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Noor
Ministry of Education

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
With over 5.5 million students, 33,000 schools, 500,000 Teachers, 48 School Directorates, and over 200 million annual records, the Ministry of Education was challenged with access to real-time data and records that would facilitate accurate analysis and reporting and impact public education development across the Kingdom. Although data was available to a certain extent, but some key challenges existed, such as: Data redundancy, High probability of human error, Inability to develop up to moment reports and analysis based on live data, Need for timely feedback and results, and Limited data integration and workflow between the Ministry and its various related departments, school districts, schools, and other stakeholders. Over the past years, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been undergoing various activities related to its national public education reform plans. One of the most significant aspects of such reform is the ability to make better informed decisions, and to be able to base such decisions and design reform plans and policies based on statistics, intelligence, and real live data provided from all schools and users all over the country. The ministry also could not accurately provide its various beneficiaries including students, parents, teachers, administrators, planners and policy makers, etc. across the Kingdom with access to education related data and e-services relevant to their needs. Based on the above, the need for a centralized database and a strategic project and initiative to better service the complete education community was raised. Accordingly, the Education Management Information Solution (EMIS) initiative was created by the Ministry of Education (MoE). The initiative was later named “Noor” which is an Arabic word that means “Illumination”.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
The MoE “Noor” project is considered as one of the Kingdom’s most strategic initiatives. It aims at connecting the Ministry of Education and all schools and school districts in the various areas and regions within the Kingdom to a centralized information system and data base. The implemented solution is based on the latest technologies, and solution provides a magnitude of features and e-services, including around 2,700 functionalities designed to serve the various stakeholders including students, teachers, parents, as well as school / districts / and Ministry level administrators and decision makers. The solution aggregates all data from the various sources, and provides real time accurate and comprehensive data and reports that serve the complete education community and facilitates planning, analysis and decision support across the country. The solution is deployed centrally, serving the entire community of stakeholders through remote access through the Internet, thus providing access anytime anywhere, while special considerations are made to accommodate the few disconnected schools through a specialized offline mode application and clear work procedures to ensure inclusion of such data. Number of Beneficiaries from this initiative reaches around 10 million including 5.5 million students in over 33,000 schools in addition to their parents, teachers, and school and ministry administrators and staff, analysts, planners and policy makers. In addition, the initiative involves other entities outside the Ministry of Education realm, including, the e-Government Program Yesser, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Higher Education, colleges and universities to facilitate students admission and registration procedures, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labor, among others. The following are some of the key benefits served by the initiative: • Increased efficiency and effectiveness in the public education sector. • Increased transparency and accountability. • Improved quality of data, due to elimination of data redundancy and reduced human error. • Streamlined workflow between Ministry and the various related departments, school districts, schools, in addition to stakeholders and entities outside the realm of MoE. • Improved public services thus achieving higher citizen satisfaction. • 20 e-services are provided through this initiative to end users including Ministry, districts, schools, parents, students, public entities, Saudi universities and colleges, recruitment companies, among others. • Ability to achieve better informed decisions and develop plans and policies based on proper and comprehensive live data and statistics. • Provision of real live educational data to the education community as needed, along with timely feedback, reports and results. • Reduction of operational costs due to the high level of automation, and due to the centralized deployment of the solution (further elaboration under the impacts below). The objectives of this initiative are: The provision of a national education solution that can provide real live countrywide data for use in planning, policy making, and decision support. And the other objective is To provide the various stakeholders in the education committee including students, parents, teachers, administrators, planners and policy makers, etc. across the Kingdom with information and education services relevant to their needs. Thus the Ministry of Education initiated this initiative for the provision of a national centralized Education Management Information Solution that can help the Ministry achieve its strategic objectives in the most effective manner. As part of the project, a main operations center was created, through which the key ministry administrators responsible for this project can monitor the operations and ensure that all aspects are sustained and under control.
