Q8Ba7th Official Blog

Popularity: 4% [?]

Name: Alworud.com

Site: http://www.alworud.com

Type: Sport / Soccer

Brief: For the first time I think, girls have a decent indoor place to practice soccer and other kind of sports. For 30 KD an hour, no more than men usually pay, girls can get their own indoor artificial grass field, and on the side can set and enjoy the cafeteria, and hey, Wi-Fi. How come we don’t have that? Interested people can even book the whole place for one day for, umm, 240 KD. But that’s good for large gatherings and special occasions I guess.

They also have a website for online booking called Inspor, although I have to say, the mix of the two sites is a bit confusing.

At all rates, I think it’s a great thing to have, and hope the girls can enjoy it (without invading our territory please!)

Popularity: 4% [?]

Aramex it seems are extending their Ardiya office working hours to more than 12 a day. At such time when everyone seems to be going away from Aramex for their prices, and slow delivery, I would think this is the last thing Aramex should be worried about.

What people really want I think is, first faster delivery, then cheaper prices, and better (much better) tracking.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Name: Q8Traffic

Site: http://twitter.com/q8traffic

Type: Twitter / Info / Traffic

Language: English (mostly)

Brief: Q8Traffic is a new simple, yet can be very useful, idea. Q8Traffic is basically a twitter account that retweets all tweets that includes the hash #q8traffic. So by following it, you get what everyone else says about the traffic condition on Kuwait roads.

Example: You’re driving by Road 50 towards Kuwait City, and road jams at third ring road.

You tweet: “Traffic jam at Rd 50 towards Kuwait city near 3rd ring rd.”

As I’m following Q8Traffic, I would get an instant update about the traffic and be able to avoid it. What’s in it for you you say? What goes around comes around, and other people will be helping you as well hopefully.

Ofcourse, we’re not suggesting here you tweet while driving 120 km/h (or more) ofcourse, but if road is already jammed, this update can help others avoid the jam, and minimize it as well.

Snapshot:

Popularity: 4% [?]

Site: PIFSS.GOV.KW

Name: The Public Institution for Social Security

Name (Arabic): المؤسسة العامة للتأمينات الاجتماعية

Type: Government

Brief: PIFSS have started providing it’s online services as part of the e-government project a while ago, giving it’s users access to loads of information about their social security status and numbers, as well as allowing them to submit certain certificate requests.

Review:

Registration:

Sadly, for registration, PIFSS have decided to go with their own online user credentials, thus taking a step away from a unified government identity. Perhaps the reason for this is the slow progress of the unified identity, who knows. To start the registration anyhow, you first click the Electronic services link at the top left of the screen.

From there, click on New User? (مستخدم جديد؟), fill in your civil ID number and click submit. After that, you will have to complete a certain form with some personal information, secret question and such. Once you submit the form, you will have to wait for few days, after which they will notify you of the time to come and collect the password with an email like this:

Sadly, this is an after two weeks kind of period, which is too long just to create the account and deliver a password. Hopefully with time this process will get faster. You can go on the specified date or later, and you collect the password from the main branch, car parking building, Floor # 2. It was quite empty when I went there. You need to go in person and have the Civil ID with you, sign few papers and you’re done.

After that, just open the envelop to get your password and login. First thing I suggest is change your password to something you can remember, rather than rely on the numeral one given to you. If you forget the password, you can reset it online by answering the secret question, no more trips to Kuwait City.

Online Services:

The online service portal design is quite neat, pretty fast to load, and very easy to follow, renders on different browsers and operating systems properly apparently, as I was using Firefox on Mac with no issues. This is the main page with your personal information.

And from the side menu, you can access loads of information and certificate request forms, such as the allowance info, registration periods, retirement salary calculation if applicable, and your current salary and cut amount.

Summary:

PIFSS online service I believe is an ideal of how online services should be. Quite informative, neat and clean design, easy to read and follow, and quite fast as well. Ofcourse, other e-Government services are bound to have more interactive features, like paying the bills and such. For PIFSS, I’m sure there is also a long way to go, but this is quite a good start. My only concern beside the long time for password delivery is how each entity is delivering with it’s own user credentials, which will complicate unifying the user identities later on across all the government. But again, maybe they couldn’t spare to wait for Civil Service Commission to get ready, or maybe the latter was making it too complicated. Who knows.

Go ahead and try it I say. You will get quick access to your info, and be able to support further enhancements in the e-Government.

Popularity: 27% [?]