Questions/Answers

1) Generally, Judicial services’ centers and the distribution of its offices and internal departments were designed to serves the paper-work procedures, which constituted a burden on citizens to obtain the required services, and the direct interaction between applicants and employees, that leads to the risks of losing documents / case files and and/or damage and/or tampering with the contents, as well as limiting employee productivity. 2) The old procedures required the circulation of the paper files between the concerned employees’ offices like clerk's office - where the case archive is located - and the judge’s office and the various departments within the Directorate. 3) The manual files archiving increases the difficulty of saving and retrieval files information. The matter becomes more complicated with in complex cases that need long-time processing in the courts. 4) Data integration between courts and execution system was limited, that leads to the need of a human factor intervention with multiple repetitions of data entry and its consecutive levels of reviews before being processed by the concerned employees and judges. In addition, there was a difficulty in responding the urgent information requests due to having multiple sources of data with minimum integrations.

SDG 16 is focused on promoting peaceful and inclusive societies; providing access to justice for all; and building effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels. The re-engineered and developed Judicial services perfectly aligned with SDG 16, it manifests itself As an effective and transparent mechanism for all beneficiaries to access the judicial services without any discrimination or leaving any category behind. The Judicial eservices not only a channel for submission but also keeping applicants fully aware with the status and the progress of their transactions.

Developing Judicial services is fully aligned with UN SDG-16 that aim to achieve the sustainable development via establishing peace, stability, human rights, and effective governance, based on the rule of law. This initiative gives greater efficiency and effectiveness to the Judicial services, by expediting processing time and improving the quality of information, with full access to justice services and inclusion to all beneficiaries, via electronic channels. *Reference to the statistical summary that shows the impact of the initiative on the productivity and efficiency of the judicial services.

iGa considers the customers' needs as the most important critical success factor. To have an objective and realistic view of the business needs, multiple techniques being followed like Users’ stories, document analysis, surveys and site observations in addition to being familiar with the related laws and regulations. Economically and environmental aspects are interconnected in the improvements and development of the governmental services since iGA always aim to utilize technology to reduce the operations cost of the governmental services and reduce the paper use and physical walk-in that lead to higher traffic and gas emissions.

In this initiative iGA worked on three main aspects as the following: First, full redesign of Judicial services to be more around users’ needs. This implies that services are built based on stakeholders needs, either internal stakeholders (officials, judges) or external stakeholders (lawyers, individuals, and other government entities). Second, rethinking the way Ministry of justice MOJ work by incorporating new technologies. That leads to a complete transition from paper-based processes to digitized processes, which, in turn, implies the establishment of flexible work processes. Third, ensuring the smooth transition via change management activities, working on developing MOJ personnel, training them on a new way, more productive and advanced instead of doing their traditional legacy daily paper-based tasks. In addition to that we ensure engaging the external stakeholders via launching marketing campaigns that increase the awareness of the public regarding how they can benefit from the new eservices.

The Kingdom takes responsibility in providing equal rights to women and ensuring they are represented in various fields. In the judicial sectors, women lawyers represent 54% of the total lawyers in Bahrain, in addition to that there are around 14 women judges working in different courts. The transformation of judicial services ensure that it's accessible to all segments without any discrimination based on gender.

The stakeholders were classified into two main categories: 1) Internal stakeholders (officials - judges) 2) External stakeholders (lawyers - individuals, and other government entities). Initial assessment was showing that 87% of the transactions were issued by lawyers, and that was considered during the change management activities, where workshops and user guides were designed to targets the lawyers.

iGA has a customized operating model for service development, this operating model is derived from service development life cycle (SDLC) with customization to fit with iGA internal structure that include some extra unique functions like marketing and change management in addition to the standard functions related to the typical software development life cycle. The above-mentioned operating model identifies the systematic processes of business process reengineering, prototyping, developing, implementation. With the support of highly critical function of change management activities that play an important role in making the newly introduced changes sustainable as the new norm of the intended organization.

1) The offices and front desks arrangements were designed to adapt the paper-based procedures. iGa introduced a new floor plan that was implemented by Ministry of Justice, the new proposal aimed to provide more efficient arrangements to improve the productivity of backend employees. In addition to full arrangements of customer services area equipped with self-services kiosks, screens, and queuing system. 2) Human resistance to change the traditional paper-based activities. We planned change management activities that included publishing user guides, training workshops, and presence in the work environment during the launching the system and the electronic services to guide the users.

iGA worked on three main aspects. First, full redesign of execution services to be more around users’ needs. This implies that services are built the stakeholders needs, either internal stakeholders (officials, judges) or external stakeholders (lawyers, individuals and other government entities). Second, rethinking the way Ministry of justice MOJ work by incorporating new technologies. That leads to a complete transition from paper-based processes to digitized processes, which, in turn, implies the establishment of flexible work processes and the developing MOJ personnel, training them on a new ways more productive and advanced instead of doing their traditional legacy daily paper-based tasks.

