WSIS STOCKTAKING REPORT IN THE ARAB STATES

2016 – 2018

Acknowledgement

The WSIS team would like to acknowledge the tremendous contributions from governments, international organizations, private sector, civil society and other stakeholders in providing information on ongoing projects and initiatives to the WSIS Stocktaking Platform. The WSIS Stocktaking Report In The Americas 2016 – 2018 is based on the contributions provided by different stakeholders on ICT related projects within the Americas.

The report benefited from the contributions and insights of ITU staff:

Richard Gbedoah, Liviu Vacareanu, Tianfeng Luo, Gitanjali Sah and Vladimir Stankovic.

Disclaimer

The information contained in this publication is provided by the multiple stakeholders that contributed to the WSIS Stocktaking process and does not engage ITU. Denominations and classifications employed in this publication do not imply any opinion on the part of the International Telecommunication Union concerning the legal or other status of any territory or any endorsement or acceptance of any boundary. Where the designation “country” appears in this publication, it covers countries and territories. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ITU or its membership.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgement

Executive Summary

Introduction

The WSIS Action Lines break down into 18 categories

17 Sustainable development goals (SDGs)

The role of ITU in WSIS implementation

Countries in the Arab States Region

WSIS Stocktaking 2016 Outcomes

WSIS Stocktaking 2017 Outcomes

WSIS Stocktaking 2018 Outcomes

С1. The role of public governance authorities and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development

С2. Information and communication infrastructure

C3. Access to information and knowledge

C4. Capacity building

C5. Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs

C6. Enabling environment

C7. ICT Applications

E-government

E-business

E-learning

E-health

E-employment

E-environment

E-agriculture

E-science

C8. Cultural diversity and identity

C9. Media

C10. Ethics

C11. International and regional cooperation

Conclusion

Executive Summary

Following the publication of the WSIS Regional Stocktaking series for the period 2014-2016 and its popular reception within the WSIS community, we have prepared new edition of the WSIS Regional Stocktaking with the special focus on how ICTs are helping advance the Sustainable Development Goals on the ground. Our objective is to have a customized reporting by region (based on six ITU regions distribution) that will be considered as a strong reference point to good ICT practices implemented by the different stakeholders (government, private sector, civil society, academia, international organizations, others), generating social impact, partnerships, replicable examples, and advance the achievement of the SDGs.

In the period between 2016 and 2018, three hundred and ninety-nine (399) entries were submitted from the Arab Region to the WSIS Stocktaking platform while forty- six (46) entities from this region have been awarded WSIS Prizes as winners or champions since 2012. It is our pleasure to recognize the WSIS Prize 2016-2018 winners and champions from the Arab Region, and to applaud their dedication and commitment to the implementation of the WSIS Outcomes, while also honoring and awarding outstanding projects from the international WSIS community.

It is also with pleasure that WSIS Stocktaking and ITU recognize the commitment of this region to the implementation of the WSIS Outcomes, including the commitment made to share best practices regarding the use of ICTs to help advance the achievement of the SDGs.

The United Nations Economic and Social Council resolution 2017/21 on “Assessment of the progress made in the implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society” reiterates the importance of sharing best practices at the global level and, while recognizing excellence in the implementation of the projects and initiatives that further the WSIS goals, encourages all stakeholders to submit ICT-related projects and initiatives to the WSIS Stocktaking platform.

The same resolution also reiterates the importance of recognizing excellence in the implementation of the projects and initiatives that further the goals of the WSIS process, and encourages all stakeholders to nominate their ICT-related projects for the annual WSIS Prizes contest, as an integral part of the WSIS Stocktaking process.

The WSIS Stocktaking database (www.wsis.org/stocktaking) was introduced in 2010 and currently has more than 10,000 entries and a growing community of more than 350,000 stakeholders. It is a unique global tool for collecting information and regular reporting on ICT-related initiatives and projects, carried out by governments, international organizations, the business sector, civil society, academia and other entities, in the context of 11 WSIS Action Lines. The WSIS Stocktaking process has been maintained by ITU since 2004, as requested by the WSIS Outcomes (Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, paragraph 120).

With the year-round ongoing call for updates and new entries, all stakeholders are invited to continue sharing best practices on the WSIS Stocktaking Platform and emphasize how ICT-related initiatives and projects are enabling SDGs. WSIS Prizes 2019 Call for Submissions will be launched in July 2018. Please follow up on www.wsis.org/prizes.

All WSIS-related publications, including the Reports on the WSIS Stocktaking, are to download at the ITU Bookshop: https://www.itu.int/pub/S-POL-WSIS.

Introduction

On the occasion of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2018 – held in Geneva on 19-23 March, a special edition of the WSIS Stocktaking Report for the ITU Arab Region for the period 2016-2018 was produced as the information document for the technological developments and innovations within the Arab Region.

The principal role of the WSIS Stocktaking exercise is to leverage the activities of stakeholders working on the implementation of WSIS outcomes and share knowledge and experience of projects by replicating successful models designed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The WSIS Stocktaking process was initiated in October 2004 during the Tunis phase of WSIS, and in the years since has come to comprise the database of:

• Exchanges of information on projects

• Sharing of best practices of certain regions

• Initiatives related to the implementation of the 11 WSIS Action Lines

• Linkages between the 11 Action Lines and the SDGs – a linkage that becomes more and more important over the years.

In addition to the United Nations Economic and Social Council resolution 2017/21 on “Assessment of the progress made in the implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society”, the WSIS Overall Review called for close alignment between the WSIS process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, highlighting the cross-cutting contribution of ICTs to the Sustainable Development Goals. In this context also the WSIS Stocktaking evolves into the unique global process for collection of information on actions carried out in context of WSIS, while underlining their contribution to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

There are three hundred and ninety-nine (399) projects listed in this Report and most of them were also nominated for the WSIS Prizes contests in the period 2016-2018. WSIS Prize, as an integral part of the WSIS stocktaking process, is a unique global recognition for excellence in the implementation of WSIS outcomes. The contest was held for the first time in 2012, and rapidly gained attention and popularity within the ICT for Development (ICT4D) community.

ICTs are enablers for sustainable development, and reporting on ICT success stories to best showcase the possible achievement of SDGs is the major objective of WSIS Stocktaking process, including WSIS Prizes, as already recognized and anticipated by the WSIS stakeholders community. All stakeholders are urged to encourage their networks to join the WSIS Prizes process, including the multistakeholder open consultation process for the WSIS Forum 2019, in order to ensure that all features correspond to the real needs of the WSIS implementation process towards 2025.

The WSIS Stocktaking community comprises of more than 350,000 stakeholders who are eager to contribute to the WSIS Process year after year. By identifying trends in implementing WSIS Outcomes, the WSIS Stocktaking Process makes a significant contribution towards building an inclusive Information Society.

The WSIS Action Lines break down into 18 categories

1) The role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development

2) Information and communication infrastructure

3) Access to knowledge and information

4) Capacity building

5) Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs

6) Enabling environment

7) E-government

8) E-business

9) E-learning

10) E-health

11) E-employment

12) E-environment

13) E-agriculture

14) E-science

15) Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content

16) Media

17) Ethical dimension of the information society

18) International and regional cooperation

17 Sustainable development goals (SDGs)

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal 11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Goal 14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Goal 15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

We take this opportunity to extend sincere gratitude to all of the stakeholders from the CIS region who have been engaged in the WSIS Process, sharing their national advances on implementation of the WSIS outcomes since 2004. We would also like to invite all ITU Member States and Sector Members of the CIS region to continue engaging with the WSIS Stocktaking process by submitting projects relevant to WSIS Action Lines and the newly established SDGs, promote the WSIS Stocktaking process within their communities, and follow new developments of the WSIS Prizes 2017 contest.

The role of ITU in WSIS implementation

It is important to stress here that ITU has been contributing enormously to WSIS implementation and follow-up from 2005 to the present. The tasks carried out by ITU at the operational and policy level cover all mandates assigned to it relating to the WSIS process, in particular:

• in its capacity as lead facilitator in coordinating the multistakeholder implementation of the Geneva Plan of Action (§ 109 of TAIS) and primary organizer and host of the annual event in May, the WSIS Forum;

• as facilitator for Action Lines C2 (Information and communication infrastructure) and C5 (Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs), as well as C6 (Enabling environment);

• as co-facilitator for Action Lines C1, C3, C4, C7 and C11

• as partner in Action Lines C8 and C9;

• as rotating chair and vice-chair of the United Nations Group on the Information Society (UNGIS) (§ 103 of TAIS);

• as lead partner on Measuring ICT for Development (§ 114 of TAIS);

• as facilitator of the WSIS Stocktaking process (§ 120 of TAIS);

• as organizer of World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (§ 121 of TAIS);

• as lead of the Connect the World Initiative (§ 98 of TAIS).

