Identifying the Three Tools of Governance

A public information tool is very useful for providing awareness about a current problem and for giving accurate information on an issue about which the public needs to be informed. Policy-makers use public information as a policy tool to increase public awareness and to educate people about a policy issue and therefore increase the outcomes of the policy. ^{Reference Weiss and Salamon8} The simple rationale behind this tool is that people are rational and are responsive to relevant information. The information may be about COVID-19, such as providing detailed information about the disease and its initial symptoms for early recognition as well as what happens if a person contracts COVID-19. For example, since COVID-19 can be transmitted through physical contact, it is very important for individuals to keep clean by washing hands and using sanitizer. The public information tool can be utilized to achieve awareness of this in the public.

On March 19, 2020, Saudi Arabia’s government noted that the full cooperation of the people is necessary for the success of the government’s efforts to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. Moreover, the MOH said that Saudi Arabia continues to take all possible preventive measures to combat the new coronavirus. However, in order to prevent the spread of the disease, public awareness and the dissemination of information about the disease need to be focused. Therefore, to draw the public’s attention to the danger of COVID-19, the public information tool was utilized to address the problem in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s MOH asked all citizens and residents to stay at home as much as possible and maintain social distance. The MOH reiterated the importance of wearing face masks and keeping a safe distance as based on a risk-based approach recommended by the WHO. The Saudi Government made it mandatory to wear masks in all public and retail venues, and those who failed to comply were subject to a fine of 10 000 Saudi riyals. ⁹

The Saudi Government designed an information campaign to inform citizens and residents about how to protect themselves against infection. This information was distributed using social media, TV advertisements, mobile applications, flyers, radio announcements, and public agencies’ websites. Preventive measures in workplaces, communities, houses, mosques, restaurants, and public transportation were also implemented, along with guidelines on how to look after mental and social health.

The MOH reiterated the importance of mass screening programs based on a risk-based approach recommended by the WHO. As the Saudi Government applied this strategy, the MOH began testing all citizens and residents with suspected infections, tracing their close contacts and isolating people with a confirmed infection as well as supporting them in isolation. As testing capacity in Saudi Arabia expanded, the MOH started to pilot areas with community-wide testing. Between early April and the end of June 2020, over 1.5 million polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests were conducted. Individual sectors were performing nearly 1000 tests a day, with approximately 95 000 tests being performed daily in total across the country. According to the MOH, Saudi Arabia was one of the first countries in the world to secure laboratory testing for the diagnosis of the novel coronavirus. ¹⁰ In the first phase of expanded testing, the rate of spread of the novel coronavirus inside homes or when authorities visited residences in Saudi Arabia was evaluated. The second phase was conducted on May 4, 2020, and involved citizens and residents who had scheduled COVID-19 tests through the application Mawid. ¹¹ This application was provided by the MOH to enable patients to make, reschedule, or cancel their appointments. The third phase was conducted through several outlets, including centers that were set up in several cities to test people inside their cars and testing in primary health care centers. Citizens and residents were also able to make appointments to collect their own test samples through an online application (Table 1).

Table 1.

Overview of approaches to easing COVID-19 restrictions in Saudi Arabia (March 2020–July 2021)

On March 23, 2020, the Saudi Government ordered a curfew from 7:00 pm until 6:00 am for a period of 21 days to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the Kingdom. On April 6, Saudi Arabia implemented a 24-hour curfew in most of the country, enforced the lockdown and isolation of several suburbs and districts in major cities, and started mass and extensive testing in the community. ¹² The Ministry of Interior called on all citizens and residents to use express delivery services through smart device applications and to have food, necessary medicine, and other excluded goods and services delivered to their homes.

In the case of COVID-19, the public information tool can be utilized to achieve awareness in the public. Saudi Arabia decided to use technological solutions to track the spread of COVID-19. The Saudi Government launched the Tawakkalna application to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. The Saudi Press Agency stated, “The Tawakkalna application is a major participant in the Kingdom’s success in managing the coronavirus crisis and limiting its spread, which makes downloading and activating it an urgent necessity.” ¹³ The public information tool is easy to apply for and be accepted. It is very important to consider that new technologies, especially the application of Tawakkalna, will make credit programs easier to manage.

Information is a tool for eliciting a desired policy outcome. Using information as a tool is based on the assumption that people respond to information. From the government’s perspective, the government wants to perform its function as a public health provider and needs to obtain information about infected people so it can both provide health services and prevent the spread of the disease. Public information can also be explained by the open system theory, where the government as the policy center in the system takes the required steps to produce better outputs. In this system, the undesired outputs are the infected people. Since the citizens are the important part of this system, the government provides information to the citizens to prevent them from being infected. After this intervention, it is expected that the number of infected people will be reduced.

