HE Dr. Raed Mohammed Bin Shams, the Director-General of the Bahrain Institute of Public Administration “BIPA”, stressed the importance of the National Leadership Development Programme in supporting government action drives in the Kingdom of Bahrain in a manner that will satisfy the country’s and citizens’ aspirations through its government initiatives and projects, which directly lead to the development of the government action system. He pointed out that BIPA is keeping up with modern trends in government leadership development by upgrading and linking the National Programme outputs to the requirements of the government sector. A study by BIPA’s Department of Education and Development arrived at a number of important percentages including that 75% of the developmental directions of the trainees of the National Leadership Development Programme is concerned with customer service and e-transformation.
Dr. Bin Shams also pointed out that 40% of the government projects and initiatives; the outputs of the National Leadership Development Programme, list under e-transformation: development of government services support systems, e-transformation of certain services and creation of applications. With regard to human resources, the study shows that 18% of initiatives and projects are concerned with HR development in the government action system in addition to optimum investment in government human resources to realize the goal of the government meeting on investment in citizens. He also said that 35% of total initiatives concerned with government services aim at upgrading services to meet citizens’ aspirations. He indicated that 7% of the projects concern the legislative and legal aspect as they deal with dissemination of knowledge of certain legislations and introduction of laws and legislations that support government action.
Mr. Ishaq Al Koohiji, the Executive Director of Education and Development, added that BIPA followed a new approach after approval of its strategic plan for the period 2016-2018 through which all BIPA’s leadership programmes were redesigned based on several scientific methodologies that will lead to the development of government action in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Mr. Al Koohiji pointed out that the scientific design of the National Leadership Development Programme is based on scientific methodology that considers citizens to be the major element in government action. The Programme is considered a strategic mechanism to build leadership capabilities in the government sector in the Kingdom of Bahrain. This Programme is also considered a training and development tool of BIPA. Therefore, the National Leadership Development Programme is tied to a number of government drives on the local and international levels which reflected directly on all levels of the outputs of the Programme. Al Koohiji explained that the National Leadership Development Programme is considered one of the major initiatives and projects introduced by BIPA as part of its role to develop government action and raise the human resources efficiency in the public sector. The Programme is also developed by BIPA as a sign of its belief in the importance of linkage to government action drives represented in the government action plan, outputs of the government meeting, the strategy of integration, in addition to the sustainable development objectives which have become today a most important developmental determinant at international and regional levels. He pointed out that the results of the study indicate that 67% of total projects and initiatives relate to the UN sustainable development objectives. With regard to development and training, results shows that 35% come under customers and partners in conformance to the outputs of government meeting.