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Wage Protection System (WPS)
Ministry of Manpower

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
In the past, service delivery mechanisms of the ministry departments took two months to one year to solve the wage violations of 6K employee cases yearly. Thus, a lot of issues occurred, such as employee strikes and work stoppages, resulting in employee loss of productivity. The employee wage complaints have respectively increased 10% to 20% yearly, and most of them from vulnerable groups who are blue-collar laborers who received their wages manually. Most complaints were processed in paper form and the data was maintained and recorded manually. Some private sector owners did not pay salaries to their employees for three to six months. Thus, resolving these cases was critical, and the process of the complaints took a long time to resolve due to the difficulty the ministry's employees were facing in getting accurate information from employers and employees. Many procedures were required before transferring the employee cases to a court. With growth of economy and increased number of employees at private sectors, the wage violations also were increasing and affecting vulnerable groups, creating instability for the economy. The ministry's concern was about vulnerable workers (blue-collar workers, indigenous, disabled, youth and women,) their rights, and work conditions. So, the MOMP is seeking a good solution in order to create stability in the work place, and to provide labor rights to employees.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
On the beginning of the 2013, The Ministry of Manpower (MOMP), in collaboration with Central Bank of Oman (CBO) and local Banks, have implemented Wage Protection System (WPS) – an electronic platform to monitor payment of salaries of around 2M employees who work at more than 201K private sector entities. The MOMP requires all employers to pay their workers' salaries through the bank accounts. The vision of the MOMP is to regulate the labor rights article 53 by protecting the rights of employees. And the Objective of this initiative is to streamline and automate the process of monitoring the salary payments by employers against the employment contracts registered in the ministry of manpower. Thus, the MOMP has created an intelligent database in order to track salary distribution and ensure that the employees get paid as per their contracts, on time and on a regular basis. The MOMP’s strategy planned in creating a wage protection system that can regulate the employer commitment and responsiveness. The WPS provides a set of services to the ministry, companies and workers. The idea of the system is that the employers will deposit the salaries of their employees into the bank accounts, so the banks will transfer the data to the central bank and the central bank cycle converts payroll data to the WPS to compare received data with the data recorded in the ministry in terms of the amount agreed upon salary on the contract. Through this process, the ministry has been able to identify the delayed workers wages and provide a positive effect of transparency to the MOMP's inspectors by providing them with accurate sources of up- to- date wage information. In this way, the inspection team takes just three days to one week to perform the necessary action, thus eliminating the need for random inspections that drain a lot of time, effort and money. In addition, workers can file complaints in case of any delay in payment of their wages through the ministry's website, and companies can assess the justification and reasons for delay in payment of the salaries of their workers. The program has contributed to the process of transformation of e-government and has integrated with many services provided by the ministry, which required wage information and the actual extent of the commitment of companies to pay their workers . This initiative has achieved a remarkable “Time to Market”, considering the complexity of the project and the coordination required by the multiple stake holders involved in the project.
