E-media:
Riyadh. General Organization for Social Insurance Completes its E-services System
General Organization for Social Insurance Governor Mr. Sulaiman bin Sa'ad Al-Humaid announced the completion of GOSI e-services system during a ceremony held in Riyadh Region Office. The ceremony was attended by a number of officials and figures interested in the field of information technology.
On this occasion, GOSI Governor stated that the completion of GOSI e-services system came in line with the government directive to transform to an information society that provides simple, fast and secure online services.
These services contributed to improving and developing GOSI procedures and transactions, in addition to ensuring comfortable, expedient and high quality use as well as providing support to decision makers. These e-services are integrated electronic system for all transactions and procedures needed by GOSI clients. Through this advanced leap, GOSI has fulfilled our government guidance to be transferred to e-government. Such e-services will save the clients' time and effort, where they were required in the past to visit GOSI field offices in order to process their applications. Now, they can perform all transactions from anywhere at any time.
GOSI Governor added that the completion of e-services is part of GOSI comprehensive plan that aims to make procedures easier for clients be they employers, contributors, beneficiaries or treatment bodies. The services can be performed using latest technology methods that ensure the speedy processing and high-quality service delivery with the constant increase of number of companies and workers in the private sector, whereas the number of registered establishments under GOSI scheme has increased five times in the past nine years reaching 222,000 and the number of contributors exceeded 4,450,000. This, in turn, increased the volume of applications received by GOSI.
On the other hand, GOSI Assistant Governor for Insurance Affairs chairman of e-services committee Mr. Fahad bin Abdulrahman Al-Howaimel said that this achievement was made by GOSI Saudi staff whom GOSI has invested in through its training and scholarship program. The e-services consist of six channels accomplished through efforts exerted by GOSI various departments.
These e-services were created to be compatible with all GOSI clients' requirements of all sizes, technical potentials and financial capabilities. All these channels were incorporated under one umbrella "GOSI E-Services", which aim at reducing the administrative and financial costs of all transactions carried out by GOSI clients.
For his part, GOSI Acting Assistant Governor for Information Technology Mr. Ahmed bin Mohammed Al-Omran pointed out that with the increasing number of establishments and contributors registered with the Social Insurance Scheme, GOSI believed it is necessary to adopt effective and proactive measures. In 1998, GOSI prepared a strategic plan for information technology to convert GOSI old systems to open and advanced electronic systems compatible with internet applications. In 2000, GOSI began the implementation of this plan and the result was an integrated automated system capable to process all GOSI transactions and support all internet and e-government applications. The first e-channel "GOSIonline" was first launched in mid 2005, through which the first interactive and integrated transaction was carried out. Later that year, "Direct Link" was also launched in order to meet the needs of major companies to directly perform electronic transactions between their own systems and GOSI system without man-intervention. Due to the importance of providing clients with significant information, SMS Notification Service was introduced in April 2006, where more than 300,000 short messages per year are sent. SADAD Electronic Payment System was also launched, thus more than 360,000 transactions per year are now converted from the traditional method of payment to electronic payments.
Additionally, in order to serve GOSI clients from any location, "GOSIPhone" service was presented to offer various self-services for contributors and employers. Furthermore, GOSI did not only aim to facilitate access to its services, yet it now delivers some services before clients request them through "Proactive Services". All information of interest to GOSI clients is now easily-accessed and well-presented via its website www.gosi.gov.sa.