| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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Transparency, accountability, responsiveness, integrity and measures to prevent abuse or misuse of public power, innovative management of public finance were the main focus for SCTAwhile developing PC ePortal.
The mentioned issues and concerns were based on issued raised during the implementation of the manual process. To insure meeting users expectations the e Portal effectiveness was a main objective. Additionally, the results of monitoring the status and flow of competitions were considered at the time of objectives definition, the communication channels with vendors and related parties were took into account too.
Starting with a clear road map and strategies to insure the success of the project. Full utilization of the ePortal was a goal and to eliminate resistance we decided to develop the solution in three phases. The first phase included the core functions and procedures in the procurement and contracting process. The second phase was a customized version from the first phase. The third phase is the fancy and enhanced phase which will surely be welcomed and utilized properly by the intended audience and users as they will be already familiar with the automated system.
Without a skilled project team the existence of the portal was not possible and that is why SCTA made sure to create a team with various expertise and specialties to do the implementation and development of the Procurement and Contracts Portal. Strategies followed included latest business process reengineering techniques, comprehensively studying and analysis of the users’ needs from the solution and system usability best practices and the familiarity of the sequence of the solution for users were applied to improve, simplify and prevent redundancy in the competition process steps before automating them. Additionally one of our key success points was involving the user in several parts of the project development and implementation.
Finally, as in the development of any huge system, it is not possible to start with a random set of ideas and strategies and expect a system to appear. So by setting clear strategies and identifying a road map and goals with the use of the latest technologies from software development techniques and following the plan and identified roles and responsibilities, and engagement of the intended users the system was excellently implemented and deployed and successful beyond the expectations.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The development of such a solution needs the collaboration of several members and Stakeholders. The creation of teams was needed to fully establish the system successfully. These team members are represented in SCTA Employees from all concerned departments, which are the Finance, Procurements and Contracts and IT Departments along with competitors and users, and related governmental agencies who are engaged in setting the rules and regulations of the governmental rules and regulation, insuring the setting of the right goals and implementation of each goal set. Teams included DBA’s, supervisors, and users.
The collaboration resulted in success of the solution to fully assure the engagement of all concerned parties. After conducting the analysis and obtaining feedback from these concerned members
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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SCTA is the main owner for the PC ePortal represented in its departments. Hence the decision of in-house development of the system was reached after conducting a feasibility study to either in-house develop the system or outsource. After that, the project team was built which included all concerned SCTA members such as Specialists, analysts, financial representatives, users from the concerned departments who are the PC, finance and IT department, working along to insure the success of the development. These teams were derived into multiple sub-teams where responsibilities were assigned facilitate the process and ease the work.
Following the in house development approach was beneficial in achieving a high level of teams' engagement and communication channel throughout all project phases. The in-house development approach provided a convenient way to involve project team members from all related department to gain their feedback or ensure the alignment of the developed solution
Technically the system is created on SharePoint 2010 interface with an SQL Database, to have the system compatible with all SCTA platforms and making integration with other SCTA applications easy and accessible. Furthermore, integration with SADAD system – an online payment method similar to PayPal that eases the payment process for companies - and Live streaming – where venders are able to view the process of opening the envelopes as it is being processed, showing transparency and accountability- were part of the built of the system.
From a financial point of view, there were no additional costs on SCTA as the system was developed internally, and teams were members of SCTA. The efficient use of budget on equipment, tools and licenses required for the development.
To sum up, the use of cutting edge technologies and in-house development benefited SCTA as there was a high level of communication and productivity leading to the success of the developed system.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The achievement of the targeted goals were the success of the output. This shows in the resulted implementation of
1- Transparency as a main target to the creation of the system, that was insured by making sure to know what type of information to display and for whom to display these information to. Also the possibility provided to vendors who bought the tender to be able to view the process of opening the envelopes through live streaming.
2- Accountability as a main aspect to prevent corruption in public services. Accountability is supported in many ways, developing proper process documentation and announcements and making them public on the portal is a strong evidence of SCTA’s conformity to legal, procedural and fiscal requirements, and improves the processing of complaints and handling of grievances
3- Responsiveness by raising public awareness of corruption and government action to prevent and combat it; and to promote partnerships between the public and the private sectors to prevent corruption; and to encourage public opinion’s monitoring and filtering of government decisions and the views of concerned sectors of the community, and finally to include an obligation to disclose information on the organization, functioning and decision making process of public administration and to demonstrate openness through consultative mechanism with the public.
4- Integrity and Measures to prevent abuse or misuse of public power, as the most common types of corruption is the abuse or misuse of public power by public officials who don’t comply with public sector regulation models, where organizations must implement advanced regulation models to promote integrity and provide clear and accurate procedures
5- Innovative Management of Public Finances; and finally transforms Administration public finances is considered as one of the most important measures to prevent corruption in the public sector. Effective financial management can be achieved through the implementation of a clear and consistent regulations and procedures for the organization’s expenditures and the bidders’ management.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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As a bases to insure system efficiency and productivity, monitor tools are necessary to be implemented on any system to be developed. The systems used to monitor progress and evaluate activities used are a range of Microsoft products and they are 1- Team Foundation Server 2013 (TFS), a product that provides for source code management 2- Team/ Project site on SharePoint, a tool that enables a manager to build project Web sites to support the project team 3- (EPM) Enterprise Project Management, an organizational development tool that supports organizations in managing integrally and adapting themselves to the changes of a transformation
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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Transparency promotion and Procedures facilitation were the main drivers behind the idea of developing an ePortal for procurements and contracts management in addition to the achievement of the previously mentioned goals and objectives. Different obstacles were encountered. Firstly, the allocation of the resources to be used in such a solution, their costs and capabilities were major concerns. Furthermore, the coordination and communication with other engaged stakeholders during the project initiation stage, the identification of the legal rules and condition for what can be shared and what can't, the application of proper security measures and techniques to ensure the safety of users profiles and competitions information, and finally the creation of public awareness about the solution functionalities and capabilities, since most of bidders and users are not very familiar with automated systems.
The solution to all the above obstacles requires time, efforts and of course strong experiences in the field of system development, so most senior and professional resources were assigned to be members of the solution development team and to implement this huge and critical solution. Additionally, feedbacks and inquiries were collected from related organizations and governmental agencies to define clear and comprehensive system requirements. Also, random surveys were conducted to measure the degree of bidder engagement, and to define their worries and concerns then these results were analyzed and defined. Finally, publications and guides regarding the new solution were published through different media channels to provide users with fair knowledge about the system features and content.
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