Countries in the Arab States Region

– Algeria

– Morocco

– Bahrain

– Oman

– Comores

– Palestine

– Djibouti

– Qatar

– Egypt

– Saudi Arabia

– Iraq

– Somalia

– Jordan

– Sudan

– Kuwait

– Syria

– Lebanon

– Tunisia

– Libya

– United Arab Emirates

– Mauritania

– Yemen

WSIS Stocktaking 2016 Outcomes

As of April 2016, more than 8,000 updated entries were registered in the WSIS Stocktaking Database, reflecting all manner of innovative WSIS-related activities.

The eighth edition of the WSIS Stocktaking Report and the fifth edition of Success Stories 2016 was officially released during the WSIS Forum 2016 (2 to 6 May 2016, in Geneva, Switzerland). It reflected activities which were submitted to the WSIS Stocktaking process for the period March 2015 to March 2016.

While the 2015 contest was already a record-breaker in terms of the number of projects submitted, the WSIS Prizes 2016 contest hit a new high with a 10 percent increase in submissions. Following a comprehensive review of the projects submitted, the ITU Expert Group nominated more than 300 projects and posted them online for public appreciation. The 311 nominated projects break down into 179 projects from the government sector, 41 from the business sector, 31 from civil society, 14 from international organizations and 46 from other entities (mostly academic). As regards regional distribution, 86 projects are from the Arab region, 73 from the Asia and Pacific region, 53 from the Americas region, 36 from the Europe region, 31 from the CIS region and 27 from the Africa region, while five nominated projects come from international organizations.

The members of the WSIS multistakeholder community were invited to participate and cast their votes for one project in each of 18 categories. The deadline for voting was 10 March 2016. The list of the 18 most appreciated/voted projects were identified and the winning projects were announced officially to the public during the prize ceremony held during the WSIS Forum 2016. The success stories have showcased examples of projects for implementation of WSIS outcomes, emphasizing the achievements of stakeholders working towards the achievement of WSIS goals and SDGs, transferring experience and knowledge at the global level, and spreading and fostering WSIS values.

Besides the 18 winners, an innovation in this year’s WSIS Prizes contest is the WSIS Prize Champions category, which recognizes those contenders having emerged from the online voting phase with at least 245,000 votes from the WSIS community. Their projects are among those having received the highest number of votes and having gained the best reviews by the members of the Expert Group. Among the five projects selected in each of the 18 categories, one was the Winner and the runners-up were appreciated as the WSIS Prize Champions.

WSIS Stocktaking 2017 Outcomes

As of June 2017, almost 9,000 updated entries were registered in the WSIS Stocktaking Database, reflecting all manner of innovative WSIS-related activities.

The ninth edition of the WSIS Stocktaking Report and the sixth edition of Success Stories 2016 was officially released during the WSIS Forum 2017 (12-16 June 2017, in Geneva, Switzerland). It reflected activities which were submitted to the WSIS Stocktaking process for the period 30 March 2017 to 30 April 2017.

While the 2016 contest was already a record-breaker in terms of the number of projects submitted, the WSIS Prizes 2017 contest hit a new high with a 25 percent increase in submissions. Following a comprehensive review of the projects submitted, the ITU Expert Group nominated more than 300 projects and posted them online for public appreciation. The 345 nominated projects break down into 145 projects from the government sector, 78 from the business sector, 56 from civil society, 22 from international organizations and 47 from other entities (mostly academic). As regards regional distribution, 66 projects are from the Arab region, 104 from the Asia and Pacific region, 45 from the Americas region, 42 from the Europe region, 41 from the CIS region and 42 from the Africa region, while five nominated projects come from international organizations.

The members of the WSIS multistakeholder community were invited to participate and cast their votes for one project in each of 18 categories. The deadline for voting was 10 March 2017. The list of the 18 most appreciated/voted projects were identified and the winning projects were announced officially to the public during the prize ceremony held during the WSIS Forum 2017. The success stories showcased examples of projects for implementation of WSIS outcomes, emphasizing the achievements of stakeholders working towards the achievement of WSIS goals and SDGs, transferring experience and knowledge at the global level, and spreading and fostering WSIS values.

Besides the 18 winners in this year’s WSIS Prizes contest, the WSIS Prize Champions category, which recognizes those contenders having emerged from the online voting phase with 2.2 million votes from the WSIS community were acknowledged at the special ceremony dedicated to WSIS Prizes Champions. Among the five projects selected in each of the 18 categories, one was recognized as the Winner and the runners-up were awarded as the WSIS Prize Champions.

WSIS Stocktaking 2018 Outcomes

As at January 2018, almost 11 000 updated entries were registered in the WSIS Stocktaking Database, reflecting all manner of innovative WSIS-related activities.

The tenth edition of the WSIS Stocktaking Report and the seventh edition of Success Stories 2018 was officially released during the WSIS Forum 2018 (19 to 23 March 2018, in Geneva, Switzerland). It reflected activities which were submitted to the WSIS Stocktaking process for the period September 2017 January 2018.

While last year’s WSIS Prizes contest was already a record-breaker in terms of the number of projects submitted (345 nominated out of 467 submitted), the WSIS Prizes 2018 contest has hit a new high with a 45 percent increase in submissions. Following a comprehensive review of the projects submitted, the ITU Expert Group nominated close to 500 projects and posted them online for public appreciation. The 492 nominated projects break down into 245 projects from the government sector, 97 from the business sector, 82 from civil society, 30 from international organizations and 73 from other entities (mostly academic). As regards regional distribution, 85 projects are from the Arab region, 154 from the Asia and Pacific region, 98 from the Americas region, 53 from the Europe region, 55 from the CIS region and 65 from the Africa region, while 14 nominated projects come from international organizations.

The members of the WSIS multistakeholder community were invited to participate and cast their votes for one project in each of 18 categories. The deadline for voting was 10 January 2018. The list of the 18 most appreciated/voted projects were identified and the winning projects announced officially to the public at the prize ceremony held during the WSIS Forum 2018. The success stories showcased examples of projects for implementation of WSIS outcomes, emphasizing the achievements of stakeholders working towards the achievement of WSIS goals and SDGs, transferring experience and knowledge at the global level, and spreading and fostering WSIS values.

Besides the 18 winners, this WSIS Prizes contest continued recognizing the WSIS Prize Champions category (runner-ups). Seventy two (72) were awarded in 2018, during the special WSIS Prizes Champion Ceremony at the WSIS Foroum 2018. These contenders have emerged from the online voting phase with almost one million votes cast from the WSIS community during the Online Voting phase. Their projects are among those having received the highest number of votes, while the Winners have gained the best reviews by the members of the ITU Expert Group. Among the five projects selected in each of the 18 categories, one was selected as the Winner and the runners-up were appreciated as the WSIS Prize Champions. For all details and new updates, please visit www.wsis.org/prizes.

С1. The role of public governance authorities and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development

In Algeria, the International Congress on Health Sciences and Medical Technologies launched in 2016 as an international conference for enriching research findings and technological development. It aims to contribute to scientific progress by attracting an interdisciplinary community for an efficient interchange between researchers and organizations. The International Congress aims to promote efforts in scientific and technological findings and developments around health systems. It confronts the hot domains of ICT and its applications on health and technology.

As such, it relates to SDGs 9 and 10, where the aim is to build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization, foster innovation and reduce inequality within and among countries.

Also in Algeria, the Ooredoo organization has launched the “Oobarmijoo” (Arabic for “I develop”) project in order to support innovation within the community of Algerian developers. Specifically, Oobarmijoo works as a challenge/competition to stimulate the creation of local content by local publishers, such as mobile applications and innovative solutions in the IoT and ICT spheres, under the label “Made in Algeria”. The project highlights the impact of ICT promotion for the purpose of encouraging innovation in Algeria.

As such, it relates to SDG 9.5, where the aim is to enhance scientific research and inspire the local innovation process.

Again in Algeria, Algérie Télécom has launched a project with the determined aim of positioning itself as a model in terms of organization and automation of work processes and quality management, through the implementation of a Quality management system entailing the participation of all workers. In this context, web portals and workflows have proved to be tools of major benefit in organizing, executing and optimizing business processes, with the result that Algérie Télécom can now plan to use them for the automation of processes in the business plan. The project is relevant to SDGs 9, 12 and 15.

