| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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As one of the strategic initiatives of the MoFA, FANAR has pushed the Ministry in achieving its goal of delivering ubiquitous and channel harmonised centric eServices.
The project implementation plan had the following key milestones:
• A series of workshops with various stakeholders to identify the various services offered by the Saudi embassies and consulates across the world.
• The business requirements analysis phase and development of technical requirements.
• The development of the portal including testing phases.
• Soft-launch in various embassies and then deployment gradually across the world.
• A huge training program for IT staff in all Saudi embassies and consulates across the world.
• Continuous marketing and promotion campaigns via various channels including online and offline channels.
In addition, the following elements of the strategic plan of implementing FANAR to achieve strategic objectives have been considered in the project implementation.
Business Drivers Strategic Objectives
1 Empowered Decision Making
• Partner with business stakeholders to set and drive the ministry’s modernization agenda and help realize a paper-less environment
2 Knowledge-Driven Diplomacy
• Drive collaboration and information sharing and mobility between MoFA and its partners, and customers
3 Operational Efficiency
• Balance IT demand and supply through effective IT planning, operations and governance
• Elevate ICT readiness of MoFA and missions staff
• Realize and maintain a global and lean ICT infrastructure
• Ensure availability, security, and integrity of MoFA information and systems
4 Service Excellence
• Deliver ubiquitous and channel harmonized customer centric e-Services
• Institute a responsive and service focused IT support
Stakeholders:
In addition to civil servants working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the FANAR system involved the following stakeholders in its launch
Inside MOFA:
Saudi abroad affairs department
Embassies
Relevant IT departments
Outside MOFA:
Ministry of Interior
Technology companies: Devoteam Company - Interactive Company
Project Team:
The project has a huge team that covers all countries with Saudi embassies and consulates around the world, key members of the team include:
• The project sponsor.
• Business analysis team
• Database administrators
• Representatives of embassies and consulates around the world.
• Design and development teams
• Trainers
• Technical support teams
• Promotion and marketing teams
Technology:
The FANAR solution used the following technology and systems to enables its smooth running:
Smart phone applications and mobile phone programs
Website and online systems using Asp.Net 4.0, HTML 5, CSS 3, MVC4, Jquery.
The system was built using multi-tier architecture design which partitions the system components logically and physically into three independent layers; front-end (Web), middle tier (Middleware), and database layer. This architecture provides very high levels of performance and availability through scaling these layers horizontally; by adding more servers, or vertically; by adding more hardware resources to the servers. These operations are done easily as MOFA has virtualized infrastructure.
Communication between users and the system is through Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) which provides security over the internet. Furthermore the system is using different authentication mechanisms based on the functionality classification such as basic authentication, multi-factor authentication, and client certificate authentication to ensure the identity of the user.
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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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In addition to civil servants working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the FANAR system involved the following stakeholders in its launch
Inside MOFA:
Saudi abroad affairs department
Embassies
Relevant IT departments
Outside MOFA:
Ministry of Interior
Technology companies: Devoteam Company - Interactive Company
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The project cost was around 18 Million Saudi Riyals (USD 5 Million).
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Over 1500 cases have been reported and solved, 1293 passports have been registered and over 1450 passports have been renewed using FANAR
The FANAR service has been widely used across smart phone platforms by Saudi Arabian citizens with an average of 250 passport registrations and renewals being processed on MoFA smartphone app weekly and an average of 1024 searches for nearest embassies abroad being made on the MoFA mobile application
Before the launch of the portal, the passport renewal was taking 3-4 months because of using the regular mail between the participants: mission – Headquarter – mission – citizen. Now it is taking 3 weeks which is related to passports to be mailed from HQ – mission – Citizen
The cost on th citizen side was reduced as well mainly by eliminating the cost of traveling to the mission city and paper printing.
The cost Saving on MOFA side was reduced as well by eliminating the cost of paper handling and mailing between the mission and the HQ. Other cost saving factors include the elimination of manual money receiving and the saving in employees time by utilizing them in different tasks and serving more citizens.
The cost saving is estimated to be 30-40%
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Implementation of the strategy has been monitored and evaluated continuously by measuring the following:
To measure ease of access to services through the MoFA FANAR portal online and through smartphone apps, we adopted several he Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) including:
• The number of responses made effectively to help requests
• The average number of passport registrations made effectively
• Average waiting time for citizens to receive passports
• Average waiting time to activate ABSHER services
To measure quality of services provided to Saudi Arabian citizens living abroad, we measure the following KPIs:
• Differences between paper processing work and integrated system processing work in terms of quality and time taken to process
To measure the effectiveness and efficiency of requests and their processing, we measure the following KPIs:
• Accuracy of processing and number of errors
To measure time taken in addressing requests that requires transferring to designated departments for particular respective purposes, we measure the following KPIs:
• Average time taken and delay in processing and resolving requests
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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• Putting together all Saudi citizens' requests and needs
• Redesigning the infrastructure and concepts of various procedures and processes
• Training and preparing employees in 120 representative centers for the new system
• Providing technical support 24 hours a day to users
• Integrating internal and external systems to provide whole services through standardised systems.
We managed to overcome these challenges by adopting the following strategies:
• Organizing workshops that brought together various stakeholders inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
• Documentation of the business processes of the services included in the project scope.
• Allocating enough time for the review of business processes and deep analysis of the system requirements.
• Offering training programs to the staff in charge of running the system in all Saudi embassies and consulates across the world.
• Establishing a support center that provides business and technical support for both employees and citizens.
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