H.E. Eng. Mohamed Jamil Mulla, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology and H.E. Dr. Yousuf bin Ahmed Al-Othaimeen, the Minister of Social Affairs, signed at King Abdul Aziz Telecommunications Complex in Riyadh Sunday 31-1-2010, a bilateral agreement. This agreement comes within the endeavor of the Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA) to adopt e-government transactions in implementation of the Council of Ministers’ decision No. (40), dated 27-7-1427H.
Within this agreement, YESSER Advisory Group, an affiliate of MCIT e-Government Program (YESSER) will work with MOSA to offer advisory services for developing and empowering e-transactions and its programs and projects, identify best practices and methods to upgrade necessary infrastructure for MOSA and identify the Ministry’s services and rearrange measures for offering these services electronically within a timetable and according to priorities.
Within this agreement, also, YESSER will provide MOSA with an advisory team to work on a comprehensive study of some e-services offered by MOSA. This should include the study and evaluation of the quality of the services offered by MOSA and to what extend ICT is utilized for offering these services.
The advisory team would work with MOSA to identify and document the Ministry’s vision and requirements for the next phase in term of upgrading and improving services in addition to upgrading and improving necessary infrastructure and regulations in addition to the assessment of gap between present and proposed future situations.
In this context, the agreement stipulates that the two parties shall prepare MOSA strategy for e-services within the framework of the National e-government Strategy. This work shall cover projects, programs and plans necessary for the implementation of this strategy according to the priorities to be set in coordination with concerned parties at MOSA.
Meanwhile, Eng. Mulla praised MOSA endeavor for taking this step that would lead to the acceleration of the implementation of e-government transactions.
In press statements following the signature of the agreement, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology said that this agreement would enable MOSA to benefit from cooperation opportunities with e-Government Program (YESSER) in the implementation of the Ministry’s tasks according to YESSER’s plans and mechanisms, the support of the Ministry’s works and its link with other government agencies through Government Service Bus and Government Secured Network, both affiliated to MCIT and supervised by “YESSER”.
The Minister noted that the establishment of YESSER Advisory Group comes with e-Government Program (YESSER) endeavor to help government agencies to shift to e-government transactions by supporting these agencies with specialized working teams for upgrading and improving services offered by these parties.
For his part, the Minister of Social Affairs said that cooperation of his Ministry with e-Government Program (YESSER) comes within the general trend of the government for the implementation of e-government transactions and to benefit from the huge positive developments taking place in ICT services.
He pointed out that while taking these developmental steps, MOSA by the support of YESSER, is aiming at meeting the increasing requirements and needs of all society segments benefiting from its services, adding that this will guarantee accuracy, acceleration, comprehensive and easiness of the offered services.
The Minister of Social Affairs expressed his thanks and appreciation to Eng. Mohamed Jamil Mulla, Minister of Communications and Information Technology as well as all those in charge of e-government Program (YESSER). He voiced hope that all involved parties would benefit from this constructive cooperation.