The symposium entitled ‘e-governance reality and challenges’ started on Saturday and is being held jointly by Muscat Municipality, the Arab Urban Development Institute and the World Bank. Qasim Sultan Al Banna, director of Dubai Municipality, chaired the third morning session which discussed the theme, ‘Hurdles and challenges to the introduction of e-government’.
Two papers on financial transactions through the Internet and information security and the role of legislation in applying the e-government were presented respectively by Dr Sabri Al Azizawi, a corporate official from Dubai and Dr Ali Al Baz from Sa’ad Al Abdullah Academy for Security Science in Kuwait.
In the same session, Dr Omar bin Said bin Mishait from the King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia explained the administrative and human challenges involved in applying the e-government. Dr Mahmoud Hassan Nofal from Asyout University, Egypt, and Mahmoud bin Nassir Al Riyami from the Ministry of Defence, discussed the requirements of the e-government.
In the fourth session, which was chaired by Mohammed bin Ali Al Wohaibi, executive president of Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel), the speakers were Dr Rabeea’ Refa’at from Sidney University and Dr Mohammed Al Mutwali from Sa’ad Al Abdullah Academy. They addressed the issues of creating a successful e-government and qualifying manpower to run e-government, respectively.
Dr Bijan Azzad from Lebanon, Dr Badr Al Deen Mohammed from Malaysia and Dr Sami Mohammed Sidqi from the UAE also presented their papers on the subject during the session.
Yaquob bin Dur Mohammed Al Balushi, director of information systems department, Muscat Municipality, said the forum was held now because there was an urgent need to lay down the basic infrastructures for establishing an e-government in the Arab countries.
He said the recommendations to be made at the forum would be important because the forum brought together e-government specialists and created an opportunity to discuss ideas on introducing electronic government.
Al Balushi said the municipality presented its experiment of introducing online services on Saturday and had designed a strategy in this respect.
He said the municipality website offered at present a number of necessary services to citizens.
It also allows enquiries about rent contracts in building permits.
He added it had recently being agreed with the National Bank of Oman (NBO) to collect the municipality’s fees and details of the agreement would be announced soon.
Quelle: Times of Oman
