4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The BPR Strategy is based on a detailed assessment of the ‘As Is’ difficulties customers faced in registering their vehicles manually. It is designed to deliver services that help support both citizen and business lifecycles.
At the outset of the initiative, a workforce representing various stakeholders was established to define service objectives and benefits. A detailed plan was then formulated outlining the rules and responsibilities of each participant along with expected outcome and delivery dates. Finally, technical and business teams were establish to define the requirements and functionality needed to achieve the projects objectives, as well as to identify any technical limitations.
Key project development and implementation steps included the following:
1- Service Development: eGA used its own methodology for service development (Service Development Life Cycle) based on ITIL and CMMi methodlogies. The various phases of service development include the high level design, low level design; testing, QA and service roll out.
2- Monitoring: Implementation of the service was monitored throughout all stages to ensure that progress was on track and solutions existed for any issue that might rise during implementation
3- Business Continuity and Operations: eGA and GDT have worked together to combine and create processes for continued business operation to provide the services 24X7. The eGA contact centre provides the customer support and eGA payment gateway provides the payment facility.
To implement the eGovenment strategy, several steps where followed:
1. Conceptualization Phase: Develop and maintain an appropriate work plan in which it will be the base to build the work required to deliver the service. This phase include:
- Service Description: It provides information about the service in hand, who are the stakeholders (primary and secondary), type of services provided (G2G, G2B, G2C), the as-is process, the volume of transactions per year, and the channels responsible for delivering the service. In this case, For New Vehicle Registration, it is a G2B service that connects the car dealers with GDT to ease the process of registering a new car. On the other hand, for Vehicle Registration Renewal, the service is of type G2C which allows vehicle owners to renew their registration online.
- Business Process Re-engineering (BPR): conduct a study among the various stakeholders – the Car Dealers, citizens, insurance companies, and the GDT employees in order to thoroughly understand the existing processes of As-Is service and to identify an innovative To-Be service. The To-Be process was based upon a detailed study and analysis of the existing manual service, and designed in alignment with process efficiency and change management principles.
2. Analysis and Design Phase: Depending on the as-is and to-be process reports conducted,
- Business and Functional Requirements: Provide a detailed document about the business objectives, benefits, measures and risks. Also, describe the functionality and the requirements related to the implemented service.
The objective is to achieve a fully automated solution that enables Car Dealers to register new vehicles and private vehicle owners to renew vehicle registration without the need to wait in queues at GDT counters. Seamless integration between the 2 biggest stakeholders, the Bahraini CIO and GDT, plays a vital role in ensuring that the transference of data between both systems is accurate and timely.
- Use Case Specifications: Define interactions between a role (Car dealers, GDT officers and Citizens) and the system to fulfill a certain task.
- Service Prototype: Develop or design a model that reflects the concept of the service and its functionality.
3. Production and Implementation Phase:
- Development: Transform the designed prototype into a developed system consisting of front-end, back-end and web service applications. Through this part, the Interface and System Design documents are created.
- Testing and QA: Executing the testing rounds for the system to determine whether there are any defects to be fixed. After that, the Quality Assurance (QA) start their own set of tests to ensure that the system is ready to be deployed to production.
4. Manage and Change: analyze any changes in the scope, requirements or design. Also, manage the service in operation by providing ongoing support and operation monitoring.
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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 following stakeholders contributed to the design and implementation of the new eService for Vehicle Registration:
*General Directorate of Traffic (GDT): The Primary owner of the service, providing the business requirements, development support with backend connections, updating of data, issue and dispatch of plates’ numbers, registration & renewal badge and ownership cards etc.
*EGovernment Authority (eGA): Design and implement the service. Conduct as-is study, recommend to-be process with appropriate process reengineering, design and develop the solution, integrate with the GDT and CIO data bases, test and deploy the solution, undertake training to the users, oversee marketing and awareness raising of the service amongst the public.
*Central Informatics Organization (CIO): Responsible for GDT database and eGovernment portal operation
*Management Consultants: Support detailed assessment of ‘As Is’ and ‘To Be’ states
*Technical Consultants: Support delivery of technical components
*Bahrain Post: Deliver the new badges to the vehicle owners
*Car Dealers: Consume the New Vehicle Registration service and provide GDT with accurate vehicle specification.
*Insurance companies: Integrate their individual systems with GDT through eGA portal to provide insurance policies details
*Vehicle Owners: Consume the Renewal of Vehicle Registration eService.
*NGOs: Insurance Society encourages the Insurance companies to adopt this service and automate the process of registration and renewal of a vehicle.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The new GDT eService was implemented as a part of the eGovernment Strategy of Bahrain, and therefore funded out of the eGovernment Authority’s budget. The solution was designed with the existing hardware and software capabilities of GDT and eGA. The back end was hosted at GDT and CIO. Front end services were provisioned on the National Portal of Bahrain. The project team blended dedicated skill sets from eGA and GDT.
