Pillars and Criteria

This Pillar places services at the heart of the government core business. It focuses on the importance of delivering distinctive value through providing proactive, innovative, personalized and seamless services. This new generation of services is enabled by the intelligent use of digital transformation, the leverage of partnerships, and the creative potential of human capital and their unique talents to design and deliver distinctive services that delight customers and elevate competitive performance.

Leading government entity instills a culture of innovation to approach the challenges unconventionally, cease the practice of outdated functions and steer away from building an innovation enabling system towards building a creative mindset that exists everywhere in the everyday tasks and functions.

Leading government entity creates an environment where people are encouraged to take risks and learn from mistakes. It is open to all sources of innovation, and allows the permeation of fresh ideas and new thinking to keep the entity on the path of sustainable learning and development. It builds on the previous experiences and incorporates new learning to ensure relevance; now and into the future.

Leading government entity disrupts the ecosystem with innovative and distinctive capabilities that transform services, generate exceptional outcomes and enhance the wellbeing of the nation, thus creates a paradigm shift that others follow.

To exist everywhere across the whole ecosystem.

The leading government entity collects and analyses relevant, reliable, quality and timely data from multiple internal and external sources including big data and open data. It consolidates and manages data, information and knowledge to gain insights that enables better decision making at all levels.

The leading government entity is data driven, it applies data analytics to monitor performance against strategy, develop future scenarios, seize emerging opportunities, mitigate future risks, optimize the value proposition and ultimately to enhance wellbeing. It builds the capacity for exchanging knowledge and successful practices with stakeholders across the ecosystem to enhance organizational performance and generate additional value on the national and international levels.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

The Leading government entity explores, experiments and exploits the potential of relevant future technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robots, Blockchain to provide distinctive value in a sustained and efficient manner.

It optimizes the utilization of the digital infrastructure to nurture partnerships, minimize resources’ consumption, maximize the return on investment, and ultimately to enhance the services’ provision and elevate customer happiness.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

This Pillar emphasizes the importance of integration and collaborative partnerships with stakeholders across the ecosystem in order to leverage all potential capabilities necessary to deliver distinctive and sustainable value and positive impact on the national wellbeing. Embracing the ecosystem is vital to ensure the efficient and effective management of tangible and intangible resources including data and knowledge, and to harness their optimum return on investment.

The leading government entity recognizes the importance of partnerships and integration in order to enhance national wellbeing. It builds long-term collaborative partnerships with all stakeholders on the basis of continued commitment, trust and mutual benefits in order to enhance vision realization and value proposition.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

Leading government entity is able to spot the opportunities that are worthy of consideration and exploitation to offload obsolescence and ensure that inertia will not set in. It does not wait until it is forced to change by external drivers, but it rather anticipates and actively drive change within the ecosystem, establishing a leading position and setting the direction for others to follow. Leading government entity constantly challenges itself to be the first to spot emerging trends, anticipate their implications to ensure future readiness. 


To happen all the time and it's very much top-down and bottom-up driven.

The leading government entity places the wellbeing of customers and citizens at the heart of everything it does. Its leadership plays a crucial role in inspiring wellbeing and aligning the entity’s vision and strategies with their wellbeing aspiration.

The leading government entity translates the wellbeing orientation into practice through developing and deploying all the essential capabilities at the core in its main functions to enhance the rendered value and deliver positive impact to citizens and community. It pursues creating seamless cohesion and synergy between all government entities across the whole ecosystem to ensure alignment and collaboration of efforts to deliver national wellbeing.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

The leading government entity focuses on creating the right business model to achieve its strategy. It continually assesses the relevance and effectiveness of the current operating model, and is able to introduce new work models, systems and functions to disrupt the conventional or ineffective methods and ensure rapid pace of achievement and better response to potential or emerging challenges.

Effective business models enable the entity to develop preemptive policies and legislations to fulfil the mandate, and devise agile organizational structures that support the delivery of strategy, and establish robust governance that promotes integrity, accountability, transparency and confidence for all stakeholders.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

The Government Excellence Model (GEM 2.0) has been divided into three main pillars; each Pillar comprises a set of Criteria that represent the basis that guides the government entity wishing to achieve leading position, sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Each Criterion encompasses a set of Principles that define and explain a high level meaning (general concept) of the Criteria and can be utilized as a guidance intended to give examples to aid interpretation of the Criteria.

For more information please click on the Pillars and Criteria.

The leading government entity recognizes that its human capital is key for ongoing success. It explores the potential and future skills of its people and capitalizes on their talents to deliver distinctive value to customers and stakeholders.

It nurtures the skills and competencies of people through engagement, enabling empowerment and proving opportunities for lifelong learning. It thrives to build a happy workplace and emphasizes that employee wellbeing is vital to delivering high performance outcomes and achieving the wellbeing of the community.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

The leading government entity establishes effective outreach activities that promote its initiatives and programs, and utilizes social media channels and media messages to support its strategies and the national priorities and directions.

It establishes open communication and feedback channels to stimulate an ongoing positive dialogue with the community, it responds rapidly and effectively in crisis times to halt the escalation of negative tonality in various media channels.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

Leading government entity is highly responsive, flexible and resilient based on the constantly changing needs and expectations of stakeholders to ensure sustained superior outcomes. It builds agility into its strategies and capabilities to enable it thrive in uncertain operating environments and rapidly adjust whilst maintaining a clear focus on the desired outcomes.


To be present in everything that needs to be done.

The leading government entity builds preemptiveness, agility and resilience into its strategies, policies and capabilities to ensure future readiness. It is not only able to adapt to meet the changes within its environment, but it is also able to anticipate and understand relevant future trends, recognize their implications and potential impact, and utilize predictive analysis to generate insights that enable better decision making.

The leading government entity plans multiple alternative scenarios and integrates them within the strategies to exploit opportunities and manage possible risks, uncertainties and disruptions before others, thus maintaining a leading position. It ensures agility be renovating its business model to accommodate future advancements beyond the current capabilities.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

This Pillar emphasizes the ultimate purpose of the government to enhance the wellbeing of the nation. It highlights the importance of setting and delivering agile strategies and functions to realize the vision and the national agenda, ensure future readiness, and enhance the competitiveness of the nation.

The leading government entity continues to pioneer, transform and disrupt with novel thinking. It has a clear understanding of its core purpose and contribution to the country’s long-term vision and national agenda. It crafts agile strategies that define what “success” means. Its strategies set clear outcomes and initiatives to deliver distinctive value, attain competitive performance and leading positions, and ultimately enhance the national wellbeing.

The Leading government entity aligns all the capabilities, operations and resources to ensure dependable and quality delivery of the strategy with optimal use of resources, constant innovation and effective collaboration with stakeholders.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

The leading government entity designs and delivers unique value proposition that is primarily driven by a human centric mindset. It continually seeks to understand current and future customers’ needs and expectations.

It actively engages the relevant stakeholders in co-creating, co-designing and co-producing proactive, innovative and seamless services and it constantly seeks to enhance customer experiences through leveraging partnerships and exploiting the full potential of digital enablement.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.

The leading government entity optimizes the use of its tangible and intangible resources to support the efficient delivery of strategy and services’ provision. It effectively manages its human resources, financial and non-financial resources to optimize the return on these strategic investments.

The leading government entity assesses its current levels of resources utilization and forecasts the future demand on its resources and assets to assure sustainability, efficiency and productivity. It effectively collaborates with stakeholders to leverage all the resources available within the ecosystem in order to maximise the impact of all its activities and achieve sustainable superior performance outcomes.

For more information about the principles related to this criterion, kindly see GEM guide.