Participants in the Government Innovation Program take first place in the Regional Ideathon Competition on Ways to face the Challenges of the Corona Crisis

His Excellency, Dr. Raed Mohammed Bin Shams, the Director General of the Bahrain Institute for Public Administration, BIPA, affirmed that the victory of the Government Innovation team in the Regional Ideathon Challenge, organized annually, by the General Secretariat of Supreme Council for Planning and Development in the State of Kuwait, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Bank Group, reflects the excellence of the Bahraini National cadres and their ability to employ the applied scientific methodologies both administrative and professional in order to create innovative initiatives and projects which enhance the Government work system. His Excellency added that this in turn bolsters the capability of the Kingdom to face the various challenges currently and in the future then, His Excellency moved to thank and congratulate all the ministries and Government bodies that have contributed to this latest Bahrain achievement.
Dr. Bin Shams explained that the Innovation team established by the Institute for Public Administration for the Ideathon competed with 77 other teams from 17 Arab countries. This team is one of five teams established by the Institute for Public Administration in collaboration with the United Nations Development office in the Kingdom, adding that the team represents various different government bodies and has presented during the competition a high level of performance and was able to win the competition with their project, which is the “Government Talents Cloud”.
Dr. Bin Shams said that the project “Government Talents Cloud” aims at directing and investing the Bahraini government energies and talents and strengthening the national abilities in the organizational structures of the Public sector, explaining that the Corona outbreak (covid-19) crisis became an incentive for the government team to create this project.
He added the idea of the project is based on employing skills and abilities of the government employees, who experienced an occupation vacuum with the digital transformation during the Corona pandemic. With the creation of a monitoring system for talents, knowledge and skills and registering them in the Government Employee Application, Dr. Raed said that the system then analyses the skills of the cadres and moves the data to the cloud, following which the employee will be rotated and re-positioned within his establishment or other government establishments as per his talents and the needs of the establishments.
For his part, Mr. Stefano Pettinato, the Resident representative for United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Bahrain praised the victory of the Government Innovation Program team in the Regional Ideathon competition at the level of Arab States, affirming that this success is the result of the positive cooperation between the Institute for Public Administration and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for the development of modern innovative skills amongst Government sector employees in Bahrain, Whereby the winning team was part of the inter-agency training programme. Mr. Pettinato further expressed hope that the cooperation between the Institute of Public Administration and UNDP would continue to provide similar programmes and activities in the future, and that the winning project would see its way to implementation in the Kingdom of Bahrain and abroad.