| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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PACP has developed the Maidan initiative to allow the public to provide a suggestion or lodge a complaint regarding any violation to the consumer rights including market price hikes, monopoly, low quality services and products, and counterfeits. This initiative provides PACP with an important tool to monitor the market and provide a healthy environment for the consumers and ensure their satisfaction. The service includes an array of supporting eParticipation tools to keep the consumers engaged in different ways and mediums, provide timely feedback, and promote transparency. This initiative is both innovative and creative as PACP is able to provide various channels of communication to the consumers to empower them with the capability to police the market place. PACP alone cannot cover the length and breadth of all market segments in Oman. Only through educating and empowering the consumers with direct channels to the organisation, PACP can widen its reach to cover the large segment of the consumers’ markets. Essentially, the service provided the following advantages;
• Increased Mobility - Consumers can sound their protest or concern and easily follow the updates on that matter in a transparent manner through any mobile devices
• Transparency - The practice provides a more personal interaction with PACP and sponsors the development of a community around consumer protection
• Personal Interaction - The practice promotes a healthy consumer environment where consumer rights are protected and the consumer community is educated
Healthy Environment - Consumers can lodge a complaint electronically from anywhere at any time through one of the different channels they are accustomed to.
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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 Public Authority for Consumer Protection (PACP) was formed via the promulgation of the Royal Decree No. 26/2011 on 5 April 2011. At the same time, Royal Decree No. 53/2011, promulgating the Law of the Public Authority for Consumer Protection.
PACP’s primary objectives are to protect the market from price fluctuations, guarantee fair treatment, honesty and credibility, develop consumer general awareness, find prompt solutions to consumer complaints, and fight counterfeiting, swindling and monopoly. In addition, PACP aimed to develop a sustainable downstream chain to support Oman’s thriving consumers’ market and protect consumers’ rights. The PACP’s action is bolstered by the Consumers’ Protection Act and its by- law which enforces the authority’s position as consumers’ watchdog. PACP also recently revised and enhanced the Legal, Administrative and technical procedures relating to consumer protection which included the procedure in handling complaints from electronic and social media channels.
PACP strongly believes that providing an efficient, transparent and satisfactory service to the consumers can create a healthy and a prosperous consumer market. Therefore, it strives to protect consumer rights and promote awareness effectively, which requires participation from the consumers themselves. Ultimately, PACP empowers the consumers and engages them in the effort to create and maintain a healthy and prosperous consumers’ market. The core of PACP customers’ protection philosophy is customers’ feedback and complaints. These feedbacks provide the basis on which PACP can provide quality services to the consumers. PACP leverages on information technology and pervasive mobile technology through the Maidan initiative which encompasses the whole business process and system architecture to empower the consumers through which they can lodge complaints, provide feedback and suggestions concerning any breach to the consumer rights from anywhere at any time.
This electronic service allows the public to lodge complaints and suggestions concerning breaches to consumer rights. Through the Maidan Services, PACP reached out to the citizens and residents of Oman and through its mobile platform, users from rural regions can also gain access to this services electronically.
Since PACP have total of 16 branches all over Oman which is covering all areas around each branch, including visits of inspectors to urban areas to check the price fluctuations, and monitor market prices of goods and services and curb their rise. PACP works on making consumer aware of misleading advertisements and the role of the Authority in fighting them. As well as receiving complaints from consumers and consumer societies, investigating them and finding appropriate solutions. In addition to a continuous campaign of following up the commercial activities, monitor movement of goods and services and make sure of availability of basic goods. By covering all of that, PACP is actually benefiting the whole population of Oman, where citizens and expatriates, men and women, children, adults, and old age people, with a population of 4.58 million are getting affected by this initiative.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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As a government entity, the project is fully funded by the government. The main implementation of the initiatives is as follows.
May 2011- June 2013 - PACP started off with 58 and now they have about 850 team members all over the Sultanate. They also started with a main branch and now serving with 13 Branches in all over the Sultanate. Today PACP was awarded one of the Best Six Practices around the world and PACP practices has been taken as a road map by all Arab countries
Dec 2011
• Web Site Launch - The website provides unique identity to PACP over the web and up-to-date Information to consumers on various platforms which includes pc, tablets, phones. Web site is available in both Arabic and English languages
• Call Center - Modern call center to receive and register consumer complaints and suggestions
Mar 2012 – Implementation of central repository for consumer Information which stores all consumers’ related information, issues, resolutions, calls records. Line of Business (LoB) and other applications are integrated with CIMS to store and retrieve the consumer records.
Oct-2012 - The e-Consumer Guide -PACP information and e-services were released on smart phones and tablets. At the same time, PACP started to engaged consumers through social media network sites by sharing information, pictures, videos, surveys and news sharing with consumers, and established PACP presence on Facebook, Twister, YouTube, Instagram and Oman Forum (Sablat Oman)
May-2013 - PACP upgraded the Call Center to Contact Center where consumers can contact using various communication method like Voice, Web Chat, Email. Subsequently, in Aug 2013, the PACP Website was upgraded to be an ePortal with more G2G and G2C eServices. The Business Continuity Plan was also put in place for PACP electronic services and processes.
By Nov 2013, the Regional Office of the International Union for Consumers was established at the PACP premises. At the same time, the Public Prosecutor’s Office was also established within PACP’s premise to expedite the enforcement efforts.
By 2015 the system was fully integrated with other entities and systems such as the Royal Oman Police and Ministry of Commerce. Such integration ensures seamless efforts from multi-parties and organisations in addressing public safety and consumers’ protection.