 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
Some of the many unique and innovative features of the project can be summarized as follows: • Uses a highly secure network (MPLS) that provided by Information Technology Authority (ITA) to exchange data between ministry and banks through the central bank of Oman CBO. • Changes the existing practice, making it mandatory for all employers to pay salary through banks accounts. • Increases the level of communication through the MOMP portal between ministry, employees and employers by improving information flow, transparency, accountability and service delivery. • Utilizes Microsoft business intelligence service to support a set of statistical reports. • Has mechanism to securely transfer the salary data processed by all commercial banks to MOMP through CBO. • Integrates data with other government entities, unified and updated. • The website provides feedback forms as well as online polls for the visitors. The MOMP replies and addresses the reviews posted by visitors directly through social networks links. Most of these reviews are concerned with new changes and procedures brought by the MOMP. Consequently, this service has an essential impact on the public, clarifying their issues and complaints which surround the labor workflow.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
The project was governed by three different layers to assure project application compliance as follows: • Project Steering Committee (Chaired by H.E the Undersecretary, Ministry of Manpower) • Project Implementation Committee (Chaired by Deputy DG, IT Planning & Development, Ministry of Manpower) • Project Implementation Team (Headed by the Project Manager-MoMP) Project Business Case: As a pre-project activity, a business case was developed between Ministry of Manpower and the Central Bank of Oman (CBO); this document contained information stating the objectives/benefits of the system and broad statements on how the system would function. Reference Document: MOMP-Business Case Concept-20130122-vi1.1 Project Statement of Work: The document was developed with the scope of work that will be done to complete this project, mentioning what development is covered within the scope and what is not in order for the Project Implementation Team to have a clear reference. The document also states functional requirements of the system and data process flows, as well as hardware technical requirements and scope of Phases I, II & III. Reference Document: WPS-SOW-20130424-v1.02i Project Schedule: A project implementation schedule was developed to effectively track tasks, dependencies and project progress; the schedule was maintained by the Project Managers of both Ministry of Manpower and the Central Bank of Oman (CBO). Reference Document: WPS System Development Schedule v2.0 - 20130929.mpp Vendor Relationship: The implementation team comprised of Ministry of Manpower outsourced developers that were responsible for building the system within the Ministry’s in-house, allowing very close coordination between the management and the developers. The outsourced development team attended all implementation team meetings and system testing sessions. Change Management: During the implementation period, the implementation team scheduled regular weekly meetings, possible changes were deliberated and recorded in the meeting minutes, and necessary changes were raised to the implementation committee for approval and assigned actions. Risk and Issue Management: Risks and issues were recorded in the “RAID Log” matrix; the sheet contains the implementation team’s assessment for each risk and issue regarding project impact and criticality. RAID stands for Risks, Actions, Issues & Dependencies, as the document also contains information about important actions to be taken and project related dependencies. Reference Document: WPS RAID Log.xml
 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
The MOMP has a lot of departments, 35 branches in the different locations, and is integrated with other government entities. A technology project of this nature requires the entire range. MOMP demonstrated the plan and the role played by all stakeholders working together as a team. MOMP studied the background of these complaints and managed a committee to address employee wage issues. During the phase of analyzing and gathering requirements, the MOMP and CBO decided to involve some of employees, employers and local banks to determine their needs by distributing questionnaires and collecting their suggestions to enhance the system analysis. The Stakeholders in this project are: • Ministry of Manpower - The Project sponsor and hosting the application. • Central Bank of Oman – Project Management and Interface with banking Systems and liaising with Banks • Commercial Banks – Provide salary Data • Royal Oman Police and Ministry of Commerce & Industry – Data Source to validate employee/employers • Employers – update the latest Salary and other data with Manpower • Employees – Required to open a Salary account with any of the commercial banks • Sanad Offices- will be facilitating employers to in updating employment contracts on a periodic basis • Public Authority Social Insurance – Interface with WPS for extracting the Pension contribution data. • Local IT company - has worked together with MOMP; has developed several applications and provided training for employees and public. • Media: helped to disseminate information through newspaper, ministry website and social media
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
The project was governed by three different layers to assure project application compliance as follows: • Project Steering Committee (Chaired by H.E the Undersecretary, Ministry of Manpower) • Project Implementation Committee (Chaired by Deputy DG, IT Planning & Development, Ministry of Manpower) • Project Implementation Team (Headed by the Project Manager-MoMP) Vendor The implementation team comprised of Ministry of Manpower outsourced developers that were responsible for building the system within the Ministry’s in-house, allowing very close coordination between the management and the developers. The outsourced development team attended all implementation team meetings and system testing sessions. Financial The Ministry of Manpower funded the project, The estimated cost of the entire project was 777K US$ (300K OMR). The project used technical infrastructure created under the new hardware and software. The role of the MOMP's IT department as an owner of the project was to conceptualize the project, coordinate with various stakeholders who were involved in developing the entire technical infrastructure of the project including hardware and software, providing connectivity to the Data Centre and other entities, as well as the management of the setting up of data security and providing training.
