United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

Bahrain recognizes the importance and the need for collaborative and innovative ways of delivering Government services to make life easier. This is the philosophy behind Bahrain’s eGovernment, which is more than a technology, it is a tool that is easily accessible and for the benefit of everyone in the Kingdom and beyond. Therefore, the Government of Bahrain identified that providing better public service delivery to citizens is a major concern of the ministries in the Kingdom. In this regard, even though each ministry had undertaken some initiatives on their own, a full fledged and integrated service delivery mechanism for people was not in force.

The major issues related to the public service delivery are bureaucratic hurdles, inefficient processes, outdated policies, inability of the existing government mechanism to handle the ever increasing demand for the public services. At the same time, Bahrain has one of the best ICT infrastructures amongst the countries in Middle East. It has a Government wide Data network connecting ministries, one of the highest personal computer penetration in the Arab world, highest mobile and internet penetration, advanced telecommunication infrastructure, and high literacy rate. With this backdrop, the Kingdom decided to leverage its ICT strength to solve the issues in improving the public service delivery.

In order to improve the government service delivery to citizens and taking into account of utilizing the best in class infrastructure and high e-Literacy rate of Bahrain, the kingdom launched the eGovernment Strategy for Bahrain. The strategy emphasized on providing government services to the customers (citizens, residents, businesses and visitors) through the 4 service delivery channels – National eGovernment Portal (www.bahrain.bh), Mobile Portal, National Contact Centre and Common Service Centres & Kiosks. The strategic vision of this programme is “Deliver Customer value through Collaborative Government”.

As a part of this programme, the Kingdom is implementing around 200 eServices spread across 30 ministries to the customers through the National eGovernment Portal.

One of the key service delivery channels for the Kingdom is the National Portal. The National eGovernment Portal is a “one stop shop” Portal and is the primary service delivery channel that integrates and provides all types of services – informational, transactional and online payment. The National Portal was launched on 23rd, May, 2007, and is being managed by the eGovernment Authority (eGA). The National Portal is available in Arabic and English languages.

On 3rd, November, 2008, the portal address was changed from www.e.gov.bh to www.bahrain.bh to an easier address based on the results of a customer survey study which revealed the difficulty of memorizing the old address.
As on date, eGovernment Portal provides more than 100 eServices online including vital services with payment features such as “Pay electricity and water bill” and “Pay Traffic Contraventions”.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The key benefits are as follows: • 24x7 availability of all government services • Wide array of services provided online with single window for access • Reduced the human intervention to minimum or nil for several services • Cost-effective scalable solution • Considerably reduced the physical queues in the ministry counters Some of the indirect benefits which were assessed and reported during our biannual surveys are the following: • Reduced traffic on roads • Time saving for citizens as they need not physically visit government offices • Less bureaucracy perceived in the new system • Convenient channel for citizens to access. In addition to the above we may highlight some of the key aspects of the portal which has made these benefits possible: The National Portal has an attractive design with a clear navigational menu which represents the various customer segments - Individuals, Businesses, Government and Visitors, each tab are given a unique color and when clicking on each tab the user will get the contents (eServices and Informational) related to that particular tab. The National Portal is 100% compatible with