The deputy prime minister in cooperation with many other ministries is ensuring that the e-government principles are implemented in the ministries.
Addressing a press conference, the minister commended the jump in ranking from 36 in 2012 to its present state. The Kingdom stands at number five among the Asian countries to receive such a reward, he said. The countries that supersede Bahrain are Korea, ranked first, followed by Singapore, Japan and Israel. “However, this is not a time to sit on our laurels, he added. Every element of the report is being analysed to understand the areas for enhancement going forward and find the areas of weakness. The departments concerned will lay out strategies to overcome the weakness, he added.
He later told the Bahrain News Agency (BNA) that Bahrain was ready to share and impart the expertise gained with any regional neighbour who looked to Bahrain as a role model. The mission and plans to take the sector forward are integrated between the member states. “We have one integrated e-government strategy,” he added.
Mohammed Ali Al Qaed, CEO of e-Government Authority, presenting the various indicators said that the survey data presents e-government development at the global and regional levels. It also analyses the relationships of the EGDI in the small island developing states (SIDS), the landlocked developing states (LLDS) and the least developed countries (LDC) and explores the correlation of e-government with other indicators like national income.
He added that the three components of the EGDI -- online service index, telecommunication infrastructure index and human capital index – are factored in while ranking a country. One of the primary factors contributing to a high level of e-government development is concurrent past and present investment in telecommunication, human capital and provision of online services, the survey details said. Among the primary factors contributing to a high level of e-government development is concurrent past and present investment in telecommunication, human capital and provision of online services, the CEO said.
Looking ahead at priorities and focus areas going forward to take Bahrain to greater heights, Al Qaed said that Bahrain showed tremendous gain in the web measure we scored 93 points. There is tremendous pressure at maintaining this spot. There were 100s of assignments with the ministries to be implemented over the past two years. Earnest efforts helped jump from 88 to 93, he added. The questions get tougher and the assessment is over many factors than one ever even expects, Al Qaed said. The norms of e-participation itself was tightened. The participation has to involve the decision-making in the process of the citizen. Thus our priority will be e-participation and open data and maintaining ministry websites, making sure that the latest technologies are integrated into what already exists.
A second area of improvement, going forward, will be the telecom and human capital segments. The latter will poses challenges, because, that involves education over a longer period of time. In the human capital a one or two percent growth is a good indicator, because it is very slow. Growth in the telecom is very challenging. We did from 40 points to 70 points, but there is still room for improvement. An improvement of three per cent here will push the overall improvement by one per cent. This will have an overall improvement in ranking, he added.
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Quelle/Source: Bahrain News Agency, 30.06.2014
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