Manama: Bahrain’s eGovernment Authority (eGA) has launched a package of public services to the list of eServices provided through the National Contact Centre (NCC), one of the delivery channels of eGovernment services.
The addition increases to 47, the number of services available to be carried-out fully via the telephone, on a 24X7 basis.
Mohammad Ali Al Qaed, eGA’s Chief Executive Officer, said that the centre was looking at expanding the base of its services and increasing the number of governmental entities that provide services through the centre.
The seven newly-added eServices are Schools Directory, provided by the Ministry of Education; Accredited Missions in the Kingdom of Bahrain, provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Shipping Costs by the Ministry of Transportation — represented by Bahrain Post; Government Agencies provided by the eGovernment Authority; Hotel Directory, provided by the Ministry of Culture; Tender Awards and Tender Notices provided by the Tender Board and other services will be launched in conjunction with the Ministry of Works, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health.
“The National Contact Centre has successfully managed to provide the support for over 300 public services through outsourcing. Some ePayment services have been added through the centre such as Online payment of Electricity and Water Bills, along with ePayment of Traffic Contraventions,” Al Qaed said.
“On a yearly basis, we are planning to add 20 more services to our list and this will give an opportunity for nationals to carry-out transactions as a whole by a phone call through the National Contact Centre (NCC),” he added.
Statistics indicate that there has been an increase in the volume of calls to the centre from January to October at 68 percentage.
NCC has received over 418,705 calls in total, compared with 249,217 calls during the same period in 2012.
Enquiries with 78.11 percentage of the total calls were far ahead, followed by Services with 19.30 percentage, Complaints with 2.56 percentage and Feedback with only 0.03 percentage.
NCC has recently launched video calling service for the mute community at the centre, supervised by competent employees and professionals in the area of sign language, Al Qaed said.
“The 24×7 basis centre operates with higher levels of quality and it has been running the customer experience in an efficient approach to ensure that customer activities are smoothly carried-out since its inception in 2010,” he said.
The unified national centre, part of the strategic objectives of the eGovernment programmes in the delivery of eServices, provides a full range of services for all segments of the society along with the concerned authorities to maximise the utmost degree of transparency and inclusiveness.
NCC is as an additional channel to all other channels that are designed to the delivery of eGovernment services that include the eGovernment portal (Bahrain.bh), Mobile Gateway (www.bahrain.bh/mobile), eService Centres, eKiosks and the smartphone applications.
