Language:
Search
 
Ship Registry Portal
General Organisation of Sea Ports
Bahrain

The Problem

Bahrain ship registry (Ship Registry) comes under the umbrella of the General Organisation of Sea Ports. The ship registry office at the GOP is responsible of registering ships of 150 gross tonnages and above. Currently we have 334 ships registered with total tonnage of about 800,000 tones. The functions of the ship registry department include, but not limited to:
• To register ships under the Bahraini flag in accordance with Amiri Decree No. 14/1978 with respect to Law Registration of Ship and Determination of Safety Conditions.
• Issuance of all relevant certificates for Bahraini vessels.
• To issue the Continuous Synopsis Record (CSR) in accordance with SOLAS Regulation XI-1/5 & IMO Resolution A.959 (23).
• To issue endorsements of recognition of a certificate for marine officers in accordance with STCW78 Convention.
• Ensuring that all Bahraini vessels are in compliance with the national and international standards and requirements.
• Coordination and liaising with Classification Societies with regards to Bahraini ships.
• Follow-up all communications and matters with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) with regards to ships and seamen registration and the issuance of Seamen Book.
• To prepare general statistics and provide figures on ships registered in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
The Bahrain flag is run with an uncompromising commitment to excellence and service to the customer. The registry seeks to take on only the best tonnage which has been certified by an IACS (International Association of Classification Societies) member. The GOP started work to prepare for legislation to upgrade the present “closed” registry, which can only accept vessels owned in Bahrain, to an “open” one, which will allow vessels owned anywhere in the world to be registered in Bahrain.
Ship Registry uses the GOP website (www.gop.gov) to enable some of their services available online. These online services though being used by some ship owners are not fully utilized by the ship owners’ community.
GOP approached a consultant for technical consultation on developing further enhancing the ship registry online services in addition to several meetings with GOP’s customers to take their feedback and suggestions to enhance the system.
The Major issues that resulted to develop a Ship Registry portal was:
- Not all of the 10 services are available online.
- There is no system integration between the ship registry and the financial application.
- There is no direct integration between GOP application and other ministries application that are associated with some of the services (i.e. TRA).
- The need for better performance, logs and history for the vessels’ and customers’ masters.
The system users will be:
- Internal: Maritime Ship Registry, Finance and Management.
- External:
o Shipping owners (Customers).
o Other ministries (i.e. TRA).

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
This has reduced the effort of the Ship Registry officers and the Shipping owners, the application used to be submitted in hardcopies and the Ship Registry officers used to maintained the record of vessels in Excel Sheet, and prepare the invoice manually.
Currently four forms available online in GOP Website (www.gop.bh), when the shipping owners fill in and submit the forms; it gets send by email to the Ship Registry emails ID, manual records updated, certificate required prepared then the request sent to the Finance team to calculate the required fees thru the financial application (MS Navision) which has another records of all the vessels and owners (customers), which can calculates the fees automatically.
GOP has initiate the project to implement a Ship Registry Portal which will contain all the ten services provided by the Ship Registry Directory, it will allow the business owners to login and perform the process online including the payment. The portal will be integrated with the Financial system, so there will be one database only with one record of vessels and customers; therefore all the transaction will be performed online with less human interventions.
The portal will also be integrated with Government payment gateway and SMS gateway, and with other government applications (i.e. TRA).
The portal will reduce the duplicate of work, of records, paper works and the human interventions/errors.
Who benefited from it?
- GOP: Management, Ship Registry Directorate and Financial Accounting Directorate.
- GOP Customers: Shipping Owners.
- Stakeholders: EGA (when the 10 services will be available in the bahrain.bh portal), TRA (when the process is automated and they may view the requests online and approve/reject the requests online without waiting for the documents to be sent by email or fax).
Measurement:
GOP is following the ISO 9001 standards, KPIs are set for each process and the performance is measured and reported to the management in a monthly basis – corrective actions and preventive actions are considered if required.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Who proposed the solution: GOP Management and Ship Registry Directorate.
Who implemented it: A tender has been released and the vendor has been awarded in Dec 2010, implementation will be done by a vendor and the project management will be handled by GOP.
Tender document were prepared by the IT department with coordination from the Maritime/Ship Registry Directorate, data gathered from Ship Registry Directorate, GOP customers and other agencies that will be integrated with GOP System (i.e. TRA).
Stakeholders:
- GOP internal Users: Management, ,
- GOP Customers: Shipping owners.
- Government agencies: i.e. TRA, CIO (for the email and sms gateway) and EGA (to host the 10 services on the EGA portal – bahrain.bh).
- Other Agencies: Bank (for payment gateway).

