| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The System has been developed following an extensive service development methodology combined with the Project Management tools:
Phase 1: May 2013 – Planning – The first phase of the project was dedicated to the planning of the initiative. In addition to the consultation of all key stakeholders, planning entailed the creation of a detailed vision for the finished Complaint Management System, engagement of the key personnel and resources to execute the project and creating an effective timeframe.
Phase 2: May to June 2013 – Process Design – The second phase of the project was dedicated to conducting a detailed design of the process from the perspective of integrating the system across the whole of government. The key actions in this phase included harvesting the stakeholder needs, identifying the appropriate form and functionality for the system and preparing an in-depth project plan used to inform all development work.
Phase 3: May to August 2013 – Technical Design & Development – The third phase of the project encapsulate all development work to deliver the finished system. In addition to the technical design of both the system back-end and front-end interfaces, the phase deployed a prototype of the system that was subjected to numerous rounds of technical testing to ensure that functionality was correctly working.
Phase 4: September to October 2013 – Testing & Training – The final phase of the project subjected the Complaint Management system to rigorous testing by both customer and government actors to ensure that all functionality was correctly working and met requirements. Finally, the phase ensured that continuous training was implemented among staff to build their capacity to use the system effectively.
Throughout the phases of implementation, a number of specific development steps were taken to ensure that the project was successfully delivered:
• Business Case: A Business Case was used to identify the key objectives of the system and also helps in creating the scoping and budget for the solution. The Business case is shared with Ministry of Finance for relevant budget allocation and payments in the later stage.
• Service Notification: Service Notifications were used internally at eGA to notify CEO & Directors about the new service. This functionality provides a high level description about the nature of the Project , the major stakeholders of the project, the type of the services in the project (G2C, G2B, G2G) and the channel in which this project will be deployed.
• Service Description: Service descriptions were used to build a common understanding of the project among key stakeholders. It includes the Project Name, primary and secondary stakeholders, the high level as-is and to-be process, the type of services within the project, the service level, the volume of transactions per year and the list of forms or documents required and also the technical maturity of the entity with respect to the project
• Business and Functional Requirements: Business and Functional Requirements were used to provide detailed objectives, benefits, measures, organizations affected by the service, assumptions, constraints and risks associated with the service being implemented.
• Unit Test: Unit tests were used to evaluate every aspect of the service to ensure that they comply with the rigorous standards of the eGovernment Authority for quality and usability.
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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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To implement such a transformational system across the whole of government, it was necessary to consult with the full range of internal and external stakeholders to ensure that the system delivered an effective, unified process which could be used across all government departments:
(a) NATIONAL LEADERSHIP:
* Crown Prince Office: Monitoring and supporting the initiative.
* Bahrain Center of excellence: Advices on the systematic implementation of the solution.
* Ministry of Finance: For approval of the project budget
(b) INTERNAL:
eGovernment Authority - Implementation conducted by the following teams:
* Service Delivery: Design, Develop and Deploy
* Business Process Reengineering: Define and Refine Processes
* PMO: Project Administration
* Marketing: Portal Design
* NGI Team: Upgrade NGI Infrastructure
* Quality Assurance (QA): Change Control
* National Contact Center: Complaints Channel
* Support team: Maintenance
(c) EXTERNAL:
*Civil Services Bureau: Public Relations and Employee Care Division
*Ministry of Housing: Customer Care Unit
*Ministry of Social Development: Public Relations and the Disability Center
*Ministry of Works: IT, PR and Customer Care
*Ministry of Labor: Human Resource and Administration department and IT
*Ministry of Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning: Aali Municipality,and four other municipalities
*Ministry of Transportation: Specialised Committee
*Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MOIC): Licensing, PR and Customer Care Units
* Central Information Organization (CIO): Administration, GIS and Smart Cards
* Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA): Customer Complaints
* National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA): Complaints Office
* Ministry of Health: Patients Complaints Unit, PR Department
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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A full range of human, financial and technical resources were deployed to ensure that the National Complaint Management System was implemented successfully:
(a) Financial Resources:
All work was covered with an annual budget from the Ministry of Finance. The main costs generated by the project focused on training, marketing and shared maintenance. Key details include:
* Implementation timeframe: 6 Months
*Estimated cost of the system: 175,000 BHD ($464,000)
* Estimated annual maintenance cost: 15,000 BHD ($40,000)
Based on analysis and detailed budgeting, and taking into consideration the availability of technical and human resource at the time, the cost for the project came in at a mere 35,000 BHD ($83,000) .