Internet Explorer 6.0 & above, and mostly compatible with Firefox, Netscape, Opera and other major web browsers. This growing popularity is evident from the statistics of the viewership of the portal on various parameters i.e page views – 8,845,127; 1,241,577 visits; 3340 visits/day; Visits from more than 180 countries; with 38 % new visitors, in the last one year. The customer’s confidence and trust on the National Portal enabled transaction security is evident from the statistics of financial transactions (online payment) done during the last year Over USD 11 million worth transactions; and Over 700,000 financial transactions till date. National Portal provides the platform to engage customers in the government decision making process. National Portal provides multiple tools such as eGovernment Blog, Online Polls, Feedback Form to consult with the customers. A comprehensive policy on eConsultation is available for the general public on the Portal (refer “Your Opinion Matters” section). Since it launch in July 2009, 3 blogs have been initiated (2 blogs of the two Ministers and 1 blog of the CEO, eGA) In order to promote accountability, responsiveness and transparency, National Portal has published its commitment to its customers through the Customer Charter. This Charter promises the Portal’s service levels, grievance redressal mechanism, etc. The Customer Charter is the first and one of the unique initiatives among the Gulf countries. The Portal features more than 100 eServices, and most of the services are end-to-end, connecting different ministries and have been developed after thorough BPR. E.g. Issuance of Birth Certificate – the eligible user needs to apply and pay online for issuance of a birth certificate for a new born. The system integrates the hospitals with Ministry of Health, Central Informatics Organization (CIO) –to generate unique national id for the new born, eGovernment – for online payment gateway and Department of Posts to dispatch the birth certificate.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The Kingdom of Bahrain was in the forefront to implement innovative ways of improving the governance for the better service delivery to the public. A Supreme Committee for ICT (SCICT) was created under the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister of the Kingdom and comprises of Ministers. SCICT decided to go for a pilot national portal to be launched with the help of private participation. In the 2006, the government launched its first national portal with the help of BATELCO – the largest telecommunication service provider in Bahrain. The pilot was a great success. Based on this success, SCICT spearheaded to develop a comprehensive National eGovernment Strategy. The Strategy identified the priority list of more than 200 services and 4 service delivery channels. The SCICT created a nodal agency in Sep 2007 by name eGovernment Authority (eGA) to implement the national eGovernment Strategy. Since then, eGA is managing and maintaining the National Portal with the support of the government’s technology arm – Central Informatics Organization (CIO). CIO provides the hosting services and the system administration services for the deployed National Portal infrastructure. The services development on the Portal is undertaken by the Services Delivery Directorate in eGA consisting of more 10 developers and approx another 30 technical and managerial resources available onsite from the outsourced vendors. Customers are one of the key stakeholders from the consumption side. Customer interaction has always been an integral part of the eGovernment strategy. During the development of the strategy, public opinion was also sought through “Voice of customers” survey to identify the needs and aspirations of the citizens. Based on this, the priority list of services and delivery channels were identified. As an ongoing tradition, the Kingdom conducts half-yearly citizen’s satisfaction surveys across the country to measure the impact of the eGovernment service delivery. In November 2008, the portal address was changed from www.e.gov.bh to www.bahrain.bh to an easier address as result of a customer survey study which revealed the difficulty of memorizing the old address.

