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General Organization for Social Insurance
Saudi Arabia

The Problem

The essence of GOSI’s role is to provide social and economic services for citizens and employees at the time of need either for going retire or getting injured in the work space or covering heirs who missed their guardian. GOSI takes it as a part of its mission to perform its responsibilities professionally and adequately to serve social needs, protect the national capital and boost the economic growth. Therefore, it proactively engages in a series of initiatives and re-developments to ensure that clients are completing their transactions easily and with satisfaction and transparency .
As the global economy grew at the beginning of the millennium, Saudi economy followed suit. The growth was coupled with changes in demographics age slots as Saudi had a steep birth rate growth. Moreover, the economy was strategically reformed to transfer services from government to private enterprises, and to encourage rural migrating to reverse urbanization.
Prospects and trends on economic and social levels have sent signals to indicate upcoming changes in the existing environment for GOSI. Forecasts indicted large growth on private sector causing large increases in GOSI’s clients: employers, contributors and beneficiaries. Reverse-urbanization movements led to an expansion in geographical areas with the expanding businesses. Those two factors were expected to enforce a huge burden on GOSI on operational and logistical levels. Problems linked to growth such as deterioration in quality of service, lengthy lines, crowded parking lots, poor response time, process delays, cumbersome, inductive errors due to large volume and absence of physical GOSI representation were expected to rise.
Those challenges have effects on economic level as social security is mandatory for all businesses by law. Simplifying registration and maintaining processes are key factors for encouraging new businesses and FDI. Moreover, challenges have impacts on the social level. GOSI compensates a large volume of retires and injured employees as a part of its duty. It is crucial for GOSI to be close to their concerns and grievances and make its services smoothly and easily available to clients. It is a part of its mission and image as an entity with superior customer service. Therefore, GOSI needed a solution that provides innovative, efficient, effective & value-adding answers for all challenges.
GOSI was not only looking for a solution to meet challenges but also to achieve other benefits such as more flexible, personalized and efficient services. To resolve challenges & achieve desired outcomes, GOSI applied an innovative electronic services strategy which covered multiple processes. The goal was to build a complete virtual GOSI presence that is accessible from anywhere, available 24/7, handles large volume of users and transactions and tolerant to different needs and clients’ segments. This approach is called E-GOSI.
Based on that GOSI established a vision to introduce the letter ‘e’ to GOSI to be eGOSI. The letter ‘e’ doesn’t only stand for 'electronic'. GOSI sees the word 'electronic' as a bridge to what 'e' really stands for: Efficiency and Effectiveness that GOSI targets to better serve its clients. E-services is one main initiative GOSI relies on to reach its vision. With effective e-services, GOSI satisfies its clients and increases service quality despite the substantial growth in transactions' volume due to businesses’ growth in Saudi Arabia.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
E-GOSI is a suite of services that connects multiple types of clients with different needs through different channels. Client segments vary from government entities, large business, small business and individuals. GOSI is benefiting from the strategy as other client segments leading to an overall social and economic value.
Social Benefits: Retirees, heirs, and injured in the workplace are served by GOSI. This segment is one of the weakest in the social aspect: the old, the young, women and the sick. GOSI has implemented procedures to protect their rights and tamed services to help them. Proactive services were uniquely introduced to proactively serve citizens before they request that or know they deserve it. GOSI transfers its 200,000 beneficiaries’ financial benefits electronically to their bank accounts and give them an online access to monitor their benefits. Injured complaints are processed, when reported to the hospital, online instantly reducing delay time from 2 weeks to a day. GOSI processes on average 45,000 complaints monthly through e-services. With e-service, important goals were achieved efficiently. More than 10% reduction in occupational injuries was achieved by re-utilizing resources that were saved by e-services
