Jury session of Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence begins

Energy Sunday 21/October/2018 21:20 PM
By: Times News Service
Jury session of Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence begins

Muscat: Organised by the Information Technology Authority (ITA), the activities of the Jury Session of the Sultan Qaboos Award for Excellence in eGovernment 2018 began yesterday at Kempinski Hotel, Almouj, in the presence of Dr Salim bin Sultan Alruzaiqi, CEO of ITA, and the jury members.
The jury committee consisted of a number of international and local experts in eGovernment and participated in evaluating several international awards in the same field.
On this occasion, Dr Salim bin Sultan Alruzaiqi said, “We’re pleased to begin the evaluation of the competing projects participating in the 6th round of the Sultan Qaboos award for Excellence in eGovernment, which reflects in each of its rounds, the progress made by the government, private and SMEs in their competing projects the level of improvement in the delivery of eServices.”
“We trust that the carefully selected jury committee will make their decisions with complete impartiality and will provide detailed reports consisting of recommendations and ways for improvement of the participating projects to enhance the eServices in the Sultanate,” he further added.
Over the five days and according to the set criteria, the jury committee will evaluate 64 submitted projects: 47 projects from government entities, 9 projects from private organisations and 8 projects from SMEs. The jury session is the final phase of the selection process of the winning projects and works independently and impartially abiding by the award’s rules and guidelines, hence, the results of the jury committee are final.
In this round, the award comprises 10 categories, three of which were newly added, distributed for the government, private and SMEs sectors.
The two new categories are for government entities, which are Best Open Data Initiative and Best Government Application for Smart Devices. Whereas the third new category is specified for the private sector to the Best Private Application for Smart Devices.
Hence, the government sector entities can compete in seven different categories, namely: Best Open Data Initiative, Best Government Application for Smart Devices, Best government eService – individuals, Best whole of government Project, Best eService supporting doing business, Best Practice in Community eParticipation and Best eTransformation achievement. Whereas the private sector’s large organisations can compete in two categories, namely: Best Private Application for Smart Devices and Best Private eService. Besides, the Private sector ICT Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can participate in one category: Best SME eService.