The two day workshop, which was commenced on November 6thwill discuss all the UN eGovernment rankings which comprise eServices, Telecommunication Infrastructure, Human Capital, Open Data and eParticipation, with the attendance of 17 countries representing every region.
The objective of the workshop is to ensure that countries are in fact using the UN indices to advance and enhance their position, use such indices in their development strategy at a national level and to embrace them in their Key Performance Indicators (KPI) just as Bahrain did with its national eGovernment strategy. The aim of the report is not only to advance each nation’s ranking but to develop the nation and use the report as a motivating method to go by.
“With your valuable inputs and recommendations, this workshop is derived to play a vital role in enhancing countries’ rankings in the UN eGovernment Survey Report,” eGovernment Authority CEO Mohammed Ali Al Qaed his opening remarks said.
“We truly believe that we can all work together in improving our rankings at the UN eGovernment Survey Report; hence reflecting a positive outcome on the 199 countries evaluated through the UN indexes. Ensuring the sustainable development at an international level and contributing to the enhancement of this report which directly affects our countries is a milestone that we can successfully achieve through this workshop,” he added.
Remarkable experts and active representatives from various countries discussed the measurements adopted from the UN Indexes; they presented different scenarios for developed indexes based on the latest emerging changes and provided the authority with the services related to eGovernment.
Pavle Sicherl, Professor in Economics at the University of Ljubljiana in Slovenia presented the first paper of the workshop entitled ‘eGovernment Measurement – The role and the Time Perspective on Indicators’. He highlighted the key findings from the 2012 survey which include eGovernment survey rankings by countries and regions, the steady improvement in all the indicators of the eGovernment development index and an imbalance remains in the digital divide between developed and the developing countries.
Dr. Ali AlSoufi, Assistant Professor at the University of Bahrain and an expert of IT infrastructure projects, pointed out various issues in a paper entitled ‘UN eGovernment Readiness Index Towards a Comprehensive Model’. He pointed to the current evaluation indicators and the Supply-Side of eGovernment services. He suggested the development of a more comprehensive model that includes both supply and demand side of the eServices.
Dr. Raymond Khouri, Vice President of Booz & Company gave an example in a paper entitled ‘Bahrain UN Workshop, eGovernment Indices – Review and Recommendations’. His example presented the volatility as in the year 2010 the UN introduced changes to the survey affecting 70 questions and greatly impacting the rankings on many eGovernment programs. He also suggested an initiative that comprises seven points to elevate the discussion on the strategic imperatives of an eGovernment Index.
Kim Anderson, Managing Director of DAKA Advisory AB presented a paper entitled ‘United Nations’ eGovernment Development Indicators’. He pointed out five trends in eGovernment: mobile government, improving usage, open government, trust and security as well as sustainable development. He concluded with a demand for measurement at all levels in order to give local policy-makers and public sector managers the equivalent data, tools and benchmarks available at the national level.
With more papers focusing on indicators, Dr. Susan Teltscher, Head of ICT Data and Statistics Division at the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) Telecommunication Development Bureau in Geneva casted an overview on ITU’s work of the ICT statistics and telecommunication infrastructure indicators. The paper recommended including the fixed broadband subscriptions and eliminating fixed Internet subscriptions which will lead to the dial-up becoming insignificant for a better quality indicator.
Dr. Yousif Falah Ismail, Statistical Cluster Advisor of UNESCO Institute for Statistics focused on Human Capital Indicators (HCI). He mentioned that since 2011, Human Development Report (HDR) has added three dimensions: Life Expectancy Index (LEI), Education Index (EI), and the Income Index (II). HCI is the geometric mean of the three dimensions.
Prof. Kim Norman, Full professor of Copenhagen Business School presented the last paper on Open Data. He focused on data from the prospective of providers, developers and citizens as well as the future ambitions in the view of these triangle partners within the current rapid evolution of web tools.
The workshop is being held on 6th and 7th November in the Kingdom; with the participation of numerous countries such as Korea, Slovenia, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Russia, Estonia, Turkey, Ethiopia, Mauritius, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar. Attendance also included experts from the UN Global eGovernment Readiness Report, ITU, representatives of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as well as international experts in the area of global indexes. The workshop aimed to evaluate ICT, Open Data platform, and eParticipation.