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Policy, Technology

Singapore shapes Qatar's e-govt model

By Alice Kok | 15 May 2009

Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) is assisting ictQATAR in implementing the Qatar Services Infrastructure (QSi) project, a fast developing e-government initiative.

“QSi is based on Singapore’s successful Public Service Infrastructure (PSI) initiative,” said Shaik Umar, IDA Centre Director (Middle East).

He said QSi will provide the government of Qatar with a rich and highly integrated centralised software platform, which helps accelerate the delivery of public e-services on the internet.

The pilot scheme, Company Registration e-Service, is in collaboration with Qatar’s Ministry of Business & Trade. It will speed up company registration in Qatar, removing the need for queuing at government departments.

He added that IDA was also assisting Qatar in establishing an integrated system for the Customs & Ports General Authority. Once implemented it will help Customs & Ports General Authority to issue export and import permits for various commodities in co-ordination with the departments concerned.

“From the Singapore experience I can tell you that the process which used to take several days can now be done in a matter of minutes,” Umar said.

A major project which IDA collaborated with ictQATAR in advisory role was Hukoomi—the user-friendly portal allows citizens, residents, businesses and visitors to easily access government information and services at any time of the day.

The first project, which was announced earlier under the IDA and ictQATAR MoU was the eSchoolbag pilot project. The eSchoolbag project forms part of Qatar’s e-education strategy through which ictQATAR wants to encourage the use of ICT to allow students and teachers to enrich their learning experiences and realise their potential.

Through its experience with Singapore’s BackPack.NET project, IDA assisted in identifying Singapore infocomm companies with the necessary experience to support ictQATAR in its ambitions.

Some Singapore infocomm companies were engaged by ictQATAR to implement the project in September 2006. The pilot scheme, with Al-Wakra Independent Preparatory School for Girls in Doha, involves Science, Mathematics and English lessons delivered through tablet PCs.

By early 2007, approximately 200 teachers and Grade 7 students would have completed their tablet PCs familiarisation programme and the first lessons would start using the tablet PCs.

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