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.
The main objective of National Portal has been to be the one-stop-shop for all government services with 24x7 availability for 99% of the services. The goal of one-stop-shop is being achieved through provisioning of around 200 services through the Portal by Dec 2010. To provide these services, the Portal infrastructure has been upgraded with redundancy and high availability architecture that ensures portal accessibility 24x7 for all its services. The Kingdom’s leadership has adopted a continuous self-improvement based strategy to implement and enhance the national portal to meet the customer’s requirements. A Supreme Committee for ICT (SCICT) was created under the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister of the Kingdom and comprises of Ministers. SCICT decided to go for a pilot national portal to be launched with the help of private participation. In 2006, the government launched its first national portal with the help of BATELCO – the largest telecommunication service provider in Bahrain. The pilot was a great success. Over a period of little more than 1 year, a comprehensive National eGovernment strategy was prepared and launched in May 2007 which emphasized National Portal as the primary channel to deliver around 200 government services by Dec 2010. In Jan 2007, Program Management Consultants were appointed to assist the implementation of Strategy. Further, to implement this strategy, SCICT created a nodal agency in Sep 2007 by name eGovernment Authority (eGA). Since then, eGA is managing and maintaining the National Portal with the support of the government’s technology arm – Central Informatics Organization (CIO). CIO provides the hosting services and the system administration services for the deployed National Portal infrastructure. The services development on the Portal is undertaken by the Services Delivery Directorate in eGA consisting of more 10 developers and approx another 30 technical and managerial resources available onsite from the outsourced vendors. To sum up, the Kingdom of Bahrain has adopted a multi-pronged strategy to implement the National Portal. It started with private participation and then later government took upon itself to upgrade and maintain the National Portal. As on date, eGovernment Authority is managing the National Portal (development of the Services on the Portal, coordinating with Ministries for service integration, managing & creating contents for the Portal, ensuring compliance to leading industry standards, etc.). In order to enhance and provide a dynamic portal, eGA has appointed IT & Consultancy vendors to assist in development of services on the Portal. In order to keep the momentum and ensure customer acceptance, eGA has launched four Common Service Centres (CSC) across the Kingdom. These CSCs provide assisted services to the citizens / customers to use the eServices available on the National Portal. These centres cater to the customers who do not have computers or internet connection or are not aware of using computers, etc. Focus Groups have been formed consisting of external stakeholders (industry, government officials, academicians, citizens, etc) that review the usability and accessibility of the National Portal on a periodic basis.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The key development and implementation steps of the programme were the following: 1) Formation of the SCICT - Jul 2005 2) Launch of National Portal with 3 services online – June 2006 3) Launch of the Payment gateway facility – June 2006 4) Launch of the National eGovernment Strategy Implementation- May 2007 5) Launch of the National Portal with 11 services online – May 2007 6) 55 services enabled on National Portal – May 2008 7) Launch of revised National Portal (www.bahrain.bh) – Oct 2008 8) Launch of 68 services on National Portal – Dec 2008 9) 87 services enabled on National Portal – May 2009 10) 100 services enabled on National Portal – Oct 2009 11) 110 services enabled on National Portal – Dec 2009 Achievements: 1) The eGovernment strategy has been widely appreciated by leading international agencies including UN (Quote the words of UNPAN Authorities “UN would publish the Bahrain eGovernment strategy in their website for other countries to study and emulate”) 2) Bahrain invited to the International Forum of eGovernment in Rome, Italy to share Bahrain’s successful experience in eGovernment. Bahrain was the only state in the Middle East & Arab countries which was invited to participate in the forum. This was due to its outstanding eGovernment achievement record. 3) Launch of a National Portal with over 100 electronic services, and over 10 million hits, over USD 11 million worth payments through the national portal.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
eGovernment National Portal implementation had the following obstacles: 1. Lack of key resources: An implementation of more than 200 government services requires experienced project managers and varied technology and business skills at different levels in the ministries. Bahrain as a country lacks these resources. eGA recruited qualified people from other geographies on contract basis and also hired vendors; skill up-gradation of the existing government employees through the various capacity building training programmes; sponsored overseas training for the employees. These actions ensured that best-in-class skills sets are available in Bahrain for the project. 2. Ownership, relationships, and Cooperation from stakeholders: As the success is dependent on delivering eServices, which in turn are owned by stakeholders (ministries), their cooperation is the key. To ensure the continuous co-operation and support, the following actions were undertaken - Created a high level steering committee led by the Deputy Prime Minister for overseeing the progress - SCICT and TCICT; Creation of task teams for implementation- Task force in ministries; Conduct meetings at frequent intervals for status tracking and issue resolution. Effective communication amongst the stakeholders is the key success factor for any eGovernment initiative to succeed. Stakeholders should also ensure the participation of users and business communities during formulation of processes /regulations regarding the use of technology by public administration. 3. Lack of standards and policies: Ministries lacked standards and policies for the data exchange or inter-operability. This has resulted in compatibility issues between applications for delivering eServices. This was overcome by creation of standards and policies by eGA for developing and maintaining eServices. 4. Lack of awareness among the citizens: The success of the eGovernment programme lies in the uptake of newly developed electronic channels vis-à-vis traditional channels. This required a massive awareness and capacity building campaigns throughout the Kingdom. The Marketing Awareness directorate of eGA conducts awareness campaigns, and various marketing initiatives for the general public. It organizes road shows in order to reach to the citizens and provides necessary training & awareness to the citizens for using the services on the National Portal. Common Services Centres are also providing the access of the National Portal to the citizens who do not internet connection, do not have computers or do not know how to operate computers. 5. Lack of trust in e- commerce among the citizens: The acceptance of the eGovernment Portal as the service delivery channel is dependant on the citizens’ trust in e-commerce especially performing online payment related transactions. Concentrated efforts were made to create awareness among the general public and build their trust in e-commerce. The Portal has a VERISIGN SSL for secure e-Commerce and confidential communications. The site is also monitored by MacAfee on a daily basis and certified daily to pass the “McAfee Secure” Security Scan. This helps address concerns about possible hacker access to Portal confidential data, and the safety of visiting this site.

