IS projects implementation in Kuwait: current state and challenges

The State of Kuwait has recently seen widespread growth in the past three decades, which also includes the IT sector. Due to government reforms to bring the private sector in economic growth, the demand of IT specialist, particularly in the education industry has been rapidly increasing (Khalfan, 2004). As the form of organisational governance in Kuwait tends to be more individualistic and primarily controlled by a highly- individualistic, manager-focussed hierarchy, the CSF-based approach can be deemed more suitable (Al-Malkawi, Pillai, and Bhatti, 2014). Yet, with an increasing integration of IT, the use of IS in Kuwaiti medium-to-large organisations is increasing.

A major challenge is the integration of user-sensitive-information in server-based systems where the access-control policies are generally flexible to allow access to multiple subjects (El-Bahey and Zeid, 2013). The current data protection law currently does not comprehensively cover the rights and privacies of users whose information is stored on enterprise web-servers. A Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) was indeed passed in 2013. However, its wider implementation still remains at-large (PDPA, 2013). A number of data protection approaches have been proposed in the literature by Al- Fedaghi, Al-Saqabi, and Thalheim, (2008); Alatiqi et al. (1996) and Buabbas and Al- Shawaf, (2011), that report a substantial lack of IS integration particularly in the education, research and medical sectors. According to Abdulgafer, Marimuthu and Habib, (2010) and Saleem, Marimuthu, and Habib, (2012), despite a significant improvement in Enterprise IS (EIS), the majority of implemented systems utilise expensive IT infrastructure that is underutilised and suffer from high power and maintenance costs. Apparently, the consultants hired to implement EIS do not focus on these issues and the majority generally do not stay as permanent employees due to a

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heavily expatriate-oriented Kuwaiti economy. In order to integrated Kuwaiti graduates in the IS/IT sector, the government of Kuwait has recently passed landmark bills to integrate women in national governance. However, the role of women in IT/IS still remains largely under-represented. This is despite the fact that the percentage of female graduates in computing have reached around 40 – 50% (El-Bahey and Zeid, 2013).

Despite the above-mentioned substantial improvements, implementation of EIS in Kuwait has largely been limited to oil (Harrison and Safar, 2004), pharmaceutical and medical (Buabbas and Al-hawaf, 2011), finance (Mostafa, 2010) and industrial sectors (Al-Salman, 2008). An earlier study does include an overview into the integration of modern curriculum by El-Sayed Noor (1984). However, the proposed methodology primarily focuses on workflow management and conceptual database design architectures and lack in terms of any concrete, large-scale information systems. Recently, a trend of IT/IS outsourcing has also changed the situation particularly in terms of loss-of-control and hidden-costs (Khalfan, 2004). Due to low costs of using IT/IS infrastructure from countries such as India and China, an increasing number of organisations are now reported to outsource their IS integration needs. The trend is however largely prevalent in private organisations whereas larger multinational firms are reported to have the majority of their information systems sourced locally (Abdul- Gader, 1997).

AlAdwani (2002a) presented a more empirical view of IS project performance research which divided performance into technical and “social interactionist” view. The former comprised of issues related to technology, tasks, and project-specific details whereas the latter focus more on the organisation itself, the people and the underlying processes involved. Based on this notion, IS research focussing particularly on the developing countries can be categorised into technical and management domains with each having its own set of CSFs. The research model presented is further elaborated in Figure 5.1.

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Figure 5.1: An IS project performance evaluation model by AlAdwani (2002a)

The integrated model presented in this research was further proposed via an empirical validation based on data from 84 US organisations (AlAdwani 2002c). The validation focussed on a number of critical goals which are also stated as CSFs in the majority of future research articles discussed later-on. These so-called “critical goals” included the quality of work produced, effectiveness of interaction with non-team members and adherence to schedule, budget and operations.

The above-mentioned model was further extended for the particular case of the State of Kuwait and examined the mediating effects of project planning on three main uncertainty variables of size, diversity and technical complexity of projects (AlAdwani 2002b). The model was validated using a field survey of 42 IT project leaders operating within the state of Kuwait. The evolved research model is thus shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 5.2 Research model given by AlAdwani (2002b) applicable to the case of the developing countries

The model thus shown in Figure 5.2 was evaluated in the context of the State of Kuwait. The outcome of work by AlAdwani (2002b) clearly made a case of CSF-based IS project management in tKuwaiti organisations as it reduced uncertainty and improved the understanding of IT project context. This approach also facilitated the adoption of task-oriented strategies to improve project control and thereby increase productivity.

The case study of Kuwait University forms a basis of the case presented by AlAdwani (2002 (a), (b) and (c)) based on the fact that ERP systems are increasingly and rapidly been integrated into Kuwaiti higher-education institutions. As the overall approach draws its description from the personnel driving and managing organisations, adopting the strategy will provide more control over the underlying academic process. These factors can then be drafted into a set of standards and best practices which can then be improved and tuned on the basis of experience and lessons learned. For instance, student productivity outcome based on increased investment in lab and classroom resources can be suggested by the executive level of the University. This can form part of a CSF best practice if it successfully meets the intended “student performance improvement” objective of the process.

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