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General Organization for Social Insurance
Saudi Arabia

The Problem

General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) was established to apply social insurance rules and implement its regulation, particularly, concerning achieving the lawfully social coverage, collecting contributions from employers and paying benefits to entitled insured persons or their family members. Before GOSI’s initiative to implement and use a new electronic Management Information System (called Social Insurance and Management Information System SIMIS), the situation had major issues that constituted a problem for GOSI, its registered business employers, and the insured employees.
One major issue was the slow responsiveness due to the communication conditions at the time. There was a communication problem between clients and other constituents of GOSI, the communication channels were limited and outdated. As the number of inquiries and transactions increased, the response time increased because the response involved manual procedures to answer them. More inquiries meant more employees’ time spent on answering them and less time on other major activities. Also, the more transactions are initiated, the more employees’ time is spent on processing the transactions. GOSI contributors (workers who are registered with GOSI) also were not served efficiently. For example, registered contributors needed to follow up on their retirement pensions in person with a field office of GOSI that used to consume a lot of time to be processed. The problem was accentuated by the increase in the number of retirees (as evident in the increased number of pension applications).
In addition, GOSI clients could not be updated on their application status in a timely and accurate manner. Clients had to visit a field office and wait in line for a GOSI employee to serve them, and even then, the employee might tell them that their application has not yet been processed which is a major frustration for the customer and a cause of many complaints. There were no electronic means that satisfied the timely and accurate criteria of information requests by clients as well as GOSI employees.
Another major issue was the lack of transparency and accountability in the sense that business owners could report data to GOSI that their contributors would not approve such as wages that are lower than the actual in order to reduce the contribution amount paid which would negatively affect the employee’s contribution. There were no direct simple ways to enable contributors to check information such as the registered wage. Likewise, employers needed further transparency from GOSI to know their status, their accounts, and be able to have their information visible and accessible.
Furthermore, it was hard for GOSI to conduct tasks it is accountable for such as completing fiscal auditing timely and accurately. It was difficult to do so because of the tremendous increase in data being audited due to a large increase in the number of private establishments and registrants (registered establishments increased 444% in the last 7 years). The legacy systems in place before SIMIS were so complex that implementing modest changes, which were mandated by law in some cases, became increasingly difficult and time-consuming.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
SIMIS increased GOSI’s control over its transactions. Thanks to SIMIS, GOSI can track and monitor its business transactions in real time. This allowed GOSI to measure transaction response time and work on improving it. GOSI uses the transaction response time to let clients know the time their transactions need to finish which increased GOSI’s responsiveness to customers.
Also, SIMIS has an integrated Document Management System (DMS) that converted paperwork to electronic documents. Because of DMS, business transactions now are electronic with no papers involved. Electronic copies of paper documents are made and papers are kept for a short period before being disposed of. This step helped minimize paper handling costs when papers need to be sent between branches, which waste time and resources.
As an example, private establishments in the kingdom are required to submit a form called ‘form 3’ that details the employees’ movements in that establishment. Around 150,000 forms are delivered to GOSI monthly which needs verification, approval, and storage. Average employee processes 1000 documents a month, and it takes 150 employees whose sole job is to handle the documents. With DMS, the documents are digitally stored while customers themselves fill in the forms online and hence eliminate the need for 150,000 employees for inputting data. In addition, DMS allows multiple GOSI employees to view the same document simultaneously, providing even further control from the same integrated system.
SIMIS made available more channels of communication. Now, transactions can be made through SIMIS intranet or through the Internet. Also, customers can be contacted and informed through emails and SMS messages. SIMIS enabled customer to use the phone for processing transactions and even inquiries. Enriching the communication channels is appreciated by GOSI customers and it is evident in the number of customers using the new channels. The number of walk-in customers who visit a physical GOSI office decreased as the number of electronic transactions and inquiries increased. A recently conducted survey show that 95% of registered employers noticed a sharp drop in the number of visits to GOSI field offices after offering the electronic communication channels and GOSI statistics show that business transactions that are processed via electronic communication channels constitute around 90%.
Also, SIMIS helped GOSI connect with multiple organizations electronically (system to system) which reduced the workload on GOSIs’ employees and increased data accuracy since more work was automated and less probability of human errors. Moreover, SIMIS increased accountability of its employees and customers, thanks to electronic services provided by SIMIS. Because SIMIS uses digital certificates in transactions with clients, it enabled authentication of users and clients.
SIMIS enabled GOSI to be among the best Saudi government organizations that succeeded in transforming to electronic transactions with more than 90% conformity according to YESSER, the e-government program in Saudi Arabia.
As a result of its excellence, SIMIS achieved international recognition from the International Social Security Association (ISSA). SIMIS was rewarded in ISSA good practices. This gave the country an excellent reputation around the world in the Social Security circles.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
A Management Information System was proposed as a solution after strategic studies and plans conducted by GOSI upper management. SIMIS was planned, designed and implemented in-house using well trained local talents as well as efforts and expertise of professionals from Information Technology companies. Contributors to SIMIS success are numerous.
GOSI management proposed designing a solution for its various needs. GOSI consulted with an external company to further study the proposed idea for SIMIS and using their proposals, GOSI contracted with a well-known software development company to build SIMIS in-house with collaboration from GOSI employees. GOSI also took input from the Ministry of Interior regarding implementation of e-government services such as the service to verify citizens’ National ID for validating applicants’ identity.
The stakeholders of SIMIS include hospitals, contributors, GOSI employees, and other government organizations among others.
Input for SIMIS was taken from these stakeholders. GOSI met with hospitals to know how to standardize communication channels between the hospitals and SIMIS. These hospitals shaped how SIMIS is implemented so that there is transparency between the hospitals and SIMIS. Also, it helped ensure equal treatment for vulnerable groups of injured and disabled patients in hospitals. So SIMIS made increased accountability of hospitals for their mistakes in treating patients.
For example, hospital patients can be tracked and SIMIS can alert GOSI to any increases in injuries reported by a particular hospital and then GOSI can further investigate the reason for this increase. GOSI can then determine if the increase in this injury is due to bad hospital treatment or due to lack of personal safety in the work environment of the patients. GOSI can then take measures to ensure the safety of employees/ patients by pointing out any deficiencies in either the hospital or workplace.

