People in Bahrain will now have faster and more convenient access to the country's e-government services.

Driven by customer needs, the e-government portal address has been changed from www.e.gov.bh to www.bahrain.bh, said a report in our sister publication, the Gulf Daily News.

The new address was announced by the e-Government Authority at a Press conference at the Sheraton Hotel on Monday, held under the patronage of Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Shaikh Ahmed bin Ateyatala Al Khalifa.

'As part of Bahrain's e-government strategy, we have identified a number of key indicators which measure how well we are doing in terms of activating our strategy,' said Shaikh Ahmed.

'One of these measures is conducting an annual customer satisfaction survey.

'The e-Government Authority appointed an independent research group to undertake that survey and the results showed that 75 per cent of respondents did not use the e-government portal and 60pc stated that the reason for this was the difficulty they had in remembering the portal's address.'

Based on the results of the survey, the e-Government Authority was instructed to meet the regional leaders in charge of e-government initiatives and programmes across the GCC to help identify and agree on an easy-to-remember portal address for each country and identify new standards for the region, said Shaikh Ahmed.

'The process of identifying a new address included polling users for their opinions on identifying the new domain and the new national address for e-government,' he noted.

'The address that we have selected was one of the addresses chosen by the majority of people polled.'

The presence of a state-of-the-art e-government framework clearly demonstrates that Bahrain is striving to ensure that all services are easy to use and suited to the needs of residents and businesses, said Shaikh Ahmed.

'It will also extend this improved service to different participating ministries and organisations,' he revealed.

'The launch of the new address coincides with a new design and new content for the portal which will help in meeting users' needs and encourage them to use the e-government address in all of their government interactions.'

Shaikh Ahmed said the new e-government portal was a tool that allowed the government to improve the services it provides to its citizens and visitors, allowing them to reach them quickly and easily.

'It also allows the different government organisations to communicate and interact with each other in a simple and more efficient way,' he added.

'The .bh was chosen for the new portal and not the .gov which is used for government organisations or .com that is used for the commercial sector because .bh truly represents all sectors of the Bahraini market, opening up the opportunity for the e-government portal to offer all electronic services related to customers either from the government sector or the private sector.

'The whole project is in line with Bahrain's Vision 2030.'

The e-Government Authority chief executive Mohammed Al Qaed said the change had further enhanced the content and structure of the existing portal and new features had been added to enhance services.

'Besides the launch of the e-government portal, improved electronic services are being activated which will make it easier to get information by using the portal that today offers a total of 65 government e-services,' he said.

New user-friendly systems include an SMS alert and notification system, multiple access routes to information, special search facilities in Arabic and English and categorisation of information for individuals, businesses, tourists and government users, said Al Qaed.