Doha: Digital transformation remains at the core of Qatar’s blueprint for economic and social development in line with the Qatar National Vision 2030. The country is moving towards digital technology across all fields and fostering innovative solutions to accelerate digital transformation, said an official.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) organised the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) eGovernment Digital Workshop 2023 at Marsa Malaz Kempinski Hotel. The workshop gathered a wide range of experts, specialists and senior officials in the digital government and UN representatives. The event also saw a dialogue session with GCC eGovernment leaders and key recommendations.
The e-government uses technology to deliver benefits for people who access government services. It helps in making more transactions available online, simplifying websites to make them easier to use, and creating innovative new applications that improve people’s lives.
Acting Assistant Undersecretary for Information Technology Affairs at the MCIT Mashael Ali Al Hammadi discussed the vital role of digital transformation, technology and innovation in advancing sustainable development. She said the event was organised in line with the Qatar National Vision 2030 and trends of the digital governance in Qatar. “We believe in the importance of helping countries to keep advancing to achieve sustainable and development goals and e-government that is one of the important tools to use technology. The importance of digitalisation was shown during COVID-19 pandemic and the e-government helped a lot in reducing the problems that many countries faced.
Speaking about the journey of digital transformation in Qatar and the future steps, she said, “We are focusing on improving the available services. Many departments of the State and entities have moved to the digital technology and the future will be about the end users to achieve the best benefit from the technologies.”
Al Hammadi further said, “We have several partnerships with Microsoft and have launched many projects for government employees that link all the financial sectors. Our partnerships are also with Oracle, Azure and Google Cloud to accelerate digital transformation in Qatar and other initiatives regarding the assessment of the digitilisation. There are electronic services that will be designed for the user benefits for example, for kids.”
“We have platforms for modern infrastructures to serve the people and the business environment. This approach was started in 2000 and we used these automation ideas. In 2014, we started the transformation strategy for some of the government sectors, transforming through e-portals,” she added.
Al Hammadi noted, “We are focusing on the next phase which includes services for the citizens and residents through the portal. We have a new category, the tourism portal after the FIFA World Cup 2022 and we used the Hayya platform using the newest technologies built in APIs. The goal is digital transformation for all services, and we will focus on the user benefit to simplify the procedures and devise a mechanism in order to take the most important decisions.”
The workshop concluded with discussions that included exchanging information and experiences with participants to enhance the provision of e-services.
