Istiqdam.sa — A Centralised Platform for Government Labor Services

Improving the ease of doing business is a key goal set by Vision 2030 — the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s blueprint for fulfilling the country’s potential in all major spheres. It’s hard to imagine achieving this goal without giving businesses advanced digital tools.

The client, Takamol Holding, asked P2H to develop a comprehensive platform that would automate the services of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD) related to private business, employee management (for both Saudis and expatriates), and entrepreneurship.

In response, P2H worked with Takamol to design and develop Istiqdam, a platform which is revolutionizing business services in the KSA by eliminating paper-based government services and, ultimately, making it easier to do business in the Kingdom.

A well-thought-out project strategy

The client was already pleased with the results of another P2H project which digitized access to the KSA’S labor-related public services. They asked us to use the same approach for MVP development, namely:

• Preparing an impressive MVP to get the project roadmap approved by the Ministry;
• Building a strong and scalable foundation for the development of new services based on the solid architecture of the labor sector services platform.

In less than two months, we developed an MVP that allowed our client to validate the Istiqdam platform concept and get approval for its development roadmap.

Rapid development

As soon as the MVP was approved, the P2H team proceeded with core platform development. We ensured a smooth user experience and easy access through:

• Effective UI/UX design. We managed to speed up bureaucratic business operations with meaningful user-based design. P2H’s design team carried out all UI/UX work, from concept to implementation.
• An easy login and registration process. We developed a single sign-on (SSO) solution to provide users with a simple, secure way to sign in to all the platform’s services.
• An easy-to-use dashboard. After login, the system directs the user to the platform’s dashboard. This information about the beneficiary’s company — number of employees, licenses, work permits, visas, payments, contact information, and more.
• A comprehensive workspace. A workspace allows users with more than one registered company to manage procedures. They can track and manage company data and paperwork, such as certificates, licenses, and work permits for each of their companies. The workspace also has features for managing company employees.

After implementing core functionality, P2H extended the platform by adding new services related to private business development in the KSA, as well as recruitment and entrepreneurship.

A comprehensive range of platform services

The platform offers the following services:

An iterative development process

Given the specifics of the government niche and the platform’s main goal — to simplify access to government services for business — communicating each project development stage and ensuring we’re meeting the requirements of the Ministry has been critical to project success.

We also work closely with Takamol’s operations team to stay updated on end-user feedback, so we can quickly adjust the platform to meet business needs.

A more efficient alternative to already digitized services

A paper-based bureaucratic process isn’t the only stumbling block to the mass digitization of state services. Some services in the KSA have already shifted to the digital space, but their implementation needs improvement. For this reason, together with Takamol, we stayed true to Agile principles and gathered real user feedback. This lets us streamline already digitized services and attract even more users to a unified, personalized, and reliable platform.

Microservice architecture

The client asked us to use the best advanced technologies for the platform. Given the need to add and manage dozens of self-contained, instantly deployable business services, we decided to build the system using a microservice architecture.

As microservices constantly communicate with each other to gather data and send it to the client, we ensured communication through the gRPC framework. This prevented latency issues and allowed fast inter-service interactions. We chose RabbitMQ message broker to implement message queuing.

Test data generation

A vital step before platform release was verifying systems reliability, which was challenging as we had no genuine data to work with. Recreating different types of responses according to the client’s specifications on the MockServer took time, but it was the only solution given the strict personal data protection laws in the KSA. Despite a lack of access to platform logs and production, we managed to build a reliable testing system and processes.

Close interaction with the client

We’ve developed a close and efficient working relationship with Takamol through collaboration on this and other public-sector projects. A proactive approach helps us bypass lengthy decision-making, while our familiarity with advanced technologies lets us suggest the best ways to reach the client’s business goals.

Project managers and business analysts from the P2H team work hard to help Takamol’s project owners adapt development roadmaps to ever-changing government requirements. Moreover, our team is always ready to assist client POs with urgent issues and give time to backlog refinement with the development team.

P2H cooperates with Takamol at different management levels: C-level, VP level, and project management teams. We also visit the client’s on-site team to strengthen our cooperation and establish bonds at new business levels.

Customer journey tracking

P2H team-led initiative was to grant Takamol an opportunity to trace user activity on the platform. The number of inquiries to issue certificates, renew licenses, applications for change of occupation, and other platform-specific business intelligence data is all tracked and logged. Moreover, for better observability, we suggest using an open-source Grafana tool. Upon clients’ request, we can provide a visual report for any process initiated for each microservice, showing corresponding dependencies.

This project is ongoing. Existing services are being fine-tuned to end-user needs based on feedback. The platform will be enlarged and further developed in line with the KSA’s Vision 2030 framework. Together with Takamol, we plan to add more integration and synchronization with other country platforms to give citizens and expats even greater access to centralized digital services.