United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

Bahrain eGovernment strategy is customer centric; we build our services around the citizen’s demands and needs. The kingdom regards the recipients of government services as ‘Customers’ and not ‘beneficiaries’. i.e looking at citizens ,business and as ‘customers’ with unique needs and requirements; therefore, it is imperative to continuously measure the citizens satisfaction levels and learn about their concerns and needs.
Before year 2007, incorporating the citizens’ opinions and concerns in the public services was not the norm. Starting year 2007 with the implementation of Bahrain eGovernment strategy, getting the feedback of the citizens and other stakeholders became a main activity to continuously improve the services provided.
Citizens, businesses, government employees, and visitors are the social groups affected by this initialize. Those groups’ needs and demands were never addressed in the way it should be.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The first eGovernment strategy was formulated in year 2007 which was based on a customer survey done in year 2006.Thereafter, Bahrain eGovernment continued to engage with citizens and customers to measure their satisfaction and learn about their needs and demands. To accomplish that Bahrain eGovernment has utilized several customer engagement methodologies such as Bi-Annual customer satisfaction surveys, Blogs, Face Book, polls and lately focus groups. eGA lunched Bi-annual customer survey to measure the Customer satisfaction index, awareness and to learn about the concerns and needs of the different stakeholders. This Survey includes face-face interviews and telephonic interviews to collect all stakeholders’ feedback. We consider face-face interviews crucial that they give the freedom for the interviewee to express his concerns and opinions freely. In this survey we target government employees, citizens and businesses. In addition to the bi-annual surveys, Bahrain incorporated focus groups to find about all stakeholders concerns during the formulation of its new eGovernment strategy 2011. Some of the key objectives of the focus groups done last august 2010 are to understand the needs of the different use groups when it comes to service delivery and detect pain points of service deliver in general and online service delivery in particular. Also in those focus groups we extracted a list of services that the various citizen and business participants would like to have online. Four focus groups were held with representatives across all the different user groups which are Bahraini Women, Bahraini men, expatriates and businesses. A total of 36 participants across all user groups (nationals, expats, and businesses) took part in the focus groups. In addition to the bi annual survey and focus groups mentioned above, Bahrain eGovernment uses innovative mechanisms to encourage participation of the community and concerned sections of the community in the policy-making decisions. Fostering participation in Face Book and online Blogs are of those innovative ways of collecting citizens demands, needs and concerns then those are transferred to actions to satisfy citizens. The Bahrain eGovernment Face book page has more than 6300 subscribers till the moment whom constantly provided their feedback on whatever is published and communicated to them from Bahrain eGovernment. This is an invaluable tool to interact with Bahrain citizens. EGA currently has 2 blogs live which are the new Bahrain eGovernment strategy (2011-2014) blog and the Bahrain.bh portal revamp blog. The new Bahrain eGovernment strategy (2011-2014) blog has received more than 121 comments until the moment in less than 3 months. Those comments are taken into consideration in the development of the new strategy. The CEO owns this blog and he responds to the citizen’s questions and concerns, and he makes sure that those concerns are addressed in the best way. Comments received on The Bahrain.bh portal revamp blog are used to customize the new bahrain.bh portal to the citizens and all stakeholders concerns.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
As mentioned earlier, the initiative is part of the Bahrain eGovernment strategy that it emphasizes considering the citizens as customers with special needs and demands. eGA outsourced the implementation of the bi-Annual customer satisfaction survey to Nielsen which provides a detailed report at the end then eGA takes care of turning the results to actions to be implemented. Blogs, Face Book and Polls are all designed and implemented by eGA. Some ministries own some of the blogs offered through the Bahrain eGovernment channels; therefore, those ministries share the responsibility with eGA regarding their blogs. Focus groups were implemented in co-operation with our new strategy consultants in preparation of the new Bahrain eGovernment strategy (2011-2014).