(b) Human Resources:
The team consisted of the following personnel from the eGA and participating government entities:
* Project Manager responsible for resource management and business continuity
* BPR specialist provided the AS-IS and TO-BE
* Business Analyst delivered the system prototype
* Technical Analyst created suitable architecture
* Developer part of the service delivery team to develop the software systems
* QA and Testing team to ensure end to end quality assessment of the system.
(c)Technical Resources (infrastructure):
The solution was designed to be seamlessly interoperable with all the different Ministries of the Bahraini Government. Therefore, the technical design was carried out within the Webshpere Infrastrtcure used to design different government computer systems. The following specific aspects comprised the technical design of the solution:
*Websphere Process Server: A server that provides a runtime environment produced in a business-driven development process. Technically, WebSphere Process Server is mounted on top of WebSphere Application Server and extends the WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus.
*Websphere Integration Developer: An integrated development environment for building applications based on service-oriented architecture (SOA). It is the authoring tool for WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere ESB V6.0.
*Websphere Business Monitor: Used to monitor the business matrix like rune time reports, dashboards and score cards.
*Websphere Business Modeler: Provides a powerful business process modeling, simulation, analysis, and reporting features to help optimize the performance of your business processes
*Websphere Service Registry and Repository: Provides service registry and repository functions for service-oriented architecture (SOA) enterprise applications. This software enables service lifecycle governance to help optimize productivity and resources in an SOA environment.
The front-end services were provisioned as virtual portal on the websphere portal of the Kingdom of Bahrain - Bahrain.bh.
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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 new Complaint Management System ensures that no citizen, business or visitor is excluded from making a simple yet meaningful contribution to the improvement of the Bahriani Government. The anytime, anywhere approach and smart, responsive management system allow a unified, accessible complaint management system to be shared and deployed by all government departments:
Collaborative Improvement: The system with its capabilities has helped the entities concentrate on improving their customer relation management and provision of services. Ministries have started feeling that “complaints should be perceived as means to improve services”. Further, the shared system promotes collaboration across departmental boundaries by identifying best practices, facilitating shared approaches and visualizing the results in a visual way.
Continuous Training and Improvement: Users in the different departments are fully trained to understand the common organizational structure, services provided and workflows. Through a successful combination of both direct training and a ‘train the trainer model,’ the system has successfully fostered a culture of continuous learning, training and improvement. Training was supported through the creation of a documented process flow and the help documents have made the roll out of the solution easy.
Integrated, Cross-Departmental System: The production of a unified system that can be simply and inexpensively deployed by all government departments has been a major success factor for the initiative. Through a scalable, harmonized system Bahrain will be able to achieve significant savings in time, cost and effort across the whole of government. Maintenance and upgrades also becomes simple and controllable. The implementation of this project allowed the development of a standardized and refined process for handling complaints, enquires and suggestions with in an entity and ultimately government of Bahrain.
Improved Customer Satisfaction: A simple, accessible portal has made it easier for all citizens, businesses and visitors to access consistent, effective complaint management. The improved notification and the feedback mechanism for the closure has increased the customer interaction and satisfaction.
