4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The origins of the action plans that have been developed can be traced back to 2004/2005 when policies were developed and put in place by the Council of Ministers and the Government Service Bus (GSB) and Yesser were created through the National Communication and Information Technology Plan (NCITP). GSB is the overall initiative and Yesser is the organisation created to facilitate it through actions such as the development of the strategic plan and the creation of a number of groups such as the Office for Strategic Management and the Yesser Consulting Group. This led to the development of the First Action Plan, which ran from 2006-2010. During the course of the action plan, numerous steps were taken which enabled the development and successful implementation of the Saudi Portal:
2006
Strategic planning for the Saudi Portal was undertaken by several bodies, including the Office for Strategic Management and the Projects and Initiatives Group. During the course of this year, furthermore, international best practices were identified, clarified and operationalised by various groups, including leading international consultancy firms which had specific expertise within relevant areas. Further actions in 2006 included the issuing of competitive tenders for the project and the evaluation of the perceived value of bids before work was allocated and awarded. Access layers for users as well as providers were developed and consultations with both groups were initiated and incrementally intensified. One further point of relevance, which emerged during the course of this early period, is that there was an acknowledgment that some of the high level skills required were not available in Saudi Arabia; therefore, international experts were employed but, importantly, alongside this a process of constructive learning and mentoring was instigated so that such national shortages would, over the course of the action plans, be reduced.
2007
Essentially, this was a year where the processes and initiatives instigated during the previous years were allowed to develop and gain some maturity. Two specific actions of note were the identification of the need to strengthen the interoperability framework, which was articulated as the Yesser Enterprise Framework for Interoperability (YEFI), and the beginnings of implementation with the creation of an embryonic Saudi Portal with a single sign on (SSO) capability.
2008
A central electronic store for information storage and retrieval was initiated and the results from progress to date were published, testing of the now developing system was undertaken, and flaws and bugs removed and resolved. Several ministries and their agencies were identified and preparation was initiated for the conversion of their services so that they could operate through the Saudi Portal.
2009
The process of revision, working with ministries and further developing the initiative progressed during 2009, documentation for the system was updated and necessary infrastructure upgrading was completed.
2010/2011
Revisions were made to YEFI, GSB was made operational and the Second Action Plan, which runs from 2012-2016, was developed. More ministries were prepared for the use of the Saudi Portal. Further measures included the conducting of a national survey, which was aimed at eliciting user perceptions of the preparedness of approximately 300 government agencies for using and operating through the Saudi Portal.
2012
Following the launching of the Second Action Plan, attention was focused on making further improvements to human capital, and even greater strides were taken to include consumers in the implementation of the initiative. The Saudi Portal, furthermore, was enhanced through greater GSB capacity, including increased response times.
2013/2014
As the Saudi Portal became more extensively operationalised, the National Call Center was successfully opened, GCloud planning has been extended and public forums and conferences have been established.
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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 Saudi Portal is a central part of the overall plan to ensure that e-governance is the means by which all government services operate. Therefore, in a broad sense, all stakeholders in GSB and Yesser are contributors to the system and these include the people of Saudi Arabia, government agencies, the managers and employees of Yesser and external consultants and expatriate specialists. This involvement came through direct interactions with groups either by virtue of the fact that they were involved in the decision making process, were involved in the planning, design and implementation of it, or their views and opinions were gained through surveys and other forms of interactions.
In order to achieve the long term objectives of the NCIPT, the Information and Technology Group at Yesser developed the portal and this was subsequently fine-tuned in order that it could meet the requirements that had been determined by the Office for Strategic Management. External consultants were involved at various times and with differing specialist skills along the path of progress of the initiative; for example, the firm Deloitte was engaged to initiate and distribute proposal tenders for prospective private partners, resulting in the engagement of Smart Link Customer Contact and Outsourcing Services. As the initiative evolved, McKenzie and IBM were included within the teams of specialists, with Yesser overseeing and coordinating the valuable input of these partners.
At the most senior levels stand the e-Government Program Supreme Supervisory Committee, which includes executives and managers from ministries and e-governance committees from government agencies.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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Throughout the project as well as the specific initiative (the Saudi Portal), the Saudi Government has provided financial support, with agreed funding being released in stages, and where the successful implementation of one part of the plan triggers the release of funding for the next. An estimated SAR 3 billion was allocated for the first phases of the overall Yesser e-governance project and from this the first phases of the Saudi Portal were, in turn, financed. While this funding arrangement may appear as being straight forward, a precise figure for the cost of the Saudi Portal is elusive because it is not, nor could be, a ‘stand alone’ initiative and even at a disaggregated unit of analysis, parts of the system such as the Government Secure Network (GSN) and the Data Center and Government Service Bus (GSB) were necessary elements in the creation of the Saudi Portal.
The technical resources used were sourced at both an international and national level. For example, while the upgrading of infrastructure and location and installation of hardware through which the system would operate was predominantly located and implemented at a local level, the development of programs such as the Yesser Interoperability Framework has been developed in partnership with international consultants and expatriate technical experts.
However, while the necessity for involving international partner organisations and individuals was identified at an early stage, so too was the opportunity to develop the human resource capabilities of Saudi Arabia. This meant that as the portal and its uses widened through partnerships with entities such as Avaya and SURE, Yesser and its employees were increasingly involved.
Programs such as one which uses mentorship to develop the skills of executives and senior managers have operated alongside those such as the Future Experts Program of Yesser, which identifies candidates from the worker and line management ranks of the organisation, as well as sufficiently promising and appropriately skilled and qualified graduates. These people are placed in a specialized program which delivers education as well as practical skills through mentorship and constructed learning methods.