(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.
There was a strategic study of GOSI as a whole and its need of Information Systems were gathered and analyzed. The Information Systems analysis emphasized the latest tools and technology available at the time. The technology selection was focused on scalability and openness (as opposed to proprietary solutions) of technology solutions. GOSI applied business process reengineering on all of its processes to obtain an insight on how to design and manage these processes efficiently and effectively. Also, an important criterion was to establish a good documentation of all the processes in order to better understand and pinpoint the related entities for every process and procedure.
The strategy embraced by GOSI focused on applying the latest technology solutions that showed great potential and while financial costs were considered, GOSI believed that by implementing state-of-the-art solutions, it can recover any initial cost by later savings caused by the technologies used.
GOSI focused on implementing best practices and benchmarking its processes with relevant successful organizations.
Giving scholarships to its employees is an important strategy that GOSI has adopted. By giving their employees the proper knowledge and education, GOSI gained some exceptional talents that are the real driving force for its success.
GOSI’s strategy also focused on training end users on the new system early on the phase of SIMIS. GOSI believes that training its end users gives them better understanding of the solutions implemented and it also increases end users acceptance of the solution. In order to decrease end users resistance to SIMIS, GOSI gave training, workshops, and even sent employees to attend conferences that focused on teaching and educating end users of the effectiveness of embracing new technology solutions.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
At first, GOSI did an extensive strategic study of its business needs. GOSI brought in consultants and documented the business processes already existing in GOSI. Using the documented processes, GOSI began breaking down the processes into transactions and each transaction is further broken down into steps where each step is performed by a single user. At the end of this step, GOSI had a complete documentation of all of its processes and tasks. This made it easier to understand and know who is responsible for what transaction or step. Then GOSI analyzed the produced documentation and further broke that documentation into modules that are loosely coupled. Interfaces to each module were in one place, so changes to them can be made easily in one place only.
Then, GOSI investigated what technologies to use to implement the documentation and its loosely coupled modules. GOSI chose to use the latest technology available at the time to satisfy its strategic view of making the system scalable and by using technologies that are easy to maintain. GOSI used Java technologies, which are open standards, and used J2EE architecture to implement SIMIS.
GOSI’s vision of the solution is that it’s a continuous effort and that it has to be up-to-date on the latest technologies. GOSI continues to train and educate both its IT employees and its end users on how to use and get the most out of SIMIS.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
One of the main obstacles was employees’ resistance to change. Employees were accustomed to using the old system that they didn’t want to change their way of doing work even though the system was designed to make their work easier and better. GOSI countered this resistance by educating its employees and by keeping them informed on the changes and giving them some input regarding the design of the solution. GOSI formed a change management team that was responsible for tackling employee resistance.
Another obstacle was the lack of qualified and trained employees. GOSI did overcome this obstacle by continuously training and educating end users and IT staff on the latest changes and technologies. GOSI started choosing exceptional high school applicants and sending them abroad on a full scholarship to study and then work in GOSI. This helped GOSI obtain the necessary human resources needed to sustain its IT and its business processes early on. Also, GOSI hosts in-house training sessions for its employees which also contributed to the high skills of its employees.

