Qatar’s move to become a knowledge-based economy got a major boost with the launch of Qatar Open Data Portal. The new initiative reflects the government’s commitment to become more transparent. The Minister of Transport and Communications H E Jassim bin Saif Al Sulaiti launched the Portal, which will make it easy for all stakeholders to access, share and reuse the information easily.
“The Ministry of Transport and Communications launched the Open Data Policy in 2014 to achieve the objectives of national development and Qatar National Vision 2030. The aim is to provide public services efficiently and transparently, build a knowledge-based economy and boost innovation and creativity through an open and transparent culture where knowledge is available and accessible,” the Minister said. The Qatar Open Data Portal will facilitate the dissemination of government data on the Internet through a single national platform and make it available to the public. The Portal will help transform these data and information into tools and applications that help in areas of research, innovation and creative and smart solutions.
Open data is crucial in light of the digital age and new technological inventions in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, Internet of Things, 3D printing, as well as the tremendous developments in computing power, and the availability of huge amounts of data among other factors. These data represent a major resource for a knowledge-based society and is also one of the main drivers of trade progress and economic growth.
The Minister said it was important to release data and make it open given the social and business value of doing so, “because data is a fundamental resource for the knowledge society that we aspire to and one of the powerful catalysts for trade progress and economic growth”. He hailed the Ministry of Interior’s initiative in the field of open data, and efforts of the Ministry of Finance and Planning and Statistics Authority, which took the lead and began sharing their data via the new portal.
It must be mentioned that the Ministry of Transport and Communications recently launched the Government Cloud Service in association with MEEZA and Media Analytics Service, adding both of them to a list of shared services MOTC provides to government entities within the framework of Qatar Digital Government 2020. The first is a government cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
It utilises dedicated government network and focuses on delivering the service over a private and highly secure environment for government entities. Media Analytics Service allows government entities to monitor, follow and analyse what is being published about them on social media and traditional electronic media, thus helping them monitor information and relevant published topics, follow up their indicators, measure public opinion, interact with them and identify potential crises for action.
All these measures will help contribute to building a government that is more efficient, more open and more transparent for the good of all.