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 objectives of the imitative are:- • Measure the satisfaction levels and the collecting the feedback of the different stakeholders regarding the Bahrain eGovernment program and services. • Reflect the feedback obtained from the different channels on Bahrain eGovernment decisions and services. • Continuously Encourage and motivate the different stakeholders to contribute with their opinion and feedback • Investigate innovative mechanisms of participation. The following strategies are used to implement the initiative and meet the objectives :- Outsource marketing research: The marketing research is outsourced to Nielsen to guarantee a high quality of implementation and deep results analysis. Before the beginning of the marketing research activity, eGA decided the objectives of the research and agrees on the questioner with Nielsen. Then eGA receives the research results and develop the appropriate action plan. Focus on Web 2.0/implement with internal resources: eGA management has realized the importance of Web 2.0 tools as an inexpensive effective way of encouraging the participation o the citizens. Therefore, Face Book pages and Blogs are developed with internal resources which lower the costs and provide direct communication channels with Bahrain eGovernment. Focus Groups: Lately Bahrain eGovernment has introduced focus groups to engage Bahrain citizens in the decision making. Last August 2010, focus groups were conducted to engage the Bahraini women, Bahraini men, expatriates and businesses. The output of this focus group has taken incorporated in the new Bahrain eGovernment strategy (2011-2014). Starting next year Focus groups will be institutionalized and a main activity to engage the customers in decision making.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The implementation of this initiative in continuous, that we are always in the process of getting the feedback of all the stack holders and incorporating them in our decisions. As a rule of thumb, we provide the citizens the means of engagement then we collect their input and analyze it then we turn our findings to actions to be implemented. Since the Bahrain eGovernment inception the Market research is conducted every 6 months. After market research wave, actions are developed and implemented to reflect the citizen’s needs till today 4 surveys were conducted the lasted of which was ended in the 15th of December 2010. Then an internal committee within eGA takes care of implementing the actions. Face Book page and Blogs were first introduced year 2009. And now they are successfully utilized as tool with to engage with the citizens. Same as above we analyze the inputs of the citizens and then turn their concerns into actions. Focus groups findings (conducted last August 2010) were incorporated in the new Bahrain eGovernment strategy. Starting next year Focus groups will be institutionalized that focus groups will take place more often.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The main obstacles encountered are :- Lack of participation on web 2.0 tools: unlike focus groups and marketing research, web 2.0 tools do not encourages the citizens to participate unless they are supported by marketing and awareness campaigns. Therefore, a marketing campaign to encourage the citizens to participate in the bahrain.bh blogs is launched from time to time when it is needed. Obstacles Implementing citizens’ suggestions and concerns: Some of the concerns of the different are difficult to implement for different reasons such as technical difficulties, the existence of higher priority tasks, the concerns may not fit with the current strategy. First we take an internal decision if we can implement a certain suggestion or not, if we cannot we ensure to inform the citizen the reason for which we cannot implement his concern and make sure that he is satisfied. Sometimes other ministries do not appreciate implementing citizens concerns; however, we do our best efforts to convince them the importance of customizing their needs to the citizens needs. Gaining the trust of the Citizens: we were faced with the disbelief of the citizens that their opinions and comments would be incorporated in our decisions. Therefore, we had to show the citizens their opinions and concerns being implemented and respected by eGA; for example, eGA has created an award (eConcept which takes part in Bahrain Forum) which is awarded for the best suggestion Bahrain eGovernment receives prior to the forum and we ensure this suggestion to be implemented and live before the Award ceremony. Getting Face-Face interviews: Government and business employees are not flexible when it comes to have an interview with them regarding the Bahrain eGovernment program. Therefore, Bahrain eGovernment helped Nielsen resolve this issue through initiating the request to conduct the interviews with the government employees by Bahrain eGovernment CEO. Also, we make sure to make the employees aware of the purpose of the interview and the contribution they are making for the overall Bahrain eGovernment program by answering the interviewers questions honestly and in-depth.

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 initiative is funded by the Bahrain eGovernment budget allocated for the overall Bahrain eGovernment initiative. The last 4 waves of customer satisfaction survey have cost almost $ 477,000 USD that those surveys included more than 2600 samples for each wave. Those samples were obtained through telephone and Face-Face meetings. Blogs, face book and polls costs are minimal and total developed by internal recourses. For each customer satisfaction index survey wave there is a project manager responsible about approving the questioners, following up with the project progress and finally interpreting results and suggesting action plan in response to the results. The same person is responsible about interpreting the feedback collected from blogs, face book and polls. Focus groups were funded by the budget allocated for developing the new eGovernment strategy. However, starting next year as the focus groups will be continues activity; a special budget will be allocated for this activity.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The initiative is sustainable through marketing awareness campaigns that encourage the citizens in consciously participate in the web 2.0 engagement initiative. Also the management sustains the initiative through giving importance to the citizen’s demands and needs to be addressed, the management consider it a cornerstone of the Bahrain eGovernment strategy to meet all stakeholders needs and demands. This initiative is transferable to other governmental entities, that they can implement our methodologies and strategy to engage the citizens in their decision making process. We already host the blogs of other governmental entities on our portal and we plan to expand the invitation for other governmental entities to host their blogs on our portal.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The most profound impact of the initiative is the increasing level of the satisfaction dealing with eGovernment services among the citizens, businesses, visitors and all other stakeholders. The continuous addressing of eGovernment customers needs resulted in an eGovernment program which closely matches the needs of all the stakeholders; hence, the satisfaction levels increased dramatically. We have learned a lot of lessons from this initiative. We have learned that simple ways of collecting the customer feedback and measuring satisfaction levels are as effective as complex expensive methods. For example, a simple page on face book in addition to a simple survey distributed at our shows are very effective to get customers feedback and investigate their needs although it is inexpensive if compared to costly methods such as full fledge customer satisfaction campaign. Therefore, next we are going to conduct the customer satisfaction survey annually instead of Bi-Annually.


Institution Name:		eGovernment Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Feras Ahmed
Title:		Director, Services and Channels Enhancement
Telephone/ Fax:		+973 17388335
Institution's / Project's Website:		+973 17388338
E-mail:		fahmed@ega.gov.bh
Address:		Building no. 145, Road no. 2403, Block no. 224
Postal Code:		PO Box 75533
City:		Muharraq
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