MANAMA: Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, Minister of Transportation praised Bahrain’s results in the UN eGovernment Readiness Survey 2014 during one of the workshops held within the activities of the UN Public Service Forum and Awards 2014 in Seoul South Korea.
The UN announced the Kingdom of Bahrain’s achievement of an advanced ranking in the report 2014 as Bahrain ranks first in five geographic regions advancing to the 18th place in e-Government readiness worldwide compared to the 36th place in the former report of 2012, showing a progress of 18 points ahead of many European and Asian countries in this field.
The Minister of Transport, Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, congratulated His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, King of the Kingdom of Bahrain, His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister and His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince Deputy Supreme Commander First Deputy Prime Minister on this achievement, that has added to the list of the eGovernment Programme’s achievements. This came as a result of the attention and follow-up given to the UN Report by the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology (SCICT), chaired by His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, who gave his directives to form specialized committees comprising the membership of senior officials in the governmental entities to improve the rating of the Kingdom in the index and review the results in the SCICT on a regular basis.
The Minister of Transportation also praised the sincere efforts exerted by the Main Progress Follow up of eGovernment readiness Committees represented by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (TRA), Central Informatics Organization (CIO), Ministry of Education, along with other contributing ministries to the development of the eServices Index represented by Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Development, Ministry of Finance.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bahrain eGovernment Authority, Mohammed Ali Al Qaed has indicated that the report is most integral and comprehensive in measuring the readiness of the eGovernment and is globally considered as the only report that evaluates the readiness in all 193 United Nations (UN) member states. He also announced that the Kingdom of Bahrain has achieved the first rank in 2014 report, on the level of all Arab and Middle East countries in its readiness and advanced in the eParticipation Index to top off the region’s countries, and improved its ranking by five points over performance in the previous report, jumping the 14th place compared to 19th in last year’s report. It has also been classified, for the third consecutive time, as one of the top eight countries on the global government Web Index.
It is worth mentioning that most of the world countries and eGovernment programmes include improving its ranking on the index as part of its strategic goals.