Last month, as a part of Oman’s overall e-government strategy, the Ministry of Health (MoH) announced the latest set of services that will be offered online. The plan outlined the development of three digital tools to better extend the ministry’s services.
According to a statement by the MoH, the first to be launched will be an e-Referral Engine, which was successfully tested in a pilot program in August. The program will replace paper-based referrals between institutions. It will be gradually deployed to tertiary hospitals and then extended to other hospitals and health centers this year.
The engine will cover both request and appointment bookings and will also provide a notification system via SMS. Dr. Ali Moosa, the minister of health, said this will resolve all the drawbacks of the existing system. “Referral feedback … will be mandatory … thus it will ensure proper continuity of care,” he added.
Following the MoH strategy
The Directorate General of Information Technology (DG-IT) at the MoH is spearheading these efforts. Another project under construction is an e-Notification Engine that will cover birth and death notices as well as registering diseases.
The MoH also announced plans to develop Tele-Education and Tele-Medicine. Tele-Education will cater to continuous medical education for MoH staff throughout the country and Tele-Medicine will allow physicians to receive expert consultation on cases being treated from anywhere in the Sultanate.
To ensure coordination of such e-initiatives, the ITA was founded in 2006. The body has an independent status yet remains affiliated with the ministry of national economy. It replaced the Information Technology Technical Secretariat (ITTS), the government body previously responsible for digital activities.
The ITA is responsible for implementing national IT infrastructure projects and supervising all projects related to Digital Oman Strategy implementation while providing professional leadership to the various other e-governance initiatives in the Sultanate, according to a release by the body.
Salem al-Ruzaiqi, CEO of the ITA, confirmed that the three pillars of the ITA were infrastructure, to drive citizen awareness and training, and to help the government in bringing services online.
He added that all the head offices of the ministries would be linked by the end of 2007 and subsequent infrastructure would be extended to the remaining government bodies throughout the Sultanate by the end of the decade.
Meanwhile, the ITA will coordinate portals to deliver the various government services online. The portals are integration platforms, which will group different government services into a single interface.
Al-Ruzaiqi said that phase I of the portals will be launched in the first quarter of 2007. The education portal will be the first, linking a number of ministries and serving both schools and universities.
The One Stop Shop (OSS) portal will be important for the business community. The portal will deliver all the services of the OSS online, currently located at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI). The OSS regroups six ministries and is expected to improve efficiency for entrepreneurs in their dealings with different governmental institutions.
Another important component of the ITA’s activities is the training of government employees in IT certifications. A pilot program will cover 400 employees this year and the goal is to have all government employees trained by the end of the decade, representing 106,000 people.
Meanwhile, in 2009, the educational system will produce the first batch of students from the new ‘basic education’ which includes computer courses from grade one. All schools in the sultanate are already equipped with computer labs. They will also be used as training centers for adults in the evening.
