ITA to set up e-gov kiosks

By V L Srinivasan

Muscat, April 28 - Taking e-governance services to the doorsteps of citizens, officials of the Information Technology Authority (ITA) are planning to install bi-lingual e-gov kiosks across the sultanate shortly.

These kiosks will help reduce the distance between citizens and the government. Numbering more than 30, including 20 in Muscat alone, these kiosks will help citizens register to avail of the various benefits of the proposed integrated e-services.

Under this, citizens can obtain building permissions and make payments of electricity and water bills and other services. The kiosks are to be set up latest by June.

A couple of kiosks, put up for display at the five-day COMEX 2010 exhibition, at the Oman International Trade Exhibition (OITE) Centre, has been drawing a large number of visitors, most of them from educational institutions, and ITA personnel were seen explaining the benefits of the service.

The kiosk resembles an ATM machine which can be operated using national identity cards. Once the registration is completed, an SMS will be sent to the applicant informing him/her on the transactions.

“This is a major milestone in the history of sultanate's ICT sector and we are planning to launch the integrated e-services portal in a day or two,” ITA manager (application & e services) Dhahi Bilaish Sulaiyan al Mashifara told Muscat Daily.

The Department of Agriculture has already planned to offer two to three services through the portal but more services from other departments and ministries will be added in the coming months, he said.

Another ITA official said that the government was also planning to announce the Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence in e-Government to businesses and citizens from next year onwards. At present, the award is presented only to government entities.

Another major IT initiative launched by the government is the National IT Training and Awareness through which government employees, citizens and private sector are being imparted training in information technology. “We have trained 11,513 government employees and among them, 4,529 have received certificates so far,” the officials said.

For training the general public, the ITA has set up four Community Knowledge Centres (CKCs) - one each in Salalah, Muscat, Sur and Sohar. Plans are underway to establish six more centres by the end of this year. The ITA is planning to churn out around 900 skilled IT personnel from each CKC every year, the officials said.

The ITA has also engaged MasterCard to implement the National e-Payment Gateway (e- PG) system for the sultanate. MasterCard provides its Master-Card Internet Gateway Service, also known as 'MiGS' for the implementation.

MiGS is a modern, high performance and highly reliable epayment gateway system which operates worldwide to provide payment services for e-commerce.

The e-PG system, as implemented using the MiGS system, was launched in 2008 and currently provides access to merchants in the sultanate who would like to offer online shopping or e-commerce services via the Internet.

Though the number of users, including ROP, National Life & General Insurance, Omanbay, Tender Board, Ministry of Sports Affairs, Omantel and e-donations portal, are few, as many as 80,000 transactions have taken place totalling an amount of RO3mn so far. “We are planning to rope in more organisations and departments in the coming months,” officials said.