Reengineering government processes to accelerate Jordan’s digital transformation
The Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship (MoDEE) in Jordan is responsible for developing digital initiatives nationally, including for government services. Its 500 employees focus on five key pillars for digitalization: Entrepreneurship, Skills, Financial Services, Infrastructure and Platforms.
Deployment of strategy to digitally transform Jordan’s government services
Lack of consistency and coherence in process mapping across departments
Desire to become a regional hub for green innovation
Need to establish process-service alignment as the foundation of digitalization
Established and standardized business process framework in order to accelerate digital strategy
Reengineered processes executed within governmental entities using business process framework using ARIS
Documented governmental services catalogues with around 2,700 services in one repository using ARIS and publish it in SANAD website (SANAD is the gateway to all digital government services in the Kingdom of Jordan)
Achieved 40% increase in process efficiency after reengineering and automation of environmental approval licensing using ARIS
Improved the time needed to update processes and services by 50%
Strengthened the adoption of digital tools, resulting in a 90% reduction in paper printing
ARIS Business Process Analysis
Noor Al-Haridi Senior Business Development Consultant, MoDEEARIS has not only laid the groundwork for our digital transformation; it has multiplied the opportunities. With our processes now continually improving, we are rapidly making government services more responsive and more intelligent.”
The government of Jordan has a strong vision for its digital future, covering everything from improving citizens’ quality of life to empowering the future of healthcare. It has particular ambitions to establish the Kingdom as a regional hub for green entrepreneurship and sustainable financing.
As part of its mission to drive this digital transformation, MoDEE was charged with optimizing the processes of different government entities. This was essential because the pace of digital change requires processes to be rapidly and continually updated. Those processes, in turn, impact the 2,700 services provided by the government, ranging from issuing passports and export licenses to providing education and emergency services. Furthermore, processes are the foundation of future services and innovations.
“In the past, processes were documented individually, with different government entities using different tools, such as Word and Excel,” explains Ramy Rawashdih, E-Government Program Director at MoDEE. As a result, processes often existed in isolation and were not working together as efficiently as they could.
The lack of a consistent standard operating procedure and of a single repository for process documentation posed a considerable challenge to the government’s digital ambitions. It also reduced overall efficiency and made cross-department collaboration more difficult.
MoDEE realized it needed to standardize the various processes and align them with the government’s portfolio of services. This would ensure a robust, coherent and efficient process structure to help accelerate transformation initiatives and enable the government to realize the full potential of digitalization.
To restructure, realign and reinforce its processes, MoDEE chose to use ARIS and Process Intelligence from Software AG. The project was supported by Palmira Software House, a Premier Software AG partner in the Middle East, in collaboration with five other government entities: the Greater Municipality of Amman, Ministry of Trade and Economy, Ministry of Health, Health Insurance Association, and the Ministry of Local Administration.
“Our team already had a lot of knowledge about process management—and ARIS gave us the capability to apply that knowledge,” explains Noor Al-Haridi, Senior Business Development Consultant at MoDEE. “Working with Palmira, we organized extensive training sessions for around 50 users across the five entities to get the most from Business Process Management.”
Using ARIS, MoDEE was able to apply a consistent approach to process mapping across the different entities, creating a single repository within the Jordanian government for sharing information and analyzing processes. This allowed it to establish the Business Model Canvas methodology as the standard for documenting and developing business models for the government, laying down the foundations for coherent and efficient growth in the future.
In addition, MoDEE used Palmira’s MetrixPlus platform to monitor and manage the unified National Service Register (NSR), a kingdom-wide information system that supports policy-making and decision-making. All data from the register is automatically synchronized back to both ARIS and the government services portal, ensuring process standardization and data transparency.
Today, MoDEE has mapped core processes across the five government entities involved in the project. In total, around 1,000 processes have been documented, and also the services canvas and customer journey of 2,700 government services.
ARIS now provides all stakeholders with full visibility on processes and services. Any changes to the National Service Register, government services or processes are immediately registered in ARIS and shared with all users. In this way, ARIS is estimated to have enabled a 50% reduction in the time spent keeping processes updated.
Furthermore, the platform has empowered MoDEE to establish a coherent business process framework and brought insights to pave the way for digital transformation. “ARIS delivers standardized reports that help us understand our current business architecture through root cause analysis and impact analysis,” says Noor Al-Haridi. “We’ve been able to identify improvements and re-engineer our processes as part of our digitalization project.”
For example, ARIS was pivotal in optimizing the process for environment licensing approval—which is used by many government services. “Our process analysts were able to identify gaps and redesign the process with an enhanced workflow,” says Ramy Rawashdih. “We reduced a number of redundant steps, and introduced automation for cross-functional operations with other stakeholders.” As a result, the efficiency of this process has increased by around 40%.
Another key benefit has been improved collaboration across the five departments involved in the project. “We’ve become more agile in responding to the demands of different government entities,” explains Ramy Rawashdih. “That’s allowed us to accelerate the digital transformation and build more responsiveness into our services.”
The digitalization of the Jordanian government, enabled by ARIS, has brought numerous advantages—especially in the area of sustainability. MoDEE is actively pursuing the vision for a green future by increasing the adoption of digital tools and reducing emissions and paper consumption in government services. The strategy has already brought about a 90% reduction in paper printing.
Following this initial success, MoDEE is planning to extend the deployment of ARIS to additional government entities. The aim is to further increase process transparency and collaboration across the government, helping to expand the digitalization strategy and bring smart capabilities to more services.
MoDEE is also looking to implement a National Enterprise Architecture methodology using ARIS. This consists of assessing MoDEE’s existing e-government architecture framework and service-oriented architecture, and then designing a plan to optimize and align them with the digital transformation strategy.
“We want to realize the full potential of our digital ambitions,” says Noor Al-Haridi. “And ARIS has a key part to play in making that happen.”