(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
One important resource GOSI used was data. GOSI migrated its 30 years of data from its legacy systems to Oracle Database. GOSI used an implementation-oriented methodology, which was recommended after carrying out an implementation of a detailed pilot study. To verify that data migration succeeded, GOSI used testing and to guarantee the end users accepted the migration of data, GOSI did an acceptance testing with end users and they were satisfied with the outcome.
GOSI acquired its human resources needed to complete the work by early on sending employees for training and for full scholarships to gain the needed knowledge. GOSI gave exceptional high school applicants full scholarships even before implementing SIMIS, so that when these applicants graduated, they would return and take part in building SIMIS. Therefore, the timing of graduates was excellent because when GOSI decided to start implementing SIMIS, it already had its needed human resources to complete the job.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
GOSI is sustaining its success by continually training its employees on the latest technological and business solutions. SIMIS is by design, easy to migrate and even customize to a different environment. SIMIS was designed as a group of loosely-coupled modules. This design ensures that changes in one module have minimal effect on the other modules.
To sustain SIMIS, GOSI constructed two backup locations besides the main head quarter location. Together, these three locations provide SIMIS with sustainable solutions in case one location is down. Also, they load balance the traffic between them, so they can ease the congestion on one location.
GOSI focuses on knowledge transfer so it focuses on training its employees and educating them on how the business process works so every employee can have a substitute to replace that employee without affecting work.
The initiative is transferable to others. However, the decision to transfer this initiative needs careful study and planning. Any organization has unique needs and requires different inputs to process. Transferring the technology is the easy part, because the more difficult task is through transferring the knowledge and management processes which includes gathering required input and expected value of the initiative.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
SIMIS has greatly impacted GOSI’s responsiveness, transparency, and accountability. The new Management Information System allowed GOSI to process its transactions faster and easier via electronic means providing better response to its clients. SIMIS reduced processes cycle time via its transactions workflow system and DMS system. Also, processes control increased, thanks to the integration between GOSI systems. SIMIS also improved GOSI’s responsiveness to its clients by enabling it to anticipate clients’ needs and provide ready solutions when that needs arise. That’s possible by using data mining and business intelligence techniques to find hidden connections in the clients’ data.
In addition, SIMIS increased transparency between GOSI, registered employers, and insured employees by allowing employers and employees to view their status and registration information anytime and from anywhere via channels such as internet portal and phone services that are connected to SIMIS. The further transparency greatly enhances GOSI’s accountability towards registered contributors as GOSI enable them to view and verify the information employers submit to GOSI.
There are many elements that made SIMIS a success and stand for GOSI as lessons learned. These lessons include the following:
There should be continuous support from upper management to ensure continuity of the project. Upper management need to be the first supporters of any project so they can drive that project to succeed. There should also be strong project management. As part of project management, change management process should be established at the early stage of any project.
There should be a strategic planning beforehand so it can ease and better manage resources and time constraints. One task of strategic planning is comparing the expected outcome and the estimated costs for obtaining these outcomes. Strategic plans should keep in mind minimizing total cost and maximizing the outcome.
Proper documentation has significant impact in maintaining the processes. Documentation shows the flow of tasks and also can reveal the strength and weaknesses. You can see the bottlenecks of processes by analyzing and studying their documentations. Therefore, there must be a rigorous strategy to provide high quality documentation for all project aspects.
Quality assurance should be emphasized and enforced to prevent problems and issues from occurring because prevention is better than cure. Likewise, continuous improvement is necessary because it is easier to be in the lead than to maintain the lead.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   General Organization for Social Insurance
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Bader Al Dakhil
Title:   -  
Telephone/ Fax:   +96614777735
Institution's / Project's Website:   +96614777735
E-mail:   baldakhil@gosi.gov.sa  
Address:   P.O.Box 2963
Postal Code:   11461
City:   Riyadh
State/Province:   -
Country:   Saudi Arabia

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