ABU DHABI, 1st February, 2022 (WAM) — After four years of planning, analysis, design and implementation, the General Pension and Social Security Authority (GPSSA) has executed a Digital Transformation programme applying Enterprise Architecture (EA) practices to qualify for the finals at the ICMG Global Awards, from 8th to 11th February, 2022, in New York, USA.
What started as an ambitious goal to become a world-class innovative customer-centric pension service provider has now turned into global recognition and serves as a role model for other federal, government and private organisations worldwide for the GPSSA.
The GPSSA’s project submission resulted in it reaching the Global Round as a finalist in the ten award categories for its pragmatic EA to drive a holistic Pension Industry Modernisation and Digital Transformation. It included Customer Oriented Business Models; Customer Centricity and Excellence; Digital Strategy to Execution; Best Digital Architecture in Federal/State Government; Digital Transformation; Digital Architecture; Digital Architecture Governance; Architecture Methodology; Enterprise Architecture and Cloud Technologies and Solutions.
The GPSSA has undergone five rigorous evaluation rounds, competing with 219 submissions from 27 countries representing different industries such as telecommunications, manufacturing, automobiles, oil and energy, and more. In addition, there were 16 submissions from the UAE edition of the EA programme out of which the GPSSA was the only UAE-based federal authority qualifying for the global winners.
The finals constitute 40 percent of the overall evaluation results for the GPSSA, with the rest of the 60 percent taken from the previous rounds already completed.
Speaking about the achievement, Mohamed Saif Al Hameli, Director-General (DG) at the GPSSA said, "GPSSA has undergone a holistic digital transformation that delivered an entirely new way of engaging with customers who are at the forefront of our plans. Technology is an enabler of change. For that change to happen successfully, we needed to implement an entirely new digital transformation road map that focused on our customers' lifespan from birth till death. What is unique about our pension scheme is that it caters to an insured’s family members too, which is why we had to think outside of the box and cater to all types of individuals and moments in their life.
When the GPSSA was interested in embarking on the most suitable digital services for its customers, it had to undergo a rigorous international benchmarking exercise by looking into 65 different platforms worldwide, which is when they decided to design their own platform using a United Kingdom product as a core pension engine but tailor-made it to suit its customers and architecture.
The GPSSA now caters to 127,000 insured, pensioners and beneficiaries across 7,000 public and private entities in the UAE. "Our stakeholders are the reason why we have reshaped our digital services and we could not have done it without engaging with competent authorities, gathering information on the lives of our customers and learning more about our customer experience. We then revamped our digital platform and upgraded our entire infrastructure, data, applications and channels, all in alignment with our EA digital strategy," explained Al Hameli. "When GPSSA was first established in 1999, pensioners and insured individuals had no information on how much they or their companies were meant to contribute on monthly basis. Now, customers have transparent information on monthly contributions through a dashboard, alongside SMS and email alerts with details. GPSSA meanwhile acts as a custodian, pinpointing any errors in contributions or payments and soon artificial intelligence and cognitive services will be introduced to anticipate changes or alternations in pension percentages owed by an employer to the employee."
Krish Ayyar, Director at Architecture Rating and Awards Programme, ICMG Australia, said, "The GPSSA project submission, Pragmatic EA to drive a holistic Pension Industry Modernisation and Digital Transformation, has been named a finalist in ten award categories, which is exciting and encouraging. We hope the GPSSA project will serve as a model for other governments and private organisations around the world."
During the 2021 edition of the Architecture Rating and Awards programme, projects and initiatives were evaluated for over 300 parameters, which are organised around 18 groups including Project Goals and Strategy Models; Information Models; Network Models; System Models; Quality of Service Models and Transformation (Relationships) across the models; Architecture Value (Technology roadmap, change management, stakeholders etc); Architecture Development Approach and Architecture Governance. Individual prizes will also be given to an entity’s best DT&EA, CEO, COO and CIO.
Additionally, the GPSSA earned 6th place at the competitive 2021 Forrester & InfoWorld Enterprise Architecture Global Awards for their impactful EA strategic outlook, innovative and concrete business outcomes and agile approach to technology implementation.