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Government Cloud Applications

Cloud First Policy

KSA Cloud First Policy of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology was launched in 2020. In general, the government has been fostering the use of cloud computing formally. This policy for cloud computing leverages several elements, including scale, virtualization, resilience, cost, efficiency, service orientation, agility, etc. The policy details what is related to it and the government agencies it covers, in addition to accelerating its adoption and considering cloud computing options when making new investment decisions related to information technology. The policy also encouraged the private sector to follow similar policies by internally applying the "cloud-first policy" in their facilities.

Government Cloud 'DEEM'

The Government cloud platform "Deem Cloud" is one of the innovative technical solutions at the National Information Center of the Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence (SDAIA), which contributes to providing cloud computing services based on the latest technologies in support of uniting efforts and enabling government entities to achieve digital transformation. Deem Cloud integrates and unifies government entities' data centers into one secure platform. As of July 1, 2023, 237 government data centers have been integrated, 183 government entities and 94,000 electronic mailboxes hosed into the "DEEM Cloud", which enabled reducing 64 megawatts of power consumption, reducing 608K tons of carbon emissions and saving 5.6 billion SAR (approximately 1.5 billion USD).

Government Cloud Office

The Office was established in 2021 and plays a crucial role in managing the relationship between the government organization and the Cloud Service Providers. It ensures that the adoption and utilization of cloud services align with the government's goals, security requirements, compliance obligations, and service expectations. Currently, there are more than 30 Registered Cloud Service Providers in KSA.
The Government Cloud Office works on three main pillars:

Setting strategic directions and creating momentum: Determining the strategic trends associated with the governance of the cloud system and developing the controls and guidelines to achieve targets.

Activating & enabling the ecosystem: Providing services that reinforce awareness, build capabilities, and work with governmental agencies and suppliers.

Monitor results & measure the impact: Monitoring program performance, tracking realized impact, ensuring compliance level, and conducting periodic reviews for business progress.

As part of its mandate, the Government Cloud Office initiated the Cloud Adoption Acceleration Program to accelerate the adoption of cloud computing services within government agencies by facilitating awareness, enabling capabilities, and offering strategic support to seamlessly transition agencies from traditional computing environments to dynamic, scalable, and collaborative cloud environments.
The program is dedicated to expediting the adoption of cloud computing within governmental agencies, engaging a range of stakeholders to collaborate, coordinating efforts, and continuously developing national cloud capabilities. The specific objectives include:

Raising the efficiency of governmental expenditure over digital services.

Raising the quality of governmental services and satisfaction levels of beneficiaries.

Enhancing the local content in the governmental agencies by adopting cloud computing.

Enhancing investments and raising participation levels of cloud computing related sector.

Elevating the digital experience

The impact on Government agencies includes raising awareness of cloud services, increasing the maturity and readiness of the governmental agencies for adopting cloud services and providing pioneered cloud solutions. Private cloud users benefit from the acceleration of the integrated digital experience and increased satisfaction with government services.

National Enterprise Architecture

National Enterprise Architecture is the national reference for implementing enterprise architecture in the government sector through unified national practices, standards, methodologies, and controls to support the digital transformation in government entities in order to reach an integrated smart government with a unified national vision, putting the citizens first. It includes practices and controls for implementing the government entity's vision and strategy by making the necessary changes to align the business (processes and services) with the information technology (applications, data, and technology). National EA provides models, standards, and guidelines to enhance the implementation and practising of the enterprise architecture and accelerate digital transformation to achieve the vision's objectives.

The Government paid great attention to the national enterprise architecture practices, as it issued the National Overall Reference Architecture (NORA) and the Framework for Measuring the Maturity of Enterprise Architecture Practices (SEAM) in 2015. It continued to continuously improve this framework according to a clear mechanism that studies the extent of adopting national enterprise architecture practices and finding opportunities for improvement, ending in 2022, when Issuance of the Digital Government Regulatory Framework.
Based on the Digital Government Authority mandates of regulating digital government, the Authority developed and maintains a comprehensive and integrated framework to adopt the practice of national enterprise architecture through studying and understanding the challenges facing government agencies today. The knowledge base built in the Kingdom for this field through several initiatives that the Authority continued to reach the highest levels of maturity in adopting the practice of the national institutional architecture among government agencies and other parties that seek to do so.

