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Acellerating eGovernment Adoption for Expanding Access to All Members of Saudi Society
Min. of Communications & IT, Yesser e-government Program
Saudi Arabia

The Problem

In 2005 the government of Saudi Arabia recognized the need to formally adopt methods, technologies and management approaches for the delivery of better e-government services for all women, men, citizens, residents. In a country of 31 million people, 50% are under 30 years of age. The growth of this new generation coincided with adoption of internet, an expansion of mobile phones to 172% per capita and the awareness of new customer service levels was taking hold.
Within the 300 government agencies, individual efforts to improve service delivery using technology dotted the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s drive to make government services better, but, there were no unifying standards, core infrastructure, overarching policy guidelines and central solutions for helping agencies with inadequate resources or technology. Regulatory frameworks, cross-government governance mechanisms, awareness and training programs were non-existent. The challenges were enormous.
These conditions were exaggerated by the special cultural and business requirements and even by her short history as a Nation. As KSA’s economy and global importance grew over a short period of time, an uneven approach and access to services for all members of society were barriers to inclusive and effective public service delivery.
For example, services such as renewing work permits—a necessity for over 4 million men and women each year from across a 550,000 square kilometers—that often took multiple visits to the same office because of a “fragmented,” or inconsistent requirements, ranging from types of identification acceptable for women, families and types of employers, plus inefficient business processes with non-integrated, inter-agency service delivery processes—created frustration, extra costs and again, alienation.
Saudi Arabia confronted these needs to radically deploy solutions. Accordingly, a supreme Royal Decree included a directive to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to formulate a plan for providing government services and transactions electronically. KSA’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) established Yesser, the e-Government Program in 2005 in conjunction with the Ministry of Finance and the Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC).

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The solution was to create the e-government program, Yesser—Arabic for “enable and facilitate”—e-government within Saudi Arabia. Yesser as an organization has the mandate to promote the development of eGovernment throughout Saudi Arabia. Yesser can facilitate the integration of 300 government agencies through a state-of-the-art service oriented infrastructure named the Government Service Bus. In 2010-11, 17 services are being rolled out in production with 115 integration requests (33 agencies, 29 services) in preparation and a final target to integrate all major government agencies (166). These capabilities then extended into the next layer of Saudi Arabian eGovernment solution offerings and capabilities: Identity Management (eID) and Single-Sign-On (SSO) as well as shared data and services from agencies and for agencies, citizens and enterprises.
Within 4 years of Yesser’s existence, more than 1000 eServices are now offered through the National Portal, crossing gender, and age and income barriers with a growth rate of 250 services each year. Yesser offers training programs to government employees with 3000 in 2008 to more than 7000 in 2010-11.
This high growth of service offerings touches nearly every sector of the economy, population and government office making it a “comprehensive e-government hub” of leadership, technology, services, performance measurement, and most key: assistance to those agencies who reach deep into society’s need for better access.
These enabling services then open new opportunities for Saudi Arabian women and men to access fundamentally important National services. An example is the eID solution which provides assured identity for private and secure transactions through a highly integrated cornerstone service. eID encourages women, men and enterprises to confidently and privately consume sensitive electronic services such as renewal of Work Permits.
This specific service--Work Permits—is delivered by the Saudi Ministry of Labor and is requested once a year for at least 4 million individuals. The manual issuance of these permit requests is estimated to take a least an hour for each individual to complete, with Yesser’s GSB, eID and online transaction it is reduced to 10 minutes. This increases the Kingdom’s productivity by ~3.3M hours per year or a savings of 1B SAR annually.
Beyond Yesser’s enabling services a whole host of modern and critical business practices were developed. For the first time there was an agency responsible for developing a unifying vision for the Kingdom’s electronic service development. Yesser also coordinated and communicated fundamental components of what eGovernment requires by establishing standards, establishing supportive funding mechanisms for project uniformity and capabilities. It took on the lessons from other national efforts and devised the unique e-Transformation measurement tools for agencies to monitor their advancements. Creative incentives and capacity building programs, consultants, architects and customer centric practices. Now service offerings are enabling access to services by those who once found it difficult to obtain before Yesser’s existence.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The operational plan for the e-Government Program "YESSER"—was a broad inclusive effort obtaining significant guidance from members of the public, business owners, public institutions senior executives, ministers, and government employees to recommend how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could both modernize and take advantage of lessons from other top-performing nation’s e-government efforts—and rapidly increase the value of public services delivery to all members of the Saudi public.
Stakeholders are embedded in the overall governing of the operation, planning, and monitoring of Yesser’s performance. In what can be called a “state of the art governance structure” the direction given by The e-Government Program supreme Supervisory Committee This committee is formed by His Excellency the Minister of Finance, His Excellency the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, and His Excellency the Governor of the Communications and Information Technology Commission. And, The e-Government Program Steering Committee.
The Steering Committee is headed by His Excellency the Governor of the Communications and Information Technology Commission. His deputy is the Director General of the Computer Center at the Ministry of Finance. Committee members include a number of relevant executives from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Communications and Information Technology Commission as well as the Director of the e-Government Program.
An e-Government Committee in each government organization is directly linked to the top executive in that organization. The major task of these committees is to supervise the implementation of the e-government plan in their respective organizations (these committees are currently being formed).

