The Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) Chief Executive Mr. Mohammed Ali AlQaed highlighted the importance of the Government Forum 2017 – held under the patronage of HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman AlKhalifa – the Prime Minister – and initiated by HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad AlKhalifa – the Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister. The Forum reflects the success of the wise government’s policy in attaining customer satisfaction by continuously evaluating the quality of performance of delivered services and contributing in providing advanced public services to citizens in the highest of quality. He also commented that the attention paid by HRH the Crown Prince to the National Suggestions & Complaints System ‘Tawasul’ has enhanced the efficiency of public entities’ performance and contributed in developing public services through direct prompt response. This has created a positive competitive amongst the government entities in an aim at reaching high levels of excellence in the delivered services.
AlQaed congratulated the Ministry of Housing; Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism together with the Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications for being granted this year’s Government Forum Excellence Award for communicating with citizens via Tawasul. He thanked them for their keenness and commitment to the positive interaction. He further stated that such recognition has been acknowledged for their efforts and initiatives in solving citizens’ issues and developing the quality of services as well as government performance. The CE stressed that such recognition is considered as a motivational initiative for other entities to strive towards providing the best for the nation and its people.
Regarding the total number of cases received via Tawasul – from January up until September 2017 – the number has exceeded 12,000 cases received through bahrain.bh and the mobile app. Utilizing the app has been steadily growing in comparison to the national portal. Moreover, the rate of responding within the assigned timeframe has reached 99% from the total number of received cases.
The process of developing the system is continuous in order to achieve the highest standards of efficiency. Recently, the user-backend of the Tawasul system has been entirely developed for all governmental entities in addition to the development of the reports and statistics system, development of reviewing the timeframes when responding to raised cases accompanied by new system reports and updating some features such as raising reports specifically to the minister’s office and a report that measures the performance level of responses in details.
The public can benefit from Tawasul via the national portal (bahrain.bh) or the mobile app (bahrain.bh/apps) which offers numerous advantages such as ease of submitting suggestions or complaints to public entities with the accessibility of attaching documents within a period of maximum 30 seconds. Additionally, users can then follow-up on their complaints through a tracking number along with a survey of the users’ feedback on their complaints.