Qatar is developing a digital strategy for more resilient, sustainable, safe and smart nation in alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Collaboration and constant exchange of information is an ever-important catalyst for continuous change and development, said a senior official addressing the WSIS Forum 2022.
The inauguration ceremony of the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) Forum 2022 with the participation of Qatar as the golden sponsor was held virtually on March 15 and will culminate with the final week on May 30 - June 3, which will take place physically at the ITU Headquarters in Geneva. Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union, delivered the opening remarks.
Mashael Ali Yousef Al Hammadi, Acting Assistant Undersecretary of Government Information Technology Affairs at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), discussed the plans that Qatar has for WSIS Forum.
Addressing the event Al Hammadi said: “International forums should continue to highlight the importance of UN SDGs as this ensures that we are all moving in the same direction. The WSIS Forum is a major international event that highlights the importance of SDGs through IT initiatives and projects. Together with ICT, the relevant policies and services are adopted across all sectors such as education, healthcare, and sports to achieve the key development milestone and result in social, environment and economic prosperity.”
Mashael Ali Yousef Al Hammadi added: “Qatar is a developing digital strategy for more resilient, sustainable, safe and smart nation. This strategy considers UN SDGs alignment to ensure we are working on the same wavelength as the other nations and the international community. We believe that WSIS Forum is important for us as we have had a great deal to learn from other countries and participants either from their submissions or workshops. Collaboration and constant exchange of information is an ever-important catalyst for continuous change and development.”
In the education sector, Qatar has made a good use of material and human assets. It has also worked in improving its infrastructure in providing better training to accelerate progress in this sector in alignment with the four SDG goals which is quality education.
She said, “A new platform has recently been launched which is a system providing interactive learning environment among students, teachers and parents. In health sector the government is always concerned with enabling this sector both logistically and technologically. The use of ICT can be clearly seen through the important mobile apps like Ehteraz and Nar’aakom, online clinics and health centers that are diagnosing and assessing patients and also by a unified clinical information system for consolidating all medical data, a national registry or a communicable diseases surveillance and vaccination and increased robotic process automation.”
Al Hammadi noted, as for the sports sector, eight amazing stadiums will be hosting the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and each one is an example of how cloud computing is important in providing the necessary linkage. These sport facilities follow the UN SDGs to a great extent and the stadiums also ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by using up to 40 percent less energy than international benchmarks. The FIFA World Cup stadiums use recycled water of irrigation and dust control, thus reducing the demand of potable water up to 40 percent as for climate action the stadiums adopting energy efficient designs.
“WSIS action lines acts as a driver to target more SDGs and we see the number of projects submitted yearly on WSIS platforms increasing which is a good sign to ensure increased inclusion and collaboration between nations. Qatar has increased its efforts with regards to WSIS submission which can only come from intensive effort and number of IT projects nationally,” she added.
She said that the constant alignment with the UN 2030 SDGs is necessary to ensure we are constantly combining our efforts focusing on specific goals and reaching them collectively. Being a forum that hosts governments and as well as NGOs private institutions WSIS is well positioned to provide recommendations that tackle our issues from a multi-channel which is a collective approach that includes the private sector, public sector and academia.