In Algeria, the Caisse Nationale de Sécurité Sociale des Non-Salariés (CASNOS) has launched the Pharmnos in connected mode project. This solution, which is being rolled out with a view to contain-ing expenditure and combating abuse, enables officially authorized pharmaceutical dispensaries to consult remotely, via a secure Internet connection, the history of the medicines prescribed to people on social security and which will consequently engage the pharmacists’ responsibility.

The Takaful and Karama programme has been developed by the Government of Egypt as a national targeted Social Safety Network programme aimed at protecting the poor through income support. Takaful is an income support programme (conditional cash transfer) for families with children (0–18 years), designed to produce human development outcomes. This entails commitments to families regarding child health and nutrition (0–6 years), school enrolment and attendance for children (6–18 years) and maternal care for pregnant and lactating mothers. Karama is a social inclusion programme (non-conditional cash transfer) for persons who cannot work, specifically the elderly (65-plus years of age) and persons with disabilities (50 per cent disability and above) and is designed to provide social protection and decent lives for these most vulnerable populations.

Takaful and Karama was developed based on the latest technologies and with the latest innovative tools to help the poor get their cash transfers as fast as possible in an accurate manner. To ensure its integrity, the programme links numerous databases, in registration, poverty scoring, and reviewing the registered families. This required implementation of a mega-management information system and information technology platform to support all functions required for the programmes operational processes, through a flexible, integrated technology solution. The Takaful and Karama programme uses mobile solutions in the registration of households, and a fully automated back end that manages cross-database checking, eligibility checking using the proxy mean test, smart card issuing, cash calculating based on the proxy mean test score, financial aid distribution, grievances application and beneficiary management. This project is related to the advancement of SDGs 1, 2 and 3, calling for healthier lives through the achievement of food security, improved nutrition and the promotion of sustainable agriculture.

In Lebanon, the IGF platform fosters national multistakeholder dialogue and collaboration with the global Internet community on public policy for the Internet. Lebanon Internet Governance Forum (LIGF) is a national IGF initiative devoted to open, inclusive and transparent dialogue on Internet governance issues among all stakeholders in Lebanon. LIGF emanated from the need to gather relevant stakeholders from the country in one place to discuss the current state, necessities and emerging Internet-related issues in Lebanon. LIGF intends to learn from best practices of the global IGF. LIGF will encourage all actors to actively participate in the process.

For its first forum, LIGF chose the theme “LIGF, a step towards achieving SDGs”. When selecting panels for the programme agenda, the Lebanon Multistakeholder Group will adopt a participatory approach that includes multistakeholder participation from civil society, academia, and the private and public sectors. The Lebanon Multistakeholder Group will also ensure gender and generation balance. Objectives of the programme include the following:

• engage the community in discussing Internet governance issues;

• facilitate a multistakeholder dialogue between different bodies dealing with the Internet to share expertise and best practices, and to identify common ground;

• highlight the importance of the role of the Internet in developing SDGs. Subsequently, this project is relevant to the advancement of SDGs 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16 and 17.

In Oman, the Information Technology Authority has set up the Sas centres, in line with SDG 9. These Sas initiatives (“sas” evokes a “solid foundation” in Arabic) - Sas Centre for Entrepreneurship, Sas Centre for Virtual Reality (VR), and Sas Centre for Mobile Applications Development - aim to lay the foundation for creating a new and vibrant ICT industry, thereby fostering an entrepreneurial spirit in the ICT sector in Oman. The programme con-tributes to the development of an internationally competitive ICT industry, self-employment and new job creation, as well as the introduction of new technologies to create innovative products, solutions and services. Today, Sas for Entrepreneurship has produced 35 companies, and Sas VR and Sas for Mobile Applications Development have trained 480 and 148 Omanis, respectively.

The Open Data Policy is part of fulfilling Qatar’s National Development Strategy 2011-16 mandate that requires the efficient and transparent delivery of public services in Qatar to achieve the goals of the Qatar National Vision 2030 for social progress, human development, sound and diversified economy and sustainable environment. The strategy also states that, in order to build a knowledge-based society, it is important in the long term for Qatar to create an open, transparent culture where knowledge bases are kept current and easily accessible, which, in turn, develops the capacity and culture for routinely processing, sharing and interpreting information.

This document outlines the approved Open Data Policy that will assist the State of Qatar in attaining its national development goals of efficient and transparent delivery of public services, and building a knowledge-based society by creating an open, transparent culture where knowledge bases are current and easily accessible (SDGs 4, 8, 16, etc.).

Also in Qatar, the ICT Landscape Report 2014 released by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology reveals that all segments of Qatar’s population have access to Internet-enabled ICT devices—particularly mobile phones—with newer devices such as smartphones and tablets yet to fully penetrate.

The report is based on a large-scale study of ICT access and the usage behaviours and patterns of residents in Qatar. It also shows that the use of basic online services such as e-mail, Internet browsing, social networking and peer-to-peer file sharing is prevalent across all segments of society. However, advanced online services such as e-commerce, online banking, and transactional e-government services are employed much more frequently among people with higher levels of education, as well as among Qataris and westerners.

Thus, while broad ICT access has almost been achieved in Qatar, there is still much room for improvement when it comes to the sort of advanced usage that will drive future innovation and economic success (SDGs 8 and 9).

Again, in Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communications is launching a Government e-tendering system project. The project, which can relate to SDGs 8 and 12, aims to provide a government-wide standardized electronic solution to automate government entities’ tendering processes in compliance with Qatar’s procurement regulations, and thereby serve the objectives of increased efficiency, improved transparency and a reduction in duplicate procurement and consumption in government procurement management. The project will also advance the national goal of providing equal opportunities for small and medium enterprises to grow and contribute to the economy.

In Saudi Arabia, the Communications and Information Technology Commission pioneered the project KSA National Open Source Technology Stack to develop a unified national consensus regarding a complete and comprehensive technology stack for adopting open source technologies. A total of 120 branches of technology are covered, including operating systems, virtualization environments, middleware, databases, programming languages, development environments, publishing technologies, application programming interfaces and much more. The available choices in the international domain are filtered via selection criteria and then two recommendations are provided for each stack level, one primary and one alternative. The goal is not to select the very “best” at each level, but rather the “most appropriate” – to provide a helping hand for early adopters as well as to reach consensus between organizations and agencies countrywide, and to provide guidance for the private sector regarding what technologies to invest in for services and support. It also strives to provide guidance to the educational sector regarding focusing training and educational plans. Finally, it assists in strategic planning at the national level regarding investment and development opportunities. This “best practice” recommendation is then published through a unified portal in the Arabic language, with additional facilities to foster and encourage not only searching, but also collaboration, discussion, feedback, location of service providers, success stories and other similar services. The first version of the report and website were planned to be launched and publicized on 30 January 2018. Thereafter, the recommendations are planned to be updated annually. This project is in line with SDGs 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 17, and it is realized in partnership with the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology and the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

Also in Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Education developed the project Tawasul. The Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia is keen to open communication with beneficiaries, develop and provide the service to all sectors of the general education and higher education institutions, upgrade the concept of “client care service” and exceed through adopting the best means, regulations and quality standards in this field to strengthen the bridge of students, teachers, parents, researchers, faculty members, employees, citizens and residents through client care centre in all matters related to education, to solve the issues and follow up with the concerned departments. These technologies can be achieved through the Tawasul online portal and smartphone applications for iOS and Android, to market the service and communicate with beneficiaries and follow-up by the concerned departments, and monitor and present appropriate statistics for decision-making, and assist in the speedy resolution of issues in line with which calls for an inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

The Agency for Security Planning and Development in the Ministry of the Interior of Saudi Arabia has implemented the Unified Security Operations Centre 911 (MOI 911) project, whereby emergency call reception services are consolidated in one physical location using a single emergency number for unified multi-agency call-handling at provincial level. The target operating model also included consolidating field dispatch at the agency level, while deploying a crisis-management and joint-oper-ations capability. The MOI 911 project delivered processes, data, systems, ICTs and training, resulting in unification of the operational rooms through a single emergency number (911) for several agencies - Police Patrol, Traffic and Road Security Special Forces, as well as Civil Defence. The project is relevant to SDGs 9, 11 and 16. The partners include the Public Security Directorate and Civil Defence.