By 2016 to make the system more expeditious PACP have successfully accomplish below milestones
a. Integration with Oman Public Prosecution OPP which ensures that all violation cases are dealt with expeditiously. Before this integration it was a manual process which were taking weeks and months in some cases after this integration it is just a click and the case will be forwarded to OPP.
b. Signature Pad implementation with Questionnaire. This improvement expedite the process of investigating any issue raised by the consumers. Previously the questionnaire must be printed, signed and uploaded again to the system, which was a time consuming activity. Hence to make the system smoother and easier for the public, PACP adopted electronic identification through the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) which automates the entire process.
c. In progress integration with Muscat municipality (MM).
d. Direct Integration with some suppliers for items prices. Continues working with other suppliers such as the larger hypermarkets Carrefour, Lulu and Millennium.
e. Tracking system for seize goods unfit for human consumption is added to expedite the persecution and disposal process.
Further Plans – PACP will develop more integrated services with other government organisations such as the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The main stakeholders are the government, citizens, residents and merchants in Oman. The Public Authority of Consumer Protection as a government entity implements and enforces the policies, rules and regulations pertaining to consumer protection. In addition, PACP developed and implemented the Maidan initiative to solicit, register, collate and resolve all complaints, feedback and suggestion from the consumers who are also the customers of PACP.
The entire system is supported by customer services in the various PACP offices not only in the capital city of Muscat, but also in major towns in the interior regions. It also includes a pervasive backend IT system to register, collate and streamline the internal processes as well as the whole public awareness mechanism comprising both traditional media (print, screen, radio and television) and new media (portal, social media network). It is an example of a successful Government to Citizen eServices, in which PACP empowers consumers as their agents on the ground to support in regulating the vast markets. Through deeper integration with other related government authorities such as the Royal Oman Police, Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Oman Public Prosecution, this initiative is the benchmark for successful move towards an integrative government (i-Government).
In addition, the Maidan initiatives works genuinely to serve the consumers and provide the best services and response to them. As such the enabling system backing Maidan ensures that the PACPs’ inspectors respond to consumers instantly and reduce the delays through the following modules.
a. Transportation module which allows PACP transportation division to maintain the number of available vehicles for which the inspectors can request for their fields visits.
b. Automated ticket assignment module which allows Inspectors to register any issue related to their devices. Automate ticket assignment, routing and escalation to the right agent, at the right time. For example, they can report the technical issues of the PDAs’ and portable thermal printers to the IT department in order to get an immediate solution or replacement to avoid any delay in their work.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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1. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages - The initiative has been successful in preventing some serious violations which could affect consumers’ health and safety such as the case of poor quality tyres and the attempted sale of tobacco and tobacco related products hidden in books to children which were successfully thaw by the authority.
2. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns- This is achieved through PACP’s primary objectives to protect the market from price fluctuations, guarantee fair treatment, honesty and credibility, develop consumer general awareness, find prompt solutions to consumer complaints, and fight counterfeiting, swindling and monopoly. In addition, PACP aimed to develop a sustainable downstream chain to support Oman’s thriving consumers’ market and protect consumers’ rights. The PACP’s action is bolstered by the Consumers’ Protection Act and its by- law which enforces the authority’s position as consumers’ watchdog. PACP also recently revised and enhanced the Legal, Administrative and technical procedures relating to consumer protection which included the procedure in handling complaints from multi-electronic and social media channels. In addition close integration with other related ministry and government organisations ensure that consumer products are fit for consumption and derived from sustainable and reliable sources.
3. With support from the top management and the entire organisation in helping the consumers protect their rights and rectifying any complaint lodged. Consumers can send feedback even to the Chairman of PACP if they have any complaints about PACP services. That is the level of support rendered by the senior management of the organisation. In addition, there is also a clear and transparent process in handling and resolving complaints which increase the consumers’ faith in PACP and encourages them to be an active watchdog for the authority. This helps to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
4. By Leveraging on social media network, PACP was able to hassle the power of social media and integrate them into the Maidan eco-system. This is essential as mobile penetration rate in Oman is almost 190% and every citizen and resident has a mobile device. With high mobile usage, internet connectivity becomes pervasive. Through the social media network, PACP is able to better educate the public and solicit feedback from them effectively and efficiently.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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a. Geographically, Oman is a vast market with diverse culture and large number of traders providing numerous products and services. It was a challenge for PACP to reach out to all consumers especially in the interior regions. However, by empowering the consumers through public awareness and training of their rights and equipping them with means to reach PACP directly, they become PACP agents on the ground. With easy access to PACP, these consumers can tip off PACP of any fraud or violations on the ground and actions can be taken immediately by PACP enforcement team.
b. A large percentage of complaints were lodged physically at PACP centres – relying heavily on customer services centres for the Maidan services is not effective. With the advent of mobile connectivity and social media sites, PACP is able to harness these technologies to equip the consumers and provide quality services to the consumers.
c. Social media accounts are active with discussions bit are not used for lodging complaints. Through the Maidan initiative, PACP is able to harness the social media network as an excellent medium for engaging the consumers and encourage consumers to lodge complaints on PACP’s social media sites
d. Consumers are not always lodging complaints because access is not always easy especially in the interior regions. Hence, providing mobile access to Maidan services is essential to its successful adoption by the consumers. PACP developed a native mobile application for various platforms on IOS, Android and Windows. So far this is the most useful application for PACP with 57.5k downloads till date on android and 9.02k downloads on IOS till date and 3.5k downloads on Windows phone till date.
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