Muscat, December 27: The Abu Dhabi eGovernment Portal, www.abudhabi.ae, of the United Arab Emirates won the inaugural GCC eGovernment Award, which was received by Rashed Lahej Al Mansoori, Director General of Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre, at the award ceremony held today at Al Bustan Hotel, Muscat.
This award comes as a part of the 1st GCC eGovernment Conference organised by the Information Technology Authority, Sultanate of Oman from December 21 to 23.
Abu Dhabi eGovernment Portal offers a variety of features and services in both English and Arabic and contains approximately 30,000 published documents.
Both of the Portal’s gateways; Citizen and Business, include a comprehensive list of topics covering over 750 services and general information pages providing descriptions of the steps, documents and fees required to complete services.
The Portal also provides over 20 integrated services allowing users to complete a transaction end-to-end over the internet without the need to visit any entity.
According to the latest survey conducted, 89% of Abu Dhabi eGovernment Portal users are highly satisfied or satisfied with the quality of information provided on the Portal.
This result is clearly evident in the number of portal visits which reached 2.5 million visitors during 2009.
The Portal also gained international recognition by winning the Arab eContent Award of the World Summit Awards last May and receiving the GCC award today.
This award is considered the start of GCC efforts towards exchanging and enhancing experiences in multiple aspects of Information & Communication Technologies among GCC countries.
This award comes following discussions held during a meeting between GCC eGovernment officials where eGovernment bodies opted for the establishment of the “eGovernment Award for Excellence” to serve as a model for the implementation of the “eGovernment Award” project among the various GCC countries.
The selection process was based on technical and strategic criteria used to measure the impact of the project in advancing society on the organisational, national, and international level.
The award jury comprised distinguished representatives of many leading ICT organisations and independent bodies to ensure neutral and transparent award results.
The recognition of Abu Dhabi Systems and Information Centre projects comes in line with the positive impact it has on the different public sectors and its efficiency in fostering an information society by enriching portal content which facilitates interactive services and online transactions.
It is worth mentioning that the Abu Dhabi eGovernment programme is moving along a steady path towards enhancing service provisioning and expanding service availability through pioneering initiatives such as the Abu Dhabi Government Call Centre and the Abu Dhabi eGvoernment Portal and Jobs Abu Dhabi, in addition to raising government competencies and encouraging the use of information & communication technologies as one of the factors needed to implement the process of national modernisation in all sectors of the Emirate.
—Agencies