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The Qatar Open Data Portal of MOTC won the 2020 World Summit on Information Society (WSIS 2020) Award on Category 7- ICT Applications e-Science.

This was announced yesterday during the opening activities of the final week of the WSIS 2020, organized by the ITU via videoconferencing. The event continues until Sept. 9, 2020.

“We are pleased the Qatar Open Data Portal has won the WSIS 2020 e-Science Award. Congratulations to the State of Qatar for winning this award, which without a doubt represents an international recognition for the digital progress achieved by the State of Qatar as part of the Qatar Digital Government strategy,” said MOTC’s Acting Assistant Undersecretary of Government Information Technology Ms. Mashael Ali Al-Hammadi.

She added that this achievement indicates that MOTC is progressing on the way of achieving Qatar National Vision for building up a knowledge-based digital economy and it is also an indication of its progress in improving its online services provided to the public, facilitating it in the cyberspace, and getting rid of the restrictions of time and place, wishing for the permanent presence of Qatar’s digital government projects and programs on the appreciation platforms to raise Qatar’s name high at international fora.

“On this occasion, on behalf of myself and the Government of the State of Qatar, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those involved in this work at ITU and we highly appreciate their efforts in organizing these awards. I would like also to extend my sincere thanks to all our partners in this initiative, from government agencies in Qatar for providing the data and statistics, as well as the public who supported by voting for the initiative. Appreciation is also extended to the members of the content team of the Qatar Digital Government Administration at MOTC for their effective contribution to updating the portal’s content regularly. The portal is a key element for achieving one of QDG’s key goals, namely enhancing government openness, transparency and societal participation by enabling government entities to publish their data and make them available to the public.”

Three projects from Qatar were initially have been selected as champions for WSIS 2020 Award. The 2nd category of the award included the “Centralized Connectivity in the Schools Network” of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, the 7th category included the “Open Data Portal” under MOTC, and the 8th category included the “Multi Languages Electronic Labor Contract System” of the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labor and Social Affairs.

MOTC launched the portal on April 2019 where government data is published and made accessible online via a single national platform to streamline public access to data while guaranteeing its quality by making it available in the right format in line with best world practices.

The WSIS Prizes is the unique global platform to identify and showcase success stories in the implementation of the WSIS 18 Action Lines and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The WSIS Prizes contest was developed in response to requests from the WSIS stakeholders to create an effective mechanism to evaluate projects and activities that leverage the power of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to advance sustainable development.

The WSIS Prizes contest is open for all WSIS stakeholders: governments, businesses, civil society, international organizations, academic institutions and others. It features 18 categories that directly match the WSIS Action Lines.