 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
A solution needed to be developed which incorporated which would not only overcome the complicated problems outlined above, but would provide business intelligence on ways to prevent barriers to equal education through diversity in classrooms, recognize any possible biases in decision-making and effectively enable fair and improved quality for students, parents and administrators. To do this a solution would be flexible enough to create new services or capabilities based on an evolving set of needs by all stakeholders. The MoE “Noor” Project was conceived and is now one of the Kingdom’s most strategic initiatives in education in public and private schools. It aims at connecting the Ministry of Education, all schools, and school directorates within the Kingdom to a centralized information system and data base. The implemented solution is based on the latest education technologies. It provides features for all stakeholders involved in the educational processes. E-services with 2,700 functionalities are designed to serve the stakeholders including students, teachers, parents, as well as school districts and Ministry level administrators to enable sophisticated decision-making designed to bring equity, quality, and effectiveness to the Kingdom’s students and educational system. The solution aggregates all data from the various sources, provides real time accurate and comprehensive data reports that serve the complete education community, and facilitates planning, analysis and decision support across the country.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
Because a very large number of requirements, the project has been divided into five phases, and, later on, the sixth stage has been added to increase the requirements of departments and to enter the new systems The first phase focused on the establishment of structured databases and the data center and fields needed for most systems The second phase focused on the transfer of data from of data from the old systems to the previous administration in order to provide user effort. Then it was the most important launch systems relied upon by larger segments of users as a system of testing and counseling for students and educational supervision The strategy was all in the loop begins collecting requirements of the beneficiary, programmed, reviewed, loaded in an experimental setting, tested, raising the notes to be adjusted at the same time training the beneficiaries and finally implementation and follow-up training slide that followed in the field, and thus to the follwing system. Key implementation steps include the following: 1. Idea developed based on identified need. 2. Needs assessment report developed. 3. Search initiated for implementing firms through public tender. 4. Firm selected to implement, project implementation initiated. 5. Project implementation in 5 phases. 6. Awareness, training and knowledge transfer conducted in parallel with project implementation. 7. Completion of Implementation. 8. Operations and support.
 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
The initiative is a result of collaborative efforts between several entities within the public and private sectors. The initiative was proposed and initiated by the Ministry of Education, and is managed by it as well. Consulting services were provided by a team of academics experts from the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Information & Computer Science Department to perform analysis and needs assessment. The project is implemented by a private IT firm Integrated Technology Group who also provided the solution design. And the overall program management is provided by another private firm, Deloitte. The initiative is overseen by a steering committee and a supervising committee formed of representatives from the various Ministry departments and related entities. Furthermore, as this is considered one of the most significant national education initiatives in the Kingdom, the Ministry decided to involve more of the public in the selection of a name and logo for the initiative. Thus, this selection was conducted through nomination and voting through the Ministry’s website. Thus, the name “Noor” won the vote
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
The main resources used for this initiative was training the concerned stakeholders. Then development process was started by the IT department and was followed by the role of supervision by the Exam department. Of course the IT department provided and maintained support by producing additional visual products to demonstrate the ease of use of the system
 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
• Successful data and processes automation. • Easy data collection and retrieval, which can be accessed remotely through the internet anytime and anywhere. • A centralized deployment that can facilitate maintenance and reduce the need of technical support staff. • Reduce time needed for installation of upgrades on the previous system with less than an hour, in comparison to the current situation where installing upgrades requires thousands of hours. • Support decision makers to come up with best detailed statistical reports by empowering them with knowledge needed.
 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
An Enterprise performance Management (EPM) system was also developed to facilitate governance deployments and be able to manage, monitor, and assess the status of the initiative, including program documentation updates, track changes and to follow up with action points that have been delivered by the steering committee. Dashboards were developed for each party (Owner: Ministry of Education, Implementer: Integrated Technology Group, Consultant: DevoTeam).
 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
The main obstacle faced is ensuring the consistent and continuous population of the system, which is key to its success. This requires commitment from the various stakeholders especially the teachers and administrators responsible for the population and operation of the system. As the norm in such national large scale projects, there were certain challenges. However through continuous monitoring and follow-up by the management and operations team at the Ministry through the state-of-the-art operations center that was especially created for this purpose, and through scheduled awareness and training sessions conducted to bring the stakeholders up to speed and get their buy-in, and overall average of 98.5% participation from the fields has been achieved which is considered a high success rate.