Economic Benefits: As any e-services, intangible savings are giants for all parties: GOSI, its clients, society and the environment: better service, less overhead, time savings and convenience for clients, more productivity and efficiency in the economy by saving time and cost, and less traffic and purer air for the society. Business clients have experienced a reduction in costs. Employers’ Survey indicated that 85% of the sample expressed a reduction on cost due using e-services. More than 200,000 business owners are taking advantage of completing their transactions from their offices. An average of 175,000 monthly transactions that represents more than 80% of employers’ transaction with GOSI is completed on e-services by businesses. GOSI’s e-services were also a factor in increasing the investment attractiveness in the kingdom as investment authority declared in its website.
Training: the technology used in building e-services is the state-of-the-art new technologies that are demanded by businesses every day. Until 2009, GOSI have provided college and training scholarships for up to 331 employees and students. Building this base of highly trained individuals on the newest technologies provides highly demanded and skilled employees to the country’s labor pool.
Transparency: E-services provide full transparency between GOSI and clients. Employers can view their status, transactions, balances and history online. Beneficiaries can view their benefits, status and their data online. Hospitals check their transactions and balances through e-services. Clients with access to the service are able to raise services and regulations complaints and grievances and follow them through e-services.
Customer Service: E-services offer easy, friendly, cost-effective, time efficient (in terms of transaction and commuting time), complete geographical coverage and 24/7 service for clients. A survey conducted on E-services' users showed 89.3% satisfaction with the service. E-services fast adaptation by average annual growth of 296% confirms findings.
Time: Even though transactions’ number doubled, transactions going through offices decreased by 67%, which led to 75% decrease in transaction average time. Taking E-services volume in the equation makes the average a lot more appealing. The average time for each transaction has dropped by 96% because E-service consumes 0 time, more efficiency and effectiveness for GOSI and clients.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The initiative to implement the e-service strategy is an alternative that has been proposed by the IT department at GOSI as a proactive measure to be taken to overcome the challenges facing GOSI in the near future and boost the quality of service. When the initiative was approved, a committee was formed from senior deportments’ managers to discuss the feasibility of the project and the possible functions to be offered. It has been estimated that 85% of GOSI’s transactions could be completed through the e-services. The alternative has shown a great appeal to the top management due to the excellent services proposed to be offered to the clients and the efficiency and effectiveness it brings to the organization.
To achieve the desired results, active members from different types of clients: large businesses, small businesses and beneficiaries were consulted either through participating in surveys and workshops or through joining the committee overseeing the development of the approach. Moreover, to offer a complete solution other stakeholders such as banks, hospitals, and other government agencies were involved in the process. 2 banks were involved in the process e-services offered, 47 hospitals were consulted, and government agencies with direct interaction with GOSI such as Ministry of interior and ministry of Labor have been contacted.
The initiative was developed in house. GOSI employees were utilized, trained and prepared to complete the tasks. There were multiple stages in the development. Large volume transactions with less dependency with external agencies. were implemented first. Lessons learned from each stage were recuperated in the development of the following stage.

