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Qatar

Qatar maintains business continuity with best infrastructure and digital services

Published: 11 Aug 2020 - 08:49 am | Last Updated: 28 Dec 2021 - 11:39 am
Peninsula

Irfan Bukhari |  The Peninsula

The world-class infrastructure and availability of digital services have placed Qatar in a position to maintain business continuity during crisis situations.

It was evident during recent remote working phase adopted in face of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. The success behind remote work system lies in infrastructure readiness and government shared services under Qatar Digital Government of the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC). 

“Crisis Management and Business Continuity Plan in the State of Qatar supports remote work system thanks to government shared services and infrastructure readiness to providing electronic services to individuals and businesses,” MoTC tweeted recently.

The tweet indicates that crisis management and business continuity plan in Qatar for supporting remote work revolves around four core principles including rolling out policies and framework; activating the crisis management task force; securing best customer services; and adopting remote work mechanism.

It also points out the government shared services which ensure smooth sailing of remote working and continuity in business including Government Network, Government e-Correspondence System, Government Data Exchange, Government Data Center, Government Contact Center ‘109’, and SMS Gateway.

The Ministry’s infographic also reveals availability of over 1,000 digital services and 40 smartphone apps by government entities as well as regular update of all services via Hukoomi.

According to information on the MoTC website the Government Network enables a secure and reliable environment for exchanging data between government agencies.

The Government Network comprises 100 government entities, and facilitates access to the Internet, in addition to providing access to existing shared government services and future government applications.

The Government e-Correspondence System has been developed to provide all government entities with a secure and robust system for sending and receiving correspondences (official letters) through the government network.

As many as 125,365 government e-correspondences were done via Government e-Correspondence System (Morasalat) in the first six months of 2020, the Ministry of Transport and Communications tweeted.

The Government Data Exchange system helps government entities to raise their efficiency and improves collaboration between them to provide services to the public. Through this centralized back-end data exchange system, entities no longer require the public to submit hardcopy documents for verification purposes. Such verifications can be done through this system directly with the data sources entities, therefore increasing the entities to deliver end-to-end e-services to the public.

The Government Data Center offers a centralized facility to host government entities’ IT infrastructure and provides essential hosting and basic monitoring services for all government entities.

The Government Contact Center ‘109’ receives public inquiries and complaints 24/7. The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MoTC) has implemented the “Government Call Center” project to provide supporting services to the public and communicate with customers, on one hand, and with government and semi-government entities, on the other hand.