Qatar makes steady progress in ICT sector

By V L Srinivasan

Muscat, Dec 22 : Less than a decade after coming out with its official portal, which was launched in 2003, Dawlat Qatar (State of Qatar) has been making news in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector in recent years.
Besides steadily climbing the ladder in terms of rankings accorded by the Global IT Readiness Report (from 35th place in 2006 to 29th in 2008), Qatar has now drawn up ambitious plans and a strategy to become one of the global leaders in the field of ICT by 2020.

After setting up the ICT Supreme Council in 2004, the Qatari government announced its
ICT Policy last year. In between, the official portal was refurbished and named Hukoomi, through which over 300 services including 50 e-transaction services (the
others being informative in nature) like business-to-business (B2B), government-to- business (G2B) and government- to-citizens (G2C) are offered at present.

The popularity of Hukoomi can be gauged by the fact that 3.5mn transactions have taken place, including issuance of 1.5mn exit permits till the end of 2008.
Qatar is one of the few states in the Middle East which has published a white paper on ICT activities initiated in the country.

“Hukoomi was made the main portal for providing authorised government information and
conduct e-transactions by the ICT Supreme Council,” Eng Ahmad Mohammed al Kuwari,
Gov IT Platforms manager, who heads Qatar's ICT delegation at the first GCC eGovernance Conference, told Muscat Daily.

While all government wings have been computerised and the official-public interface has been reduced considerably, some of the departments have engaged themselves in developing inhouse technologies to upgrade their efficiency further, he said.

The government is also encouraging private sector for developing the sector and several multinational companies like Microsoft have started their operations in the country. “Sustainable and stable national economy of Qatar has been attracting lots of companies from abroad,” he said.