Experts from KPMG Qatar, who spoke during the webinar held recently in Doha.
Doha: Only 29 percent of governments have indicated that they have a clear digital business vision and strategy. And while governments worldwide are not immune to digitalization, they should also focus on citizen and resident centricity, by improving digital landscapes in their countries, experts from leading consultancy firm KPMG have said at a recent webinar in Doha.
During the KPMG hosted webinar, titled “How does digitalisation impact the government sector?”, a panel of experts highlighted that with the COVID-19 situation, digital interaction and digital services have become a necessity for each business. Qatar’s government has been investing in providing digital services to citizens, expats and businesses for some time now. As a result of this, some questions have come up which the panelists tackled during the session, including the challenges facing further digitalisation, how to improve the user experience and increase engagement and how to secure successful digital initiative implementations.
The webinar was hosted by a panel of KPMG Qatar experts including Suhail Shaker, Digital and Innovation Advisory Director, Rania Al Wafai, Advisory Manager, and Devash Vijay Advisory Manager.
Vijay said: “Digitalisation for the government sector should focus on citizen and resident centricity. For enabling the said centricity, the underlying principle is to improve productivity and eye optimisation by improving the digital landscape.”
Shaker added that “different sectors in the economy were impacted in a different way based on their readiness, their ability to cope and their business model. Governments are not immune to either, they are part of the enterprise and the private sector and they were hit as badly as everybody else”.
The findings gave insight on how government sectors in the world were mostly split between a “hard reset” approach or “transform to re-emerge” approach. Although the Qatari government has well-established e-services platforms like Hukoomi, Metrash other digital platforms like Mawared, Mersal, and others, the Qatari government needed to “transform to re-emerge” and provide more digital services, adjust to accommodate the remote work and reduce the need for the physical interaction between the users and the government. However, with its digital transformation initiatives such as TASMU, it will be well on its way forward, he added.
Al Wafai also reiterated that “the citizens’ and residents’ expectations from the government are changing”. She led the webinar’s segment on enhancing the citizen centric experience and shared some statistics. She said 76 percent of Human and Social Service organisations view customer-centric strategy as a top or high priority, but only 40 percent claim to provide a customer experience that exceeds expectations and only 29 percent of governments indicate they have a clear digital business vision and strategy.
The discussion during the event stressed that overall, the covid-19 pandemic has re-emphasised the importance of digital enterprise. The session concluded that government clients should realise implications and opportunities of new digital technologies such as automation, augmented reality, and mobile apps; and to develop scenarios for how their workforce needs reshaping. In regards to assurance and integrity, governments also need trust, and the ability to deliver against programme outcomes is critical. In addition, cybersecurity and privacy is essential for any government transformation. Cybersecurity affects most, if not all, parts of any organisation and its risks need to be appropriately managed, the speakers added.
