GAC's ePMO Service Catalog
Verion 1-March 2021
Introduction:
The enterprise Project Management Office (ePMO) at Qatar Customs is the custodian of project management process responsible to perform certain roles and functions in support of the strategic vision of the organization. The overall function of the ePMO can further be illustrated through a set of services that are organized under a Service Catalog. It is mainly the listing of all services that is intended to enable Qatar Custom community to identify and utilize these value add services. The ePMO Service Catalog will enhance mutual understanding between the ePMO and other business units and it will also provide details of the role and value of ePMO unit in the organization. This Service Catalog will outline service descriptions in business terms, as such, the ePMO can be viewed as a service provider for project management services to GAC internal business units. Thus, the Service Catalog will further enable the ePMO to offer streamlined and directed service provision, enhanced value realization, and help Qatar Custom achieve its strategic goals in alignment with stated government objectives.
• Service Offerings:
In order to fully utilize the full range of expertise and know-how the ePMO has organized the Service Catalog in to three different areas of focus for better resource alignment, project risk management and continues improvement of the services.
1- ePMO Governance and Advisory
ePMO has established the project management governance discipline to facilitate various governance mechanisms and to provide analysis and key data points in advance for decision making, and to support timely communication among stakeholders. The ePMO processes facilitate control and governance at different stages of a project using different templates / forms. A multi-tiered approach is designed to help project managers to move swiftly thru various stages of project approvals and project life cycle execution.
1.1. Portfolio Management
PMO oversees Portfolios so Management has the required information for project prioritization/ current demands, strategic alignment and resource capacity to make decisions. The Portfolio level project management offers Management flexibility to control the direction and pace of the activities based on Realtime data and details of the portfolio.
1.2. Business Case Validation
In order to better control the flow of the project demands, ePMO processes capture details of project demands in a structured manner to ensure completeness & integrity of project data. These requests are further analyzed for compliance to meet key requirements before projects are approved.
1.3. Resource Management
Project resources are critical members of GAC community and ePMO is at most concerned that these resources are efficiently and effectively allocated and utilized. A comprehensive list of Project Managers is maintained by ePMo to provide management with details of available resources across different business units. The project manager profile will house critical data about staff capabilities and areas of focus.
1.4. Project Communication Management and Meetings Support
The ePMO is uniquely positioned to engage with various business entities to discuss common concerns, issues and lessons learned. To further enhance communication among GAC community ePMO will raise concerns, engage or initiate in escalations and seek common ground among our business units. The overall objective of ePMO is to remove communication obstacles, prevent duplicate works and ultimately help/accelerate overall achievements at GAC.
1.5. Financial Management
Project Cost is a critical piece of information for Management to evaluate the cost benefit of a proposed activity/project. Financial evaluations are performed based on trusted data to document required budgets, secure funds per Finance Department allocations and finally set the guidelines to minimize budget overruns. Furthermore, ePMO will help and support management to track project benefits in post deployment stage.
2- Direct Project Management Support
Established ePMO processes and governance policies enable the GAC community to utilize a standard approach with determined steps to manage project life cycle. Specific templates are created to guide Project Managers thru various stages of the process. These templates also help with communication among several stakeholders, Management, and vendors, for example, status report, risk and issue reports, and change request reports.
2.1. Planning for a Project
A key driver for successful project management is the initial time spent on planning for execution of a project that encompasses all aspects of a project life cycle. To help with this critical effort ePMO has developed the tools / templates to guide the Project Management team in organizing and documenting the details of a project execution roadmap. A key document is the project charter which captures all essential components of a project execution plan to ensure successful delivery. For larger engagements, ePMO will support Project Management community in their efforts to navigate thru complexities of procurement process.
2.2. Project Quality Management
In order to save guard against future project audit issues, ePMO proactively maintains the quality and integrity of project artifacts in alignment with stated goals of the project. During life cycle of a project as tasks and millstones are completed ePMO will further verify project progress based on evidence provided by the Project Management team. The collected documents are housed and archived in corresponding folders as GAC asset/intellectual property.