Also, the municipal sector in Saudi Arabia is unique in structure. It contains the Ministry of Municipalities and Rural Affairs, and 16 regional municipalities (Amanats) and 269 municipalities (Baladiyat) have several entities. Over the last 25 years, those entities have been working almost in silos, delivering services to citizens based on the regulations of the Ministry. The services provided vary in nature and quality. Recently, the Ministry and all entities have been working closely to improve the services delivered to citizens and to rationalize spending. As part of that, the Ministry and all entities have been working toward a new target operating model for IT, where IT services are centralized and applications are rationalized and consolidated. To develop the target operating model stakeholders’ form, all entities have been involved in various working groups to draft the best fit model for all entities. As a result, they have a consolidated road map for the sector and a detailed one for each entity, where all stakeholders will collaborate and work together to achieve better services for citizens, rationalized applications and services, and better quality and agility of IT. This project promotes the advancement of SDGs 3, 6, 8, 9 and 11, and it is developed in partnership with the Ministry of Municipalities and Rural Affairs’ 16 regional municipalities.

In Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) has launched the Digital portal for tourist accommodation licensing services, in partnership with ELM (the developer), a joint-stock company owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF); the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI); and the National Information Centre (NIC). It is an online website designed to provide users with a virtual link to SCTH for licensing services. The portal enables access to information for all stakeholders, in order to promote investment in the tourist accommodation sector. It was created by dint of several partnerships in the governmental sector, including with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, to enrich databanks and raise standards for all parties involved. The results have shown a 60 per cent reduction in processing times. The portal is flexible enough to accommodate any potential changes in the future. SDG 16.10 has to do with ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements; such is the case for this portal.

In Tunisia, Tunisian Post has developed the Mobile Payment mobile money platform in partnership with operators in the market, having launched mobile services in 2010. The Mobile Payment services can be accessed from any mobile phone, including the most basic feature phone, and on any network technology. The platform enables users, through their mobiles, to recharge GSM credit, transfer money, cash money orders nationwide, cash Western Union transfers, pay bills, pay microcredits with microfinance institutions and pay micro-insurance premiums, as in the case of micro-health insurance for students.

Mobile Payment is directly related to ICTs and the corresponding SDGs by promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all, and revitalization of the global partnership for sustainable development.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) initiated three projects within this category.

The United Arab Emirates Telecommunication Regulatory Authority developed the project New Born Baby Bundle. Having a baby is a deeply rewarding experience, particularly when registering a newborn requires several documents from several governmental bodies. The process of registering a newborn baby in the United Arab Emirates involves the local health authority, the hospital, the Department of Naturalization and more. This can cause frustration among the masses. Therefore, a productive and less time-consuming process was required. Residents and citizens struggle to navigate multiple entities to find out the proper procedure and information they need while they provide the same information multiple times, through the journey of registering newborns to applying for all the official documents. In addition, they need to make multiple payments to different entities wherein the current process takes anywhere from five to eight days to complete by visiting entities multiple times during the process. Overall, there are five entities involved, five visits are required, and 15 documents must be submitted and copied over 24 times to complete this process.

New Born Baby Bundle ensures that nobody is left behind in registering their babies as long as they are citizens or residents of the United Arab Emirates. The initiative has helped to reach marginalized and vulnerable groups, particularly via mobile technologies, while making institutions more efficient, transparent, inclusive and participatory, including by the deployment of electronic government. The collaborative project utilizes ICTs in the public sector and e-government to help ensure a fully participatory approach in everyday life. Moreover, the project aims at sustaining a more environmentally friendly approach through several factors that cause high carbon emissions, while spreading awareness on the cause of the initiative, thus promoting responsibility on being productive, in line with SDGs 3, 8 and 13. It has been developed in partnership with the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Health and Prevention, Ministry of Finance, the Emirates Identity Authority and mGovernment.

The Ministry of Education in the United Arab Emirates developed the Mohammad Bin Rashid Smart Learning Programme. The programme was launched in 2012 by H.H. Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai, as a part of the United Arab Emirates Vision 2021 and national agenda for education transformation. The programme’s mission is to deliver world-leading education technology solutions for the United Arab Emirates education community in order to drive up the educational achievements, excellence and creativity of the country’s students. The Smart Education Model for the programme is a model that defines indictors for building a Smart Education Model that enables communities, regions, and schools and academic institutes to pursue sustainable and equitable prosperity in “Smart ICT Transformation”.

In other words, it is a model for the twenty-first century “digital age”, where the coming generations will lead the future economy. The model includes ensuring that the effective integration of ICT into the curriculum, teaching and learning is achieved by implementing the E-maturity Framework along with students’ and teachers’ digital competencies, using their tools and solutions, digital content, devices and data analysis by learning machine, alongside sustainable infrastructure to achieve the change in people’s attitudes, perceptions and assumptions that will make the real change. This project is relevant to SDGs 4, 5, 9 and 16.

In United Arab Emirates, the Ministry of the Interior (MoI) has launched the MoI UAE Smart Application, in line with SDGs 3, 16 and 17. To achieve the vision and initiative of "smart government", MoI introduced a qualitative shift in service delivery channels by transforming from e-government to more advanced and innovative smart government concepts, which are consistent with the ambitious goals of the UAE Vision 2021: “We want to be among the best countries in the world by 2021”. This was achieved through the development of an intelligent application that makes it possible for MoI to deliver its services 24/7 from anywhere on smartphones and handheld devices. Its approach was characterized by innovation, excellence and the application of international service standards.

Mashrooi is a smart application launched in 2015 by the Dubai Land Department for the real estate community, to provide it with a secure and authentic marketing platform for all real estate investors, both local and international, on which they can find relevant information about real estate projects at different phases and milestones (final façade and related videos, final inspection pictures, cadaster information and trust account details). It is a unique reference for government and stakeholder participation in the promotion of ICT for development, taking into account local, regional and international needs and concerns. It is sustainable over the generations to come and is supported by the Executive Council of the Government of Dubai. The purpose of this mobile application is to enable the building of resilient infrastructure, fostering innovation and the strengthening of global development.

The UAE Government invites the most innovative and creative minds to find solutions that will improve people’s lives and provide positive technological solutions to modern day issues. Within this context, the Drones for Good Award is designed to offer people from all parts of the world an opportunity to make a genuine difference. With a commitment underlined by the significant prize fund, the Drones for Good Award is considered the first and largest of its kind, rewarding the best practical implementations of drones for the benefit of humankind. Its aim is to serve as a hub for innovators worldwide to demonstrate their prototypes, network with stakeholders and investors, and explore opportunities for collaboration. It consists in an international competition (award of USD 1 million) and a national competition (award of AED 1 million). By establishing strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Samsung, Indra and IEEE, the award attracted over 800 submissions from 57 countries in its first cycle, and 1 017 submissions from 165 countries in the second cycle.

By triggering international implementation and the promotion of country engagement, the Drones for Good Award relates to a large number of SDGs.

To achieve the vision and initiative of Smart Government, the UAE’s Ministry of Interior (MOI) introduced a qualitative shift in service delivery channels by transitioning from e-Government to more advanced and innovative Smart Government concepts, in line with the ambitious UAE Vision 2021 goals – “We want to be among the best countries in the world by 2021” – as well as with SDGs 3, 16 and 17, as it deals with ensuring healthy lives, promotion of well-being for all and revitalization of the global partnership for sustainable development. It has involved the development of an intelligent application that enables MOI to deliver its services around the clock, irrespective of location, via smartphones and other handheld devices. Its approach is characterized by innovation, excellence and the application of international service standards.

The Dubai Land Department (DLD) in the United Arab Emirates has launched the EJARI online tenancy registration project, in partnership with the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), Dubai Economic Development (DED), General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA), Etihad Bureau (EB), Dubai Municipality (DM), Dubai Supreme Council of Energy (DSCE), Rental Dispute Centre (RDC), Dubai Happiness Meter, Supreme Council for National Security, and Dubai Statistics Centre (DSC).

EJARI is a world class ICT programme providing a bridge between property owners and tenants with clear end-to-end governance from DLD, so that Dubai can host a transparent, secure and sustain-able real-estate market. EJARI is fully aligned with connecting minds in the value chain and creating a sustainable and predictable future. This unique B2B-B2C programme provides diversified features for landlords, tenants, investors, city planners, government entities, real-estate management companies, property service vendors and administrations through various interfaces and integrations. EJARI plays a key role in sharing authentic critical information on tenants with various other government departments in order to provide services to citizens through tenancy contracts. Thus, EJARI plays central role in e-governance, national identity, visa services, access to utilities and traceability, and the project can relate to SDGs 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17.

