Okaz newspaper

The directive of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman to urgently restructure the general intelligence service has come at the right time. There is a need to update its regulations, to identify its authority, to evaluate the procedures, methods and authority that regulate its work, to ensure the improvement of the workflow and to identify responsibility and form a special committee to ensure that this will take place.

This directive aims at many things, most importantly identifying responsibility and authority and the administrative hierarchy.

There is, in fact, a need to restructure many departments that are related to citizens’ services, so that we can avoid the abuse of power at many different levels.

The misuse of power and authority takes place because the administrative hierarchy system is not always respected in the workplace. Authority, as a result, overlaps and this ultimately leads to carrying out work and tasks without identifying responsibilities. In many cases, an employee in a lower level or position ends up giving orders and directives that are the responsibility of those in senior positions.

Moreover, carrying out favors at work is very common, as employees, mixing personal relationships with work, overlook any action that is done by a colleague at work that is not within his responsibility. The employee here gives himself a responsibility that is neither his nor part of his work description. An employee with certain responsibility cannot ethically give it to his colleague. That is a major fault in the work hierarchy.

One of the deadly mistakes at work is the overlapping of responsibilities. When that takes place, there can be different and conflicting orders coming from multiple bosses, each claiming that this is his responsibility. When that takes place, it will only lead to failure.