Higher Education Degrees’ Verification eService (Moahhal)
Ministry of Higher Education, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Dr. Khaled AlAjmi
Background Information
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been significantly developing its higher
education infrastructures. Fueled by more than 50% of its population being under 25
years old, the Kingdom has realized that higher education is a fundamental driver in
developing its economy and diversifying its resources away from the traditional oil-based
ones. Higher education institutes in Saudi Arabia have grown from only seven public
universities at the turn of the millennium to more than 25 public universities and 28
private universities by the end of 2013. The Kingdom has also offered a generous
scholarship program, the King Abdullah Scholarship Program (KASP), for qualified
Saudi citizens to pursue their university education abroad. This expansion of higher
education’s infrastructure resulted in more students, both males and females, graduating
every year and potentially joining the public and private labor markets.
The recruitment process of the thousands of graduating students every year has
been confronted by laborious qualifications and credentials verifications tasks which had
to be done manually resulting in huge time consumption, larger margins of errors, and
increasing backlogs of graduates who are applying for jobs and awaiting job interviews
and screening.
The Ministry of Higher Education has realized the importance to act fast to
facilitate the process of qualifications and credentials verifications. Through the
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implementation of Higher Education Degrees’ Verification eService (Moahhal), the
degree verification process is now instantaneous, accurate, up-to-date, and free. By
availing the Moahhal eService to public and private employers, employers can online
verify the accuracy of academic information a graduating student presents to them.
Goals and Timeframe
The primary goal of Moahhal eservice is to provide an up-to-date, accurate, and
complete verification response to recruitment personnel about any Saudi citizens or
expats who graduated from any Saudi university, either public or private, from KASP, or
from any foreign university if the graduate registered his or her information with MoHE.
Additional goals of this important electronic service include: building an accurate,
updated, and complete database of all graduates and running important business
intelligence analyses on performance indicators. Other Saudi government’s agencies can
find this national database an essential source of information for planning and decision
making and/or for statistical purposes. Perhaps, one of the most affected government’s
agencies that is in constant demand of this national database in the department of labor,
where graduates represent the supply side of the labor market supply-chain model. The
demand here is, of course, the employers, both in the public or private sectors. Other
secondary goals of the implementation of Moahhal eservice include giving the graduates
themselves the chance to enquire on their degrees for validation purposes that would
result in correcting or updating their records at the universities they graduated from.
Figure 1 shows Moahhal’s portal where identified users can verify the graduates’
information via the following parameters: National ID or Passport number for the
graduate and the graduate’s student ID number at the relevant university. The retrieved
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information is displayed in Figure 2 with the following information fields: graduate’s
names, year of graduation, affiliated university, degree, major, minor, and the GPA.
Figure 1. Verification Request Page
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Figure 2. Verified Information
The timeframe of implementing Moahhal eservice spanned a period of 4 months
from inception to deployment and finally to production. The initial phase of deployment
focused on establishing the master data file for all graduates and building the related
eservice’s software. The other phase of this implementation is the ongoing updates, data
cleansing, and customer service. Customers, in the context of Moahhal, are all those who
could benefit from this electronic service. The implementation of the entire service was
started and completed in the second half of the year 2013.
Project’s Added Value and Importance
Moahhal eservice’s added values are enormous and provided to a number of
stakeholders. These stakeholders include the student her or himself, recruitment agencies,
public and private employers, other governments’ agencies, and the Saudi labor market
management. From an efficiency enhancement point of view, degree verification of the
university’s graduate, being Saudi citizen or expat, is provided online and free of cost.
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Public and private recruitment agencies can now subscribe to the service and carry out
the verification transactions almost instantaneously. This efficiency enhancement of
introducing Moahhal eservice saved significant time and effort for both the job applicants
and employers.
Another main added value of Moahhal is the creation of the single point of truth
on the actual size, distribution, and details of all graduates from Saudi universities,
KASP, or graduates from foreign universities endorsed by MoHE. Mining the Moahhal
database is a major information source for decision makers to make from informed
strategic plans of managing the higher educational process in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi
labor market behavior. Ministry of Planning and Economy, for example, needs to have
detailed analyses on graduates’ records and files for many purposes, among which are the
very purpose of job creations in areas that most fit Saudi universities’ outputs and KASP.
