Qatar, represented by Qatar Open Data Portal of the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC), won the 2020 World Summit on Information Society (WSIS 2020) award for e-Science.
The announcement came on Monday during the opening activities of the last week of the WSIS 2020, which is organised by the International Telecommunication Union via videoconferencing and continues until Wednesday.
Acting Assistant Undersecretary for Information Technology Affairs at the MoTC Mashael Ali al-Hammadi congratulated Qatar for winning the award, which represents an international recognition for the digital progress achieved by the State within the Qatar Digital Government strategy.
She indicated that this is an indication of its progress in improving its online services provided to the public, facilitating it in the cyberspace, and getting rid of the restrictions of time and place, wishing for the permanent presence of Qatar's digital government projects and programmes on the coronation platforms to raise Qatar's name high in international forums.
Al-Hammadi added that MoTC thanks all government agencies' partners in the portal for providing all the data and statistics needed for the portal.
Three Qatar projects have been selected as the heroes of 2020 on the WSIS Award.
The second category of the award included the "Centralised Connectivity in the Schools Network" at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, while the seventh category included the "Open Data" portal under the MoTC, and the eighth category included the multilingual e-contract system project — the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs.
The WSIS 2020 is held entirely online, under the slogan "promoting digital transformation and global partnerships...WSIS action lines to achieve sustainable development goals", in co-operation between the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in close co-operation with all the facilitators participating in the WSIS Action Line.
The MoTC launched the "Qatar Open Data Portal" to facilitate the process of disseminating government data on the Internet through a single national platform, making it available to the public, and appropriately ensuring its quality and provision and according to international standards followed in this field.
The portal comes within the framework of the Qatar Digital Government 2020 strategy, which includes among its axes open data, e-participation, and related policies as major initiatives in this context.
The portal promotes Qatar's march towards the transformation of smart transactions to achieve national development goals in providing public services efficiently and transparently, building a digital economy based on a knowledge society, and promoting innovation and creativity by creating an open and transparent culture in which the foundations of knowledge are in circulation and accessible.
Several government agencies share their data through the portal, and it is expected that all government agencies will join and participate in the portal to build a more efficient, open, and transparent government.
This data represents a huge wealth, especially government sector data, which is the main source for official statistics, due to the amount of data collected as well as its central importance.
The MoTC is keen to make this data available online so that it can be used in an innovative way to create useful tools to support and develop business, facilitate public services, and restructure administrative procedures.
The WSIS Prizes competition is open to all stakeholders: governments, companies, civil society, international organisations, academia, and others.
The competition includes 18 categories that are directly related to the WSIS Action Lines.