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
Maritime Affairs directorate had included this project as part of their business strategy for 2010, the idea was approved by the management and the resources (project manager, evaluation committee and budget required) had been defined.
GOP approaches a consultant to review the requirements and to draft the tender document in coordination with GOP, customers were interviewed and their inputs have been elaborated in the tender document.

The main objectives are:
- Marketing of GOP and it services.
- Streamline the services,
- Having a one spot application, with fully automated system.
- Better tracking and reliable system.
- To Ease the process and the coordination with other ministries.
- To prepare Bahrain (GOP) to be an open registry (to be able to register non-Bahraini vessels).

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
- Project plan has been prepared, including releasing of the tender, evaluation, signing the contract, provide the necessary hardware, installation, testing, user training, releasing of Beta version of the application, testing and fixing of bugs, Go-live date.
- Tender and been release, and proposals were evaluated by an internal committee with representatives from Maritime Affairs, IT and Finance.
- Vendor has been awarded, and a contract has been drafted and being reviewed by the awarded vendor.
- Beta version to be ready in 23 weeks (estimated),

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The main obstacles were:
- System Capability: the current financial system is not supporting online payment, therefore we have established another project to upgrade the current system from version 5.1 to NAV2009 – project will be complete on 31 Dec 2010 and we will be start using the new system on 3rd Jan 2011.
- Integration with other ministries: At the project initialing stage, the TRA was not having a system for the “call sign” which is required for GOP – currently TRA is implementing the system and which will include an interface for GOP.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Resources were:

External:
- Appointing a consultant: approx. US$76,500.00
- Customers (feedback): conducted free of charge
- Meeting with TRA, Coast Guard: conducted free of charge.
- Awarded Vendor: project cost is BD 58,825
- Hardware vendor: hardware to be purchased – estimated cost is BD 15,000
- Navision Vendor (upgrade project): project cost is BD 6000
Internal:
- Maritime/ Ship Registry: setting the requirements and preparing the required data.
- IT: preparing of the tender IT specifications, evaluating the technical and financial proposals and project management.
- Finance department:: finance were involved in evaluating the commercial proposals, in allocating the required budget and to prepare the required purchase orders and payment.
- Contract department: to prepare the tender advertisement and coordination with the tender board.
- Legal Advisor: reviewing of the contract.
- Marketing & Communication department: publishing of the adds.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Yes it is, since we are in the initial stage, the system can be always be changed based on the business requirements. i.e. the current system based on the current tariff (available on http://gop.bh/maritime.asp) , there is a proposal for new tariff which may be approved in the next Board of Directors meeting on Jan 2011 – therefore the system will be modified as well as the Navision System to the new tariff.
The same with other ministries integration, currently we are working with the TRA to integrate the two applications – if the TRA system changed or modified; then the same customization will be applied in GOP portal.
GOP Portal will be modified “if required” to host the services in the Bahrain Portal.
The required budget will always be available for such project, as the system enhancement has been included in the GOP 5-6 years business strategy plan.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
- Considering the customer feedbacks to enhance the value of services provided.
- Gathering the requirements from more than one stakeholders.
- Evaluating other Shipping Registries application (i.e. The Singaporean Maritime Affairs application).
- Allocating the right resources and made them available and dedicated for the project.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   General Organisation of Sea Ports
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Wafa Al Nusif
Title:   IT Senior Officer  
Telephone/ Fax:   Office: +973-17359591, Mob: +973-39662865
Institution's / Project's Website:   +973-17359590
E-mail:   wafa.alnusif@gop.gov.bh  
Address:   P.O. Box 75315
Postal Code:   P.O. Box 75315
City:   Hidd
State/Province:   Hidd
Country:   Bahrain

          Go Back
Print friendly Page