Kingdom of Bahrain, As part of the Kingdom of Bahrain's national strategy to execute comprehensive e-Government programmes, under the patronage of H.E Sheikh Ahmed Bin Ateyat Allah Al Khalifa, Bahrain's Minister of Cabinet Affairs, the eGovernment Authority today announced the launch of a new address for the eGovernment portal www.Bahrain.bh, at a press conference in the presence of senior government officials and a local and regional media representatives.
In his keynote address, H.E Sheikh Ahmed Bin Ateyat Allah Al Khalifa said: "As part of the Kingdom of Bahrain's e-government strategy, we have identified a number of key indicators which measure how well we are doing in terms of activating our strategy. One of these measures is conducting an annual customer satisfaction survey.
"The eGovernment authority appointed an independent research group to undertake that survey and the results showed that 75 per cent of respondents did not use the eGovernment portal, and 60 per cent stated that the reason for this was the difficulty they had in remembering the portal's address."
The Minister added: "Based on the results of the survey, we instructed the eGovernment authority to meet the regional leaders in charge of eGovernment initiatives and programmes across the GCC to help identify and agree on an easy-to-remember portal address for each country and to identify new standards for the region.
"The process of identifying a new address included polling users for their opinions on identifying the new domain - and the new national address for eGovernment. The address that we have selected was one of the addresses chosen by the majority of people polled."
HE Sheikh Ahmed confirmed that, based on the results of the survey and the opinion poll, www.Bahrain.bh was selected as the easiest address to remember.
HE the Minister spoke about the importance of the enhanced eGovernment Portal stating: "The presence of a state-of-the-art eGovernment framework clearly demonstrates that the Government of Bahrain is striving to ensure that all services are easy to use and suited to the needs of the public, residents and businesses. It will also extend this improved service to different participating ministries and organizations.
"The launch of the new address coincides with a new design and new content for the portal which will help in meeting users' needs and encourage them to use the eGovernment address in all of their Government interactions."
He continued that the new eGovernment portal is a tool that allows the Government of Bahrain to improve the services it provides to its citizens, residents, visitors and businesses allowing them to reach all Government services quickly and easily. It also allows the different government organsisations to communicate and interact with each other in a simple and more efficient way
Sheikh Ahmed added that the .bh was chosen for the new portal and not the .gov which is used for Government organisations or .com that is used for the commercial sector because .bh truly represents all sectors of the Bahraini market, opening up the opportunity for the eGovernment portal to offer all electronic services related to customers either from the Government sector or the private sector.
Mr. Mohammed Al Qaed, Chief Executive of eGovernment authority said: "The concept of eGovernment does not mean simple technology, nor is just a presence on the internet, but rather eGovernment is a tool that allows the Government of Bahrain to improve the services it offers to its citizens and residents and allows them to make use of all Government services in an easy and more efficient way. It also allows the Ministries and Government organizations to work with each other and interact more efficiently
He continued: "Besides the launch of the new eGovernment portal, improved electronic services are being activated which will make it easier to get information by using the portal that today offers a total of 65 Government e-services, and it is predicted that an additional 25 eGovernment services offered by the portal will available by the end of 2008."
During his speech the eGovernment Authority CEO explained that the eGovernment authority has further enhanced the content and structure of the existing eGovernment portal and added new features to enhance the services. New user-friendly systems include an SMS alert and notification system, multiple access routes to information, special search facilities in Arabic and English, and categorisation of information for individuals, businesses, tourists and government users.
www.bahrain.bh offers wide-ranging, multiple-featured eservices and information under the categories of Individual; Business; Government and Visit Bahrain - allowing people of all age groups to have the quickest access to valuable information. Visitors can view the eservice name, logo and related description and steps before using any service.
Users can print information pertaining to a given service and pick what font they require for printing. Information is available in both languages on how to change documents into PDF files and there are links to video clips to simplify the use of the e-services in order to bring the experience to life.
The new website also provides more space for Government organization advertisements, in addition to simplifying the pages for the user
Visitor numbers to the eGovernment portal have now reached a total 8,692,800 with the average time spent on the portal at six minutes.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Adel A. Maymoon; Kamalakshi Misra
Quelle/Source: Zawya, 03.11.2008
