The Interior Ministry recently held a forum on e-governance to discuss new ways to provide online services for all of the ministry’s departments.

“The Forum of Online Services” was organized by the Ministry of Interior at the Security Forces Officers Club in Riyadh on Wednesday and Thursday, under the aegis of Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Naif, second deputy premier and minister of interior.

During the forum’s first session, Assistant Interior Minister for Technology Prince Bandar bin Abdullah Al-Meshari, talked about the successful initiatives launched in various sectors of the ministry and the state governors’ offices and how they would serve as the core of all of the online services in the Kingdom.

Two major sessions of the forum were devoted to finding ways to provide a favorable environment for better services, and to strengthen the ministry’s e-platform for governmental services.

Prince Bandar also inaugurated a number of ministry’s e-services, while stressing his hope for the forum to become a launch pad to a bright online future for the Kingdom, comparable to the achievements of advanced countries.

An important session of the forum dealt with the topic social communication, presented by Muhammad Malyani, a specialist in social networking.

Malyani spoke about the importance of benefiting from these new media channels by governmental organizations, pointing out that the government could cut costs by making use of the non-conventional media, especially as the number of social media users in the country stands at nine million people.

Deputy Chairman of the ADC Middle East, North Africa and Turkey Jyothi Lalchandani, commended the pioneering efforts made by the Kingdom in the area of e-governance during his speech.

Lalchandani also stressed the importance of employing local talent. “Any shift toward online governance requires four major factors, which are computerization, business, data and smart phones,” he said.

Another session, titled “Employment of digital media platform for government services,” was hosted by Sami Al-Rashid.

In his presentation, Al-Rashid, who is a specialist on digital media, focussed on social networking and crisis management. Like Lalchandani, Al-Rashid also stressed the power of social networks to help the government inform its citizens and launch media campaigns that will reach large segments of the population.

Al-Rashid put the number of Facebook users in the Kingdom at six million with seven million using Twitter and 190 million views in the Kingdom on You Tube on a daily basis.