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.