Early in 2004, the Saudi Government identified the need to move towards an e-Government environment to improve their service delivery to the population, particularly within the Medinah province. 'E-Government' is defined by the "META Group as "the ability to obtain government services through non-traditional electronic means, including access to government information and the completion of government transactions on an "anywhere, anytime" basis, and in conformance with equal access requirements."
South African based Human Resource Consulting firm, Skillbase Technologies, was requested to assist the government in assessing the change readiness of the people component of the fifty two agencies (government departments) to achieve this objective. Skillbase Technologies is the only South African consulting firm that is licensed to use the internationally recognised research by David Ulrich and Lominger, Pty (Ltd) on organisational culture, attributes, (cultributes) and change-ableness tools in their people intelligence software.
Using the methodology of structured questionnaires, Skillbase Technologies used the Organisational Cultributes and Changeability tools to gather data on
* e-govt awareness and buy-in: the extent to which people in the Agency understood what E-Govt is and how it would affect their roles, skill sets, business processes and services provided;
* organisational structure: the extent to which the Agency's roles were positioned to develop and support e-Government services;
* human capital and leadership/changeability: the extent to which the people in the Agency had created the Organizational capabilities required to support the implementation of e-Government, as well as the extent to which the Human Resource practices and processes were enabling the effective attraction, retention and development of e-Government human resources.
Once the data had been interpreted and analysed, Skillbase Technologies provided a comprehensive report on the gaps between where the agencies were and where they needed to be in order to be successful in an e-government environment. The report outlines the HR organizational capabilities that need to change in order to successfully implement an e-Government initiative.
Further to this, Skillbase Technologies also provided a detailed practical list of recommended solutions to transform the Agency for e-Readiness in terms of the above three areas.
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