Challenges
The design and implementation of Moahhal verification electronic service was not
trivial. Among the many challenges is the design of the proper data model and taxonomy
that is sustainable. The design of data entries, attributes, relationships, and constrains
required extended number of workshops and brainstorming sessions. The challenge was
more focused in the process of creating a common standard that can be accepted and
adopted by the many affiliated universities while being sustainable.
The implementation of Moahhal was confronted by a rather big challenge that
could affect the credibility of the verification results it provides. The challenge here was
how to make sure that the data is up-to-date at the time of the verification request. A
recruitment agency would largely depend on the verification output Moahhal provides. If
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the provided verification results don’t match with what the graduate or the job applicant
says, a reaction of suspicion would emerge leading to complications in the job placement
process and possibly on the credibility of the job seeker her or himself. Moahhal’s team
had to make sure that verified information has a life cycle that is in line with the
universities’ graduation schedules. Moahhal labels the verification results with the date
the data was last refreshed from the source university.
How to maintain graduates’ data confidentiality is a constant challenge Moahhal
eservice is confronted with. The access to Moahhal verification eservice is not offered for
the public without a registration request. Any user can request to register for this process
but only authenticated ones will be granted the access. User’s registration data is online
cross-checked with other national databases such as with the National Information Center
and Ministry of Commerce. Unconfirmed user’s data results in a failed registration
process and with a notification for the user to contact Moahhal support team for further
support.
Relevance of the Project to the Respective Action Line
Moahhal verification eservice is strongly relevant to the C3 – Access to
Information and Knowledge Action Line. The Ministry of Higher Education encourages
the promotion and usage of information online via the Moahhal eservice. Moahhal
established legislation on how users can have an access to the degree verification
information. Additionally, Moahhal’s database is essential for the promotion of
conducting multipurpose national researches on labor market supply chain model,
educational gaps fulfillments geographically, field-wise, and gender-wise. The Ministry
of Planning and Economy of Saudi Arabia benefits from using Moahhal in supporting the
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creation, development, and sustainability of jobs. It also benefits in the evaluation of
universities’ outputs where deficiencies and areas of improvements can be made from a
national-wide holistic view. Moahhal’s services are also free and available to as many
requestors as needed. Information secrecy and confidentiality are properly managed in
every step of Moahhal’s information life cycle.
Conclusion
The Ministry of Higher Education has realized the importance to act fast to
facilitate a nation-wide process of qualifications and credentials verifications that is fully
automated and electronic. Through the implementation of Higher Education Degrees’
Verification eService (Moahhal), the verification process is now instantaneous, accurate,
and free. Moahhal eService is now available to public and private employers, employers
can online verify the accuracy of academic information a graduating student presents to
them.
Moahhal eservice’s primary goal is to make available up-to-date, accurate, and
complete verification response to recruitment personnel and employers about any Saudi
citizen or expat who has obtained a university degree from any Saudi university, either
public or private, from KASP, or from any foreign university if the graduate registered
his or her information with MoHE. Moahhal also targets building an accurate and
updated complete database of all graduates and run important business intelligence
analysis on performance indicators. Other Saudi government’s agencies would
substantially benefit from these databases and performance indicators an essential source
of information for planning and decision making or for statistical purposes.
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One of the most affected government’s agency that is in constant demand of this
national database in the department of labor, when graduates represent the supply side of
the labor market supply-chain. The demand here is, of course, the employers, both the
public or private sectors. Other secondary goals of the implementation of Moahhal
eservice is to give the graduates themselves the chance to enquire on their degrees for
validation purposes that would result in correcting or updating their records at the
universities they graduated from.
Moahhal eservice is already implemented in production environments and readily
available for these who can benefit from its information. Being a free eservices makes it
more economically appealing for large job placement offices and big employers. While
Moahhal is a free eservice, students’ information is carefully kept confidential and an
integrated registration process is essential for any potential user to benefit from Moahhal.
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