Quality and excellence in the government sector

From here, every citizen has the right to wonder when quality is achieved in the government sector apparatus?

And every official has the right to ask how do we achieve quality and excellence in our government agencies?

Answering these deserved questions is considered a cherished national task, so it was necessary for me and our professors and colleagues specialists in this field to have the honor to participate and contribute to defining the process of quality and excellence in our beloved country, especially in the government sector – which is the sensitive sector for every citizen – to be achieved – God willing – The intent and lofty goal of the honorable Council of Ministers’ decision, so this article is only one of the episodes of contributing to the enrichment of the project, as it will discuss the following questions:

First: Why should quality be achieved in the government sector?

Second: How is quality and excellence achieved in the government sector?

Third: What are the most important reasons for not applying and adopting effective quality programs?

Fourth: Practical proposals for implementing quality programs in the government sector.

Fifth: A final pause with the decision makers.

Here, dear reader, are its details, seeking the help of God, asking Him for success and payment.

First: Why should quality be achieved in the government sector?

The importance of quality lies in the following postulates:

1- It is a religious and legal requirement through which we please the Lord of the Worlds who is characterized by perfection, which is the pinnacle of the hump of quality, as He, may He be glorified and exalted be He, said in His Great Book: “God made who perfected everything.” Exalted be He – and that is true to the hadith of our Prophet Muhammad – may God’s prayers and peace be upon him – in which he said: “God loves when one of you does a deed that he perfects it.”

2- Quality is a requirement for the ruler, as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques has always called for it and urged his esteemed ministers to carry the trust and perform it to the fullest, including what was stated in his historic speech, which specialists consider a motto for the national strategy for quality when he said – may God protect him: “There is no way for the Kingdom to compete and participate actively globally, except when quality is its main criterion in everything it offers to the world, deriving this perfection from the teachings of the true Islamic religion.

3- Officials among ministers and others realize its importance and necessity for the government sector, through their statements calling for raising the level of quality of services provided by their ministries to citizens.

4- The benefits arising from its implementation in ministries and government facilities, the most important of which are:

A- Satisfying and delighting customers, both citizens and residents, by fulfilling their requirements and implementing them to the fullest, which leads to an increase in satisfaction rates and fewer complaints.

B- Increasing productivity, reducing operational costs, implementing national projects on time and at an appropriate cost, and thus implementing national plans with high efficiency.

C – Developing and improving the basic services provided to the community such as education, health, security, safety and other services, and thus improving the standard of living for the citizen.

D- Providing excellent environmental opportunities for employees, developing and empowering them, improving their competencies, and building national wealth represented by caring for people before building.

E – Developing the country locally and national competition abroad with its products, services and human resources.

5- As well as the negative consequences of losing it altogether or its weak application and weak adoption, the most prominent of which are:

A – Weakness in the implementation – sometimes – of the five-year plans for the Kingdom, which are set by the leaders and who prepare the means for them from human resources and huge financial budgets, which weakens the expected outputs from them.

B- Human losses as a result of counterfeit products, medical errors, or road accidents, so that the Kingdom became one of the countries with the most victims of roads and transportation, as well as the loss of quality in municipal projects that led to major disasters! It appears with rain or other calamities, as happened in the city of Jeddah..We ask God to protect us from it and protect our country and all other Muslim countries.

C- The large number of complaints and the increase in levels of dissatisfaction on the part of citizens and residents as a result of the poor services provided due to the complexity of transactions, the long waiting for appointments, the loss of rights, and thus the spread of social, economic and health diseases.

D – The mental image of the level of services in our dear country is shaken by many citizens and residents, and even some countries of the world, which fears that it may lead to weak confidence in the administrative systems of government sector agencies, hesitation in investing and capital migration.

E – Financial losses that may reach billions of riyals, represented by the collapse of infrastructure sometimes and the delay, disruption or re-implementation of thousands of national projects, as well as financial compensations for those affected by them, all of which could have been prevented.

F- The establishments and employees of the private sector – which is generally characterized by distinction and relative administrative maturity – are affected by the major administrative imbalance in the government sector agencies in terms of not facilitating their dealings and providing their requirements and needs, which leads to a reduction in the rates of success and growth that it is hoped to achieve.

G- The emergence of many administrative violations and abuses from some government sector agencies, which were monitored by the General Auditing Bureau through review and auditing processes, the most prominent of which were the following:

1- The implementation of many vital projects was delayed, some of them stalled, and the quality of implementation was low.

2- Weak preventive internal control in many executive government agencies.

3- Poor collection of some of the public treasury revenues and their supply on the dates set for that.

4- The poor performance of some companies in which the state contributes and their continued incurring large losses.