Al-Madinah newspaper

Al-Watan newspaper recently published an article related to the annual reports of government agencies. According to the article, there are 63 official websites for 63 government ministries, authorities and institutions, and only 31 of them produce annual reports. The last time some of the organizations that published reports did so was in 2015 and 2016. In other words, almost 50 percent of these organizations lack annual reports discussing their performance.

These bodies include the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Transport. Moreover, many of the current official websites are not very good and suffer technical glitches. As a matter of fact, Article 15 issued by the Shoura Council states that the council has the right to express its opinion about the general politics in the Kingdom. That includes discussing annual reports issued by ministries and governmental agencies. How is the council supposed to do that when 50 percent of the official websites of these bodies do not have annual reports? Additionally, half of the reports on their websites are not recent.

Reports are crucial in presenting facts and information on issues. Some reports contain activities, events and statistics as well as decisions that have been made. Annual reports are very important for communications, both inside and outside agencies. They are also a main official source of information that organizations need throughout the year. Annual reports help in understanding information and facts as well as providing the background of certain decisions and how these decisions were made.

It is absolutely essential for official organizations to issue annual reports. In this way, information is archived and accessible at any time and in any place. These reports do not need to be printed and published in hard copy as long as they are saved and accessible to the public.

Every government agency should use annual reports to document their strong and weak points and to help resolve issues and improve performance.