2.3. Change Management and Change Control
Changes are imminent thru life cycle of the projects. The ePMO process has developed a special tool to document all types of change requests and their anticipated impact on scope, costs, schedule, and etc. This enables the project management team to communicate with relevant parties based on verifiable project data and have a better understanding of the root cause of the issues.
2.4. Risk Management and Risk Control
At the early stages of project planning and during project execution extra attention is given to potential risks and issues by maintaining a dynamic list to document all areas of concern. This list is shared with relevant parties to provide a deeper analysis of the risk/issues by pinpointing the impact area (resource, time, financial) and severity of the impact (critical, high, medium, low). Overall, ePMO will provide support and guidance for Project Managers to stay ahead of the issues and proactively manage all dependencies of a project.
3- Knowledgebase for Continuous Improvement
The establishment ePMO and its processes have enabled GAC community to direct all project activities thru ePMO. During a project life cycle a slew of artifacts (project data, assets and documents) are accumulated. This provides GAC with a wealth of information and intelligence for further analysis to create lessons learned, repeatable processes, and a unique opportunity to improve overall GAC project delivery process.
3.1. Knowledge Management
By centralizing all project activity via a trusted source with standard streamlined processes GAC Management and Project Management community will heavy rely on ePMO for guidance, direction and a roadmap for project execution. The ePMO utilizes current and past project data to develop knowledge base best practices for project execution and it has paced a high priority on learning from past mistakes.
Heavy focus on project data collection, verification and categorization of this data in separate folders enables the Project Management community to access relevant data on demand in a distributed environment via Enterprise Project Management (EPM) tool.
Example of a Basic PMO Directory Structure:
• Project initiation
• Project plan
• Reporting ( progress reports..etc)
• Change request
• Risk/issue log
• Project closure
• Projects other related documents . etc
3.2. Project Manager Mentoring
Project Managers are actively mentored, and their progress is document via a score card. Based on data collected in score cards, Project Managers are offered guidance, courses, workshops and seminars to improve their skills and add new capabilities. Overall ePMO objective is to increase efficiencies and effectiveness of Project Managers with positive feedback and one on one engagements.
3.3. Data Analytics and Reporting
A very concerted and conscience effort is underway for ePMO to be a data driven organization on the principle of collect data, analyze and present the findings. The foundation of this value-add discipline is the integrity of verifiable project data collected by ePMO during the life cycle of the project execution. State of the art dashboards are utilized to summarize project performance based on delivery timelines, financial exposure, staffing engagement and compliance with GAC stated strategy. Ultimately, data analytics are used to help all relevant parties and Senior Management with their decision before project initiation, during project execution and post implementation of a project. The embedded dynamism of reporting capabilities of (EPM) will further enable Management to prioritize and shift resources at a Portfolio level to enhance productivity.
3.4. Continuous Improvement
It is understood that implementing a project management culture will require constant reinforcement of the policies, Project Management capacity building, promote team work and to create a trusted relationship among all business units.
Extensive use of project data analysis will facilitate a very transparent environment to review all positives and negatives of a project life cycle. The findings are further categorized as actionable items in the form of formal feedback, positive and congratulatory encouragement letters, and gaps are identified for course corrections.
Change Management discipline is widely used to help ePMO raise awareness about project management principles for wider rate of adaptation among business communities of GAC. Different programs are designed to address identified concerns and issues. The content of these initiatives is developed by ePMO and further shared with wider project management community for their participation. At most attention is given to simplify complex concepts, processes and business terminologies during training sessions or seminars.
It is worth to mention that ePMO's tool EPM will play a significant role in promoting the Project Management processes across the organization. The system is designed to bring the structure of project management at a desktop level to directly engage Project Management team as well as Senior Management.
Strategic Projects
GAC is working on several projects that are very important and directly linked to the realization of its strategic plan, which in turn will contribute to the realization of Qatar's Vision 2030, known as (Strategic projects) These projects are aimed at developing the General Authority of customs in its various sectors, the customs sector and the support services sector, and also serve to achieve the main result of the strategic plan of the Authority 2018 - 2022 "A competitive customs authority committed to protect the society’s security and provide outstanding services to clients and partners," which includes three intermediate results, each project follows by a specific intermediate result and plays an important role in achieving it, which shown as follows:
The first intermediate result: "A customs authority that has an efficient system to combat customs smuggling and commercial fraud offences and effectively contributes to combat the money-laundering and the financing of terrorism and to the protection of the security and safety of society."
