MANAMA: The Kingdom of Bahrain which has been at the forefront of adapting to the latest trends in ICT and effective use of IT in enhancing efficiency in governance.
eGA’s Dr. Zakareya Ahmed Al Khaja, presented a working paper on ‘National Governance Framework: Towards Efficient Use of IT’ and displayed the Kingdom of Bahrain’s experience in effective use of technology to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the IT usage as part of the eGovernment strategy objectives and in line with the country’s economic vision 2030.
Specialized workshops were launched on Tuesday at the Bahrain International eGovernment Forum 2014 and will be conducted over two days to discuss the most prominent topics related to Enterprise IT Governance for Control and Value Creation, Social Media Toolkit, Leadership in Information Technology, eContent Management, eGovernment Success Stories and Global Trends, Mobile Apps, along with Agile Business Analysis and Improvements. While the 8th workshop entitled Innovation and Entrepreneurship in ICT Environment Forum will be conducted on Wednesday.
The Social Media Toolkit workshop was presented by Richard Fitzgerald, Social Media Director at Mindshare MENA along with Abbas Alidina, Director of Digital Marketing and Social Media at Logicks.com. It focused on key statistics on social media networks. For instance, 2.5 million social media active users in the world exist, and most materials adaptive for publication through desktops (PCs) are unsuitable for display in social communication platforms. Moreover, they explained that the content of the websites of famous global brands such as Volvo and Coca-Cola are not compatible with social networks, and this explains the shift towards mobile apps.
The eContent Management workshop was conducted by three top notch speakers in the field; Martin Bredl – Managing Partner of Take Off PR in Austria; Jakub (Kuba) Lebuda – founder and CEO of Clipatize and Mathias Haas CEO and founder of Social Marketing New Media Agency, Finland. The speakers focused on the best practices and latest approaches of planning the content creation, delivery and governance, as well as the means to develop a strategy that helps achieve organizational goals by maximizing the impact of content.
In the Enterprise IT Governance for Control and Value Creation workshop, speaker Phillip Sparks – Director Action Projects at HULT International Business School, and Jenny Tsuboyama eGovernment and Organizational Change Consultant and Facilitator at Adam Global Consultancy. The speakers discussed hypothetical real world experiences from the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), the framework for corporate governance of information technology, the components of the institutional framework and governance standards that enable management to achieve harmony between the enterprise IT strategy and objectives of the overall strategy in order to make correct decisions.
During the workshop, eGovernment Success Stories and Global Trends which was attended by specialists, government officials and senior officials from the private sector companies, leading experiences of GCC countries in the field of eGovernment were reviewed.
The participants were also briefed on the successful story of the eGovernment in the UK that was presented by UK Government Adviser and former Deputy CIO Andrew Stott, who addressed the fundamentals that underpin the eGovernment in the United Kingdom, namely: open data, the default digital world, the common approach to infrastructure, control projects, and innovation.
Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, Director General of the UAE Smart Government, spoke about the experience of the UAE Mobile eGovernment, his experience in the applications of smart devices and the ambition to transform 700 governmental services into applications.
The Omani eGovernment success story was presented by Dr. Seema bint Naser AlKaabi, who touched upon the important pillars of the success story such as the development of human capital and the online community, the development of the information technology industry, the importance of marketing and awareness, along with the development of national infrastructure.
The participants of Agile Business Analysis and Improvements workshop were exposed to the advanced agile methodologies utilizing Scrum framework. On the first day of the workshop, Head of Software Technology Research Laboratory De Montfort University Dr. Helge Janicke and Business Intelligence Support John Moore provided guidance for effective and innovative process improvement activities in the organization, highlighting key figures and statistics from recent reports on main social media platforms.
Algirde Pipikaite Head of International Practice led the workshop entitled Leadership in Information Technology which introduced innovative solutions in management-base technology. Algirde also pointed out that leadership in ICT has helped governments to attain leading global position.