His Excellency Dr. Raed Mohammed bin Shams, Director General of the Institute of Public Administration (BIPA) confirmed that the Institute seeks to implement the ambitious government vision of HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince of The Prime Minister, to employ innovation as a key approach in all his plans and programs, in line with the directions of developing government work in the Kingdom of Bahrain in making innovation a permanent government culture that raises the competitiveness of the government sector and contributes to achieving national aspirations and visions. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Kingdom of Bahrain was cooperated with to enhance the structure of the “National Government Leadership Development Program”, aiming at including innovation as a key component in its various programs, and in proportion to each segment of the participants in the program.
Dr. Bin Shams praised the constructive and fruitful cooperation between the Institute and UNDP, pointing out that BIPA is seeking today to promote innovation among Bahraini government leaders and raise their ability to come up with innovative government initiatives that serve public sector projects and raise the efficiency of government services, adding that the process of developing the model took into account the different functional levels in government institutions, where innovation was employed in all six programs in the national program model, namely: “Taasees” and “Benaa” and “Takween” “Qiyadat”, and “Qiyadat Ulya”, in such a way that new staff and even senior leadership can use innovation tools in line with the nature of the work and administrative responsibilities.
Mr. Stefano Pettinato, Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme in Bahrain, said: “we at UNDP are pleased to be part of this initiative, which comes as a component of a broader ongoing collaboration to promote innovation in public administration. Through this mission we seek to support BIPA, as well as all government institutions that make use of BIPA’s training services, in integrating innovation techniques, tools and criteria to execute an enhanced curriculum of the “National Government Leadership Development Programme”. The expectation is that this will lead to a more widespread culture of innovation within the Bahraini public administration. Arguably, innovation is needed now more than at any time in the past, to accelerate productivity, reduce costs, and improve quality of services, while facing a fast-paced reality of emerging challenges and increased demands by citizens, expecting state-of-the-art government services.
Dr. Bin Shams explained that in program “Taasees” course, the Institute will work to raise the awareness of the public employee about the importance of innovation in institutional work through simple educational and training doses, so that the concepts of innovation in the new employee are strengthened and become linked to the mentality and style of work, while the program “Benaa” will focus on introducing the employee to the culture of innovation in depth. Dr. Bin Shams added that the program “Takween” will seek to enhance the methodology of innovation in the employee and how to employ him in the corporate teams, to then train in the management with innovative thinking in the “Kawader” course, and then the innovative strategic planning in the program “Qiyadat”, and to finally have an innovative and competitive government vision for the administrative work in the program ” Qiyadat Ulya “.
