In line with the announcement during the Opening Ceremony of the Bahrain International eGovernment Forum 2018 on the launch of the Bahrain eGovernment Index, Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) Acting Vice CE in eTransformation Dr. Zakareya Ahmed AlKhajah stated that the Kingdom of Bahrain’s early realization of the importance of adopting modern technology and its leadership in this field has led to the establishment of a first-of-its-kind national indicator in the region. The index is developing government performance by facilitating procedures and raising quality of services delivered to the public. It is consistent with international indicators that are applied in the eGovernment sector.
He continued that the index regularly evaluates public entities based on a set of criteria which focus on maturity of delivered eServices in terms of integration, interaction, simplicity of procedures, accessibility to information as well as level of entity’s adoption to the cloud computing technology and level of commitment to IT as well as HR development. The level of entities’ adoption to the culture of IT strategic planning is also measured along with their security readiness in the field of information security based on the classification of the Cyber Trust program.
Dr. AlKhajah stated that this initiative seeks to regularly assess public entities in order to encourage the adoption of best IT practices, develop government performance and raising efficiency so as to reduce expenditures and enhance strategic planning, revising and determining government IT priorities based on planning and coordination amongst public entities by measuring public service performance and embedding the culture of excellence amongst one another.
Based on the evaluation that was carried-out under the supervision of the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology chaired by His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa the Deputy Prime Minister to measure level of provided eGovernment initiatives, outcomes and impact resulted from the initiatives on level of advancing government performance in service entities; the Authority designed the evaluation which focused on the principals of the COBIT 5 initiative responsible on linking results according to framework applied by the ICTGC sector. Over 17 initiatives of organizations and ministries will be subject to undergo the criteria prior to classifying them under the Bahrain eGovernment Index framework.