Social regulations tools are rules issued by government agencies to restrict individual or organizational behaviors that directly threaten public health, social well-being, and public safety. ^{Reference Salamon and Salamon14,Reference Bassett, Giannozzi, Pop and Ringold15} If the number of COVID-19 cases in Saudi Arabia had continued to increase, it would have been a severe threat to public health. The Saudi Government issued a regulation that required all public agencies, private health institutions, and other agencies to report any suspicious COVID-19 cases to the MOH. Since COVID-19 is transmitted human to human via physical contact and aerosol spread, people in crowded places are at a high risk of being infected. Through implementing this regulation, the MOH was able to detect infections in people early and start treatment. This also allowed the government to intervene early and prevent the virus from being transmitted to more people.

On March 4, 2020, the Saudi Arabian Government announced a temporary suspension of the Umrah pilgrimage and visits to the Prophet’s Mosque for Saudis and residents as a precautionary measure to stop the spread of COVID-19. Additionally, as a further precautionary measure, Saudi Arabia closed all cinema theaters until further notice on March 11. Many schools had already been closed, and some public activities, such as conferences and sports activities, were canceled after COVID-19 cases were detected in certain areas. These are important actions because if government intervention had not targeted this problem, the costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic would have seriously affected the country. This disease has various adverse effects. First, a lack of intervention means the number of deaths caused by COVID-19 would have increased and lead to public distress and outrage. Second, the costs of treatment for infected people would be a huge financial burden for the government. While the costs of canceling many programs and shutting down schools are also a serious problem, the negative effect of this disease is not limited to these costs. The overall economy is negatively impacted by the decrease in international trade and decreased revenue from tourism. Moreover, there is an economic impact for local businesses that have closed or laid off staff due to reduced demand.

The Saudi Government issued a regulation that use of the Tawakkalna app was mandatory to access public places. This application was updated to include vaccination information, including an individual’s status as vaccinated or infected.

The interorganizational collaboration and network tool is used to address complicated problems that the MOH cannot solve by itself. Different aspects of these problems necessitate collaboration between different government agencies, nonprofit organizations, universities, and the private sector. Collaboration allows organizations to save their limited resources and increase their ability to solve complicated problems. ^{Reference Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve and Tsai16} The concept of the network has been used to describe the connections between the variety of actors and stakeholders involved in the delivery of services and the structures in which multiple organizations engage in partnerships to address complex problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, that a single organization cannot cope with alone. This engagement includes sharing information, resources, and expertise. ^{Reference Agranoff and McGuire17}

Establishing an interorganizational network can be explained by open system theory. This theory was originally developed by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy (1956) and has since been applied to other disciplines. ^{Reference Von Bertalanffy18} System theory suggests that systems consist of elements or subsystems that are interrelated and interdependent. The failure of any individual element of the system affects the others, since the output of 1 subsystem may be the input of another. If policy-makers see the policy area of preventing COVID-19 as a system, they can consider the MOH and other government agencies as subsystems of the larger system.

On March 14, 2020, Saudi Arabia suspended international flights for 2 weeks as part of the effort to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in the Kingdom. Since 1 source of the disease is infected people arriving from other countries, it was essential to identify any cases of COVID-19 before the infected people entered Saudi Arabia. Given the possible effects of the problem, government intervention was needed to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the country. It was therefore very important that screening processes in airports, seaports, and land ports were reconsidered and redesigned to include considerations of the COVID-19 infection. These departments are interdependent, so if, for example, the airport authority failed to detect COVID-19 cases before they entered the country, the MOH would have to spend more resources and effort to detect and treat the people who are infected. Therefore, the organizations that were involved in this policy area needed to cooperatively exhibit behaviors to succeed in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and avoiding more serious consequences.

Establishing an information-sharing network that linked the MOH and airport authorities allowed for more effective detection and screening of any infected people coming from abroad. Additionally, Saudi Arabia implemented strict border control measures. All arrivals entering Saudi Arabia were subject to mandatory COVID-19 testing and 14 days of quarantine at specific hotels that received payments from the Saudi Government. Furthermore, from May 2021, all arrivals who are vaccinated do not have to quarantine, but they have to provide proof of being fully vaccinated before and after arrival by registering their data on the government’s website.