Improvement of Government Services: The Complaint Management System has made ‘smart’ tracking of customer suggestions and the most repeated complaints a reality. This functionality has enabled Government entities to review the services provided and apply feedback in order to improve their services in direct response to customer experiences. A key example of this improvement is the Service Management Group (SMG) in eGovernment who have taken the most frequent complaints and customer feedback to review the services provided by the eGovernment program of Bahrain.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Objectives and KPIs
The project was therefore subject to a robust system of strategic objective linked to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):
Strategic Objective 1: Increase society participation and engagement
KPI Associated: 50% of government entities interacting with constituents on a weekly basis through social networks such as Twitter, Facebook page, blog, etc.
Strategic Objective 2 : Maintain a higher performing collaborative integrated and efficient government
KPI Associated: 6 Government wide systems implemented (2/6 in 2014)
Strategic Objective 3: Enhance eGovernment channels and user experience with increased service uptake
KPI Associated: Customer Satisfaction Index level maintained over 80%
Performance Dashboard
The Complaint Management Portal is designed with a highly visual dashboard that provides real-time updates about the performance of different organizations across the whole of government. In addition to giving government leadership an overview of the performance of the different departments and Ministries, the dashboard also gives an idea how the system is optimally utilized to give value to the customer queries.
Dedicated Monitoring Team
The system has a dedicated monitoring team which manages the dashboard and ensures the consistent delivery of high quality service. The Service Management Group (SMG) is a dedicated team who monitor the eService Lifecycle and Health. The group has been designed to take an overview of online services and ensure consistent delivery. The SMG is staffed by the eGovernment authority with the support of professionals from across the government ministries.
Service Management Group Monitoring Roles:
Service Management Core:
• Review Analysis.
• Periodical review of governance.
• Review critical reports.
• Way forward plans.
Service Management Analytics:
• Detailed selection of services.
• Detailed monitoring.
• Generating & analyzing reports.
Marketing team:
• Receive customer feedback.
• Analyze customer feedback
• Suggest enhancement priorities
• Ensure customer satisfaction across the service lifecycle.
Business Process Re-engineering :
• Determine the Value of the service.
• Do process optimization to achieve the 100% uptake model.
• Evaluating Enhancement priority
Service Delivery & Channels:
• Execute analysis of the Service KPI periodically.
• Technical ownership of the dashboards.
• Plan enhancement implementations.
Quality Assurance:
• Conduct periodical health check-up.
• Communicate the changes required and govern the standards.
The Service Management Group ensures the Complaint Management Solution is monitored from a 360 degree view. All the identified issues and improvement opportunities cycles through the different teams to implement and refine the solution.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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Administrative Obstacles:
Challenges:
• Stakeholders initially unwilling to provide required inputs to collaborate in the configuration of the system
• Delay in approvals for the User Acceptance Testing and for the process flow
• Unavailability of critical resources in different entities during implementation
Solution: The Service Management Group was created to provide daily status update and empowered to directly interact with top officials of different government entities.
Technical Limitations:
Challenges:
• ‘Contact Us’ form within the portal gave customers the wrong impression about where to submit complaint
• Initial form design was incompatible with some Ministries
• Technical costs of adding new Ministries was high
• The auto-generated Complaint Management Application screens were not sufficiently user-friendly or customizable
• Initial Dashboard and KPIs Templates did not serve management requirements
Solution: A process study was conducted to create common workflow satisfying the majority of scenarios. A separate virtual portal with branding was created to help customers identify the solution easily.
Customer Issues:
Challenges:
• Too many numbers/channels for the customers to choose from. They are different for each Ministry.
• Customers found it difficult to track the status of their requests
• Limited service window and service availability
• Few communication channels
Solution: A common portal was designed and implemented for the whole of government to be the single interface for all the Ministries in Bahrain.
Government Problems:
Challenges:
• No unified system for government complaints, suggestions, and enquiries
• No standardized processes and lack of automation
• Different departments handle common complaints, suggestions, and enquiries independently
• No proper documentation for the request handling cycle
Solution: Customizable dashboards were delivered to every department and Central Government to facilitate a joined-up overview of system performance across the whole of government.
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