Vodafone Qatar yesterday presented its social Smart City platform #designyourqatar (www.designyourqatar.qa) at the 3rd Annual Middle East Smart Cities Summit here.
Vodafone Qatar launched the social platform in May this year to engage citizens and residents of Qatar to learn about what a smart city is and to interact with each other through sharing their ideas about the future of Qatar.
While the government works on preparing Qatar to become a smarter city by 2030, with ‘Designyouqatar’ Vodafone aims to serve as the connector between the people and the government conveying to the authorities the people’s voice and becoming a hub where they can contribute towards a better Qatar.
Thousands of users have signed up and contributing to the platform with the most interesting output addressing roads, environment, infrastructure, traffic and safety. The platform’s Arabic and mobile versions will be launched shortly which will allow a greater number of people to contribute.
George Galica, head (Managed Services) at Vodafone Qatar, discussed the importance of engaging the public in enabling the Smart City saying, “Nowhere else in the world has a social engagement platform on the subject of Smart Cities been launched. Smart City deployment is a key pillar of Qatar National Vision 2030’s success so we are excited about the public’s participation in sharing their vision for the future.” At the same time that it engages the public, Vodafone Qatar is also investing in its business to ensure it is ready for the large metropolitan projects currently being built in Doha, bringing its experience in deploying Smart City applications around the world to Qatar. Vodafone Qatar has already deployed smart solutions for a number of businesses in Qatar and signed strategic partnerships to enable smart city applications.
Vodafone Qatar was the headline sponsor of the 3rd Annual Middle East Smart Cities Summit.