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
The eGovernment programme has a three year implementation target to provide around 200 Key government services on the National Portal. The programme is spread across more than 25 Ministries / government agencies of the Kingdom. As such, proper mobilization and better use of resources is the key to the success of the programme implementation. To ensure the continuous co-operation and support, the following actions were undertaken - Created a high level steering committee led by the Deputy Prime Minister for overseeing the progress - SCICT; Creation of task teams for implementation- Task force in ministries; Conduct meetings at frequent intervals for status tracking and issue resolution. The services development on the National Portal is undertaken by the Services Delivery Directorate in eGA consisting of more 10 developers and approx another 30 technical and managerial resources available onsite from the outsourced vendors. The outsourced vendors were appointed through open international tendering process. The eGovernment programme is a completely internal government funded project. The total outlay of the programme for three years of implementation is 22.9 million Bahrain Dinars of which around 1 million Bahrain Dinars has been allocated to the National Portal. This cost comprises of the hardware, software, technical consultation assistance and implementation efforts.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The eGovernment strategy and programme implementation is an ongoing transformation initiative adopted by the Kingdom of Bahrain. The first strategy in this regard was initiated in 2006 and an implementation over a period of 3 years till 2010. In order for the programme to succeed and sustain, the national eGovernment Authority (eGA) was formulated to oversee the implementation. The programme is being owned and supported by the ministries. The following are the efforts in the direction of the sustenance of the National eGovernment Portal: a) Review of the list of services to be enabled on the National Portal at regular intervals and devising the forthcoming strategy for further improvements. b) Launch of 11 more Common Services Centres across the Kingdom by 1st Quarter of 2010 so as to reach out to all the citizens c) Conduct business process re-engineering and improve the process by streamlining of government operations and initiate administrative reforms in the forthcoming strategy so as to streamline the process and provide simplified process to the citizens. d) Implement common polices and standards for ICT initiatives through the implementation of Kingdom-wide Enterprise Architecture to enable service integration and interoperability. e) Focus Groups formed consisting of external stakeholders (industry, government officials, academicians, citizens, etc) to review the usability and accessibility of the National Portal. These reviews are analyzed by eGA team and implement the suggestions. f) Conduct bi-annual citizen survey to assess the satisfaction levels and scope for further improvements. Last year, the UNPAN had decided to publish the eGovernment Strategy of Bahrain on their website for other countries to emulate. This is recognition of the acceptance of the efforts of Bahrain in this area. The approach adopted by the Kingdom to implement and sustain the National Portal initiative is emulated by the Ministries within Bahrain and can be emulated by other countries as well.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The eGovernment programme of the Kingdom has been widely accepted by the people in the kingdom as well as internationally. The impact made by the programme has been manifold – improvement in the customer satisfaction for the government service as evident from the customer surveys: (a) The awareness levels of National Portal address has increased from 23% in 2008 to 80% in 2009 after the launch of new URL - www.bahrain.bh. (b) The awareness levels of eGovernment Programme increased from 26% in 2008 to 74% in 2009 (c) Usage of eGovernment services increased from 7% in 2008 to 40 % in 2009 (d) Over 102,000 page views (e) Over USD 11 million worth transactions (f) Over 700,000 financial transactions (g) Over 10 million hits The key elements that made this initiative a success are the following: a) Clear political mandate and buy in from the top leadership of the Kingdom (The Supreme Committee for ICT led by the Deputy Prime Minister) b) Highly motivated team in eGovernment Authority c) Alignment of ministry level goals to eGovernment strategy d) Well defined programme governance framework – SCICT, Task Force, eGA, etc. e) A Strategy that clearly addresses the citizens needs A concentrated effort involving all stakeholders is needed, including the public sector and the private sector at large; yet such initiatives may well be disjointed and erratic at times. The government cannot control all activities or conditions needed for e-Government to succeed. Bahrain faces huge challenges as it moves into the 21st century. The objective of Bahrain Vision 2030 is to ensure that we are proactive in shaping a response to those challenges rather than being overwhelmed by them. Therefore the most continuing lesson is that building a culture of eGovernment in particular and, more generally, a culture of ICTs for development and for everyday life in the long run.


Institution Name:		eGovernment Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Ziad Ismail Asfour
Title:		Assistant Director of Marketing & Awareness
Telephone/ Fax:		+973 17388313, +973 36139308
Institution's / Project's Website:		+973 17388338
E-mail:		zasfour@ega.gov.bh
Address:		10th Floor, Euro Tower, Bldg No 485, Road No 1010
Postal Code:		PO Box 75533
City:		Sanabis
State/Province:
Country:		Bahrain

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information