1- The project of developing the customs intelligence system
It includes the establishment of the national network to exchange the information with the security entities to combat the customs offences (customs shield), including combating electronic customs crimes (establishing a system for targeting postal parcels (express shipping) and suspicious persons in cooperation with the concerned authorities in the country), raising the efficiency of the mobile system, and studying the accession to global programmes to raise the authority’s ability to track dangerous goods, such as the Container Control Program (CCP) and the Cargo Targeting Program (CTS) in cooperation with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Customs Organization (WCO), the SITA program for travellers, the CHAMP program for shipments, and (Strategic Trade Control Enforcement (STCE)) of the World Customs Organization (Global Shield) in relation to chemical and biological weapons.
Project status: under Implementation
2- The Project of developing anti-smuggling operations and mechanisms
The project includes providing ion-scan sniffer detectors for drugs, explosives and weapons in the ports and forming Special Operations team, as well as strengthening the capabilities of the authority’s staff to detect dual-use items and access into what is known as "green customs." and implementing awareness-raising campaigns on the risks of smuggling and commercial fraud to the national economy and security and community in Qatar, such as pharmaceutical crimes, Pharmaceutical offences requiring the preparation of training material about it and the role of customs in combating them, as well as community participation in the reporting contraband and customs smuggling offences through an initiative that could be called (kafeh).
Project status: under Implementation.
3- the Project of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of procedures of combating money-laundering and the financing of terrorism
It is a project to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of mechanisms and procedures of combating money-laundering and the financing of terrorism to reduce money-laundering and terrorist financing crimes by controlling the physical transfer of funds and all negotiable instruments across borders.
Project status: under Implementation.
Second intermediate result: "A customs authority with a well-developed system that ensures the flow of goods and trade facilitation"
4- Advance clearance project
It includes studying the transition to "pre-clearance" within the global concept, fully and at all ports to pre-check documents and before the arrival of the goods, engaging the registration authority (if possible), as well as stop the reliance on paper data, developing the work with selective criteria to expand granting the green lane and strengthening post-audit procedures.
Project status: under Implementation.
5- the project of developing and modernizing the technical infrastructure for monitoring and follow-up
Upgrading the X-Ray scanners and raising the capabilities of the workers on using these x-rays by training them on a simulation system, a system that provides a test environment and examples of baggage pictures in the X-ray machines to help the inspector analysing it and extract danger points. In addition to raising the efficiency of the television monitoring system and supporting devices.
Project status: under Implementation
6- Procedures re-engineering and development of the central portal Alnadeeb (Platform development)
Develop and add new capabilities to Alnadeeb system across various functional areas in the General Authority of Customs through the development and re-engineering of customs procedures in a way that enables individuals, companies, government departments and other institutions alike to request customs services in a better, faster and safer manner, and it will also enable the authority to obtain more developed digital environment.
Project status: Completed.
7- Customs Risk Management:
The project includes the development of a comprehensive and advanced framework for risk management based on customs information and aims to develop a rapid and effective response to risks using an organized, coherent and integrated risk management process based on intelligence in order to better allocate human resources, increase revenues, improve customs compliance with laws and regulations, reduce release time and thus Reducing transaction costs, improving cooperation between customs and the private sector, improving cooperation with other government agencies, the community and other relevant organizations such as registration agencies, as well as contributing to the prevention and detection of crimes and customs violations.
Project status: under Implementation.
8. The Authorized Economic Operator Project:
Launching the approved economic operator program, expanding the base of beneficiaries, and signing mutual recognition agreements with similar programmes.
Project status: under Implementation.
The third intermediate result: “A customs authority with effective and efficient institutional capabilities to provide outstanding customs services.”
9. the project of launching a new corporate identity for the Authority
Appearing in a new look in line with the latest developments through (logo) that reflects the mission, values and objectives and contributes to translating our pioneering vision in providing distinguished customs services to all customers to achieve sustainable development.