The Ministry of Cabinet Affairs of the United Arab Emirates has launched the Drones for Good award. The UAE Government invites the most innovative and creative minds to find solutions that will improve people’s lives and provide positive technological solutions to modern-day issues. This award is designed to offer the people of the world an opportunity to really make a difference. With a commitment underlined by the significant prize fund, the UAE Drones for Good award is considered as the first and largest of its kind, rewarding the best practical implementations of drones to benefit humanity. The award’s aim is to serve as a hub for innovators worldwide to demonstrate their prototypes, network with stakeholders and investors, and explore collaboration opportunities. It consists of an international competition (prize money of USD 1 million) and a national competition (prize money of AED 1 million). By establishing strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Samsung, Indra and IEEE, the award attracted over 800 submissions from 57 countries in its first cycle, and 1 017 submissions from 165 countries for the second cycle.

Khalifa Empowerment Program for Students in the United Arab Emirates has launched the AQDAR’s E-SAFE SCHOOL ONLINE SAFETY program, aligning with the SDGs 3,4,9,11,16. UAE E-Safe School is a brilliantly designed, Government led project to challenge, support and recognize schools to review their e-safety provision and to develop an action plan to protect their children online. All schools have a responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Today, so much of students’ experience is shaped and surrounded by online media; internet access has truly become the new currency of learning. A school’s duty of care therefore increasingly applies to the online world. The program will revolutionize online safety in all schools to protect and support a nation’s children online.

С2. Information and communication infrastructure

In Algeria, the Telecom Mobile Company has developed a project for the deployment of 4G mobile broadband network infrastructure. This project is part of a national E-strategy. It involves the deployment of 4G broadband network infrastructure to enable digital inclusion and provide access to information and knowledge, and make ICTs available for all. The deployed network also provides service to remote and poor connectivity areas. The mobile 4G network aims to cover the entire Algerian territory and participate effectively in the construction of the knowledge-based society. Concerned with economic development, Mobilis is strengthening its partnership strategy with the local technology industry and is thereby participating fully in the emancipation of the national economy. This project is developed in partnership with Huawei Ericsson ZTE, and it relates to SDGs 1, 3, 5, 8 and 9, building resilient infrastructure, promoting sustainable industrialization and fostering innovation.

Also in Algeria, Algérie Télécom decided to follow, as from 2013, the Government’s direction in terms of the generalization of broadband access and initiated the Connect every 1 000 inhabitants locality to optic fibre project. To this end, it drew up a list of 2 000 localities to be connected by the end of 2017. As at October 2015, the number of fibre-optic connected localities has reached 1 271. The project aims to provide Internet access to individuals and companies in the country’s far south. Algérie Télécom charges the same Internet connection rates countrywide, and access for primary schools is free of charge.

Being totally financed by Algérie Télécom’s own funds, the project triggers a number of SDGs, in particular SDGs 9 and 10, by developing quality and reliable infrastructure, promoting sustainable industrialization and reducing inequality within the country.

Again in Algeria, the National Agency of Dams and Transfers (ANBT) under the Ministry of Water Resources and Environment has launched the Geoportal of Algeria’s dams programme, in partnership with Spider Network. The Geoportal of Algeria’s dams is an IT infrastructure that enables access to geographic information services via the Internet, as well as search and visualization of geographic and geolocation data on all Algerian dams. This tool, made available to the wider public and to the scientific community in particular, contributes to the dissemination of information for the sustainable development of water infrastructure. The Geoportal exports ANBT’s geographic information system to the Internet from existing map data. It offers visitors a range of consultation, research, analysis and printing tools, and a host of other features, including: displaying multiple themes according to the needs of various sectors; navigation, drawing, distance calculation and search functions; thematic analysis functions; map layer query functions for displaying alphanumeric data; tabular data export functions; printing functions with different scales; interactive legend display features; layer overlay on global cartographic backgrounds (Google, Yahoo); and access management and posting confidential data. The objective of the Geoportal of Algeria dams is to serve as a nationwide observation tool for retrieving information on changes in water reserves on all dams in operation and for monitoring ongoing projects (work and studies). It thus offers the most widely accessible entry point for retrieving the main geographical data, knowing what data are available and knowing how to access, view and exploit them. The programme is relevant to SDG 6.

In Algeria, AINA Business Services has set up Ziara, partnering with the University of Hassiba Ben Bouali in Chlef, the Ministry of Tourism and Crafts and the National Tourism Office, and in line with SDGs 8 and 17. The web portal Ziara (“courtesy visit” in Arabic) has been developed with the aim of promoting sustainable tourism for development in Algeria. This will give Algerian citizens and foreign visitors access to information on all the national territory in the form of maps and dynamic content. Through the portal, Algeria is trying to begin achieving some of the universal sustainable development objectives set by the World Tourism Organization.

Led by the Central Agency for Information Technology in Kuwait, the Creation of Discrimination Center for Innovation in Information Technology project aims to promote knowledge and experience among the State of Kuwait institutions (SDG 16). The project focuses on the role of the technology industry management system as mediator between the actor and the invention, production and presentation to the gentlemen officials in the Council of Ministers to make laws and decisions necessary for the establishment of this center and procedures.

In Kuwait, the Central Agency for Information Technology (CAIT) was established in 2006 as a government initiative responsible primarily for developing and implementing the country’s e-government programme. It partnered with an international consultant to establish its e-government strategy for the next five years. The Kuwait Information Network (KIN) is one of the early projects, set up to provide the communications infrastructure that paved the way towards efficient and integrated nationwide e-services implementation. KIN was designed to integrate the networks of all government entities to enable the future integration of isolated information systems and develop electronic services.

This is in line with SDG 17 on revitalization of the global partnership and enhancement of international support for ICT implementation.

Also in Kuwait, the Central Agency for Information Technology (CAIT) has set up the Kuwait Information Network (KIN), in partnership with Cisco, Fortinet and HP, and in line with SDG 17. CAIT was established back in 2006 as a government initiative with the main responsibility to develop and implement Kuwait’s e-government programmme. It partnered with an international consultant to set its e -government strategy for the next five years. KIN was one of the early projects that was planned to provide the communications infrastructure to pave the way towards efficient and integrated implementation of e-services nationwide. KIN was designed to integrate the networks of all government entities (GEs) so as to enable future integration of isolated information systems and develop electronic services.

In Lebanon, OGERO Telecom Company has developed the project Digital Transformation of the Lebanese Telecom Sector. The Lebanese Government initiated the process of transforming Lebanon into a digital nation. Huge projects are implemented by OGERO Telecom based on its strategic planning. In order to enhance the telecom sector, the company decided to start with enhancing the core (transport network), therefore connecting the different central offices and migration from time-division multiplexing to IP multimedia subsystems. It also upgraded submarine cables to enhance international connectivity. In parallel, OGERO is implementing fibre access to the users (fibre-to-the-curb, fibre-to-the-home, fibre-to-the-office and fibre-to-the-wireless for wireless local loop areas, and fibre-to-the-wireless Wi-Fi hotspots). OGERO is becoming an enabler for IoT services and service facilitator by helping new start-ups to build and test their services by using its test bed and ICT infrastructure. It is also establishing its data centre and cloud. OGERO is going green by using solar panels and wind turbines. A new billing and customer relationships management system has been implemented to enhance customers’ satisfaction. In addition, the Ministry of Telecoms launched the Lebanese IGF initiative, in which OGERO is handling secretariat activities. This project is relevant to SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 11.

In Oman, the Information Technology Authority (ITA) has launched the Oman Government Cloud (G-Cloud) project, in line with SDG 9. G-Cloud, an initiative for serving Omani government entities, is a major element of the national eOman strategy. It is a shared private cloud IT infrastructure for government entities initiated by ITA. It is built entirely on free open-source solutions (FOSS). For citizens, this translates into a more connected world where they can access their data and information at virtually any time from just about anywhere. G-Cloud is currently serving 13 government entities.

In Qatar, IctQATAR’s Digital Incubation Center (DIC), with its Tech Startup Incubation programme, was created to boost ICT innovation, particularly among young people at the critical early stages of launching or growing a technology-related business. The Center’s objectives are to:

• help young entrepreneurs transform innovative ideas into viable businesses;

• provide incubation programmes that nurture and help grow new businesses by offering expertise, professional guidance, and services – including access to, among other things, space, business planning, education and training and legal advice – throughout the phases of the start-up’s development.

The Digital Incubation Center is looking for entrepreneurs capable of harnessing emerging technologies to create innovative products, solutions or services that will contribute to Qatar's digital economy. The programme meets a considerable number of objectives of the WSIS Action Lines and SDGs in terms of economic growth, employment, quality education, lifelong learning opportunities, etc.

