The agenda of the second day contained three different presentations. The first paper was presented by Kim Andreasson, managing director of Daka Advisory, in which he talked about the best policy recommendations to enhance the eGovernment services performance and eGovernment measurement and re-engineering to achieve excellence.
Andreasson also highlighted the issue of building capacity to develop eGovernment strategies, involving benchmarking, and the public sector adequate awareness about relevant statistical concepts.
He identified the Sultanate position in using eGovernment services, saying: "According to the stages and the UN overall ranking, Oman has been progressing very nicely in the last couple of years and specifically in the online services index which matches the availability of eGovernment services. Oman progressed from 55th in 2010 to 35th in 2012 and this can be broken down by the different stages of eGovernment. Oman is doing extremely well in the first and second stages which are the basic website presence and enhanced website presence."
"Now, the challenge for Oman is in the third and fourth stages relating to transactions and connected governance. In the last two stages, people start to see connectivity between not only citizens and government and government and citizens, but also between government and departments. Oman is in a good position in eGovernment since it is moving up and taking the right decisions. Looking forward, I see that Oman has a strategic plan in achieving the eGovernment since it is now in the stages that requires complex implementation," Andreasson further added.
Matthew Rajendra, regional director, Green Computing Institute, Malaysia, presented the second paper about Green ICT and the ways of ensuring efficient and sustainable use of information and communications technology in ways that are eco-friendly.
Rajendra talked about creating the Oman knowledge society in a responsible way by the efficient and sustainable use of ICT, and ownership and adherence to national standard in Green Computing by establishing a wider framework for sustainable progress.
At the end of the day, Hussein Al Rahbi, Health Safety and Environment Engineer at ITA, highlighted ITA's Green Initiative and displayed a video that showed the steps for implementing the initiative. A panel discussion was held at the end of the symposium in which several inquiries were raised by the government employees attending the symposium.
In an interview with one of the speakers at the Symposium, Jose M. Alonso, Program Manager, Open Data Program Manager at World Wide Web Foundation, talked about the methods of speeding up the process to have OGD, saying: "Opening up data from government is something not easy and takes time, and this can be possible only by targeting the end users who will benefit from the data as early as possible in the whole process. Moving from paper-based to electronic data is not a difficult process. It all depends on the quality that you want to achieve."
Open government data portal
Talking about the ITA's efforts to encourage the OGD, Fatma Al Riyami, director operation excellence at ITA, said: "The OGD portal has been launched at the Official eGovernment Services Portal (Omanuna) www.oman.om, and currently it contains data on 55 issues including education, business, ICT use criteria, laws and decrees. More open data will be added later on. We are working on implementing a Big Data Competition for the best idea of the open data, and its details will be announced soon. The aim of the competition is to enable the public with authentic government data and make use of this data. We hope that the community of academics, students, researchers, businesses, and others actively use open data that has already been published in the portal."
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Quelle/Source: Times of Oman, 04.06.2013
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