*** ----> Housing Ministry launches five new e-services on bahrain.bh portal for citizens and residents | THE DAILY TRIBUNE | KINGDOM OF BAHRAIN

Housing Ministry launches five new e-services on bahrain.bh portal for citizens and residents

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Housing Minister Engineer Bassem bin Yaqoub Al Hamer has announced the launch of five new electronic services as part of its first phase of the e-transformation plan.

The new services on the bahrain.bh national portal website includes the provision of the housing application, housing requests inquiry, contact, bank account information update, and the submission of the request.

The inauguration, which was held virtually, was attended by Muhammad Ali Al-Qaed, CEO of the Information and eGovernment Authority (iGA), Shaikh Khalid bin Hammoud Al Khalifa, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Housing, Dr Zakaria Ahmed Al Khajah, Executive Vice President for e-transformation at the Authority, and Dr Khaled Al Haidan, Assistant Undersecretary for the Ministry of Housing On this occasion, Minister Al Hamer affirmed that the launch of these services came within the framework of the commitment to achieve the aspirations of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa which emphasises the importance of achieving digital transformation and employing modern technologies in various fields to improve all services and systems offered to citizens.

It also came in implementation of the decisions issued by the Council of Ministers regarding the importance of working to quickly activate the plans for the digital transformation of government agencies, and work to accelerate the pace of transformation of the services provided by these bodies to citizens and residents.

The Minister added that the electronic housing services also come in line with the unified framework for government programmes in its updated second version, concerning developing electronic services to facilitate procedures for customers, indicating that the bulk of the axes of the Ministry of Housing’s digital transformation plan are scheduled to be completed by the middle of this year.

It is planning to add some electronic services such as the right to dispose of the electronic contract and others, provided that the Ministry begins after that to develop a plan for the application of artificial intelligence in electronic services.

Eng. Al Hamer also expressed his sincere thanks and appreciation to the iGA for the efforts made to achieve the digital transformation of the Ministry’s services, stressing the continuation of this cooperation and coordination, which aims to complete the stages of launching all electronic housing services.

The Minister emphasised that launching this package of services aim to facilitate the procedures for providing services of the Ministry of Housing through accessible electronic channels for citizens, especially in light of the large volume of transactions that it handles annually, which amounted to approximately 45,000 transactions, which will be dealt with through electronic channels.