Government Interoperability Framework

National Interoperability Standard

The National Interoperability Standard was first published in 2006 as part of the key initiatives of the First Saudi Digital Strategy. The current version was revised in 2019 and is part of the Yesser Framework for Interoperability, which focuses on the data interoperability domain. It aims to achieve cross-governmental integration and service sharing, and defining common data definitions and data structures is indispensable. This standard provides the necessary guidance to guarantee the interoperability, integration, portability and reusability of systems across government agencies through utilizing Government Service Bus (GSB).

eHealth Interoperability Standards

The Ministry of Health of the Saudi Government focuses on interoperability for the sensitivity of sharing data among different sites and entities. A set of interoperability-related documents were developed outlining the basic guidelines and regulations to secure interoperable data sharing. This Core Interoperability Specification applies to existing and new information systems that will exchange Health Information. In particular, this Interoperability Specification applies to deploying eHealth Information Exchange Platforms. Examples can be found at the National Health Information Center (NHIC) such as:

Enabling Standards-Based eHealth Interoperability IS0010 Saudi eHealth Core Interoperability Specification for Immunization Version 1.0 April 21, 2016

Enabling Standards-Based eHealth Interoperability IS0003 Saudi eHealth Core Interoperability Specification for Sharing Coded Laboratory Results April 21, 2016

Government Service Bus (GSB)

The Government Service Bus (GSB) is a consolidated platform to facilitate the seamless electronic exchange of shared government services among entities, ensuring accuracy, speed, and security via the Government Secure Network (GSN). It is essential in securing well-integrated national infrastructure projects, which were established and managed by the Yesser Program in 2009 and transferred to the Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence (SDAIA) in 2022.
The GSB enables the electronic transmission of various government services, including but not limited to commercial registry, real estate instruments, Qiyas results, health files, enterprise licenses, and payment orders. It aims to activate secure data exchange between the government agencies authorized to use the data to provide services effectively and accurately. The Kingdom offers over 6,000 e-government services and records 4 billion digital transactions annually. This progress is creating a significant demand for data centers as the critical infrastructure of the digital economy. Digital transformation has blended efforts across the government for a national backbone and infrastructure that provides this growth in digital transformation.

Indicators and numbers:

Connecting 220 beneficiaries

More than 240 services have been deployed

More than 595 operations have been developed

Granting approximately 13120 authorizations to beneficiaries

More than 4 billion operations annually

Treasury Single Account (TSA)

The Treasury Single Account (TSA) was established in 2018 to provide greater transparency regarding the government's financial resources, increase the efficiency of financial planning, and strengthen financial discipline. It is an advanced technical system for cash and liquidity management, central processing of government payments, controlling and monitoring the structure of bank accounts, and auto-banking reconciliation.

From 2020 to 2021, the Cash Management Assistant Deputyship was established in the Ministry of Finance, and 79 government entities were enrolled in the TSA's pilot rollout. This stage also included building the TMS, a critical turning point for implementing and enhancing the automation processes. By 2023, 188 government entities were enrolled in TSA, and commercial bank accounts had been reduced to 4251 accounts. This contributed to accelerating expenditure payment and improving daily cash visibility by increasing cash concentration velocity while enhancing the automation of treasury processes.

TSA essentially acts as a single cash consolidation point, facilitating centralized collections and disbursements to avoid idle cash balances of unused bank accounts and to maximize the benefit of cash surpluses. It covers the core functions of government revenue concentration, expenditure disbursement, cash management, monitoring of cash and liquidity, investment of any cash surplus, and improvement in the structure of government bank accounts. It is characterized by its advanced capabilities in dealing with payments, integration with the National Debt Management Center (NDMC) work, and its ability to integrate with various technical systems in the Ministry of Finance and the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA). It utilizes the treasury software (Quantum) with the payment gateway (Trax) interface linking the Financial Management Information System (FMIS) with SAMA systems. Further improvements are planned for TSA through continual review and revisions in the Treasury Governance Framework's policies, procedures, and systems.

eProcurement Information System

The Electronic Financial Services Platform (Etimad) consolidates and facilitates the bidding and government procurement process for all government sectors, enhancing transparency amongst government sectors on the one hand and among competing entities on the other. The portal allows the largest segment of competitors to access bids, enhancing competitiveness and improving government projects' quality. The portal is an entirely digital gateway for posting government tenders, receiving invitations, obtaining fascicles, surveying bids and awarding contracts, with first preference given to small and medium-sized businesses exempt from preliminary insurance.

Debt Management System (DMS)

National Debt Management Center (NDMC) was established in 2015 to secure the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's financing needs with the best financing costs in the short, medium, and long term under an acceptable degree of risk in compliance with the financial policies and to maintain Kingdom's ability to access different international financial markets at fair pricing. To monitor and manage the public debt, NDMC developed and maintained a Central System For Debt Management, enabling the center to have a real-time overview of the public debt. Under its mandate, the NDMC is enabled to provide advisory services and propose implementation plans for government agencies and companies in which the government owns more than (50%) of their capital and public institutions in the area of NDMC's competence, including the collecting, processing and follow-up of direct and indirect public debt data, and negotiation of debts, and negotiation of debts restructuring, repricing or re-contracting, services related to hedging policies, investors relationships management in public debt instruments credit rating affairs, or other related services.

Public Investment Management System (PIMS)

Public Investment Fund

The Public Investment Fund (PIF) is the engine driving the transformation of Saudi Arabia's economy. Its objective is to actively invest over the long term to maximize sustainable returns, be the investment partner of choice for global opportunities, and enable the economic development and diversification of the Saudi economy. The Fund built a rich investment portfolio of companies across diverse sectors in Saudi Arabia and beyond, in line with Saudi Vision 2030. This includes the Giga-Projects designed to stimulate the economy, and their benefits are expected to expand significantly beyond the real estate and infrastructure sectors, helping to diversify the economy away from oil, especially given their sheer scale.