The belief that all employees benefit personally in order that the initiative can in turn benefit from enhanced levels of skills, competence and efficiency has been promoted. Examples of this approach can be seen in the recruitment process, which is backed up by initial training and mentoring periods when new employees are familiarized with the Portal in terms of the rationales and underlying reasons for its introduction as well as how it operates. This approach to training and mentoring also includes government leaders and employees who work for the partner agencies whose services are facilitated by the Saudi Portal. One of the key roles adopted by the Yesser Consultancy Group is to train and guide the staff of government agencies in the use of the Portal from a providers’ perspective and another is to interact with the management of these agencies in order that concerns about the nature of the changes and the extent of them can be overcome.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Five concrete outputs that contributed to the success of the initiative are:
1. All government services in one place
The achievement of having all services in one place means that e-governance has been moved from being at best a fragmented shadow of the benefits that should be achieved to one which represents the optimum benefits gained from the utilization and employment of modern technology. Services are delivered across a range of more than 300 government agencies through one portal and without the necessity for users to visit, as they had to in the past, one or more of them to fulfill their legal and regulatory duties or to gain access to welfare and social benefits.
2. Equality and fairness for those who depend most on government services
Whereas under the old system the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society had the greatest difficulties in using public services to either fulfill legal requirements or to access the benefits of social and welfare programs, these individuals and groups can now not only access them with extreme ease through one portal, but can be assured that they will receive the same levels of service delivery as anyone else.
3. Multiple channels for e-participation
Through a national call centre access to the system can be gained by the use of one telephone number or by numerous channels of communication, for example email, texts, fax, the website and even through social media.
4. Complete library of government regulations, by-laws and open source documents
The Saudi Portal enables access to a complete range of government publications, which includes all laws, regulations and by-laws. This ensures that users can gain direct and easy access to the original scripts, which in turn means that third party interpretations and misunderstandings that these may entail are eliminated. The portal also includes access to open source documents, which are a useful source of information about available services.
5. Complete source of documents
Because documents are now held in a single source, which can be accessed via the Saudi Portal, access to them by government agencies can be instantly achieved, regardless of the agency which originated them, thus eliminating the multiple layers of duplication which the previous system necessitated. It also means that mistakes made, not uncommon under the previous system, have been largely eliminated and, when and if they occur, can be easily corrected from one access point (the Saudi Portal).
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The initiative and the project that was instigated to develop and implement it is one that is subject to constant change and evolution. This means that there have been many unknowns and challenges despite the development of a comprehensive strategy to drive it forward. Therefore, key checks, balances and feedback loops had to be contained within the Saudi Portal as it progressed from being a concept to becoming a functioning reality.
One important monitoring and evaluative process, which has been in use since the beginning of the Saudi Portal project, is the use of the Project Management Institute Guidelines (for projects). These are based in a set of periodically updated principles which reflect best practices on a global scale. As each stage of the initiative was developed and implemented, actions taken and progress made at milestone and sub-milestone points have been evaluated against these guidelines.
For consultancy firms used, both in the development and implementation phases, the project deliverables as set out have been evaluated and this monitoring and evaluation criteria will not only continue until the finalization of the project but has also been extended to internal groups and entities as they have grown and taken on more significant planning and implementation roles.
As more agencies have come within the system, and as the number of users has significantly increased, these (government agencies and users) have become a part of the monitoring and evaluation system both through the inbuilt monitoring systems within the portal (which provides electronically generated data and feedback) and through interaction with government agencies (through the Yesser Consulting Group). Customer opinions and perceptions (via surveys and focus groups) have also been elicited and these monitoring processes are considered to be an integral part of a process which enables regular updating and changes to the system. This allows for optimal user experiences and efficiency. It is planned that these will remain in place beyond implementation and for the foreseeable future.
A range of agencies within Yesser have been given or have taken on responsibility for monitoring and evaluation, one example being the Yesser Consulting Group. It was felt that while the work of these groups in monitoring and evaluation could only be beneficial, there was a danger of overlapping or even a misalignment of priorities or solution options. Therefore, regular contact, which includes all relevant parties, takes place under the auspices of the Office for Strategic Management.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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A number of serious problems were encountered during the course of the development and implementation of the initiative but the most challenging has been resistance to change. This was not unanticipated and sprang from a natural resistance to change that is known to exist among humans with regard to changes in their work, and this was enhanced by negative perceptions of the consequences of the changes. This was most prevalent among the management and staff of government agencies and resulted from a combination of fears, the main two of which were the loss of authority and identity by becoming a part of one e-government system and concerns that streamlining and efficiency gains would put their jobs at risk.
It was considered important in order to gain the confidence of the managers and employees at government agencies not to make promises which may not be met. Therefore, in formal meetings and informal discussions with the Yasser Consulting Group, staff were told that there were no current plans to reduce staffing levels. The resistance with regard to losing authority and identity were overcome through discussions highlighting the common good that the Saudi Portal would bring to the Saudi people as a whole and by giving inter-agency responsibilities to staff and managers so that they had important roles within the new and inclusive system.
Another problem was unexpected delays due to time over-runs by teams in their delivery of project milestones. One way in which this was overcome was by anticipating at the outset that such delays may occur and providing a ‘time cushion’ (extra, unallocated time) which could be ‘borrowed’ from and by an assumption (based in the Project Management Institute Guidelines) that while some milestone deliverables would overrun, others would be completed before schedule, which was indeed the case.
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