Also in Qatar, ictQATAR is facilitating tech start-up incubation through the Digital Incubation Centre (DIC). The ictQATAR DIC was created to boost ICT innovation in Qatar, particularly among young people at the critical early stages of starting or growing a technology-related business. The center’s objectives are to help young entrepreneurs transform innovative ideas into viable businesses and provide incubation programmes that nurture and help grow new businesses, by offering expertise, professional guidance, and services – including access to space, business planning, education and training, and legal advice, among others – throughout the phases of the start-up’s development. The Digital Incubation Centre is looking for entrepreneurs capable of harnessing emerging technologies to create innovative products, solutions or services that will contribute to Qatar's digital economy. The project serves SDG 8.

In Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Standards, Quality and Metrology Organization launched the project Data Centre Expansion. The Data Centre is a next-generation green data centre, which quickly designed a cost-optimized heating, ventilation and air conditioning control system with on-board energy efficiency solutions. This includes improved machine performance with innovative automation technology and dedicated heating, ventilation and air conditioning application functions, supplemented with advanced drive technology, to increase energy efficiency while reducing maintenance and improving reliability. The ICT meets ISO standards. It has Eco2 technology submersive servers, switches and routers in a revolutionary coolant. This reduces carbon emissions and energy consumption by 50 per cent. The cost of deployment is also 70 per cent less. A centralized BMS system, which provides complete information about the equipment, is inside the Data Centre. The modern data centres consume much less power and occupy much less space. They grow as the demand for services grows. Basically, they are born small and count on the energy consumption, carbon emissions and global warming. If compared with old data centres, these new modern Data Centres have quadruple the processing capacity and occupy only 40 per cent of the space. Another important and major trend in Data Centres is the inflexible chase of higher levels of security, especially those that serve the fields of essential services and financial sectors. Large banks need to ensure that there is an absolute continuity of services and reduce the risk of disruption and blackouts to almost zero. The same applies to the telecommunication companies, especially after the arrival of the Internet. This project supports several SDGs, such as SDGs 9 and 11.

In Sudan, the Gedaref Digital City Organization (GDCO) Sudan e-Education Project addressed a number of problematic issues relating to such SDGs as ensuring healthy lives, inclusive and equitable quality education, access to water and sanitation, affordable and modern energy for all, as well as achievement of gender equality and empowering of all women and girls, etc. (SDGs 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 17). The most important among these problematic issues in Sudan are:

• large digital divides: rural/urban, women/men, people with/without disabilities

• education missed by many children because of travelling with their families due to climate change, looking for better grazing areas and water resources for their animals

• the e-infrastructure problem of Gedaref University: over 16 per cent of the population are people with disabilities, who, being poor, cannot afford to access ICTs

• illiteracy and poverty among women, who represent a vulnerable group and are not equally connected.

These are challenges that GDCO and its partners felt obliged to tackle

The United Arab Emirates set up a number of initiatives in the information and communication infrastructure domain.

In the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Distribution has set up the SMART project. The SMART project seeks to improve economic life and the ecological, educational and health systems in the UAE (SDGs 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12 and 16). The SMART Service Stations will provide world-class self- service facilities that conform to international hygiene, safety, security and eco-friendliness standards. The stations will offer enhanced designs and integrate innovative technologies such as RFID-based authorization and payment, NFC readiness, as well as mobile and B2B/B2C e-commerce platforms – all designed for the comfort and convenience of our customers and partners, providing them with innovative and convenient ways to pay for their purchases. Our SMART customers will be able to manage their accounts from anywhere, at any time, using computers or tablets, and top up their accounts as well as access their account statements online.

Building on the foundation established by the National ID Card system, the National Validation Gateway project represents one of the key programmes launched under the strategic plan to support the evolution of e-government in the UAE. The Gateway enables the National ID Card to be used for facilitating improved business services to all public and private organizations and government agencies within the UAE by providing real-time identity verification and validation and strong user authentication capabilities for digital transactions. It also provides a strong boost to local businesses by providing them with a range of new value -added services, such as legally binding digital signatures that accelerate the secure transition from paper-based to electronic transactions.

The project’s goals are in line with SDGs 1, 8, 9 and 11 as they relate to such issues as fighting against poverty, stimulation of economic growth, employment and making the UAE’s cities safe and sustainable.

In Dubai, the aim of the Dubai Electricity Control Centers project is to establish four state-of-the-art power control centres with substation automation systems and telecommunication networks (two for power distribution and two for power transmission) in three new buildings of 24 000 m2, controlling Dubai’s unmanned electricity substations and power-generation plants, with a system capacity of 500 high-voltage substations and 100 000 medium voltage substations, a suite of advanced energy management applications and smart grids, and a dispatcher training simulator. The sizing and the smart applications are designed and delivered to accompany the ambitious growth of Dubai and the transfer of knowledge to the national workforce.

The overall aims of the project coincide with SDGs 7, 9 and 12, having to do with the provision of access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy, the building of resilient infrastructure, and ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns.

C3. Access to information and knowledge

In Algeria, the University of Bechar, together with Mr Kadri Boufeldja and Ms Himri Yassine, developed a research paper for the wireless monitoring of photovoltaic systems. The aim of the paper was to design and realize a hardware and software platform that allows remote supervision of a solar installation system. The task is to implement a supervision platform for a photovoltaic panel. This platform is provided with various sensors. The sensors are placed on a photovoltaic panel and they can be monitored remotely from a wireless connection with a PC. The supervision will be literally done by the hardware platform Raspberry Pi, which receives the orders from a server via the web service webpage. It is possible to visualize all the measurements from the various sensors in real time and store them every 10 minutes in a memory type SD as a database file placed on Raspberry Pi. Measurements are done by Python programming language and the database will be used for storage in SQlite. A Google chart Application Programming Interface will display all the measured data relating to the photovoltaic installation. The team used JavaScript/JQuery/CSS to create interactive webpages. Development of the web application was achieved using Nginx HTTP web server. The problem considered in this paper can be summarized as follows: Given a photovoltaic system (in this case a photovoltaic panel) placed on the roof of a laboratory or distant to about ten metres, how can one ensure the follow-up of this installation by the agent handling it from inside the laboratory, without the use of outside moving or expensive wiring? The solution adopted to this problem is really simple and cheaper; it involves associating a Raspberry Pi card with a Wi-Fi module. This project serves the advancement of SDGs 7 and 17.

Also in Algeria, the Mobile ICT Centers (Télécentres de Proximité Mobile) project aims to ensure healthy lives and equitable quality education, promote economic growth and reduce gender inequality by empowering all women and girls in the country (SDGs 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 and 16). The Mobile ICT Centers are five ICT-equipped buses intended to provide remote rural populations, especially women, with proper access to ICTs so that they can obtain training, information and new opportunities for communication and access to networking in order to improve their living conditions and level of qualification and give them more employment opportunities. As part of the first phase of the project, five of these fully functional buses are already operational in five southern Algerian regions, namely Adrar, Illizi, Tamenraset, Naama and Djelfa.

Bend is an innovative mobile application launched in Algeria that uses image processing techniques to change Latin characters in Braille. It will enable blind people to search by keywords in books or documents in Braille. Involving international implementation, this revolutionary application will facilitate research and reading for the blind.

The project contributes to several SDGs, ensuring equality and promoting healthy lives, well-being and lifelong learning opportunities for blind people, as well as inclusive societies for sustainable development (SDGs 3, 4, 10, 16 and 17).

Again in Algeria, AINA Business Services has set up Ziara, partnering with the University of Hassiba Ben Bouali in Chlef, the Ministry of Tourism and Crafts and the National Tourism Office, and in line with SDGs 8 and 17. The web portal Ziara (“courtesy visit” in Arabic) has been developed with the aim of promoting sustainable tourism for development in Algeria. This will give Algerian citizens and foreign visitors access to information on all the national territory in the form of maps and dynamic content. Through the portal, Algeria is trying to begin achieving some of the universal sustainable development objectives set by the World Tourism Organization.

In Kuwait, the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) has launched the Kuwait Finder Project as part of the GIS programme in PACI. Kuwait Finder was released to provide users in the State of Kuwait with a localized GIS-based search engine, thereby meeting several established SDGs related to the provision of access to information and knowledge. The programme supports searching for an address down to the individual apartment level, and can search by establishment name and business type. The Kuwait Finder application was developed by PACI to serve users’ needs with the following functions:

• Search using PACI electronic numbering for a given building, apartment, etc.

• Search using area name, block number, street name or house number

• Search for points of interest such as hospitals, shops or malls, etc.

