By : Mostafa Ibrahim
Under the auspices of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Egypt (NTRA), the First Regulatory Forum for Citizen Services was held today with the participation of six regulatory authorities, namely the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), the National Organization for Social Insurance (NOSI), the Egyptian Water and Wastewater and Consumer Protection Regulatory Authority (EWRA), Gas Regulatory Authority (GASREG), Waste Management Regulatory Authority (WMRA), and Land Transport Regulatory Authority (LTRA). The forum aims to share expertise and achieve cooperation among regulatory authorities, and improve the quality of life as well service level for citizens. It also aims to maximize the use of digital services and ensure citizens can smoothly access such services.
The forum was organized in line with supporting and enhancing the State's efforts to achieve digital transformation and provide high-quality digitized services for citizens. Furthermore, 3 major axes were addressed by the forum which are raising the social awareness of digital services and ways to obtain them, the importance and role of cybersecurity in securing critical infrastructure, as well as the regulatory and governing role of the State’s different regulatory authorities to preserve the rights of users. It also tackled ways to achieve participatory regulation among entities in order to ensure citizens are satisfied with the services provided.
In this context, Eng. Hossam El-Gamal, Executive President of NTRA, emphasized the importance of cooperation among regulatory authorities to have a unified vision on smoothly accessing and reducing the time taken to provide digital services. He also highlighted the importance of promoting participatory regulation among all regulatory agencies and authorities, being the cornerstone of digital transformation and the provision of integrated digital services in different scopes, since providing participatory digital services depends mainly on coordination between various sectors.
Therefore, it has become necessary to achieve integration and cooperation among regulatory authorities to create an effective regulatory environment for governing services, and addressing the challenges raised by emerging technologies and integrated digital services. Moreover, Eng. El-Gamal stressed the importance of participatory regulation among regulatory authorities and institutions being a major global trend in service regulation and provision, and one of the most important mechanisms and criteria through which countries are evaluated and ranked on the global indicators set by international organizations.
It’s noteworthy that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Chose Egypt as a model for successful countries in the field of implementing participatory regulatory frameworks for telecom services provided to users, in a study conducted by ITU on many countries. This came as a result of the progress made by Egypt in moving up to a higher level of digital technologies in the Global Connectivity Index. The report issued by ITU praised the NTRA and the Egyptian experience for the capability of using participatory regulation as a tool to achieve an integrated digital economy and create an active regulatory environment that efficiently provides digital services.
