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Payment Enquiry System
Saudi Comission for Tourism & heritage

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
SCTH which is shortcut for Saudi commission for tourism and national heritages, have many projects and products that been provided by vendor or third party. This projects or products is costly and SCTH is paying to get advantages and benefits from these products to improve the organization outputs. Some of these products or projects have time line and during the contract, SCTH is paying the cost in regular basis during the year and based on budget received form government . SCTH has worked with large amount of other parties since establishment in 2000 and have huge data for that. A statistics did by SCTH is that almost 1000 payments request yearly is been processed by SCTH to beneficiaries. And the total amount some time exceed 500 Million SAR which is help the public sector grow and share and developed the economy growth and help the public sector to recur employees which benefits the country to reduce the unemployment perchance. Thou, dealing with process like that along with huge requests been processed that related to other parties, SCTH was suffering along with beneficiaries to track and update their payment states and share information related to payment for vendors who will receive the payments. Vendor representors used to come to SCTH building and ask about their payments and they get different answers from different employees so the transparency is not available. Also, using manual process and form to process one payment is taking time and employee will not have exact information or process that help him to track and see the statues for the payment.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
System that help beneficiaries to track their payments once been processed and getting the required details as it is with no human interact. Initiative is also integrated with SCTH internal system that been developed internally to help SCTH specialist process the payments and extract reports and track the budgeting. The solution also integrated with Ministry of Finance and General Auditing Bureau to ensure highest degree possible for transparency, accountability, and integrity with related parties.
 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
In no more than 600 words, summarize how the initiative solved the problem and contributed to enhancing the well-being of people, including the poorest and most vulnerable? This should provide a description of the strategy including its main objectives and target audiences. The solution is all about a service been published in SCTH website that allow beneficiary to track their payment along with detailed information. These information like the statues , where it now , its number in MOF , how the payment been paid , the date of payments , payment description , payment amount and other details that allow and support transparency with beneficiary , so no hidden information and also this information available for auditing from other government organization responsible for that. the information that we share with beneficiary is based on input and process been done internally throw a huge system that allow SCTH employees fill out the payment once is due and the request go throw different level of approval to ensure that the information is audited. After the process is completed throw the system, payment number will be generated automatically and system will send an email to beneficiary to confirm him that his payment is process and he can track it with the payment number that for sure will be shared. Using system like that have full integration with all related parties including SCTH , Beneficiary , Ministry of finance , General Auditing Bureau is solved a lot of issues and fill out that gap that been missed before. Now SCTH employees who used to take more time to process one single payment and take the required approval manually which may cause delay if the employee in meeting or off for that day. Now approval is been implemented throw the system and using his email he can approve or reject. In addition, digital certification integration is bring to our system more security and let us make sure that the payment will not be processed from any other employee than the one who is responsible for. Also minimize and reduce the number of request been SCTH employee received form beneficiary asking about their payments, satues and some time take time to find out the what happened to the payment. In addition, it cause inturpition for employees to answer all these quarry, which decrease the productivity of the employee.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
The solution is unique because its promote high percentage of transparency, accountability, and integrity with public. The solution now is solving alot of issue that happened before. In addition, to develop solution like that, we did the integration between 5 major systems, some of it is external along with integration with systems in other governments sector that related, and their engagement in process is required in any way. Also, delivering the information in easy way and easy to access with validating using some security steps that been used in Banking service to log in and see the details by allowing the beneficiary to fill out his commercial ID that registered in SCTH and sending code throw SMS using the contact details that registered in SCTH too.
 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
Describe the organization through which the programme is administered and how many people it benefitted. The solution been developed internally by IT department with support with Business owner, in this case Financial department whom their responsibilities to process payments. The administration and tracking the internal payment once is process do by finical employees that specialized in this area . The initiative is targeting more than 1000 companies and sector that is playing an important role for economy growth. Also, we can consider in our initive that SCTH employees who used to process that payment manually.
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
In order to implement an intuitive and solution like that. SCTH followed a clear plan using the right people to be engaged that can enhance the solution by their experience in each phase, since the solution is serving financial targets but the implementation done by IT . When SCTH noted that thy need to organize and improve the process of dealing with payments after many studied been done to evaluate the old producers. The idea for automating huge and sensitive process like issuing payments is been raised and all action been taken. At the beginning, SCTH specified the targets and goals need to be achieved by the this initiative . The goals and targets been specified by Executives. When SCTH start the action, the project team been organized and stakeholder and starring committee been identified. The team members are from different departments and having different specialties . So communication plan is created and roles and responsibilities been assign to each team member. Project start with planning phase, where all the above been identified In implementation phase, business specialist listed all requirements needed in order to achieve the target and Technical team worked to apply the best standard and practice to develop the solution according to Business requirements. At the end of each phase, the output has presented and shared to Stakeholder and starring committee. Also SCTH used an advance monitoring tools to monitor the work been done and making sure each members is doing the responsibilities assigned. The cost of implementation is 0 if we did not count the regular salary and time spent by team members to complete the solution. As mentioned before all team members are SCTH employees.
 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
The solution is unique because its promote high percentage of transparency, accountability, and integrity with public. The solution now is solving alot of issue that happened before. In addition, to develop solution like that, we did the integration between 5 major systems, some of it is external along with integration with systems in other governments sector that related, and their engagement in process is required in any way. Also, delivering the information in easy way and easy to access with validating using some security steps that been used in Banking service to log in and see the details by allowing the beneficiary to fill out his commercial ID that registered in SCTH and sending code throw SMS using the contact details that registered in SCTH too.
 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
For transparency purpose, the most successful output is all payments information will be available up to date for beneficiary to review and track. Also, integration with ministry of finance is major success in he our solution since its save time and effort for sending papers manually to ministry of finance which take time and some time it costly. No information once processed it will be sent automatically to ministry to process the actual payment to vendor. In addition, the integration with General Auditing Brue is a success story too. As government organization, Auditing the expenses and spending is very important and using the system and integration done with their system. Auditing is done directly and immediately once payment is processed so this helps to make sure all payments are audited up to date. Reporting features is one amazing output. Within once click and filling simple information, specialist can get an overall report in different way for required information. this will help management to monitor and to see the budget spending easily. Finally, one of the most easy to use feature is advance search engine. Using such a feature solved many issues related to losing the papers and information. now everything is stored an approved by different level . by filling out simple information , all information will be available and up to date
 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
To Implement such a solution, SCTH team encountered many obstacles that could lead to Failure due the complexity of data gathered from different parties. Integration between the SCTH and other external agencies related to business cause difficulties in coordination and gather data. In addition, identifying the owner of date based on data sources among multiple agencies including SCTH is a major obstacle. The readiness of other related agencies is another obstacle that SCTH had to solve. During the implementation, related agencies did not fully cooperate with SCTH team to provide the full integration needed. SCTH team overcome above obstacles by preparing a backup plan in case of integration scenario did not work. During implanting and execution, SCTH team assign dedicated employees to do Parallel execution plans until we make sure the requirements and solution is working. Hiring expertise employees in some of implementation stages that is capable to overcome any issues is perfect way SCTH did to implement solution. SCTH team take responsibilities and the ownership to coordinate with other parties