Project status: under Implementation.
10- Project to establish a customer service centre at customs ports
The aim of the project is to provide top-quality customs services to clients through the establishment and operation of customer service offices at customs ports (Air Cargo Department and private Airports/Maritime Customs Department - Hamad Port) to ensure easier procedures and higher levels of client satisfaction.
Project status: Done.
11- Project to develop an effective governing system in the Authority
The aim of the project is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of operations management and the optimal use and utilization of available resources in areas that achieve the required returns. It also aims at building a culture of staff participation and clients in policy-making, decision-making, evaluation of operations and services, adherence to laws, and building a culture of institutional loyalty and responsibility towards strategic objectives, responding to the requirements and needs of clients or customers with high quality and speed to ensure their satisfaction, as well as a culture of accountability and transparency and establishing foundations for determining responsibility for achievement and results.
Project status: under Implementation .
12-Project for the development and adoption of occupational security, safety and health standards in the Authority
includes developing and adopting the plans for dealing with various crises and emergencies and post-recovery procedures.
Project status: under implementation.
13-The Project of completing electronic documentation work and building a document management system
It includes archiving customs data in land transport, the development of an archive for completed data archiving in the Air Cargo Customs Department and private airports, improving the archive system and measuring the customer satisfaction periodically.
Project status: under implementation.
14- Digital Customs (Smart) Project
The project implements improvements from the output of the strategic project (re-engineering customs procedures) through two directions: Develop processes and procedures within the system, and facilitate services providing to users including activation of the system on different channels such as mobile phones and other devices.
Project status: under implementation.
15- Project (Quality Portal) Institutional Architecture 2
The project involves the dissemination of a quality culture within the Authority.it is an updating of the first phase of the institutional architecture project of GAC which started on 2015, The objectives of the second phase of the project have been set to support the GAC’s vision for development by harmonizing the GAC’s institutional structure with customs best practices, selecting the best mechanisms for improving performance and work procedures continuously, guiding development to meet the challenges of the current status of the Authority, and raising the level of institutional performance.
Project status: under implementation.
Project management office initiatives:
In the Project Management Office, we have always sought to develop the various areas related to work and projects and to achieve the goals and aspirations of the Authority by supporting all departments in many ways in the implementation of different projects, as well as by encouraging innovation and initiative and in order to ensure continuity of development and progress in the workflow, the Project Management Office has since its inception and continues to implement several initiatives aimed at developing the various work fields in the GAC in order to achieve its vision and strategy of excellence by providing space and encouraging all staff to participate in improving the work environment by sharing their proposals, and providing a rich database of useful information to all staff from different sectors and career paths. The initiatives implemented by the Project Management Office are the following:
1- Initiative in a Box:
collecting ideas and development initiatives by all employees in the authority, and then studying them through specialized teams according to the ideas and initiatives to achieve valuable results that eventually form development projects, which are planned according to the needs and objectives of the authority, by filling the idea in a form in which the goal and importance of the initiative are determined, and then sent to the Project Management Office mail. The employees do not need any internal approvals to share ideas, as the goal is to encourage all employees of all levels to participate in this initiative without restrictions or specific conditions.
2- Project Management Initiative in Brief:
publishing content in the field of project management with the aim of achieving the Authority's strategic goals and future aspirations, where short messages are prepared in which certain topics are identified and concepts and terms in the field of project management are defined, for example, the project life cycle, types of projects and other topics. Adding terms and concepts in the English language, as well as videos dealing with project management are published. Through this initiative, the Project Management Office hopes to raise awareness of the importance of project management science in all fields and sectors in the General Authority of Customs and that the dissemination of this knowledge will contribute to the development of work in all its forms.
3- Project Management Library Initiative:
the Project Management Office aims through this initiative to share knowledge and science not only in the field of project management science, but also in the field of developing various individual skills and other areas related to project management, where sources are sought, whether books, research, or materials for training courses, and then it becomes available to all employees in the General Authority of Customs with continuous updating, and this initiative is very important as science, skills and knowledge are shared through this initiative with various departments and sectors, which in turn contributes to enhancing the employees knowledge.
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