TECHNICAL AND HUMAN RESOURCES
The human resource requirements for the initiative were as follows:
1. Service or project Manager responsible for end to end project management of the system and in charge of business continuity. Communicate with Service owners to follow up with their needs and demands, and keep them updated with the progress of the service.
2. Project Coordinator: provide different kinds of support to the project manager through constant follow ups with the team members and monitoring the progress of each phase.
3. BPR specialist: Conduct a thorough study about the current situation between GDT, Car Dealers, Insurance companies and car owners which is represented by the AS-IS document, and followed by the TO-BE document that demonstrate the solution for the current situation.
4. Business Analyst to provide the service prototype and how the system will look like once the business owner approves the model.
5. Technical Analyst to study the existing system in GDT and advice on the suitable architecture.
6. Developer to develop the front-end, back-end and the web services of the system.
7. QA and Testing team to ensure that the system lacks any defects, and provide end to end quality assessment of the service.
FINANCIAL COSTS
The associated costs were as follows:
1. BPR: USD 6,859
2. Channel Delivery & Enhancement: USD 114,159
3. Quality Assurance & Information Security USD1,830
4. Marketing USD 5,578
5. Govt. Entity (Inclusive of CIO) USD10,265
TOTAL: USD141,371
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Concrete outputs which contributed to the success of the initiative are:
1. Integrated Back Office Infrastructure: The initiative facilitated seamless online service delivery by integrating the back office functionalities of the General Directorate of Traffic and the Contravention Department, enabling these organizations to transfer data between them securely and efficiently. In so doing, the initiative eliminated the need for customers and paper forms to shuffle back and forth between offices.
2. Increased Service Choice: The initiative complimented the existing manual process with a full range of online offerings, including a web service portal which customers could access from home, a mobile application which works across platforms, self-service kiosks which are located throughout the Kingdom and Service Centers which provide special assistance to customers with special needs. In so doing, the initiative increased service accessibility for all members of the population.
3. Public-Private Partnership Model: The initiative linked the databases of the GDT and major private insurance companies in the Kingdom. In so doing, the initiative eliminated the need for customers to manually produce proof of insurance.
4. Government Entity Satisfaction: This was achieved by:
5. Better utilization of human resources
6. Reduction of manual processing
7. Cost and time savings
8. Integration with insurance companies to check car insurance validity
9. Elimination of visits required by applicants
10. Online payment of car registration renewal including contraventions
5. Customer Satisfaction
11. Increased service levels
12. Availability of service 24x7
13. Easy availability of service information
14. Elimination of physical visits
15. Online payment of car registration renewal including contraventions
Reports Generation: This initiative provided the ability to generate various reports in which it can help monitoring the transactions done, and the progress of each one.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Implementation of the new Vehicle Registration eService was conducted in line with the eGovernment Authority’s overarching strategy, and then closely monitored by the service delivery team. Extensive QA was conducted at each step throughout the implementation to ensure successful delivery of the service. Periodical meetings and reviews were conducted to monitor progress, ensure that implementation was on track and tackle any issue that might arise, real time and on the spot.
MONITORING
The eGA puts in place a rigorous system of KPIs for all ICT projects in order to ensure that milestones are met, and objectives achieved. KPIS for this initiative included:
Monitoring did not stop after the service was launched. Rather, it continues to this day via the following means:
*Periodical channel QA to ensure the working condition of the service.
*Complaints management system for the users to log and track the complaints and issues.
*A Dedicated support team to ensure immediate fixes to service.
*Ongoing marketing analysis to identify usage vs. targeted audience ratios
*Periodical roadshows to ensure constant penetration of the service to target user groups
EVALUATION
The new eService also provides statistical reports on the number of vehicle registration and renewal requests received. GDT uses these reports to monitor and evaluate overall performance. The number of online cars registrations and renewals is increasing rapidly, rising over 500% between when the service was first introduced in 2009 and 2012. Overall uptake is projected to increase by 700% by the end of 2103). Feedback from both users and GDT employees further demonstrates the increasing popularity of the service
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The main obstacles encountered during the implementation of the Vehicle Registration eService were as follows:
1. Change Management: Implementation of the new service required government departments to break down traditional divisions, and work together in new ways. It also required employees to alter their traditional ways of working to focus more on servicing customers and less on processing paper. Throughout the initiative ongoing staff training, education and awareness activities were undertaken to shift the organizational culture and ensure a smooth transition to the newly automated system.
2. Building Trust and Credibility Among Users: Traditionally, all GDT services required the physical presence of the service recipient. Moving from a physical, in-person process to an online one required the development of trust and confidence amongst government officials and customers alike. Apprehensions regarding the credibility of the new online system were overcome through the extensive deployment of awareness raising and marketing and training sessions.
3. Security: The new eService required the integration of numerous sensitive and personal database across multiple stakeholders. The project needed to ensure that this integration did not pose any threat to the data integrity. It also needed to ensure that no external connections could breach the security line. This obstacle was overcome by ensuring that all security standards within the Government Data Network were implemented, and that access points were only granted based on established permission protocols such as IP Address, User Accounts and location of use.
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