During Covid-19 pandemic, Moj and its judicial services were the role model for other entities, due to the high maturity of the eservices, Moj was capable to render its services to the public with minimum need to have a physical interaction. Lawyers and individuals were fully able to benefit from the judicial services without visiting the service centers. That help MoJ to adapt the national health measures and reduce the risk of infections among its employees and judges in addition to the effective contribution in the protection arrangement on national level. Bahrain cabinet issued a resolution based on MoJ success story recommending all governmental entities to speed up their services transformation considering MoJ as a model.

The Justice Solution and its supporting platform infrastructure was on AWS cloud to ensure the scalability, reliability, and continuous availability of the system. This is in line with the Government of Bahrain’s commitment towards the cloud first policy. The cloud first policy is aimed at reducing the cost of government ICT by eliminating duplication of solutions and fragmentation in the technology environment and leveraging the efficiencies of on-demand provisioning of ICT services; Increasing security by using accredited platforms.; and Increasing productivity and agility, and thus improving citizen services.

Due to the high impact of the initiative on national level, all other governmental entities were required to speed up their services transformations considering MoJ as role model. (Ministry of health – Ministry of housing – General directorate of traffic ) are only example of similar national entities.

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Below is the team structure that worked on the development of the Judicial services:  Project management team  BPR team  System analysis team  QC testing team  Service delivery team  Developers team  Change Management team  Marketing and awareness team

 217,000 collection transactions of Execution Court fees from the year 2015 to 2019, with annual increase rate of 30%, which indicates an increase in the efficiency of the Execution procedures after the implementation of the electronic services.  924,000 online applications received through the eservices from 2015 to 2019.  The service cost of manual transaction in Bahraini Dinars is 1.300 and 0.200 for the submission through the electronic services, which indicates a saving of 1.100 BHD per transaction.

Si

It’s part of the operating model of service development that the Quality control department team perform comprehensive evaluation on the services, below are the types of the conducted tests: a) Functionality Testing b) System Integration testing c) Regression Testing d) Accessibility testing e) Security testing f) Performance testing g) Usability Testing

1. Server/Api performance is verified for how the data is sent to and from server efficiently , the number of API calls generated from the server should be always less ,behavior of the app when the server is down i.e. is the data stored in native app 2. Network Performance is verified for jitters , packet loss and network speed 3. Resource consumption rates: is verified for memory consumption , processor consumption , data consumption battery consumption 4. Functionality : is verified for all functional requirements 5. Security : is verified for security requirements

The below list all the parameters were successfully tested: 1-Conformity to requirements 2-Conformity to UI standards 3-Conformity to W3c standards 4-Conformity to Usability - Ease of use - Help and adequate instruction 5-Performance 6-Security Below list of references and standards utilized in the quality control: https://www.nea.gov.bh/Web-Design-Standards https://www.nea.gov.bh/Web-Accessibility-Standards https://www.nea.gov.bh/Web-Design-Standards https://www.nea.gov.bh/Web-Optimization-Guidelines OWASP standard

Bahrain is strategically planning to benefit from the emerging technologies and from its well-established IT infrastructure to provide all governmental services via omni electronic channels in addition to achieve the concept of integrated government. That goal will make the governmental services fully accessible to all customers segments and increase the efficiency performance of the government. MoJ is leading in the transformation of its eservices via electronic channels with strategic partnership with iGA. MoJ is not only partnering with iGA but with many other governmental entities like Central Bank of Bahrain CBB, Survey and land registration bureau SLRB and Ministry of Interior and many other entities. The integration among the above-mentioned entities made law enforcement procedures much more efficient and the processing time of resolving commercial disputes much more less.

On entity levels there were many entities involved as below: 1) Ministry of Justice & Islamic affairs MoJ 2) Supreme Judicial Council 3) Bahrain Lawyers Association Further breakdown to the stakeholders shows the below list of stakeholders: 1- Judges 2- Lawyers 3- Employees 4- Individuals iGa followed the approach of collaboration and engagement of the stake holders at all stages, starting from the initial assessment to the as-is situation to the final to-be proposal. Requirements workshops, surveys, site visits and documents analysis were sample of the followed techniques. In every step the team was validate the deliverables with the relevant stakeholder ensuring the common understanding at all steps.

1) Deep understanding of the business needs is a corner stone, the project team should do all the necessary efforts to familiarize themselves with the intended domain. 2) Senior Management’s support is critical to the success of the transformation initiatives taking the required actions when it comes to policy changes or required resolutions. 3) Engaging all stakeholders facilitate their buy-in and acceptance to the new introduced procedures. 4) Change management activities is pillar to mitigate the expected resistance and to ensure that the new change become a norm. 5) Taking responsibility of the newly introduced changes in any organizations build a trust between the project team and the intended government entity.