Three day GCC e-Governance meeting begins today

By V L Srinivasan

Muscat, Dec 21 : More than six dozen entries that were submitted by the Information Technology authorities of the GCC countries for the prestigious inaugural eGovernment awards have been unique and “simply amazing,” some of the jury members said.

The award will be presented to the best project initiated in the GCC countries on the concluding day of the first three-day GCC eGoverment Conference 2009 on Wednesday.

Most of the entries submitted for the five categories, e-Services, e-Content, e-Maturity, e-Economy and e-Project, are by various government departments from the GCC countries.

“The entries are innovative and quite amazing. The ideas are very good and can be replicated in other countries,” said Irene Mia, senior economist and director of World Economic Forum, who is one of the jury members for the awards.

Three day eGovernment Conference starts today Entries for the inaugural eGovernment awards quite ‘interesting’, say jury members Speaking to Muscat Daily, Irene said that the entries pertained to different applications and would reduce red tape in conducting businesses in the region. “Instituting such awards would encourage the governments to come up with more innovative ideas by next conference in 2010.”

The GCC countries have been giving preference to e-governance and there has been significant improvement during the last three to four years.”They have been shaping up very well as the respective governments are giving increasing importance to the sector,” she said.

There is lot of scope to improve ICT and diffusion and penetration should be at the centre of the strategy to develop the sector. “The GCC has all the resources to bring a change in the lifestyles of the people,” added Irene.

Dr Nibal Idlebi, chief, ICT Applications Section ICT Division, UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (UNESCWA), too said that though there were some variations, the ideas behind the eGovernance projects in the GCC nations were quite interesting.

Dr Nibal, who has gone through most of the projects, said that though they were aware of some of the projects, a few of them were new and it was good to share the experience and best practices adopted in implementing eGovernance by different countries. “These projects are better positioned and can be beneficial to other countries including those outside the region.”

Officials of the ICT departments of the GCC countries will showcase the best projects initiated by their governments at the exhibition being held on the sidelines of the conference.

Oman will present ten projects including the recently launched eGovernment Services Portal, www.oman.om and the services being offered to the people.