4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The strategy for this Diplomatic eServices was implemented in accordance with the clear mission and objective defined in the Kingdom of Bahrain’s eGovernment Strategic document and its definition on electronic services delivery, in particular. At all times, our central goal was to provide the diplomatic eServices accessible from any technology platform and improve its reach. The objective of the project was to design, develop and deploy an online eServices application. This application would “web-enable” various services which were offered by the ministry to various diplomatic institutions operating in Bahrain.
Implementation of the strategy followed well-disciplined and defined project management practices and principles. Proper documents were prepared in advance and followed. All documents, intermediate outputs underwent strict configuration management process to control and version each items.
The initiative was implemented according to 3 major phases
1. User Requirements Analysis & Baseline
2. Intuitive User Interfacing – Ensuring effective user interfaces that would exceed the expected satisfaction of multiple groups of end users, which includes but not limited to
a. well trained ministry officials & diplomatic staffs
b. users falling to different region, language, political system and ethnicity
c. users with varying computer literacy and academic qualifications
3. Prototyping the application/software to mimic its visuals and working
4. Core development of the actual application/software with zero compromise on security and vulnerabilities
5. Deployment of the software on trusted secured network environment
6. Exposing the software for vigorous quality checks
7. Pushing the service online for real-time use, as a unique & innovative solution to a large problem
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The whole implementation process was a remarkable coordinated work of multiple teams comprising of MOFA IT Directorate (As Project Coordinator), MOFA Protocol Directorate (As Business Owner), Technology Consultants (3rd Party technology consultant vendor and development team). The process basically involves bidirectional communication between 3 different stakeholders – (1.) the diplomatic institutions on one side and (2.) the implementing entities, rather the associated ministry or government agency on the other side and of course (3.) MOFA in between, bridging the two.
The project is an ideal case of services delivery of both “Government to Consumer” and “Government to Government” communication.
• Government to Consumer connectivity - as it connects Diplomatic Institutions in Bahrain with various Government Ministries and Agencies/Institutions of Bahrain.
• Government to Government as it requires interaction between Ministry of Foreign Affairs and various other Government bodies of Bahrain (like Visa & Resident Permit, Traffic, Customs, Municipality, Airport, MOFA-Protocol) for service implementing.
This synergic coordinated efforts of all team resulted in excellent output including minimal change management. Team had frequent project progress meetings, where members discussed the project execution strategies and identified risks in advance and set its mitigation plan.
End users of this initiatives includes trained Diplomatic officials from around 140 different diplomatic institutions, Over 60 Ministry officials from more than 10 different ministries and government entities and a few number of Protocol officials from MOFA that run the whole show – ranging from administrators to Diplomatic eServices processing officers and supervisors. During the implementation stage, a subset of the above users from various nodes participated in various review meetings to provide their valuable evaluation feedback, against which the project underwent refinements and corrections.
Apart from the above, the eGovernment Authority’s strategy specialists and electronic services delivery experts and consultants were also periodically consulted to get their valuable feedback and guidance on implementing such a large enterprise level workflow solution.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The initiative effectively used multiple resources in an optimized manner. The key major resources were none other than human resources and technology infrastructure for developing the software system. Each and every team member of the larger initiative had dedicated their effort and time towards this project. All the team members except the software development members were only on a part time mode, where they spend their time for any designated activity. However on the other hand the software development team members were working on a full-time, dedicated mode for a period of 4 months.
The technology infrastructure like computers, system software & software tools, used to develop the software system were brought in by the software vendor itself. The technology infrastructure for deploying the final software product on live environment was arranged by MOFA, utilizing the datacenter infrastructure of the Central Informatics Organization of the Kingdome.
Mobilization of the whole resources including human were well planned and scheduled such that it did not create any kind of hindrance and unexpected events.
The whole cost of the initiative including its ongoing maintenance and support is provided solely by MOFA from its own dedicated budget. The low cost option recommended by the software vendor helped MOFA to meet the project cost without any major difficulty. The estimated total cost of the whole project including the software development, deployment, maintenance, renewals of SSL certificates etc falls less than USD 50,000.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Online electronic service transactions – Online Diplomatic eServices made the life of the diplomatic community easier. It helped MOFA protocol to effectively manage and control the diplomatic requests and process them effectively. In the initial stage of rollout, MOFA introduced around 14 different eServices spanning across multiple ministries and government institutions. Making these service delivery online thru electronic forms on the secured web portal helped MOFA to exceed targets and resulted in increased capacity. This innovative approach of converting Diplomatic services to electronic format have benefited all 3 major stakeholders (MOFA, Diplomatic Institutions and Government Institutions & Ministries) an estimated overall savings of USD 10,000 per year.