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
Student e-Services: 1. Students Registration and Admission 2. Displaying daily schedule 3. Follow-up grades and assignments (H.W) 4. Viewing the time-table of tests 5. Follow-up bus schedules 6. Showing Library Books Teacher e-Services: 1. Showing daily schedule 2. Displaying a list of the class students 3. Follow-up and entering students’ assignments 4. Follow-up and entering students' grades 5. Follow-up attendance and absence 6. Raise the request to transfer to another school 7. Raise suggestions and observations to supervisors electronically 8. Receiving circulars and notes Parents/Guardian e-Services 1. Filing the registration application and transport 2. Follow-up attendance 3. View the time-table of tests 4. Follow-up grades and assignments 5. Follow-up attendance and absence 6. Follow-up suspensions and commitments, cautions, and notes on the student 7. Communicating with the teacher and the student advisor 8. Updating contact details School Management e-Services: 1. Preparation course schedule and modify it 2. Follow-up needs of the school 3. Raise and follow up maintenance requests 4. Follow up the issues of students 5. Follow-up school cafeteria 6. Follow-up school library 7. Analytical reports on the status of school Guidance and Direction e-Services: 1. Follow-up reports of guidance 2. Notes on the development of the student or teacher 3. Follow-up complaints of guidance 4. Showing plan of guidance and counselling Educational Supervision e-Services: 1. Template of the teacher performance 2. Supervisor plan to visit schools 3. Showing penalties given to teachers 4. Educational entry requirements for teacher 5. Adding to draw attention 6. Adding a referral request to investigate with teacher 7. Observations provide to teachers and educational guidance Educational Directorates of Region e-Services: 1. Providing accurate statistics on the results, students, teachers, and schools needs 2. Follow-up of educational supervision 3. Follow-up counselling students 4. Follow up on teachers and student affairs 5. Follow-up of school transport Ministry of Education e-Services 1. Analytical reports and performance indicators at all levels 2. Updating the basic data for schools and departments of education 3. Providing data to external bodies 4. Providing a unified channel for Circulars and decisions The solution is deployed centrally, serving the entire community of stakeholders via remote access through the Internet, thus providing real time access e, while special considerations are made to accommodate the few disconnected schools through a specialized offline application mode with clear procedures to ensure inclusion of data such as sending the student records and transcripts for input at a location that has Internet facilities without losing any of the data. The number of beneficiaries from this initiative will reach around 10 million including 5.5 million students in over 33,000 schools in addition to their parents, teachers, and Ministry Administrators and staff, analysts, planners and policy makers. The following are some of the key benefits served by the initiative: • Forward looking predictive intelligence to off-set cultural and personal biases • Ensure inclusion, transparency, and accountability; • 20 e-services including Ministry, districts, schools, parents, students, public entities, Saudi universities and colleges, recruitment companies, and many others; • 100% increase in efficiency; • Improved quality of data due to elimination of data redundancy and reduced human error; • Streamlined workflow between Ministry departments, school districts, schools, stakeholders and entities outside the realm of MoE; • Improved public services achieving higher stakeholder satisfaction • Ability to make better informed decisions and develop plans and policies based on proper, comprehensive, live data and statistics; • Provision of real time educational data to the educational community as needed, along with timely feedback, reports and results; • 50% reduction of operational costs
 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
Being a national initiative, this was planned for and budgeted under the Saudi Arabia government’s budgets. The many positive effects of such a project though and its various impacts (described further below), make this initiative favorable and encourages the creation of other similar initiatives across the various sectors in the Kingdom, thus expanding its impact
 12. Were special measures put in place to ensure that the initiative benefits women and girls and improves the situation of the poorest and most vulnerable? (If applicable)
Improved Efficiency, Time/Cost Impact: • Time saving due to a much faster cycle from data entry, cleansing, migration, to approvals and publishing. • Cost reduction due to the decrease of staff hours spent on system support, and the improved utilization of the teachers and administrators time. Also through decreased usage of paper and elimination of system support visits to individual schools. • Improved performance and increased productivity due to full automation of procedures and improved work distribution among staff, which in turn improves overall productivity and efficiency. The system also allows school districts to perform continuous online follow up on postings performed by all schools, to avoid any delays in schedule. • Example on one of the sub-systems results, where the duration required today for the ministry to process and publish the national exams results for all students, is 6 days, in comparison to 3-5 weeks duration required prior to this initiative. • Another example is where the average time needed for installation of upgrades on the previous system was 20,000 hours, in comparison to the current situation where installing upgrades requires no less than one hour. Environmental Impact: • Initiative encourages decrease in use of paper, and aims to reach a paperless environment. • Centralized deployment at data center eliminates the requirement for high-end servers at schools, and reduces the need for technical support staff to physically travel to school sites for technical support and maintenance issues. Prior to this initiative, utilizing the decentralized older solution previously deployed required an average distance of 200 Kilometers to be crossed by a support team member per trip to perform support tasks, or install system upgrades, etc. The new solution allows for remote support activities without the need for school visits. This in turn saves travel expenses and is more environmental friendly. Impact on Other Entities: • The integration of systems provided within this initiative positively affects other processes related to entities outside the MoE realm. As an example, the provision of students’ results electronically provides all universities and higher education institutes in the Kingdom with the required data, and facilitates the students’ admission and registration processes. Equal Access, and Access Anytime/Anywhere • Solution is fully accessed remotely through the Internet, and thus provides access anytime/anywhere. • The full automation of all systems and procedures and the application of standard procedures create transparency, unification of rules, and overall equality among all users and schools in the various areas and regions.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry of Education
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Ali Alsabty
Title:   Project Manager  
Telephone/ Fax:   +966505297404
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   asabty@moe.gov.sa  
Address:   11192
Postal Code:   1142
City:   Riyadh
State/Province:   Riyadh
Country:  

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