iGA project to cut government IT costs by 30pc

Manama : Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) has launched a new service called the National Private Cloud (NPC) which is expected to reduce the costs of IT operations of government entities by at least 30 per cent. 

NPC migrates government emails to the ‘national cloud’, which is a cloud service that encompasses every government entity under a unified umbrella and infrastructure.The project was implemented in partnership with Microsoft Bahrain. 

Cloud services have been gaining popularity around the world as it reduces costs and promotes efficiency by making on-premises redundant with the implementation of servers that can be set up online.

This was announced during a press conference at Mövenpick Hotel yesterday. 

iGA Chief Executive Mohammed Ali Al Qaed explained that this project is considered as one of iGA’s most prominent national projects which have been developed in response to the directives of His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Information and Communication Technology. 

He said that the project will serve all government and semi-government entities and that it will increase the mailbox capacity of government users by at least 20 times.

Responding to a query from DT News, Al Qaed said that improving efficiency would be one of the top priorities of iGA during this year. 

“We consider promoting efficiency as a top priority. We have made a lot of progress with cutting costs.There were many initiatives launched since last year for this purpose. However, we will also continue looking at reducing the costs and we may still have room for improvement when it comes to promoting efficiency and so we will continue our efforts,” Al Qaed said.