Bahrain’s Central Informatics Organisation (CIO), IBM and GBM recently announced the launch of the region’s first e-government solution centre located at the CIO premises in Isa Town. The centre is designed to help Bahrain government departments and other governments in the Middle East establish and roll out e-government projects using innovative open-standard solutions.
      The Bahrain e-government solution centre was inaugurated by Shaikh Ahmed Ateyatalla Al Khalifa, Undersecretary of the CIO, Tom Francese, Vice President, EMEA of IBM Software Group and Abdulla Ishaq, General Manager of BBM. The event was also attended by a number of senior officials from the Bahrain government and the Kingdom’s business community.
      CIO, IBM and GBM have worked closely together over the last two years to build an end to end e-government infrastructure for Bahrain on a platform based on open standards. Bahrain is the first government in the Middle East to join a growing number of governments around the world who are adopting open standards for their e-government initiatives in order to benefit from reduced costs and increased flexibility.
      “Standards based technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for modernisation throughout society in our country and we believe that this is the best way to move forward with e-government projects not only in Bahrain, but in the whole Middle East region as well,” said Shaikh Ahmed Ateyatalla Al Khalifa, President of CIO. “We have a unique experience in that we’ve built our e-government infrastructure on open standards and I am proud to say that it has been a successful project. The establishment of the centre will allow us to share our experience with other government organisations and enable them to access the latest open standards solutions they can use for their own e-government initiatives.”
      The Bahrain e-government solution centre will be linked to a network of IBM e-government centres worldwide. The centre will have access to the latest technologies and skills and be able to provide countries in the Middle East with the expertise to deliver real value to citizens as they start to role out e-Government Services. The centre will be staffed by professionals from CIO and GBM who have benefited from extensive training at the IBM e-government centres in the United States and Germany. In addition, the centre will host customer and business partner events, round table discussions, and solution demonstrations.
      “We are proud to be making yet another significant announcement with the CIO,” said Tom Francese, Vice President, IBM Software Group EMEA. “The new e-government solution centre will provide strategic resources and practical advice and experience to teams working across the public sector in the Middle East. It will establish a strong link with European and other governments and offer access to best practices and experience from around the world. This is a great opportunity to build a critical mass of resources for e-government in the region at a time when governments around the Middle East recognise the importance of open standards solutions as the way forward.”
      The Bahrain e-government solution centre will feature a number of open standard solutions that enable the successful roll-out of e-government projects and services, including e-Government cross agency collaboration, portal solutions, solutions for business controls and reporting as well as Integrated Workflow.
      “GBM has worked closely with the CIO to build this centre to support the timely and effective development of e-government strategies and initiatives. We believe the Bahrain e-government centre will become an important step for the integration of the region’s strong efforts, and a resource that will benefit all governments in the Middle East,” said Mr Abdulla Ishaq, General Manager, BBM.

“What has been created is a stable, responsive and collaborative environment. The real value is in being able to link and integrate intergovernmental agencies as this will shorten cycle times involved in introducing new initiatives and this makes Government far more responsive.” Tom Francese

About CIO The Kingdom of Bahrain’s Central Informatics Organisation (CIO) the former Central Statistics Organisation (CSO) runs central government computer systems and infrastructure and is the body responsible for regulating Information Technology within the Bahrain Government. More information can be found at www.bahrain.gov.bh

Innovative Solutions at e-Government Solution Centre: e-Government Cross Agency Collaboration - A major challenge facing government agencies as they deploy e-Government concepts is providing timely access to information sources in a collaborative manner. By storing information in a repository designed to share that information as a service and by designing applications to rely on external services to supply them shared information, adding new applications and making new usages of existing data becomes much more dynamic and timely with the eGovernment Cross Agency Collaboration solution. Flexibility in application of security policies and access controls to the information and services enables a more collaborative use of the information than was previously possible, paving the way for cross-agency usage of information. eGovernment Cross Agency Collaboration achieves this using some of the IBM products such as Websphere Portal, Lotus Domino, Sametime, Crossworlds, Directory Server and Tivoli.       A good example to illustrate the benefits of this solution is by looking at a scenario when a ship captain requests permission to dock at a port. A customs inspector inspects the cargo, and finds that there are contaminated containers on board, which necessitates the involvement of other agencies. An electronic team room is established, experts are located and an emergency management team is formed. Various government agencies collaborate on a resolution to this incident and decide that a public health bulletin must be created and disseminated. The story completes with a food industry executive reading the published health bulletin and notifying his warehouses and store managers to immediately remove the contaminated product from the shelves, thereby preventing widespread illness. Portal Solutions - Using IBM’s WebSphere portal offerings, the centre can demonstrate integrated e-government portal environments with extensive collaboration and workflow capabilities. Workplace for Business Controls and Reporting - This solution provides a framework for government organisations to document, monitor and test internal controls that can help bring clarity, confidence and management control to their financial reporting practices in response to legislation such as the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act while helping to drive down the cost of compliance. By taking a collaborative, role-based approach to controls reporting, Workplace for Business Controls and Reporting creates an environment that allows users to view information specific to their roles within the controls management process. In addition, they can manage and share control documents in a highly secure environment. Collaboration capabilities can help teams resolve issues and share information quickly to support financial reporting accuracy with real-time communication through instant messaging, online discussions and meetings, and automatic e-mail alerts. Integrated Workflow - The aim of the IBM Workflow solution is to automate workflow operations and reduce the amount of paper-centric activities. A central repository database reduces reliance on paper documents and speeds up the process of handling customer requests. Content management is treated as a service in the application architecture and the entire solution is based on the Singapore Housing Development Board (HDB) proof of concept.