For this year's edition of the award, 57 projects were submitted, comprising 52 projects across 26 government entities and five projects from four private institutions.
The government entities are vying for one of the five categories of the Award: Best eContent, Best eService, Best eEconomy, Best eProject and eReadiness.
Meanwhile, private sector organisations are competing this year for the first time in the Award programme since it was established in 2010. They would be vying to win an award in the Best Public eService and Best Public Mobile Services categories dedicated to the private sector. The assessment phase involves several steps such as field visits for the participating institutions, public voting, a eMystery shopper programme, and checking for accuracy of the electronic services.
Assessment phase
Fatma Salim Al Riyami, project manager for the award for Excellence in eGovernment, said: "The assessment phase begins with field visits which will help identify the strengths and weaknesses of the competing projects by preparing reports on their performance, in order to verify the institutions' commitment and key features.
"The public voting, which has been adopted for the first time in the competition, starts by asking the public or service users to vote for the electronic services provided by the participating institutions. The ITA involves the community in the selection process, in an effort to create a more interactive environment, thereby taking users' suggestions and comments on the services.- Every year the ITA attempts to improve the competition process.
One of the new initiatives in this year's assessment process is the eMystery Shopper programme, which aims to assess the applications and services participating in the competition. Individuals are selected randomly to evaluate the experience of using the service and are then invited to record their observations on various aspects of the service.
Fatma Al Riyami said: "The services are evaluated according to certain criteria which include: ease of use of the site; search features; social networking pages and the effectiveness of the delivery system. Moreover, the accuracy of the services will be examined under these criteria: accessibility, availability, complexity of the search function, and user experiences of the service.
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Quelle/Source: Times of Oman, 03.09.2012
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