based on the rules & regulation.
• Delay in agreed change result during business process reengineering exercises.



Obstacles overcomes
• Escalation to the top management in order to manage the situation or quick action or response to be taken.
• The project was divided into three phases which some can move parallel with others. This provides a higher degree of management control and reduces uncertainty.
• Rescheduling some deliveries only one time to fit the project deadline.
• Intensive follow up and training sessions for users.
• Choosing a vendor who is the first owners of mobility services in Middle East, with high experience and successful projects.
• High attention was given in developing the application using spiral methodology with two cycles of revision. Also, simulation, prototypes and conference room pilots were done.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Technical:
Technologies were used in implementing the project:
1. Oracle Web Application.
2. Oracle Database
3. J2EE programming as a backend.
4. Internet browsers programming.
5. IBM Message Queue services on Windows Operating System (Enterprise Systems Integration)
6. Microsoft .NET (Framework) for PDA (PPC OS).
7. Business process automation & Monitoring Workflows.
8. Geographical Positioning System (GPS) for tracking and route planning.
9. Oracle Portal for e-Services.
10. Business intelligence services to query and analyze, perform OLAP and report on enterprise data.
Human resources:
1. IT department.
2. Social assistance department.
3. Social centers departments.
4. Finical department.
5. Vendors.
6. Others: CIO and eGA.
Cost associated:
Project was of total fees of BD 224,644.000 (Two hundred twenty four thousand and six hundred forty four Bahraini Dinars). With payment terms that was made under and agreement on installments according to the percentages shown for each phase:
- 30% upon the Commencement of the Project;
- 20% upon completion of Operation Analysis phase;
- 20% upon Completion of Conference Room Pilot (CRP)
- 20% upon completion of User Acceptance Test (UAT);
- 10% after project completion certification.
Resources mobilized:
• A committed and well-informed project manager and project team having a thorough understanding of the project mission, goals and milestones, planning, monitoring and reporting on the work.
• A steering committee to manage the overall project and the dependencies, that consists of top managements such as assistance undersecretary, IT head, business owner head, vendor project manager, ministry project manager).
• Business owners with a clear roles and responsibilities in order to assure accountability, ownership and quality.
• Vendors.
• Other organizations representatives (CIO and eGA).

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The experience of applying usage of PDA device for social research study was successful because it served the researcher in terms of data consistency. This has been achieved by reusing data entered or grabbed in earlier stages of the process; which resulted in reducing the search time for each case and in turn have increase the number of research preformed in a shorter time, comparing to previous state were the researched had to re-write all data by hand on a paper. Not to mention reusability of the device for other similar applications, this certainly attains our goal in maximizing benefit of our IT assets.
The remarkable success of this feature drew the attention of government agencies and Arab country, including the Ministry of Social Affairs in the Oman and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who acclaimed successfully and requested our assistance to apply this experience in their organization in the future experience. On the other hand, technical wise done through: Server high availability, Code script is portable (Java), Load balance in server, Top database engine with high available server and data, In future remote replica on the system for more high availability and Mobile software is portable.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Impact and lessons learned:
• Stronger relationship with business.
• How to face and deal with the challenges of new techniques.
• How to deal with the different level of understanding.
• The high importance of the integration between organizations in order to have a repository of information that serves the citizens. For example, applicants with old information in CIO will be guided to update their information before applying for any service.
• The importance of a standard infrastructure which has the ability to accept any new system integrated with others. Foe example: donations by other organization to the social beneficiaries done easily with no additional cost – Superior women council donations for social assistance beneficiaries.
• More understanding of the business process and the ability to improve those processes based on other factors.
• Enables the ministry to compare its projects more systematically and document its most effective problem solving mechanisms.
• Systematic project learning enables the enterprise to develop project competencies that lead to a sustainable competitive advantage.
• Project team members return to their line functions with their new experiences with any new project.
• The success of the project is mainly depending on customer satisfactions. For example, reducing the waiting list leads to less complains from the applicant.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry Of Social Development
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Thuraya Amiri
Title:   Chief, Planning and Information section  
Telephone/ Fax:   Tel. +973 17101948 | Mobile +973 39866691
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   thuraya.sharif@social.gov.bh  
Address:   Isa Town - P.O.Box 32868.
Postal Code:  
City:   Isa Town
State/Province:  
Country:   Bahrain

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