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The third regional meeting of the Working Group II on E-government and Administrative Simplification took place in Dubai, UAE on 13 March 2007 at the invitation of the Chair of Working Group II, Mr. Nabil Ali Al Yousuf, Director General of the Executive Office in Dubai and in collaboration with the OECD. This event followed a High Level Seminar on Measuring and Evaluating E-Government organised by the Dubai School of Government on 12 March.
Participants
The meeting was chaired by Mr. Moosa Al Hashemi, Head of the Delivery Unit, the Executive Office, Dubai and co-chaired by Mr. Chang Kil Lee, E-government Policy Advisor at MOGAWA.
27 high-level delegates from seventeen Arab countries attended the event. Regional coordinators and experts from International Organisations and Academics also actively participated in the discussion and engaged in policy discussions with their Arab counterparts.
Objectives
The main objectives of the third regional Working Group II meeting were to:
• Keep participants up-to-date on the results of the activities carried out in the framework of WG II in the past few months (e.g. High Level Seminar on Personalised Service Portals, 11-12 December 2006, Paris, France);
• Report on the progress made in the implementation of Arab countries’ national action plans in the area of e-government since their presentation at the 2nd Steering Group Meeting at Ministerial Level, 19-20 May 2006, Sharm El Sheik, Egypt;
• Discuss the programme of work for the next months and plan the next round of capacity building activities in view of supporting the implementation of National Action Plans;
• Discuss a proposal, including a draft project charter and methodology, to undertake e-government peer reviews in Arab countries;
• Prepare the 3rd Steering Group meeting at Ministerial level in late 2007.
Outcomes
Key outcomes of the meeting:
• Identification and scheduling of the next round of capacity building seminars:
1. Announcement by Egypt of the upcoming 5th High Level Seminar on Strategies, tools and capacities for administrative simplification, which will take place on 20-21 June 2007 in Cairo;
2. Expression of interest by Morocco to host the 6th High Level Seminar on an e-government topic back-to-back with the eForum national event in Morocco;
3. Announcement by Tunisia of its intention to host a high level seminar on e-government collaboration and partnerships in September 2007 in Tunis;
4. Expression of interest by Saudi Arabia to host a High Level Seminar on a topic to be determined (e.g. change management) in early 2008 back-to-back with the 2nd eTransaction Conference in Saudi Arabia;
• Identification by Arab countries of technical assistance cooperation initiatives in the form of peer-to-peer exchange and training activities where OECD country support is demanded (e.g. integration of e-government into administrative simplification strategies);
• Announcement by Arab countries of their intention to have their e-government programme reviewed by the OECD using its tested peer review methodology:
1. Egypt reaffirmed its decision to have the OECD review its e-government initiative as mentioned in the National Action Plan of Egypt and announced that initial steps have been taken;
2. Morocco announced its intention to have its e-government strategy reviewed by the OECD;
• Agreement on a set of outputs to be produced and adopted by the group in preparation for the Steering Group Meeting at Ministerial Level. The following outputs were agreed:
1. Preparation of booklets on the proceedings of the high level seminars on e-procurement, personalised portals and measuring and evaluation of e-government (including summary reports, collection of country papers and presentations, collection of background documents);
2. Data collection on e-government - this would include a) the preparation of a framework for data collection, b) data collection from country questionnaires (e.g. seminar and stocktaking questionnaire) and from other available sources (e.g. national statistics, international reports), c) data presentation in the format of a series of descriptive statistics and/or commented tables;
3. Short synthesis paper on key implementation issues in Arab countries. The format and content will need to be finalised in follow up to the meeting and could take the form of a policy brief.
Documentation
• Meeting Summary Report
Session 1: Overview and update on recent e-government developments
• OECD: Draft proceeding of the High Level Seminar on Personalised Service Portals (10-11 December 2007, Paris)
• Lebanon: E-government progress update
• Morocco: E-government progress update (Arabic)
• Tunisia: E-government in Tunisia: Perspectives and Challenges (French)
• Oman: Measuring and Evaluating E-government
• Saudi Arabia: The Saudi E-government Programme (Yesser)
• Sudan: E-government progress update (Arabic)
Session 3: Preparation of the Programme of Work for the Working Group II
• OECD: Peer Review of E-Government in Arab countries
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