By Pratap John/Chief Business Reporter

The Ministry of Business and Trade (MBT) will be among the first in the country to become fully paperless in 2014 - a clear reflection of Qatar’s success in adapting e-government services.
Currently, MBT is working towards converting all its paper-based transactional services to be 100% automated by next year, ictQATAR said in its latest newsletter yesterday.  
Many government agencies in Qatar have achieved “good progress” over the past few years in terms of e-government services.
With new portals launched, e-services introduced and more helplines dedicated to serving users around the clock, e-government service delivery is on the rise in Qatar as well as the region, it said.
E-government - the process of delivering information and processing transactions online - has a number of potential benefits for individuals, businesses, as well as the government. The benefits of e-government for individuals and businesses are numerous, ranging from saving money, ease of use and 24x7
access.
Statistics by Hukoomi, which is Qatar’s official government web portal, show MBT is doing “very well” in terms of its service usability - the completed business transactions rate for their services on Hukoomi has jumped to more than 3,660 transactions in November 2012.
A robust online licensing system is being taken up to provide a “one-stop” shop for all businessmen to access business data and understand their rights.
According to ictQATAR another government department that has done well in e-government adaptation is the Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning (MMUP).
The MMUP website, originally launched in 2011, has seen a spike in visitor traffic figures - 601,705 visitors in January 2013 compared with 149,386 in January 2012. Online applications submitted via the website have crossed the 150,000 mark, a significant improvement over 70,000 in 2011.
The mobile app, launched by MMUP recently to foster mobile service delivery, has attracted 7,361 downloads on iPhones so far and another 13,300 on Android devices.
The Information Systems Division at MMUP has been “proactively collaborating” with various municipalities and other relevant agencies in the country to automate processes and ensure more and more services are offered online.  
The Ministry of Justice has been leading in innovative projects to take e-service delivery to the next level, the newsletter said. Its “Tam” service is the third top used service in the country, allowing users to submit service-related questions, complaints and suggestions. Users seeking legal consultations can also avail themselves of the service.  
The team managing MoJ hotline records users’ inquiries and dispatches SMS notifications when their complaints are resolved.
Recently, ictQATAR collaborated with MoJ on Al Meezan - Qatar’s first legal portal, offering an accessible, comprehensive and reliable platform for all legislations and laws in Qatar since 1961.
The General Retirement and Social Insurance Authority (GRSIA) recently carried out an extensive study on their e-service user satisfaction to assess key challenges faced for their online transactions, and are working on solutions to improve user experience.
The authority website is slated for a 2013 release with key functionality and usability improvements including user logins via dedicated numbers and passwords assigned to each user by Hukoomi or the authority itself.
Users will then be able to access their retirement plans and carry out transactions in a much faster, more efficient manner, ictQATAR said.
According to ictQATAR, these are just some of the key efforts underway towards e-government online services implementation. There is much more that residents and businesses can expect to see in the coming months.
“With Qatar’s UN e-participation index already improving consistently over the last few years, such e-service developments will most likely be a key contributor to Qatar’s continued global status as a regional e-government leader,” it said.