The Fund monitors the performance of the portfolio companies by exercising its rights as a shareholder to maximize returns for all investors and achieve its strategic objectives. The Fund undertakes a clear, systematic, and professional mechanism when selecting its investment sectors, as it relies on an investment policy specific to each sector and clarifies the investment aims of each of its portfolios. These mechanisms also offer necessary details such as permissible assets, assigned targets, key performance indicators, and risk tolerance. Within its mandate, PIF has launched the Public Investment Management System (PIMS) to provide oversight and ensure control of all investments made by the PIF and other government entities in Saudi Arabia and abroad. The PIMS is critical to ensure that the same rigorous standards are used across the Kingdom. Comprehensive guidelines have been applied to all projects funded by the government.

INVEST SAUDI
INVEST SAUDI is Saudi Arabia's nationwide investment attraction and promotion brand. It facilitates investments in Saudi Arabia that support its economic growth and position it at the forefront of the global business world.
INVEST SAUDI is designed to provide a clear, unified, and effective message about the Kingdom's investment opportunities to foreign and domestic investors and private sector businesses. It is, therefore, the primary point of contact for foreign investors seeking assistance before, during, and after they enter the Kingdom. INVEST SAUDI provides a Unified Investment Platform that serves government and government-related entities in promoting the Kingdom as a future-ready investment destination, thus contributing to the realization of Vision 2030.

Tax and Customs Management Information System

The Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority (ZATCA) is responsible for collecting zakat, taxes, and customs duties while achieving the highest level of taxpayer compliance possible per best practices. The Authority is also responsible for organizing and managing all activities connected to ports and customs operations to achieve the highest level of compliance, productivity, and competitiveness. This aims to assist the Kingdom in developing into a significant global logistics hub by promoting trade and maintaining national security. To achieve these goals, they have launched several key platforms:

”ERAD” Tax System, a unified zakat and tax platform lunched in 2016, hosts more than 150 online services enabling users to complete their zakat and tax duties. It is one of the most important ZATCA's projects in digital transformation, enabling data exchange with other government systems.

“Manafith” Customs System, a unified customs platform launched in 2002, centrlises all custom services into one places regulating the import, export, and goods in circulation. The system aims to facilitate, regulate, and control the movement of goods through customs ports effectively and safely.

“Fatoorah” e-Invoicing System, enables commercial entities to issue, submit and process of invoices, debit and credit notes with other commercial entities in an integrated electronic format. The platform is expected to be soon integrated into the Centralised Zakat, Tax and Customs system.

Zakaty platform is an electronic platform aimed at creating a balanced and integrated Zakat environment, i.e. to enable citizens and businesses to pay their zakat smoothly and easily through electronic payment channels to deliver it directly to eligible users.

Human Resources Management System (HRMS)

"Masar" is a central national Human Resources management and development platform. Masar enables service provision to ministries, government agencies, employees and individuals according to Human Resources regulations. Established by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD), the platform provides a package of supportive e-services to government agencies to develop their human resources to refine and develop the capabilities of government employees.

Payroll system

The payroll system is linked to the HRMS through the Electronic Financial Services Platform (Etimad), which enables regular payments to public sector employees.

Social Insurance Information System

The Social Insurance Information System was established by the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) as a governmental entity responsible for providing social protection and insurance coverage in Saudi Arabia. It covers Saudi civil and military employees, private sector workers and workers employed on an item of wages in the public sector. It provides services for individuals, enabling them to use their rights of social insurance guaranteed by law and services for businesses, allowing them to manage and pay social contributions for their employees.

Pension and Social Insurance Laws manage pension affairs for civil and military employees and care for employees working in the private sector and base salary workers in the government sector to provide them and their families with a decent life after they leave work due to retirement, disability, or death. Moreover, these laws provide medical care and compensation in cases of work injuries or occupational disability through the Occupational Hazards Branch, which is applied obligatorily to Saudi and non-Saudi workers in the Saudi labor market. Also, GOSI is diligent in helping Saudi workers who leave work due to circumstances beyond their control by paying unemployment compensation (SANED), providing training programs, and supporting the unemployed to find a new job.

By 2003, all of GOSI’s services had become automated, including the payment system for all of GOSI’s contributors and beneficiaries and connected with all government agencies through the Government Services Bus (GSB). GOSI has a solid technical structure built according to the latest standards and practices in information technology. It is a mixture of ready-made systems and systems built within GOSI to achieve GOSI’s aims and plans.

In this sense, GOSI was diligent in making digital transformation and digital leadership a strategic aim to enhance customer satisfaction along with launching digital platforms and the GOSI website to provide all services to its customers, including contributors, pensioners, and employers, to transform all the services into integrated electronic services available around the clock. Through integration with “Nafath” services, the customer’s journey with GOSI’s services has begun, making it easier to access social insurance services reliably and safely.

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