The Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) Chief Executive Mohammed Al-Qaed announced the achievement of iGA in Operations and Governance sector during the year 2022. Thanks to the continuous guidance and follow-up extended by His Excellency General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Minister of Interior, Chairman of the Ministerial Committee for Information and Communications Technology (MCICT), Al Qaed noted that the achievements were in line with government directions and aspirations to achieve the national goals and strategies, in addition, Operations and Governance achievements have contributed to the development and improvement of Government services quality and its outputs, aiming eventually towards improving the quality of life for citizens and residents.
In relation to the IT Governance, Al-Qaed stressed that iGA reviewed around 3714 government requests, through the National Committee for ICT Governance, with a completion rate of 3.7 days per request in 2022. The Committee has also updated the standards for purchasing computers, prepare and review the government data backup policy, in addition was able to reduce the cost of IT projects by 24% through Government IT purchase optimization. The operations and Governance sector has also prepared and reviewed plans to activate and implement digital policies, and signed 3 agreements with Batelco, Amazon and Cisco, in addition to launching 7 initiatives to develop IT policies and standards, completing the review of 103 projects and passing purchases worth BHD22 million to more than 50 government entities during the course of last year.
As for the single sign-on system (ekey), iGA CE indicated that Operation and Governance team managed to raise the capacity of ekey system, and increase ekey users to more than 644,000, pointing that the number of authentications verified through eKey reached to 18 million during 2022. This is in addition to improving the system’s interface and adding encrypted personal identification number in eKey notifications sent to the users. eKey system been linked it with the SIEM system to reinforce its security levels and respond quickly to any potential risks proactively, as well as enhancing confidentiality and data privacy features of eKey users.
Al Qaed also highlighted the achievement of linking eKey system with the self-service platforms (eKiosk), which enabled citizens and residents to upgrade their ekey account from basic to advanced level easily and time-conveniently through the eKiosk.
As for the Government Systems monitoring Business Continuity, the CE confirmed that the Operation & Governance sector has been able during the year 2022 to provide more than (80) monitoring systems, and more than (650) enhanced devices for monitoring government network around the clock, and more than (2263) technical issues been addressed and resolved, with the improvement of the performance of monitoring systems by 25%. In addition, Al Qaed highlighted the completion of the Recovery Center Room equipment, adding Sijilat system to the monitoring system, and completing the upgrade of the government systems hosting room at iGA, in addition to providing support to more than 55 government entities.
As for government sector Cloud Infrastructure, Al-Qaed mentioned that about 85% of government data has been transferred to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform, and the update of backup system has been completed. In addition, and the load distribution system has been upgraded to raise the availability of systems, improve the performance and stability of applications, and completing the Microsoft cloud environment.
Al Qaed also noted the achievements of the Operations and Governance Sector in relation to enhancing the connectivity to the Government Data Network (GDN). More than 300 websites been connected to the government network, raising the speed of the Internet, and completing the update of the domain (. gov.bh) system framework as well as linking government data centers with Cisco technology to improve the speed of hosting systems. This is in addition to the GCC network by linking UAE and Kuwait system through Zajel network.
iGA CE concluded by referring to the sector’s achievements in the Geospatial database (GIS), with the participation of 75 government entities, and demonstrated by producing more than 260 geospatial maps and link more than 48 government systems to the geospatial database in 2022. GIS team also worked on preparing all soil maps in the Kingdom of Bahrain and processing all maps of governorates, roads and streets in cooperation with the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA), pointing out that the iGA recently launched the Agricultural Atlas Project during the Bahrain International Garden Show in March 2023.