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
Developing a web based solution that is available to the SCTH audience who has financial interaction with it, and developing the complex integration backend services that integrate with all the related agencies. This has achieve the main objective out of this initiative, which is boosting and promoting the transparency. SCTH aimed to create a mechanism to increase the availability, authenticity and reliability of the payment orders information to SCTH vendors and employees. Having such of initiative was very helpful to save vendors’ and employees’ time and efforts as well. The whole resulted, automated and integrated business process can be summarized in the followings: The payment requests/claims are submitted by requesters digitally through the financial payment self-service. Requesters can inquire about the status of their requests at any time through this service and they will be automatically notified with the progress and the final approval as well. Meanwhile, and through the integration with General Auditing Bureau (GAB), e- audit system that mainly covers all basic activities of GAB of Saudi Arabia through the Government Secured Network (GSN), the financial information will be audited in an automated manner and SCTH will receive the results automatically as well. This important step supports accountability and ensures that the available information for all parties are being reviewed and audited through the authorized agencies. SCTH financial systems are integrated with NCDC for digital certificates to electronically sign and certify the issued payment orders by SCTH approvers. After getting all required digital signatures, the digitally signed financial payment orders will be submitted to the Ministry of Finance through the GSBexpress and the payment order status will be updated and reflected according to the MOF status on the internal financial system. This whole integrated model increase the users experience with SCTH , and ensures that SCTH vendors’ payment order status are available in a timely manner without the need of their physical presence in SCTH to follow up. It also saves the time and efforts for the financial team in the whole process of the financial payment. In addition to that, the details are audited, certified and encrypted. To summarize, SCTH creates an initiative to support transparency and accountability through this service which increased the public’s ability to get the needed information without neglecting payment orders security and authenticity and this initiative complies with the new Saudi Vision 2030 in eTransformation
 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
 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)

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Saudi Comission for Tourism & heritage
Institution Type:   Other  
Contact Person:   Mohammed Almazrooa
Title:   Performance Standerd section head  
Telephone/ Fax:   0118808065
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   mazrooa@scth.gov.sa  
Address:   Diplomatic Quarter
Postal Code:   11586
City:   Riyadh
State/Province:  
Country:  

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