Thursday 18 / April / 2024
Muscat: The details of the 6th round of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence in e-Government were unveiled at a press conference at Sundus Rotana Muscat hotel on Monday.
Dr. Salim bin Sultan Al Ruzaiqi, CEO of the Information Technology Authority (ITA) stressed that the award aims at encouraging local institutions to promote their performance and facilitating their services through benefiting from the digital technology, besides stimulating those institutions to set up new e-projects and continuous development of e-services.
Al Ruzaiqi also said that “the Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence in e-Government was first announced in 2010, with the aspiration to bring about both a qualitative and quantitative transformation in public-service delivery by honouring e-governance technology projects that have resulted in exceptional achievements, impacts and innovations by harnessing information technology, as well as insuring the implementation of the internationally recognised best practices in ICT.
It also seeks to insure the adoption of the international best practices in evaluating the level of improvement in e-Service to support e-Oman strategy and strengthening the ICT utilisation for higher economic and sociocultural progress in the Sultanate”.
Throughout its 5 rounds, the award achieved a number of the set objectives and that was noticeable in the range and quality of electronic services and projects.
Over the past five rounds, more than 49 projects from the participation of 29 entities have competed and won the award categories.
All these projects have contributed to streamlining life and accelerating processes in a number of government and private entities resulting in greater benefit for the community.
This is by itself is a remarkable accomplishment government and private entities should be proud of.
As usual in each round of the Award, it has been taken into account that the categories meet the needs of the current phase of electronic services in terms of quality and ability to serve the community in various fields, benefiting from the recommendations received from the international jury committees which controlled the various rounds of the award.
In addition, the award’s categories seek to keep abreast with the global ICT trends, which are overseen by international organizations such as the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union.
Based on the above, government and private entities will compete this year on the following categories: The Award’s categories for government namely, first category is Best government eService for individuals (Awarded to the government e-services offered for individuals through different channels that facilitate easy service delivery with high level of speed and transparency), the second category is Best e-Service Supporting Doing Business (G2B) (Awarded to government e-Services supporting the business sector and contributing in making a great change in facilitating doing business in Oman and in promoting business activities and investment).The third category is for the Best Practice in Community e- Participation (Awarded to government electronic initiatives that empower either individuals or organizations to interact with it through different digital social media channels to improve the quality of e- Services provided and to increase customers’ satisfaction).The fourth category is for the Best Government Application for Smart Devices (this category highlights excellence in government e-Services delivery offered through smart devices for individuals or the business sector), while the fifth category is for Best Whole of Government Project (this category highlights projects working on the delivery of e- Services through the integration with other government entities or projects that enables government entities to offer integrated e- Services).The sixth category is for the Best E-Transformation Achievement
(Awarded to government entities that have achieved remarkable progress in the e-Transformation project according to their online E- services maturity compared to the 2017 e-services assessment report),
the seventh category is Best Open Data Initiative Open Government data, which is a new approach that can help government entities improve the quality of their decision making processes and of public e Services.
Open Government Data refers to information disclosed and made available online for everyone’s access, reuse and redistribution without restrictions.
This Award is presented to government entities offering useful open data free of charge in a way that enables individuals and organisations to use government data in smart applications, research, news reports,
and other creative methods for utilising government data.
Award’s Categories for the Private Sector are as follow: the first category is for the Best Private Sector e-Service (Awarded to the e-Services offered from the private sector for individuals or businesses through different channels that facilitate easy service delivery with high level of speed and transparency), the second category is for the Best Private Application for Smart devices (This category highlights excellence in e-Services delivered by the private sector offered through smart devices for individuals or the business sector).
Meanwhile, the Award’s Category for SMEs is for the Best SME e- Service.
This category recognises the excellence in the provision of e-Services by Small and Medium Enterprises SMEs either for individuals or businesses.
