Bahrain’s Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) recently organised a workshop on the National Strategy of Mobile Apps attended by government IT seniors representing 20 entities.

This workshop was organised after the adoption process of National Strategy of Mobile Apps for government services by the Supreme Committee for Information & Communication Technology headed by Sheikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister, during its meeting last month.

Vice chief executive Dr Zakareya Ahmed Alkhaja said that the strategy is considered as an integrated plan  goes in parallel with the vision of HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister, towards providing high quality services to citizens through coordination with government entities to develop performance and reduce cost.

He added that the workshop aims to review details of the strategy.  It comes as a result of a full year of efforts targeting defined government directions and unified strategy to provide services via smart devices. Noting that distinctive global practices were reviewed, mainly the UK practice, during the strategy preparation period.

The main five comprehensive initiatives of the strategy were presented during the workshop. These initiatives target the optimal usage of technology to enable citizens and residence to complete government services via smart devices, as well as governance of mobile apps development which focus on quality assurance and avoid duplication to reduce development and marketing costs maintaining the international standards.

The development of new app is performed through a mandate process to be approved by ICT governance committee and follow the unified categorization of IT expenses which was explained to the attendees.

In addition, the mobile apps guidelines were presented to the participants as a reference to government and private organizations including a set of instructions and standards to develop high quality apps.

New ideas and valuable contributions to develop the mobile apps and its national strategy were discussed by the participants during the workshop. iGA will be holding the same workshop for another batch  of government entities on December 1, a statement said.  – TradeArabia News Service