4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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One unique aspect of the initiative is the extent to which it utilizes and exploits human psychology in achieving its aims. Yasser has no direct authority over government agencies, so its ability to ‘make’ things happen is limited. However, agencies do have strong loyalties and pride, so by producing and publishing scores (including to ministers), there are strong psychological incentives to improve (and move up the ‘league table’).
By focusing on equality of access, it has been possible to shift the mentality of government agencies not only towards user-focused service provision but also to finding ways of ensuring that disadvantaged groups are part of that user-focused provision.
While it may not be appropriate to describe support (in the form of meetings, workshops, informal discussions) as unique, it is an aspect of government business that is sometimes lacking. In the case of this initiative, support mechanisms are seen as an important and necessary part of the ‘jigsaw’ – the reports, statistics and scores are produced, the incentives are created (as described), and then the means for positively responding to challenges set are made available. This means that the initiative becomes a part of the solution (not a problem created) for government agencies.
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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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Controlled by several ministries and as an integral part of the Saudi e-Government programme, Yasser has a primary role of ensuring that there is cooperation and continuity in the implementation of ICT across all areas of government. The department responsible for implementing the initiative is within the Yasser framework and, in line with equality and inclusion initiatives, is led and predominantly staffed by women. The initiative is potentially of benefit to all individuals living in Saudi Arabia, which is a population of 31,742,308 people.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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This initiative is funded by Yesser, which is financed from government funds. The technical resources used are already available at Yesser, meaning that the primary costs come from human resources. As has been previously noted, the initiative is led and mainly staffed by women. Some staff are on site and four others (3 female and one male) work remotely. The most common job function among staff is assessing, and training has been provided for those selected through an application and interviewing process.
The first step in the development process was reviewing and analysing government websites. From this process it became clear that there were considerable and very worrying deficiencies that were undermining the e-Government programme to the extent of making it inoperable in any way that could be associated with the aims and objectives established by Yesser in fulfilling its primary role.
The second step was the establishment of what should be available on government agency websites, including factors such as linkages to other sites, mandates, information about services, agency performance, key indicators of performance, access to interactive media, feedback loops, target achievement, special provisions for disadvantaged users, information in languages used in Saudi Arabia etc.
From this came the development of a heuristic evaluation checklist that sought to deal with the areas identified in the previous step. The checklist included:
• Accessibility: The evaluation of website compliance to W3C standards and testing content accessibility using assistive technologies for people with special needs.
• Content: Ensuring all government information is available online, such as organization structure, contact information, services catalogue with detailed information about each service, annual reports, performance reports, key performance indicators, projects and initiatives, government spending etc.
Online services delivery: Checking content regarding government agency services, ensuring that all information required by users is available, and that users were able to provide their opinions on the services. Checking statistics concerning usage and that the impact for each online service was available (transparency and efficiency).
E-Participation: This aspect assesses many parameters, with the main goal of making sure that governments agencies have appropriate policies for e-Participation, and that they are utilising online channels in ways that support users in 3 key levels, which are e-Information, e-Consultation and e-Decision making.
Open data: To ensure government agencies are opening up all their data correctly and at the same time considering privacy and data protection standards.
This checklist also enabled a further step, which was the production of guidelines for government agencies.
The next step is assessment and the assessment service has the following steps:
1. Overview analysis conducted by the assessor on the government agency and its website.
2. Website evaluation using the heuristic evaluation checklist and, as a result, providing scores.
3. Peer review is carried out by another assessor on the heuristic evaluation results and scores given by the main assessor.
4. Expert review carried out by an expert assessor on the heuristic evaluation results and scores given after the peer review.
5. Analysis of the final results and scores, followed by the preparation of a comprehensive report, including results and recommendations with showcases and best practices examples.
6. Peer and Expert Reviews of the report.
7. Delivery of the final report to the head of the government agency.
Following delivery of the report, a meeting is usually scheduled with government agency website teams to discuss results and recommendations and to offer support in achieving the goals set.
Copies of all reports are kept in order that the team can produce national levels statistics, from which ongoing progress can be monitored and evaluated.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Internal stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of the initiative are:
• The Yesser programme director general
• The Yesser strategic and planning team
• The Yesser government agencies relations team
• The initiative team
External stakeholders are:
• Government agency leaders
• Government agency website teams (considered as stakeholders because they undertook to implement the changes on their websites)
When working on design, the initiative team involved some citizens in focus groups to elicit their needs and expectations of government agency websites in respect of transparency, accountability and integrity.
The initiative team also involved some private sector experts when they were developing the assessment methodology and frame work, and also when designing the evaluations checklists.
During implementation, qualified remote assessors were also involved.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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In terms of reducing inequality and empowering women, effectively signposting an important positive step with regard to Saudi society, this initiative has been very successful as it was led and predominantly staffed by women.
In another sense with regard to sustainable development goals, the initiative promotes accountability, transparency and integrity in public institutions as well as side-lining unwarranted and unfair patronage by one small group (public servants, their friends and families) over the many.
These key general benefits aside, five concrete outputs are:
1. In terms of measurable accessibility and functional user benefits, the initiative has changed a situation where no government agency websites passed W3C validation standards to one where 95% are complaint with them. Further evidence of accessibility can be seen in areas such as a screen reader facility now being available for the major (and most used) sectors of health and healthcare, education, employment, finance and the economy and social support. A position where no government agency websites could be completely browsed and used with a keyboard and where none provided special accessibility for people with motor disabilities, furthermore, has been changed to one where there is 100% accessibility via a keyboard and 100% have motor assistive technology.
2. In terms of website content, the situation has been changed from one where government agencies had no significant content that supported transparency, accountability and integrity, to one where 90% of them within the main sectors are publishing content that is empowering in areas such information about government agency organization structure, information about the people behind the agency, office locations and contact information, performance reports, financial reports, key performance indicators, initiatives and projects with allocated budgets for each, project statuses, as well as content concerned with the contribution of government agencies towards sustainable development goals .
3. In terms of measurable accountability, prior to the initiative this did not exist. Now 95% of agencies provide information concerning service mandates, expected waiting times for responses, costs, individual contact information for agency staff and their respective responsibilities and agency alignments with SDG’s
4. Prior to the initiative there were no user satisfaction surveys whatsoever, while now all provide them as well as feedback requests, and 50% of websites, predominantly in the main sectors, now show service usage rates and their impact.
5. Since the start of the initiative, e-Participation practices have risen from being available on zero to 95% of websites.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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One main obstacle can be categorised as attitudes and perceptions in two important areas. One is in the fact that the initiative was fully led and predominantly staffed by women. However, if any concerns existed within the minds of the women involved in terms of how they would feel in empowered positions and in how they would perform were rapidly overcome as the initiative evolved and became increasingly seen in terms of its success, dynamism, originality and sustainability.
A second such obstacle was in the attitudes and perceptions of the government agencies and their staff. These may be described as bureaucratic organisations with staff that were set in their ways and likely to be reluctant to change. However, the approaches used, which included human psychology in terms of producing quantifiable and comparable scores and consistent help and support, meant that the changes were embraced and accepted. In fact, the momentum in terms of enthusiasm has continued to grow.
A further identifiable obstacle was the nature of the task and the effective construction of standards, many of which had never existed before, and setting these out in measurable and assessable formats. This obstacle was overcome through a determination based in the knowledge that overcoming it would facilitate the success of the wider Yasser mission.
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