Al Qaed was highlighting the salient features of the new eGovernment Strategy 2016 launched by His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology (SCICT).
Al Qaed pointed out that in order to achieve the objectives of eGA and realize its required benefits, a number of key objectives have been outlined to respond to the needs and requirements of stakeholders (individuals, governments and businesses). These objectives aims to improve community engagement and participation; protect information and user rights; reinforce partnerships with the private sector; increase ICT readiness; enhance eGovernment channels and user experience; increase service-uptake; as well as offer comprehensive and effectively-managed quality service offering.
Al Qaed highlighted that 90 projects will be implemented throughout the four coming years through devising a comprehensive action framework based on a three-dimension approach (i.e. Environment, Readiness and Usage ‘ERU’). The environment dimension addresses many country-wide factors like ICT and regulatory environments; government collaboration and social engagement. Also, the readiness dimension addresses government capabilities through its people, processes, governance and technology to deliver an infrastructure that is capable of sustaining more effectiveness; and finally the usage dimension addresses customer-focused eServices and user interaction with government through multi-channels.
Al Qaed said that a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have been identified to achieve each objective and this proves the authority’s commitment in cooperation with other entities involved in the implementation of the eGovernment strategy to ensure full achievement of the required vision.
In order to achieve the first objective ‘Increased Society Participation and Engagement’, eGA will strive to increase public awareness on the eGovernment program to 90%, and 50% of government entities to interact with constituents on a weekly basis through social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc).
Furthermore, to achieve the other two objectives ‘Increase Partnerships and Private Sector ICT Readiness and Higher Performing, Collaborative, Integrated and Efficient Government’, two government-wide systems will be implemented. Moreover, utilizing the authority’s global partnerships, two new ICT initiatives will be triggered annually from international partnerships and three eGovernment-related toolkits will be developed as well.
eGA will also annually train 150 government employees on eGovernment specialized disciplines and further train 5,000 nationals on IT and eGovernment foundational topics with an aim to improve the nation-wide eLiteracy level and build employees’ capacity in government and IT skills.
In a bid to achieve the objective of protecting information security and user rights, information and privacy protection policies will be implemented at 10 government entities along with the National Authentication Framework (eKey). With regard to delivering high-quality services effectively, eGA will create consolidated services fact-book in place, all government service information to be available online and 40 eServices will be deployed annually.
In an attempt to enhance eGovernment channels and user-experience with an increased service-uptake, eGA will annually develop 10 new mobile applications, upgrade and integrate three comprehensive eGovernment channels (the portal, mobile gate, national contact center, eKiosks), in addition to increasing usage by 10% annually to attain an uptake of 100% for all two-way transaction services, launch 20 additional services that are annually delivered through the national contact center and maintain customer satisfaction index levels over 80%.
Furthermore, three eGovernment related innovative projects will be established – along with five applications to be developed, based on open data with an aim of supporting innovation and entrepreneurship.
Al Qaed elaborated that all services will be consistently defined, named and managed through an online service fact-book. By the year 2014, three eGovernment channels will be comprehensively upgraded to maintain efficient and value-added usage based on best practices. Additionally, 40 new eServices will be deployed annually with 10 new mobile applications by an average of three Apps every year – which will result in a growth of 1,005 in an uptake of 10% of online services.
Al Qaed summarized the authority’s mandate, based on the new national eGovernment Strategy 2012–2016; the authority will play a strategic role in the IT policy and standard setter, the service transformation facilitator and the strategic incubator. In that respect and over the next four years, eGA will start enabling entities to gradually take on the responsibility of developing more eServices.
The authority adopted comprehensiveness as part of developing the new national strategy through communication with stakeholders. Furthermore, it consulted a number of information sources, conducted specialized workshops attended by 27 entities, over 30 face-to-face interviews with key individuals in major entities, four focus group sessions, 32 entity surveys and a number of interviews with employees of eGA.
While crafting the strategy, eGA was keen on researching and utilizing international eGovernment trends through benchmarking best practices in 18 countries based on the dimensions and framework of eGovernment with the latest ICT trends, taking into consideration the latest nine eGovernments and eleven ICT trends.