• PQuick search via shortcuts representing different categories of entity such as shopping centres, schools or other activities and crafts

• Turn-by-turn voice navigation, with directions in both Arabic and English

• Saving of favourite locations

• PInformation on social activities and their locations

• PFunctionality for displaying both vector and satellite maps

• SLocation-sharing via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail

In Oman, the Ministry of Education launched the mobile Parent App, which is designed to facilitate delivery of critical services for parents, to make it easier for them to follow up their child’s achievement level, attendance in classrooms and behavioural discipline, as well as to communicate with those in charge of educational processes in the schools. The app is fully integrated to the educational portal main system and the student’s database. The services are covered for all parents in Oman. All categories and segments of society are considered in the design of Parent App in terms of interfaces, by providing both Arabic and English languages. The app integrates with the Madrasty app, another internal app of the Ministry. It has been designed to operate on the latest versions of Apple and Android platforms. It has also been rigorously assessed and tested, to ensure compatibility on a wide variety of devices and platforms. The Parent App offers many services, such as create, maintain and complete a student’s personal profile and school data by providing an appropriate design which could display the student’s personal profile, including student picture, student place, date of birth, school number, civil number, name of school, educational governorate and the educational system that the student enrolled in. Also, parents are enabled to follow up their students’ performance where the app provides them with a screen showing the number of daily classes’ timetable, attendance and reasons for absences. In Oman, the Government provides education free of cost and therefore the services provided through the Parent App are free services. This application aids the advancement of SDG 4.

An increasing awareness of the importance of statistics and their many uses has led many government entities in the Sultanate of Oman to focus on data collection, data analysis and statistical bulletins and reports. The Data Portal, launched and managed by the National Centre for Statistics and Information, is a flagship project which seeks to present socio-economic indicators in a dynamic and graphical manner based on a wide range of criteria and timelines. It includes a powerful map-based tool to portray spatial data about any socio-economic indicator published since the 1970s.

The website provides the population of Oman with the necessary information and knowledge, thereby ensuring well-being for all, economic growth and social development of the society, in line with SDGs 3 and 8.

In Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communications has developed the Qatar Government Contact Centre (QGCC). The centre provides the public with a single point of contact for all queries and issues related to key Qatar government services. It serves as the first line of support for many services offered by government entities. QGCC offers many benefits. It acts as a single point of con-tact for government entities to handle and deal with all end users’ enquiries. It answers all first-level users’ enquires and resolves users’ issues. It will refer matters to the government entity for resolution only when required. It consolidates all calls and requests in one CRM system for customer profiles It facilitates data and information exchange between government entities and between the government and the public. It fosters consistent customer engagement across government agencies by applying the same process, using the same terminologies, and adopting the same concepts across different agencies. It enhances communication and interaction between government entities, thereby yielding better performance and service delivery. The partnership includes Malomatia, and the project is applicable to SDGs 8 and 9.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, in partnership with the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, launched the Geographic Information System for Mosques. The project is useful and efficient for people trying to find mosques (masjids) that surround them. It contains a GPS system that allows users to locate mosques quickly, and includes full details about the activities present and much more useful information. For instance, targeted audiences can rate the facilities and send some recommendations. Complaints about a specific mosque are also an option, since this project uses five different mobile apps, with one allowing this process. The extent of the geographic framework of mosques is a pilot and subjective venture. It will give numerous highlights and preferences to the clients. It will also decrease the time taken in numerous regulatory methods and forms exceptionally reducing the time framework. It moreover encourages the take after up of the operational works of the mosques. It also gives assessment highlights for the members and decision-makers. This project is in line with SDGs 3, 11 and 16.

Also in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Organization for Standardization, Metrology and Quality is cooperating with many international organizations concerned with issuing standards, as well as many government agencies and the private sector. The Organization has issued Saudi specifications in several fields where the existence of these standards and regulations helps to raise the efficiency and quality of products, and protects the consumer from products of poor quality, or that affect the public health and the environment, and improve the efficiency of consumption of natural resources, by reducing waste in the fields of energy and raw materials in the industry. The Standards System project was to create an online system, named Wasif, that enables manufacturers around the world who wish to market their products in the Saudi market to obtain product specifications and test methods in accordance with Saudi-approved specifications. The system also requires the inspection authorities and laboratories to obtain the specifications to ensure that the products conform to Saudi-approved standards. This project helps advance SDGs 3, 11 and 12.

Again in Saudi Arabia, two websites have been created in the interests of achieving an equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities – SDG 4.

King Saud University launched the Makhtota website featuring more than 11 000 manuscripts – the written works of scholars. Manuscripts are considered a valuable treasure of mankind that must be preserved. It is for this reason that the website enables visitors to browse and read manuscripts on Shari’a Law and Tafseer, as well as other fields of science. The manuscripts also include poems in a number of languages, such as Turkish and Persian. King Saud University provided these manuscripts to assist researchers and establish a procedure for finding rare manuscripts easily.

MAS Website is the Arabic acronym for Tourism Information and Research, and is an important department of the Saudi Arabia Commission of Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) which is responsible for collecting tourism data and conducting research and related studies. The main task of MAS Center lies in the collection and dissemination of tourist information and data for both internal and external users. It uses the MAS Center website as a tool for the dissemination of this information and makes it available to everyone at any time and from any location, in Arabic and English. The MAS Center intends to develop and improve the website and e-portal to provide the best service for visitors to the website.

The goals of the website are to:

• Provide data and tourism research of high quality

• Measure the economic, social and environmental impacts of tourism development

• Build capacity in statistics and the Tourism Satellite Account

• Provide access to a wide range of knowledge-oriented materials and tourism information database

• Develop, improve and enhance the quality of electronic services provided by the MAS website.

In this spirit, these goals intertwine with SDGs by relating to equal access to information, reduction of inequality, and promotion of well-being all as well as contributing to the economic growth of the country (SDGs 3, 8, 10, etc.)

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Education has set up Rasd Al Fa’aliat Al Ilmiah (Observatory of Scientific Events), relevant to SDG 4. With the development advances witnessed in several sectors in Saudi Arabia, and in higher education in particular, it became imperative to consolidate the efforts of partners and organizations concerned in documenting academic material and recommendations for academic events held in the Kingdom. The need arose for organized institutional work to assess the sustainable development process of the sector. The observatory provides a one-stop shop for all academic and scientific events and lifelong learning programmes in Saudi Arabia.

The TRA-ITU (Telecommunications Regulatory Authority – International Telecommunication Union) ICT Discovery Museum is a place of wonder located within the premises of ITU in Geneva, Switzerland. Sponsored and designed by the United Arab Emirates, it offers its visitors – academics and students, the public and tourists, telecom/ICT stakeholders, including ITU members/delegates – a (re)discovery of the past, a better understanding of the present and an exciting glimpse of the future, in a dynamic, engaging fashion. ICT Discovery is also about the contribution that ITU has made to all the progress in ICT, from 1865 right through to the present and on into the future. Through interactive exhibitions and educational programmes, ICT Discovery’s mission is to entertain and educate the public by portraying the evolution and exciting future of ICT together with the role of ITU in connecting our world and facilitating the transformation of people’s lives everywhere. ICT Discovery is also an excellent education centre for students, who can explore the fascinating world of ICT and learn about its evolution while broadening their interest in the field of science and technology. Last but not least, ICT Discovery can serve as an original backdrop for social events and presentations.

These are some of the challenges that ICT Discovery faces after four years of operation:

• ICT Discovery to become a self-sustaining facility without any dependence on the ITU budget.

• Ideas to be generated for the effective utilization of space at ICT Discovery and for possible revenue-generation concepts such as group-pricing strategy, sponsorships, voluntary contributions, etc.

• Opportunities for collaboration with leading ICT museums worldwide and with the Museum of Future Government Services and upcoming Museum of the Future, both in Dubai, for enhancing the scope of ICT Discovery through the inclusion of future innovative services.

• Opportunities for collaboration with academic institutions and with ITU Sector Members.

The challenges are perfectly in line with SDGs 4, 8 and 17 since they have to do with equitable quality education, sustainable economic growth and the global partnership for sustainable development.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has launched the TRA-ITU ICT Discovery Museum. The museum was built with USD 2 million support from the Administration of the United Arab Emirates, and UAE was designated as the sole founding partner of the museum, with ITU. The UAE Administration has not only been a sponsor, but has also contributed to the design, theme and expansion of the museum. The initiative supports all the SDGs.

C4. Capacity building

In Algeria, the Ministry of Vocational Training – together with the Ministry of Post, Telecommunications, Technologies and Digitization, and Algérie Telecom – has launched the programme entitled The Training Centre for Excellence in Telecommunications and ICT professions. Considering the fact that ICTs and telecommunications do represent a key feature in promoting and achieving social and economic sustainable development, a framework agreement with the Ministry of Post, Telecommunications, Technologies and Digitization was signed on 25 July 2016, aiming at setting up a training centre for excellence dedicated to ICT and telecommunication professions. The objectives of this centre include boosting ICT and telephony professions, namely through training and the supply of the labour market with specialized skills; developing the professions of the new knowledge-based economy; and providing the labour market with certified skills in ICT and telephony to meet the needs of the economy. Finally, it is expected that this entity will serve as a Centre for Excellence with national and regional outreach within the field of ICT and telephony professions, which in turn helps the advancement of SDGs 4 and 10.

