By Ayman Adly/Staff Reporter

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) has converted almost 90% of its paper works and internal services into the paperless e-system as part of its 2011-2016 strategy, a senior official announced.

"We hope to be a fully paperless ministry by 2016 and this would be time-saving and environment-friendly,” Brigadier Abdulrahman Majid al-Sulaiti, director of the Strategic Planning Department (ISD) of the MoI, told a press conference.

“Almost 266 internal services have been converted to electronic form out of which 18 new e-services were launched recently,” he explained.

Internal requests, transactions and applications are processed electronically through a highly safe and secure intranet of the MoI.

Brigadier Abdulrahman al-Malki, assistant director of the Information Systems Department, stressed that electronic transactions would spare the need for individual employees moving from one department to another and thereby save the use of vehicles.

"This year we have processed around 16,934 requests without paper, and 80 million documents were converted to electronic forms, in addition to a great number of internal correspondences amounting to half a million each month," he pointed out.

These applications were connected with various sectors such as maintenance and service request, request for telephone, systems and other devices. They were processed through four departments of the MoI, such as Information Systems, Warehousing and Supply Department, Telecommunications Department and Human Resources Department.

With the introduction of the new system, what earlier used to take days can now be done in a few minutes from the convenience of an office.

“The intranet, completely protected against breaches by external parties, could only be accessed by authorised persons with user names and passwords. In addition, there is a team of technicians who work around the clock to ensure the security of the network and instantly deal with any troubles,” Brigadier al-Malki asserted. Captain Mubarak Salim al-Bouainain, assistant director of the Public Relations Department, was also present.

Two weeks ago, MoI had launched a number of new services to its e-application Metrash 2 to enable hassle-free access for the public to several services.