Published in the Service Management Paper of May 27th, 2015

The Saudi Arabian municipality in this case study is a government-owned institution that has been in existence for 50 years. Its main purpose is to serve citizens within the scope of its region.

Some of the most prominent services rendered to citizens are health care, sanitation, water, electricity, roads and schools, among others. These services are provided to 7 million residents. All of the information related to these 7 million citizens is managed by the municipality’s IT department.

Some of the IT services in the municipality are consumed within the municipality (e.g., enterprise resource planning [ERP]) and some are open to the public (e.g., health care, schools, police services). Providing good service to citizens is the main aim of the municipality, and information plays a crucial role. The information may be related to a citizen’s name, age, gender, education, health, housing, sanitation, complaint, personal likes and dislikes, etc.

A massive amount of information is created by the municipality, and managing this information correctly, consistently and efficiently is a challenge. Moreover, language poses one more dimension as some citizens want information in Arabic only and some want the same information presented in English as well.

The municipality has to pay proper attention to, and focus on, information management. The unavailability of information when absolutely needed, or incorrect information even when it’s available, leads to citizens’ frustration, and the municipality cannot take this risk. Information is managed through a list of services that the municipality provides to internal and external users and customers.

Thus, the municipality chose to adapt and implement an enterprise governance and service management framework to bring discipline, structure and an organized approach to information management. In this case, the municipality looked to both COBIT 5 and the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

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