Tuesday 16 / April / 2024
Muscat: The Sultanate of Oman launched the National Programme for Digital Economy, through which the Sultanate seeks to achieve several goals that contribute to building and developing a prosperous digital economy that responds to the requirements of the future.
Approved by the Council of Ministers, the programme includes a set of main axes, and medium and long-term goals based on the national directions of Oman Vision 2040. These are to be achieved through a set of executive programmes, and according to a clear governance for implementation and follow-up.
The programme is also founded on several main principles that will help achieve its objectives: These include, creating national industries in the digital economy, enhancing the local added value of the digital economy, creating sustainable income-generating opportunities that keep pace with technical development, creating a strategic partnership with private sector institutions, and digitally empowering the economic sectors included in the tenth five-year plan.
“The adoption of the National Digital Economy Programme enhances digital transformation in the economic and government sectors at the level of digital services, as well as enriches the citizen’s experience through proactive and integrated digital facilities,” said Saeed bin Hamoud bin Saeed Al Maawali, Minister of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, to the Oman News Agency.
“The programme also has a strategic direction to ensure national harmony, coordination and integration between the components of the digital economy in the Sultanate, and a framework for related operational plans and programmes,” he added.
Speaking to the Oman News Agency, the minister added that the programme includes three support axes to achieve the established national goals.
“As part of the first, the programme will accelerate government digital transformation, while the second axis will see the programme work towards strengthening digital society,” he said.
“The third axis will focus on enabling business digitisation in economic and strategic sectors.”
The National Programme for Digital Economy consists of a set of executive programmes supporting its implementation designed based on these main axes.
Key priorities of the initiative include government digital transformation; e-commerce; development of technical infrastructure; digital industry and cybersecurity. This initiative will also focus on a range of opportunities available in the digital economy in the Sultanate revolving around data centre services, cloud services, and cybersecurity services.
These provisions will enable the use of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as artificial intelligence in economic and strategic sectors, help develop digital content, and attract foreign technical investments to the Sultanate.