 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
The WPS is notified of wages transactions for almost 2M employees every month and provides service to G2C and G2B, making a one stop e-government shop. With centralized architecture, the system can be accessed from anywhere by mobile application or the MOMP's portal. The system has reduced the duration of problem- solving from six months to one week, compared to the earlier situation in which employers were not paying salaries to their employees for three to six months. Currently, MOMP inspection employees can receive an automated notification of wages delay within one week, and they can make an investigation and solve the problem within the same week, before it becomes critical. For example, the last statistics of wage protection system found that the target group was around 293K employees work in 7,086 private sector entities. (Reference Document: WPS DataCoverage [July 2014].xlsx) This initiative has also helped to create an accurate data base that can allow the MOMP employees to monitor and control the issues of equal pay for men and women. Many government entities are dependant on the WPS for monitoring and controlling a variety of activities such as money laundering, fraud and terrorism.
 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
The document was developed with the scope of work that will be done to complete this project, mentioning what development is covered within the scope and what is not in order for the Project Implementation Team to have a clear reference. The document also states functional requirements of the system and data process flows, as well as hardware technical requirements and scope of Phases I, II & III. Project Schedule: A project implementation schedule was developed to effectively track tasks, dependencies and project progress, the schedule was maintained by the Project Managers of both Ministry of Manpower and the Central Bank of Oman (CBO). Reference Document: WPS System Development Schedule v2.0 - 20130929.mpp . Change Management: During the implementation period, the implementation team scheduled regular weekly meetings, possible changes were deliberated and recorded in the meeting minutes, and necessary changes were raised to the implementation committee for approval and assigned actions. Risk and Issue Management: Risks and issues were recorded in the “RAID Log” matrix; the sheet contains the implementation team’s assessment for each risk and issue regarding project impact and criticality. RAID stands for Risks, Actions, Issues & Dependencies, as the document also contains information about important actions to be taken and project related dependencies.
 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
Main Obstacles The main obstacles concerned the quality of the data. The MOMP, banks and other government entities had data that was not unified and had some errors. The information required a lot of work in order to be updated and unified with local banks and government entities. Another obstacle was that majority of workers in the private sectors did not have bank accounts that enabled the employers to wire their employee wages. With such a large number of workers, it was difficult for the banks to organize these workers to open their accounts in a short period of time. Method of overcoming obstacles To overcome this problem, the MOMP worked closely with local banks, government entities, employers and the public to make sure employees and employers data was unified, updated and integrated according to the employees' contract and government procedure. The MOMP and CBO agreed to offer additional working hours at the local banks in order to absorb the large number of employees. The local banks offered services to the employers by sending their employees to the company site to facilitate the task of opening bank accounts. Due to the combined cooperation of banks, government entities, employers and citizens, the MOMP was able to reach its goal.

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
The impact of this initiative has: • Allowed the Ministry of manpower to monitor any cases of gender bias in terms of salary for women in private companies in Oman. • Helped the PASI to receive and validate the employee contribution to the social insurance. • Helped the commercial banks and government entities to analyze statistics and monitoring trends that can be used for policy decisions. • Played a prominent role in correcting whole government data to be used for further statistics. • Created the stability of the relationship between the employer and the worker. • Directly identified any wage delay and facilitated a resolution to the problem before it reached the stage of work stoppage or labor strike. • Exerted control over people who have violation visas, and prevented money-laundering and terrorism. • Improved human rights records related to expat populations. Measure Methodology for electronic participation will have a big impact on the social networks. The Ministry of Manpower website, which hosts the WPS services for employer and employee, provides links for communication channels of social media including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, to exchange ideas with the users about the MOMP procedures. Many positive reviews have been received from the visitors to these channels, commending and praising WPS services. During the hosting period, the MOMP encouraged employees and employers to participate in surveys that were distributed randomly, and which solicited the views of the customers about the WPS services. The 245 subscribers who participated in the survey had a good impression of the application and 53.2% of them found WPS services to be an excellent application due to its flexibility and usefulness. (Reference document: Employer Survey Results [WPS].pdf, Employee Survey Results [WPS].pdf) According to the last statistics of wage protection system found that the target group was 292,990 employees work in 7,086 private sector . (Reference Document: WPS DataCoverage [July 2014].xlsx) This month, with 453K employee records received from the banks, the system was able to process and notify the inspectors about the violation within 2 hours. There is a performance monitoring report on the inspector’s portal, and the inspector manager can access the report to check the productivity and performance of the background processes. Also, through the Ministry of Manpower Google analytics account, the latest reports show that the WPS services published through the ministry website registered a high number of visits during the last three months. The report shows around 10K visits for the employer justification services pages and 3,6K visits for the employee complaint pages. The follow-up e-stats are more accurate than before, through the flow of data that has already been sent by banks for companies that did not pay their employees' wages. At the same time, employers will be aware that their employees’ information will be directly transferred to Ministry of Manpower and they will take an action when there is any delay.
