The Kingdom of Bahrain is a pioneer in the eGovernment field and was among the first in the GCC to adopt a government-wide digitisation program. This reflects Bahrain’s commitment to modernising its government ICT capabilities and leading by example. By adopting cloud computing services, the government has reduced operational costs, increased security and productivity and developed excellent public services.
Bahrain’s forward-thinking vision for data and cloud computing led to the Cloud-First policy (PDF, 894KB, 11 pages), which provides a clear roadmap and guidance for adopting cloud technology at the public sector level. Under this policy, government and public agencies are obliged to consider the adoption of Cloud Computing solutions as an integral part of their IT plans and processes.
In 2017, the Kingdom engaged Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the official cloud infrastructure provider for the public sector. Bahrain has crossed several milestones since adopting its Cloud First policy. For example, the Information & eGovernment Authority (iGA) has transferred 1,357 IT operations to Amazon’s cloud computing services (AWS); completed the transfer of more than 14,000 government emails to the cloud in cooperation with Microsoft; and provided Amazon Cloud Certification to 550 employees of governmental and semi-governmental organisations.
In 2019, AWS opened its Middle East (Bahrain) Region office, which put the Kingdom in a solid position to capitalise on the advantages of cloud computing. The infrastructure enables developers, start-ups and enterprises, as well as government, educational and non-profit organisations to run their applications and serve end-users from data centres located in the Middle East, as well as leverage advanced technologies from the world’s leading cloud to drive innovation.
AWS estimates that 10,000 data solution architects will be needed across the region in the next five years, with over 2,300 young Bahrainis signing up for the AWS Educate programme.
The Bahrain Polytechnic’s Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) Programme provides an opportunity to collaborate with other public sector organisations on their most pressing challenges, test new ideas with Amazon’s innovation process and access the technology expertise of AWS. Organisations bring their expertise and work through a challenge engagement, uncover new ways to solve complex problems and publish their lessons learned to further drive public sector innovation.
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Content Last Updated: 22 Aug, 2023
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