In the early 1960s, Canadian-born Marshall McLuhan coined the term global village, a metaphorical shrinking of the world into a village through the use of electronic media. In those days electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time inspired McLuhan to coin the term.
In today’s world communication is much faster and any information is just a click away. On the Internet, physical distance is even less of a hindrance to the real-time communicative activities of people. With the advancement in electronic technology, people can access any service from the comfort of their homes.
Qatar’s government has been taking every effort to render its different services to people in a smooth and hassle-free manner. Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin saif Al Sulaiti on Sunday said that all the government services will be made available online by 2020. The Minister was launching ‘Digital Transformation of SMEs’ programme which is expected to benefit around 5,000 companies by the end of 2019.
The move will make people’s life more comfortable and accessing services much easier. Today, for some services we need to visit offices personally, but by 2020, we can get these services from anywhere in the world as all the services are being made available online.
“Currently there are more than 2,400 digital services available, including more than 1,000 online services and more than 600 mobile services. By 2020 all government services will be made available on the Internet,” said the Minister of Transport and Communication.
The Minister added that the government has clear plans for digital transformation and the enhancement of the role of technology in different state sectors in order to realise the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030 of building a knowledge based society.
As Qatar is already having some of the world’s most developed IT and communication infrastructure, whether it is fibre optic communication channels, data centres, or cloud-based computing services, going fully online will not be a huge task. Hukoomi, the official government web portal and the gateway to information about the country, connecting the public with government services, programmes and initiatives, is already offering several services online and the tech-savvy people are making best use of it. Hence, the people in Qatar are already familiar with online government services and so a smooth transfer of all the services to the online arena will not take people by surprise.
Qatar is going to be among the first few countries in the world to make all government services online. Every department is trying hard to make Qatar National Vision a reality by 2030 and their efforts really deserve kudos.