(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.
Philosophy of the Yesser, e-government program is it that plays the role of enabling the implementation of e-government. It reduces, as much as possible, centralization in e-government implementation while ensuring the minimum level of coordination between government departments.
The Kingdom has a clear vision and focus for the implementation of e-Government, in that the beneficiaries are citizens, residents, businesses and governmental agencies all with one goal: to provide faster and more effective governmental services to the public at large. This is summarized in the vision: "everyone in the kingdom will be able to enjoy - from anywhere and at anytime – world class government services offered in a seamless, user friendly and secure way by utilizing a variety of electronics means". The e-Government Program - Yesser - was launched with the following objectives: 1. Raising the National government’s productivity and efficiency; 2. Providing better and easier-to-use services for individual and business customers; 3. Increasing return on investment (ROI); 4. Providing the required information in a timely and highly accurate fashion.
The strategies to accomplish the vision and objectives were to develop a rational and effective strategy and action plan, obtain mutual buy-in from Saudi Leadership, develop a leading edge delivery system, focus on supporting agencies in a non-threatening and supportive way by creating a highly effective work team; create security and enabling solution services, communicate internally and externally, provide multiple channel services, invest in her people with the establishment of the Center of Excellence for Research and Development a center for expanding Saudi capabilities and human capital development.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
2004: Work begins on first Saudi e-government Strategy and Action Plan
2005: Establishment of Yesser as a central government body to foster e-government development from a business side (financing projects, staff etc. and consulting)
2007-Present: Specifications Guidelines - YEFI, Government Secure Network (GSN), Government Service Bus, Yesser Data Center National e-Government Contact Center, Capacity Building Initiative, Digital Certification, Consulting Services, eServices Framework, Government Modular systems Specifications, Saudi Portal, Single sign-on (SSO)
2008: Establishing and indexing of Saudi e-government initiatives and establishing central services information hub (www.Saudi.gov.sa).
2009: Launching of the Saudi National infrastructure (Government Secure Network, Government Service Bus).
2008: Present Establishment of the supporting skills, specialists, strategies and processes to allow effective utilization of the above.
2009-2010:New National enabling services (eID, on-boarding processes, Yesser Consulting Group, Center of Excellence for Research and Development, Enjaz National e-government Achievement Awards, e-Government Capacity Building and Training

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Cooperation, participation and teamwork form the basis of e-Government success, while this supports agencies to work together by integrating services, sharing information and techniques; it creates a shared commitment to provide better results. Therefore, cultivating a culture of participation and the sharing of information across government agencies is one of the most important challenges facing the transformation to e-Government environment. A coherent and integrated approach among governmental agencies is key to provide better and faster services.

1. Impact of comparable low technical orientation of government agencies. Development of processes, training, communications vehicles to educate and facilitate broad capabilities expansion. Creation of the Yesser Consulting Group to assist agencies in their project designs and strategies.

2. Financing of projects and resources. Creation of agency account managers who act as internal advocates for e-service development, design and funding requests as well as act on agency behalf to support acquisition of funding from multiple sources.

3. Impact of typical government protectionism among agencies has been reduced through two primary means: Organizational: Involvement of agencies in developing eGovernment strategies and action plans; the adherence to these plans and customer involvement in management of Yesser operation; Yesser as a agency advocate and always work to the benefit of agencies. For example, budgeting, public private partnerships, negotiation of National contract pricing and unified bidding on e-Government projects. Allow agencies to maintain ownership of their services and data but provide government-wide critical enabling technologies, strategies, support.
2007-Present: Specifications Guidelines - YEFI, Government Secure Network (GSN), Government Service Bus, Yesser Data Center National e-Government Contact Center, Capacity Building Initiative, Digital Certification, Consulting Services, eServices Framework, Government Modular systems Specifications, Saudi Portal, Single sign-on (SSO)
2008: Establishing and indexing of Saudi e-government initiatives and establishing central services information hub (www.Saudi.gov.sa).
2009: Launching of the Saudi National infrastructure (Government Secure Network, Government Service Bus).
2008: Present Establishment of the supporting skills, specialists, strategies and processes to allow effective utilization of the above.
2009-2010:New National enabling services (eID, on-boarding processes, Yesser Consulting Group, Center of Excellence for Research and Development, Enjaz National e-government Achievement Awards, e-Government Capacity Building and Training

