Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

2010 Category 1: Bahrain
To promote accountability, responsiveness and transparency, the National Portal has
published the Customer Charter, stating its commitment to customers. One of the
first such efforts among the Gulf countries, the charter defines the portal’s mission,
service standards, grievance redressing mechanism, etc.
Currently, the e-Government Portal provides more than 150 e-services online, including
online bill payment for electricity and water bills, traffic tickets, etc. The e-
services have been developed after thorough analysis of workflows and processes,
and most provide start-to-finish assistance to customers, connecting them with the
appropriate ministries for their needs. For example, a couple with a newborn might
wish to apply and pay online for issuance of a birth certificate. The system integrates
the hospital with the Ministry of Health, the Central Informatics Organization (which
generates a unique national ID for the newborn), the online payment gateway and the
Department of Posts to dispatch the birth certificate.
The National Portal started with private participation, but later the government decided
to upgrade and maintain it. Today, the e-Government Authority manages the
National Portal (developing services on it, coordinating with ministries for service
integration, managing and creating content for the portal, ensuring compliance with
leading industry standards, etc.). The development of e-services is undertaken by the
Services Delivery Directorate in the e-GA, consisting of more 10 developers and approximately
30 more technical and managerial resources available onsite from outsourced
vendors. The government’s technology arm, the Central Informatics Organization,
provides the hosting services and the system administration services for the
deployed National Portal infrastructure.
The following are the key implementation highlights:
• SOA approach: Service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles were adopted to
ensure reusability and speedy deployment of services.
• Optimized sourcing strategy: A mix of sourcing strategies was adopted to provide
access to the best resources. Outsourcing also provided flexibility in resource
management. Outsourced initiatives are completely managed by the e-GA.
• Robust infrastructure: The IT infrastructure hosting the National Portal was
revamped and state-of-the-art systems were to ensure high availability and optimum
performance during peak load times. The infrastructure is managed by
in-house resources of the e-GA and Central Informatics Organization.
• Standards: Standard style sheets for pages were developed (colour schemes, layouts,
fonts and styles), and coding standards were defined. A dedicated quality assurance
team defines and maintains the standards and ensures compliance to them.
• Accessibility: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) accessibility standards
were adopted, and continued efforts are made to ensure compliance to these
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