 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
Most of the companies have committed to paying their employees' wages through bank accounts. Therefore, this initiative has created stability in the work environment for workers. The delay of and complaints about wages have gradually decreased compared to the traditional system, the goal results of the project have been met and it has become easy for the inspection to follow up. Thus, it is easier to identify the problems before they escalate. The initiative has protected the employees’ rights (especially, vulnerable groups) which are prescribed by law, and provides them with a safe work environment. Direct identification of the cases of delayed payment of wages has helped to resolve the problem before work stoppage or labor strikes. It facilitates the control of all issues by inspectors. Socioeconomic • Automates the capturing of salary credit data from commercial banks. • Analyzes salary trends and device National Policies. • Enforces Compliance of Omani Labor Law. • Better control over the violation visa issued to individuals.. • Financial inclusion of the un-banked population in Oman. • Improves Human rights records related to expat populations. • Generates additional revenue stream for Sanad Offices. • Allows the employees to comply in a safe manner. Government Coordination of information and integrated with government entities. Redundant manual Government procedures have been removed, which has eventually increased effective for 24 hours online and productivity of Government employees. Employees now better manage core department functions. Stakeholders Government policy reformed to improve the legal framework of electronic service delivery, data security measures and have increased citizens’ acceptance. Resource utilization was maximized by incorporating innovative & simplified procedures and expanding domain expertise among Government departments to increase their overall capacity. Improved inter-departmental connectivity through centralized databases, internet connectivity, common ICT infrastructure etc. Government reach to citizens has improved with the geographical spread. Overall cost & time of service delivery has been drastically reduced. Transparent and secure delivery of services, which are being accessed on the MOMP Portal through web-services and mobile applications. Economic Sustainability The project was launched at a reasonable price and benefited various government entities, bank sectors, private sectors and citizens. . Sustainability is about ensuring solutions are built to last and are able to function efficiently over a long period of time. The goal of sustainability is to establish local economies that are economically practical, and socially responsible. Technical Sustainability The WPS is a web- based system, deployed at the MOMP, and is easily accessible. As a solution, WPS will play an important key role in helping to create a harmonious society, as this solution impacts millions in the working population of the country. Unique design of the solution that is loosely coupled between the different entities enables flexibility to accommodate new requirements in the future.
 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)
The key lesson learned is that such an initiative will automatically solve pre-existing constraints related to labor rights (gender equality for pay, minimum wage, calculation of pension), security( money-laundering, terrorist, violation of visa) and traditional exercises of power. Another important lesson learned was the use of team work in involving all the stakeholders throughout the project. It has been a success mostly because of the involvement of multiple stakeholders with their knowledge, motivation and combined efforts towards a common goal. The success of the initiative is the result of good thinking, committed individuals and supportive technology. In the initial phase, the banks delayed updating data. The process of correcting, updating, unifying and securing data of almost 2M employees and 200K private sectors entities requires good management. Thus, the MOMP has created various teams to work on this project. The initiative still has some work to be done. The MOMP is still working and monitoring all the phases to make sure all monthly data from banks is automated and updated in the MOMP's database. The future recommendation is to implement a strong policy and a procedure of sanctions for those companies that are not in compliance with the decree of the labor rights article 53, in protecting the rights of employees. As a solution, WPS will play an important key role in impacting millions of the working population in the country.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry of Manpower
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Safiya Al Rashdi
Title:   Ms.  
Telephone/ Fax:  
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   safia@manpower.gov.om  
Address:  
Postal Code:  
City:   Muscat
State/Province:  
Country:  

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