(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.
E-services main objective was improving customers’ service level by offering flexible, personalized, and efficient service to clients. GOSI looked to provide convenient and more accessible services that are transparent to clients leading to a stronger and more effective relationship between GOSI and stakeholders. E-services achieved economic value by reducing administrative and transactional costs for GOSI, employers and beneficiaries with simple and easy to adopt processes. Moreover, relying on technology has its advantages of achieving reliability and accuracy of information, eliminating bureaucracy and providing real-time data. Finally, e-services protect rights of the insured and minimize fraud cases by increasing transparency between GOSI and clients.

initiative-services required major changes in business processes to achieve objectives. To reach full electronic services, the project went through multiple phases. GOSI applied an innovative electronic services strategy that covered multiple areas:
1. Business Process Re-engineering: collaboratively, business and IT personnel joint effort modifying rules for effective e-services implementation, and removed steps from the processes and replaced them with electronic checks to achieve efficiency without jeopardizing integrity or quality.
2. Integrating electronically with government agencies to retrieve data directly from them, saving client’s time and acquiring more accurate data. For example, integrating with National Information Center.
3. Multi-channel e-services: Clients’ segments were addressed differently to meet their different needs & means. Electronic channels integrated with back systems include:
a. Portal: a virtual office where clients process transactions online. Clients complete a transaction in less than 30 seconds through the portal.
b. Bulk: clients can upload files that contain large number of transactions at once to the portal. So, they are able to process thousands of transactions in 30 seconds.
c. ٍSystem to System transparently, GOSI’s system is connected with clients systems through Web Services, so any changes & information that GOSI needs to know are reflected directly on its system without human intervention, meaning zero time leaving less room for mistakes, and more timely and reliable data.
d. Phone (IVR): another convenient e-service channel especially for computer illiterates. It doesn't also require special equipments like internet connection or PC.
e. Self-services stations (Kiosk) and SMS.
f. E-Payment: employers electronically inquire about their dues and pay them through ATMs, IVR, and internet. Benefits are also electronically deposited in beneficiaries’ bank accounts.
4. Proactively serving clients before they request the service by integrating with government agencies.
5. Securing information and channels of communication using appropriate technologies like digital signatures and certificates.
6. Focusing on reliability and continuity by establishing DR sites. Moreover, Special qualified resources are assigned for evaluating services’ usability.
7. Services are accompanied with multi-channeled support: email, phone support, online support, online manuals and screen casts.
8. Spreading awareness about services on multiple fronts: branches, clients, online & through media. Moreover, using word-of-mouth from clients themselves as an awareness tool by announcing their experiences and savings with e-services.
9. Continuously measuring performance improvements and conducting Services Assessment through customers’ surveys, field studies, and transactions and usage analysis. Improvements are reflections of measures of customer experience.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
In proceeding to implement the e-service strategy, an analysis of the existing GOSI services were categorized based on: the number of consumers of the service, the average usage of the function, the dependency on the external entities and the conflict between transforming the service electronically and GOSI’s regulations.
Large volume transactions with less dependency with external entities were implemented first. For example, electronically transferring monthly benefits to beneficiaries’ accounts was implemented first. Subsequently other services were implemented gradually.
For development of the services, different teams were assembled. A team from business and IT was assigned to study the environmental factors such as available infrastructure for clients, business needs and regulations. A different team was assigned to analyze the service requirements. The team was composed of business and IT personnel and sampled clients. A series of meetings, presentations, surveys was conducted to describe the promised services, brain storm on ideas and get feedback. A research & development team composed of IT personnel performed the task of choosing on the technology and developing the service. A quality assurance team was developed to insure standards of usability, integrity and accuracy of the services. Special highly trained resources were assuring the usability from services themselves to supporting materials produced for e-services. The final user of these electronic services was the focal point all over the cycle.
After deploying the service for public use, operation and monitoring team had an ongoing task of ensuring the availability of the service and solving issues. Moreover, the service is continually evaluated and improved based on recommendations by the operation team.
Finally, the service is fully supported. During business hours, a hotline is available for clients to obtain help or report a problem. The online help is available at all time. Users can access the available online help such as manuals, fields’ description, screen casts, FAQ and demos at anytime. Moreover, the support email is available for users at all time.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Innovations face a lot of skepticism on their validity and success. It is often hard for others to visualize the big picture and the overall benefits to all parties which in return weakens innovations business case. To insure the approval for the initiative, a complete analysis of the service was conducted to strengthen the business case. Moreover, believing in the case and its social value was a major driver for the initiatives.
Again, innovations create huge change in the current common environment. Change is not a very welcomed move in any organization. Resistance to change is a nature of institutions as well as individuals. GOSI enforced the change on all aspects. Employees were involved in the process to build a sense of ownership for the initiative. The culture of the organization was driven to embrace the change. Training and workshops were conducted to prepare the employees for the changes in the service. Also, the clarity of the business case got buy in from the top management which in-turn achieved the strongest support from the highest level.
Another major obstacle was dealing with external entities. The lack of standard procedures followed among agencies makes it very difficult to build a unanimous solution. For instance, this obstacle was faced when developing a common service for all hospitals. There is no clear and standard business procedures shared in the hospitals when submitting papers for work place injuries. To overcome the issue, GOSI’s analysts had to analyze and develop a common process procedure to be followed by hospitals when treating injuries. Also there was support from the top authority in the kingdom by establishing a special entity to support the e-government move. This entity established standards for data communication and established a service bus for sharing data between government agencies.

