An International Scientific Symposium entitled “ICT Impact on Municipal Service Development: Towards E-Government” was co-organised by the Organisation of Islamic Capitals and Cities (OICC) and the Doha Municipality in Doha, Qatar on 18-20 May 2010. An exhibition on “ICT and Achievements of Islamic Capitals and Cities” was held in parallel to the symposium. SESRIC was represented thereat by Eng. Hüseyin Hakan Eryetli, Director of IT and Publication Department and Mr. Mehmet Fatih Serenli, Director of Training and Technical Cooperation Department.

The Symposium was organised with the following objectives:

* To emphasize the importance of utilizing the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and e-Government as a tool for the achievement of sustainable development and enhanced decision making.

* To define the basic, current and prospective, needs, obstacles and electronics-related priority issues in the field of e-government and municipal services. 

* To define the strategic and empirical considerations for implementing electronic municipal and e-Government services and e-service documentation and processes. 

* To exchange experiences between the different municipalities and specialized agencies, in the field of local e-Government services, and presentation of the best practices at both regional and international levels.

Eng. Hüseyin Hakan Eryetli, presented a paper titled “e-Government Readiness: The Performance of the OIC Member Countries.” In his presentation Mr. Eryetli focused on the status of the OIC Member Countries evaluating it with reference to the data drawn up during the 2005-2007 period. The data was collated and processed to build up the composite e-Government Readiness Index (ERI) of the OIC Member Countries based on Web Measurement Index (WMI), Telecommunication Infrastructure Index (TII), and Human Capital Index (HCI). He emphasized the importance of establishing an OIC e-Government Working Group and encouraged the e-Government Experts participating in the symposium to fill in the e-Government Experts Form available online through the official web site of SESRIC at http://www.sesric.org/egovernment-experts.php. He explained that this e-government experts’ database would later on be utilized by SESRIC to determine potential members of the OIC e-Government Working Group, which is planning to have its first meeting in late September this year.

Mr. Mehmet Fatih Serenli, presented a paper titled “A Novel Cooperation Initiative among Islamic Capitals and Cities: Vocational Education and Training Programme for OIC Member Countries (OIC-VET)” where he stated that vocational training could focus on areas where OIC municipalities could share their best practices and learn from each others’ experiences in areas of common challenge. In particular, the use of ICTs by the Municipalities may not only change the structure in which municipal services are provided to citizens but reach to a wider community through the enhancement of their operations. Cooperation among OIC Municipalities on vocational training constitutes a novel practice due to the variety of cooperation areas given the nature of municipal services throughout the OIC Member Countries.

The symposium issued the following recommendations, which approved by the 12th General Conference of the Organization of Islamic Capitals and Cities:

1. To assess periodically the performance of e-government by various means, including public opinion surveys. The samples of surveys must represent all categories of society in order to improve e-government performance, recognize its problems and find out the adequate solutions.
2. To emphasize the importance of reengineering the procedures of all submitted transactions and to set up them in their final formats before starting transformation into e-services.
3. To pay attention to control of system performance that could ensure follow-up of performance in a precise and transparent manner.
4. To stress the importance of offering quality assurance system in all phases of the system to assure the accuracy of the system's inputs and outputs.
5. To carry out continuous training and promotion for the units, which are in charge of providing services in order to raise the efficiency of human resources personnel at the centers of e-services and the centers that provide services to citizens, with a view to deliver distinctive services that meet the needs and aspirations of service's recipients.
6. To support the infrastructure that needed for electronic transformation (communications, services and disaster management), and to assure their authentication and readiness.
7. To follow-up the latest developments in the area of modern technology with regard to e-transformation as well as their supporting systems such as Pocket PC systems and others.
8. To study to what extent the community could accept the idea of e-government as well as its willingness to interact with it, and to form positive trends (emotional viability) towards the application, use and benefit from the e-government services; and to motivate citizens and societal sectors to rely on e-government technologies in obtaining all services and transactions.
9. To complete indexing and documentation of all elements of real-estate wealth in Arab and Muslim countries, with a view to be completely digitalized.
10. To enact legal legislations and to determine the organizational frameworks and systems to protect the users of IT and to preserve the rights of dealers and mongers within the framework of e-commerce environment.
11. To support the cooperation programs among Muslim countries in the field of technology and IT and to benefit from the experiences of other countries in this field, and translate the research papers and scientific and practical experiences, which presented at the conferences took place in the region into shared programs and projects between the OICC's members.
12. To exploit and benefit from e-commerce applications in different economic sectors of each country and to pay attention to invest that in supporting e-commerce swap between Muslim countries.
13. To stress the importance of creating a system for roads upkeep in all Islamic cities to transform from the traditional method that depends on personal expertise to a scientific and methodological system for roads upkeep.
14. To disseminate the Pictrometry system and implement training programs for using the outputs of Pictrometry in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
15. To benefit from the available technologies and e-readiness in Arab and Muslim countries to expand the types of e-services and transform to the concept of T-Government, which lately applied.
16. To benefit from the available technologies to transform to interactive cities and link them to the systems of e-governments.
17. To shift from development of e-applications in municipalities to installation and operation of integrated Case Management.
18. To prepare the future generations starting from primary schools in order to be acquainted with technological and e-education and the use of the Internet.
19. To affirm the role of media in helping people to know about e-government services and how to benefit from them.
20. To deliver the Internet services to all areas in order to achieve the fairness in delivering services and to enable all sectors of society to benefit from this service and make it affordable for all.
21. To encourage municipalities to develop multilateral projects in the field of ICT training, share best practices and learn from other experiences through utilization of vocational education and training program for OIC member countries (OIC-VET Programme).
22. To explore the possibility of establishing local vocational training centers, with a view to increase the quality of vocational training in Islamic capitals and cities by creating opportunities for citizens.

Report of the Symposium

Presentations

"e-Government Readiness: The Performance of the OIC Member Countries." by Eng. Hüseyin Hakan Eryetli, Director of IT and Publication Department, SESRIC

"A Novel Cooperation Initiative among Islamic Capitals and Cities: Vocational Education and Training Programme for OIC Member Countries (OIC-VET)" by Mr. Mehmet Fatih Serenli, Director of Training and Technical Cooperation Department, SESRIC

Publications

“E-Government Readiness: The Performance of the OIC Member Countries” (in English, Arabic and French)

"Vocational Education and Training Programme for OIC Member Countries (OIC-VET) Programme Summary" (in English, Arabic and French)

Related Links

SESRIC’s e-Government Initiative Main Page
Online form for the e-Government Experts Database
The OIC-VET Web Site

Official Web Site of the Event

http://www.oicc.org