Questions/Answers

Metrash2 is a high-tech service delivery channels that is operated and maintained by the General Directorate of Information Systems (GDIS) of the Ministry of Interior in the state of Qatar. It enables the Qatari community, nationals and expatriates, individuals and companies, to apply for and obtain a wide range of government-provided services related to Residence Permits (renewal – cancellation – reactivation), Visas, airport eGate, enquiring about official documents, enquiring about and settling traffic violations, while enjoying the convenience of using their smart phones and devices; anywhere, anytime! Metrash2 smart application is designed and developed based on Qatar’s strategy to develop electronic and integrated government services for citizens and residents of Qatar and to make them available at any time, in conformity with “Qatar e-Government 2020” program objectives, and also with Qatar’s long term vision of 2030, which is the country’s long term sustained development plan. Metrash2, in collaboration with the other high-tech service delivery channels the Ministry of Interior currently operates, is meant to make the life of the people of Qatar easier, simpler, and to make any government-related service a rewarding experience, relieving people from paying personal visits to related MOI departments, a matter that saves their time, money, and effort.

- Metrash2 is developed in partnership with local and international companies providing governmental services and is available in 6 different languages and applies web accessibility standards. - Adapting Artificial intelligence concepts to automatically renew laborers residencies without any user interaction. - Guarantee work equality for employees by providing a unified way to access working rights information. - Ability to report children, women or labor abuse. - Provide online service for banks and companies to easily release mortgage on loans settlement to facility loan services. - Promoting environmental friendly policies, by switching printed papers with electronic documents and reducing the transportation need to accomplish government services.

Metrash2 helps to fight violence and environmental issues by making communication easier with parties that provide community and social services, besides providing electronic services and tools to help people accomplish many government operations via few clicks instead of losing time and effort doing it in the regular ways; the saved time can be used in social development.

The application is designed in a way that makes government and public services accessible and easy to use by a wide variety of people from different age groups, education levels and talking in consideration the limited technology knowledge of elderly people, in addition to the different languages used by Qatar residents. Moreover, many interview sessions was established with users with different disabilities to verify that the application supports the tools they are using to interact with technology. As a result of this efforts, the application was awarded digital access certificate from Mada Qatar assistive technology center on March 2018 for providing outstanding accessible digital service.

- The application started to provide government services through mobiles early since 2012 to become one of first applications in the region that provide such a service. - Zero clicks idea introduced to the application 2016 to provide intelligent automatic services for companies and people that require them to register only and the service will do all the work such as automatic residency renewal. - Ability for companies to delegate services and permission to the application users to execute the government service online on behalf of them.

The application has innovated new ways to deal with services that are not electronic in other countries, like transferring vehicle’s ownership, bidding for a special car plate number and receiving medical health reports and many others.

Many ministries in Qatar has adopted the way Metrash2 is providing services through mobile applications and knowledge transfer sessions was held to provide best practices.

Metrash2 team is divided to three sections: development, quality and user support to provide a complete government service that covers user needs. Development and infrastructure tools are provided by companies such as Microsoft and IBM to guarantee the adaption of the latest technology.

New services are added frequently to provide unique user experience with the focus on social and economic needs of the country and the region. In addition to providing many user communication channels through calls, emails and mobile application, to get their feedback and cover their daily issues. Many parts of the backend services are automated to resolve any issues and problems in the provided services and recover any errors.

Yes

Data analysis and statistics were used to evaluate how services were beneficial to users and their impact on daily life in regard with the ease of use and reducing the need to visit service centers. Evaluation also took into consideration the time needed to complete a service through the mobile application.

App stores download statistics, internal user interactions statistics, average time required to complete a service and feedback received through various communication channels.

- Metrash2 enhanced the transaction operation time by making it 2 minutes in average, which save the queue time and transportation to great extent. - Metrash2 users have increased significantly every year in proportion with the number of provided services - Metrash2 number of transactions per services has grown steadily to exceed more than 9 million execution transactions and 30 million inquiry transaction.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development puts emphasis on collaboration, engagement, coordination, partnerships, and inclusion. Please describe what and how stakeholders were engaged in designing, implementing and evaluating the initiative. Please also highlight their roles and contributions (200 words maximum) Metrash2 was built on collaboration with different government and public stakeholders, every department provided their input on services that can be provided electronically, priorities was set with regards to the most requested services in service centers with high wait times and high impact to residents, visa holders and citizens. Several meetings was held with stakeholders to propose any changes in business processes to adapt the new electronic service. The below contributors were a part of defining and building the provided services: 1. MOI Information Systems Department. 2. Traffic Department. 3. Immigration Department. 4. Community Police. 5. Citizens Department. 6. MOI Human resources Department. 7. MADA assistive technology. 8. Medical Department.

The successful experience of Metrash2 application can be repeated in any other government agency, inside or outside Qatar, that provides public services, on the condition that it sticks to the people; i.e., it is derived from the real-life needs of the people and it is targeted at the welfare of the people. An initiative, just like Metrash2, requires support on both governmental and public levels. The government should provide all required technological and/or human resources, while the public should be responsive and provide proper feedback, to ensure it contributes to the well-being and benefit of all categories of society.