(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
GOSI’s approach to tackle challenges was to depend on existing resources to reach solutions. Building the e-service on the existing ERP system provided huge financial savings. Moreover, it provided the service with up to date information to be retrieved for the client. Also, it provided the service the ability of direct processing and effect on the ERP system. The integration between GOSI’s ERP and e-service presented top management with real-time data and access to the performance of the e-services.
As one of the e-service objectives was to train and enhance the skills of the employees at GOSI, the resources were utilized to manage the initiative. GOSI has relied on its IT department employees in all project development phases. Also, it has employed its senior staff to oversee the development of the project as consultants.
Another resource utilization strategy was making use of previous experiences in project management obtained internally through the years. The project was managed completely by the organization’s resources. GOSI has gone through immense organizational change in the past. The experiences gained was shared and organized for future uses like what happened with e-service.

Financially, GOSI have benefited from its highly skilled and trained employees to employ low cost technological options. Open Source technologies were deployed for the development as a reliable &cost effective method. This alternative has proven durability, scalability and flexibility for usage and future expansions.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The e-services were developed to correspond with the existing regulations on organizational and national levels. However, the service is very flexible to accommodate for future changes in the regulations. This flexibility equips the initiative with the regulatory sustainability it needs to survive with in the law bounds.
In terms of the technology, the e-services initiative employs a flexible and scalable technology that could be accessed by multiple channels that are available now or could be developed in the future. The core technology is very adaptable to the changes in the channels which provide it with the sustainability it need to reshape to contain changes in the social and economical environments.
The model is extremely transferable to any agency that would like to reach its clients anywhere and anytime. The knowledge and experience was a key role in the success of the service. The technology is the simplest part of the implementation. However, the process of understanding the needs of the clients and the delivery in suitable means are the crucial issues in this initiative. There are also external factors for the organization to adopt such initiative. Regularity issues in electronic services and sharing data between government agencies is an example.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
E-services have impacted the nature of interaction between GOSI and its clients. GOSI is reaching out for its clients anywhere and anytime using the e-services. Beside the availability, the services are easily accessed with minimum effort through the different channels: online, phone, SMS and Kiosk. Moreover, the transparent interaction between GOSI and its clients has created a level of trust of the service as the adoption of the service increase with high rate. The concern that GOSI has put on making the services user-friendly and usable has been noticed with the high satisfaction rate.
E-services have also impacted GOSI’s quality of service. Transaction processing time has been decrease on an organization level by 94% even though the transaction volume has almost doubled between 2006 and 2009. Injury complaints are processed in a day meaning employees are treated and compensated faster. Data are available in real-time for beneficiaries, injured, employers and top management with accuracy. In short, GOSI’s services has entirely got transformed.
Through this experience, GOSI emerged with many lessons learned. Some important lessons are:
• Resistance to change is a nature. GOSI drove change in all aspects: organizational by altering the processes, human resources by training and seminars & Cultural by embracing change.
• Top management support: Management was engaged in the strategy from the beginning. Feasibility studies, presentations and discussion meetings were conducted for the management to get their approval and support for the initiative.
• Awareness goes a long way. To be effective, employees and clients need to know about new services and their values. Before launching the services, employees were invited to seminars and workshops to explain the services and their benefits and trained on how to support it. Clients as well have received letters and brochures on the upcoming services explaining how it works and how it could benefit them.
• Importance of collaboration with all effected departments and not to make them feel left out. Several departments in GOSI have participated in discussion boards and requirements gathering before services were developed. Those departments were given a sense of ownership of these developments which is important for getting them involved.
• Usability of e-services: meeting the mind of the user is important for the service to be utilized. the simplicity of using e-services aided its fast adoption

Contact Information

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

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