(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
3B SAR (800M USD) was allocated from the general budget for the initial phase Yesser National e-Government program. This financial resource has remained stable and demonstrates senior leadership commitment. Over arching this seed money are the new processes for vetting and accelerating the funding of e-government projects at the ministry and agency levels, this has been a significant help in advancing service development.

The National portal was an outsourced project which is receiving continuous support which is the same for the entire core infrastructure. Human resources have been a critical factor in the development and support provided by Yesser. The Kingdom has a shortage of the types of skill levels to support the projects. As described earlier Yesser is attempting to help solve this problem. Beyond training for technical and front office workers, the program now offers CIO and executive level mentorship programs. Yesser developed the Future Experts Program to take new graduates and line managers into a specialized e-government education and experiential program. In the development of the 2nd action plan high attention is placed on both Yesser and the Kingdom e-government leaders to address the on-going skills development need.

The organizational structure of Yesser to meet changing needs has been tightly focused upon utilizing the concepts of continuous improvements with goals of reaching a high-performance knowledge organization. Current departments involved are eServices, Yesser Consulting Group, Infrastructure Integration Group and management.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Yes, the initial allocation of 3B SAR indicated top-level commitment and brought mechanisms to look across government for high value and goal accomplishing projects.

Social: Introducing in a benign and enabling ways, the methods and service capabilities for all agencies has created broader buy-in to accomplishing National e-government goals.

Economic: The manual issuance of these permit requests is estimated to take a least an hour for each individual to complete, with the GSB, eID and online transaction it is reduced to 10 minutes. This increases the Kingdom’s productivity by ~3.3M hours per year or a savings of 1B SAR annually.

Cultural: Multiple approaches are being taken to support cultural adoption of e-government concepts and delivery. National conferences are held to share experiences. CIO workshops and summits now occur for the first time. Perhaps most importantly is the growing utilization of portal and Ministerial services

Environmental: Reduction of traffic and redundant data centers have immediate effect on government office visits.

Institutional: The Second 5 Year Strategy and Action Plan 2011-2015 is being completed. The acceptance of the value and contribution of a central delivery and coordinating body with actual service deliverables is now seen as vital.
Regulatory: The outgrowth of KSA’s engagement with e-government and Yesser support have left an indelible mark on the Kingdom’s virtual landscape: Some of these are: e-Transactions Act, - Telecommunications Act, IT Criminal Act, - e-Gov Implementation Rules, - Directive to form Government Agencies’ e-Government Committees, - Rules Governing Private Sector Participation, -Directive to Shift from Conventional to Electronic Methods.

Transferability: Develop once and reuse is at the heart of Yesser’s mission. It is now seen in a growing number of products offered to the public which affects everyone’s lives. These services and strategies cannot be placed into the traditional transferability model—Yesser’s contemporary

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Yesser is instrumental in both establishing, supporting, enabling and facilitation e-government adoption and advancement within a large and important Country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Yesser reinforces the firm will and the understanding of the necessity on highest government level to implement and maintain sustainable infrastructure improvements, respect individual agencies missions and priorities while at the same time provides the consultative expertise to help guide these agencies toward success.

The adoption of the National eGovernment Strategy and Action Plans are fundamental to the growth of the Kingdom. This is being achieved by opening the doors to government to more people who can access quality services no matter their gender, age or social standing. It releases employees from doing antiquated paper work and allows them to focus on their agency’s primary mission while shortening processing time, reduction of errors and creates a working environment which enables more quality service delivery.

The qualities and value of online services are well known world-round, what is distinctively different with KSA’s approach is the type of service oriented core enabling technologies and what can be achieved when a strategy is built upon this vision and architecture. The up-take of services is nearly doubling year-over-year. Agencies are now able to integrate key information to produce new products which are linked securely to enable ever more secure solutions. What is being seen is an exponential growth of services never before available to everyone within the Kingdom.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Min. of Communications & IT, Yesser e-government Program
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Ali AlSoma
Title:   Director General  
Telephone/ Fax:   +96614522370
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   asoma@yesser.gov.sa  
Address:   King Abdulaziz Communication Complex
Postal Code:   11112
City:   Riyadh
State/Province:   Riyadh
Country:   Saudi Arabia

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