Reduction of human resources – MOFA protocol was able to reduce their team size from 20 to just 4 for managing diplomatic services. During the old age manual process, MOFA protocol deployed a large pool of resources for managing the processing of diplomatic resources. By the introduction of electronic eServices, MOFA protocol brought down this to just 4 dedicated staff to manage 10s of eServices on a daily basis. The portal itself manages many processing activates automatically and effectively assigns eServices on a load balanced algorithm. Thus MOFA was able to divert the resources to alternate activities within the department, thereby reducing the operational cost of diplomatic eServices by a 100 thousand Bahraini Dinars, per year.
Environment Friendly & Zero Carbon emission - Apart from the above obvious output, it also created environmental benefits by going paperless and zero carbon emission associated with transport of documents and applications from various nodes within the workflow.
Accountability & Transparency – MOFA was able to effectively trace applications at any point in time as the portal software itself assigns responsibilities to end users in a very effective and unique manner. This also resulted in high accountability of service and full transparency on the process.
Reduced process delay and red tape – With the introduction of automated electronic services, MOFA was successful in providing esteemed customer satisfaction and higher service experience to its end users eliminating all unnecessary red tapes and process delays.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The online software is actively being used by each and every diplomatic institution in Bahrain and even in outside. Day by day, the count of services being successfully served effectively thru the new initiative proves its acceptance.
MOFA have defined strict methodologies and measuring techniques to ensure that the new initiative is performing as planned and intended to work. Periodic reports are generated from the online system to get the exact performance counts. These counts are drilled down to institution level, ministry level, user lever and even service level. Thus MOFA gets a crystal clear picture on the performance of the system.
System is also having automated escalation mechanism to notify the superior authority on any deviation from defined metrics. In any worst scenario, if the system finds that any service taking longer time than anticipated at any node and stage within the whole workflow, it is being reminded to the concerned and later escalated to higher authorities.
Statistics like 10,000 successful service delivery over the past 1000 calendar days, addition of new services to the platform, induction of new institutions and agency to the network, initiatives of automated integration of the system with downstream systems of other ministries etc. shows the success rates of the initiative.
Security and authentication of the system is something that is uncompromised to ensure trust and reliable security of the information shared through the network. In this direction, the online software is subjected to periodic vulnerability assessment and take corrective actions.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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(1) Connectivity between stakeholders
Challenge - The connectivity between various stakeholders was challenging. The success of the project lies in the effective utilization of the new system by all stakeholders.
Solution - MOFA effectively formed informal steering committee meetings and ensured effective communication.
Outcome – A smooth and effective communication was established between the stakeholders
(2) Security Concern
Challenge - Since the online software involves data sharing between various government institutions, security and privacy of the shared data was a major concern to many stakeholders.
Solution – The portal was deployed on a very secured and protocol driven datacenter managed by the Central Informatics Organization of the Kingdom. The prior expertise of both MOFA IT team took proactive measures to ensure that the whole development is as per the established standards.
Outcome – A well secured deployment platform where any can share their confidential data. MOFA’s expertise in handling such networks helped the team to eliminate any kind of delay in getting the software approved for deploying in government Datacenter.
(3) Skill and Knowledge Sharing to a large administrator community
Challenge – There were certain high level administration activities for all stake holders. This requires a detailed knowledge transfer to the assigned administrators in each entity.
Solution – Admin representatives from each diplomatic institution and ministries were called in for an elaborate training session and conducted and effective knowledge sharing.
Outcome - This training along with innovative self-learning materials available on the system helped the end users of the diplomatic community to be part of the whole process without any delay.
(4) Continuing support
Challenge – How to ensure continuing LIVE support.
Solution – Though very small, MOFA had to engage dedicated team to address the concerns of end users from various entities. MOFA effectively engaged support and maintenance with the vendor who in-turn provide all technical and business advises to the concerned over various communication channel.
Outcome – A smooth execution
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