Shaikh Bin Mubarak chairs the SCICT’s meeting

Deputy Premier, Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology (SCICT), HH Shaikh Mohammed Bin Mubarak Al Khalifa chaired the thirty sixth meeting of the committee in presence of Deputy Prime Minister HH Shaikh Ali Bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, and Deputy Prime Minister Shaikh Khalid Bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, as well as the members of the committee. At the outset of the meeting, Shaikh Mohammed stressed the importance of the adoption of standards to ensure the best use of the infrastructure of information technology and the application of a unified mechanism for monitoring and quality management. He also asserted the need to keep concerned government institutions aware of those standards and sticking to them. During the meeting, the Committee reviewed the proposed standards for hosting the webs, the electronic systems and the systems supporting them in public sector, through allocating one central destination to host the electronic systems. The committee praised the achievement accomplished by the eGovernment Authority by winning the award for the best institution in the public sector in the Middle East as part of the international e-government received awards. The committee reviewed a number of issues including the results of the study of the common services through the integration of the financial information systems at the Ministry of Finance and Human Resources at the Civil Service Bureau and the executive work plan. It also reviewed the progress report on the implementation of the e-investor project, which aims to facilitate the process of obtaining a commercial registration and the required approvals through one electronic terminal, which is a project run in collaboration between the Ministry of Industry, and Commerce, the Economic Development Board and the eGovernment Authority. The Committee was also briefed on the preparations to host the United Nations Conference on Public Service 2013, and welcomed hosting the conference that is held for the first time in the Middle East and North Africa, where about 500 participants are expected to attend from more than 80 countries. The Committee welcomed the results of the global forum for experts of e-government, which was held recently in the Kingdom of Bahrain, considering holding the forum that is concerned with the criteria of UN’s report on the readiness of the e-government for the first time in the world in Bahrain as principles of the mechanism for exchanging experiences and extrapolation of the States’ views on that subject. During the meeting, the Committee was also briefed on the report of the course of work in the electronic services and channels, where the number of online services offered through the four channels of e-government was 249 services on the eGovernment portal. On the other hand, it is expected to launch 22 new electronic services next month, and the total visits for the eGovernment portal were about 51 million, and the total number of financial transactions were more than 600, with a total up to about 45 million since the launch of the Authority.