Egypt announces government e-services breakthrough
GOVERNMENT
By BiztechAfrica – Feb. 11, 2013, 6:21 a.m.
Egypt’s Finance Minister, Dr. El Morsi El Sayed Hegazy and Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Atef Helmy, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on e-government.
The MoU will pave the way for a move to an electronic system to manage government daily work will make a breakthrough in the public services. It will allow for e-signatures, enabling Governmental electronic approval in 25 public agencies, including the Council of Ministers.
The MCIT said in a statement that the MoU is intended to activate electronic government services, build a technological community among government employees, thus contributing to the reduction of the required costs for public services provision.
Dr. Hegazy said that the agreement with MCIT emphasizes supporting and activating e-signature applications and developing e-mail system among ministries and public bodies.
This allows benefiting of government electronic certification services to assure validity and matching of circulated documents with personal identification of signatories and authenticators, a system that the Ministry of Finance oversees its construction through Government Electronic Certification Authority Gov-AC.
The Finance Minister said the move to an electronic encrypted government information and document management system was in line with the efforts of the government of Dr. Hisham Kandil to enhance and improve daily performance of the various ministries, government agencies and departments.
Dr. Hegazy said cooperation agreements and protocols had been signed with 25 government entities so far. These entities are: General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, MCIT, Interior Ministry, Ministry of Information, Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Ministry of State for Local Development, Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs, Ministry of Housing and New Urban Communities, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Endowments, Ministry of State for Military Production and Ministry of Commerce and Industry (commercial Representation).
The government entities also include Supreme Council of Universities, governorates of Cairo, South Sinai, Damietta, Beni Suef, Port Said, Matrouh, Menoufia, Gharbia.
This is in addition to Sohag University, Academy of the Arabic Language, Egyptian Tax Authority, Ministry of Commerce and Industry (cultural Affairs and missions).
Currently, cooperation with the Investment Authority, its clients and the Ministry of Administrative Development is undergoing to activate government electronic certification in document exchange system at Government-to-Government (G2G), a project that links government bodies to exchange services and documents, he said.