In Egypt, the Information Technology Institute (ITI) of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has launched the ITI Online Freelancing Capacity Development programme, in partnership with Assiut University, Mansoura University, Upwork Payoneer, Pi technologies Group and others. This ITI programme is capitalizing on a strong educational delivery framework and close links with the ICT industry locally and internationally, catalyzing the entire capacity- and talent-development cycle, from basic digital literacy up to the latest worldwide technology trends. It has been put in place by ITI in cooperation with academia, represented by the regional universities in Mansoura and Assiut, and in full coordination with the ICT industry, working collectively to:

1. Integrate freelancing skills capacity development and boot camps as key components in the professional training programme alongside the core technical modules

2. Enable distinguished ITI learners to pursue new and non-conventional endeavours and career paths in the international employment market through the Internet

3. Empower the Egyptian governorates (Mansoura and Assiut) by capitalizing on distinguished resident talents and exploit their competitive advantages to create new hubs for the ICT workforce outside major (Tier A) cities

4. Empower Egypt’s IT, social and economic welfare through a self-sustained work model for all promising youth with no preference based on gender or location across Egypt

5. Encourage the establishment of small and medium-sized enterprises adapted to the local identity of each governorate and province, and attract investments to their home towns

6. Enhance the creativity and innovation skills of younger generations to play a role in the development and management of the production and service sectors in line with economic development plans.

The programme is relevant to SDGs 4, 8, 10, 12 and 17.

In Kuwait, the Histonano Website (HNS) serves to educate readers interested in specific nanotechnology-related subjects of particular value to scientists and researchers, thereby corresponding to SDGs in the educational, economic and social domains. Ever since it’s inception in 2012, the website’s maintenance and updating is an ongoing process. The HNS attempts to identify and certify in-depth information, which it then provides to researchers, together with the latest textbooks, journals, graphics and videos to enhance users’ knowledge. The results of published papers concerning the HNS are currently in the process of being incorporated.

In Qatar, the ICT SME Toolkit by ictQATAR provides small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the knowledge they need as they adopt web presence, e-commerce and cloud service technologies. Building on the progress made over the past years, Qatar Digital Government is focused on providing benefits to the people of Qatar. The drive to make Qatar’s government more efficient, effective and customer-centric is driven by the Qatar Digital Government 2020 Strategy, which is built around three main strategic objectives:

• Better serve individuals and businesses

• Create efficiency in government administration

• Develop a more open government with enhanced participation of citizens and residents.

The ICT SME Toolkit thus promotes economic growth, employment and decent work in Qatar, in line with SDG 8.

Also in Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communications launched the Better Connections project, which is a collaborative framework for employers and contractors to establish ICT facilities and provide training to their transient workers on-site in the workers’ accommodation. This initiative (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMT_QoJJvds) provides the beneficiaries free of charge with refurbished hardware, tailored training content available in five languages and training and coordination support from volunteers, enabling transient workers residing in Qatar to access the Internet and various ICT tools, and hence take part in the ever-changing digital world. The project is thus working to reduce inequality in the country (SDG 10).

The project’s partners are Reach Out To Asia, Microsoft Qatar, RAF Foundation, Social and Economic Survey Research Institute, Qatar Foundation, Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, and CH2M, in addition to 29 employers of migrant workers including construction companies and contractors. Contractors enrolled in the project include: HBK,CHEC,BOTC, L&T,QDVC, J&P, BUTEC Qatar, UCC, Ezdan Holding, Qatar Rail - RLN UG, Qatar Rail - Gold Line, Qatar Rail - Major Stations, Qatar Rail - GRNUG, Qatar Rail- QDVC: Doha Metro Red Line South, Msheireb- Gasco, Msheireb - Carillion, Msheireb - Obayashi - HBK, Msheireb - Redco, Msheireb- Arabtec, Woqod, NRHC, Aamal Services, Qatar Foundation, Shapoorji Pallonji, Nakheel Landscapes, Shaqab Abela Catering Services, TCC/CCC.

The Saudi Arabia Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO) launched the project IT Capability Management, a programme that helped the SASO IT department to develop and manage targeted employees’ capabilities to execute IT department strategic objectives. The IT Capability Management system, named CapableIT, was built based on a model for describing and managing competencies for ICT professionals known as the Skills Framework for the Information Age, which is intended to help match the skills of the workforce to the needs of the organization. CapableIT automates the stages of capability management that organize, acquire, deploy, assess, develop, appraise and reward assets. CapableIT was a great help to the SASO IT department, and it has been heavily used since its launch date, mostly because of the great benefits it provides and the great user experience associated with it. SASO’s IT department and SASO’s human resources department are currently working together to take the system to the next step, where the entire organization can benefit from the system, not just the IT department. This venture is in line with SDGs 4 and 8.

In Saudi Arabia, the e-Government Programme "Yesser" is keen to support the change that accompanies the implementation of e-government projects. Such change requires soft skills in addition to technical competencies to move forward successfully. To this end, “Yesser” has launched multiple programmes under its Capacity Building and Development initiative, which aims to build and enhance IT competencies in order to deal with implementations involving a high level of skills and professionalism. As at January 2016, over 42 000 government employees have been trained in areas ranging from basic computer usage to professional IT certifications and workshops for CIOs.

The programme relates to SDGs 1, 4, 5 and 8 as it addresses such issues as poverty, education, equality of people and economic growth of the country. It is carried out in partnership with the Ministry of Civil Service; the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation – TVTC; he national company for training and education (TeTec ); and Alkhaleej Training and Education.

In Sudan, the Sudatel Telecommunication Academy (Sudacad) – together with Khartoum University, Sudan University, Omdurman Islamic University, Future University, Garden City University and Algazera University – developed the project Engineering Training Programme for Sudanese Universities Freshly Graduated Students. The Sudanese universities, through the Sudacad Programme, aim to bridge the gap between the academic and real industries environment in order to enhance the capabilities and skills of the freshly graduated students to satisfy the employment requirements. In order to reach its goal, Sudacad developed and implemented the Sudacad Programme for more than 1 000 students who benefit from this programme. The process is started by signing a contract with the six biggest universities in Sudan, then Sudacad develops the training programme, consisting of all the fields of telecommunications and ICT. These include mobile communication (2G, 3G and 4G), Next Generation Network and optical fibre, data communication, microwave, synchronous digital hierarchy, very small aperture terminal and IT courses, in addition to soft skills training. All these training programmes were provided to the students free of charge. On top of that, Sudacad collaborates with these universities to offer researchers (academic staff, postgraduate students and undergraduate students) to conduct research on actual technical platforms at Sudacad premises. This project goal is in accordance with SDGs 1, 4, 5, 8 and 17.

Also in Sudan, Ibsar (Vision) is one of the many projects provided by the National Telecommunication Corporation to develop the society and promote the culture of using the telecommunications and technology, and make them available to all, especially people with disabilities. Thus, the project aims to teach visually impaired people computer science, running programmes and applications to facilitate their access to ICTs to enhance their role in society. Ibsar is the best solution for reading and writing for the blind. It helps them read the newspaper and electronic documents, and save e-mail and written documents in Braille. In addition to learning computer science and how to operate and deal with it, and then access Internet services and thus information technology, it provides assistance and facilities for the necessary training, education and career development of this category, which helps in their demographics in society. The project consists of two parts: the first is computer labs with Ibsar software for the blind and the equipment attached to it; and the second part is the establishment of training courses for capacity building. The project now covers two states in phase one, but the work will continue to cover the six states in phase two. In phase three, the project will cover all Sudan and even make it available to the countries in the region and the whole world. This project contributes to the advancement of SDG 4.

In Tunisia, IEEE SIGHT Tunisia has developed Tawasol, in partnership with IEEE SIGHT; IEEE Internet Initiative; People-Centred Internet; International Connector; and IEEE Tunisia Section, and in line with SDGs 4, 5 and 10. Tawasol’s mission is to pioneer social change in Tunisia through technology and to establish connections between people and communi-ties. The goal is to build a thriving Tunisia with a new generation of thinkers and doers: boys and girls who believe they are powerful and capable of addressing Tunisia’s challenges. The project is investing in youth, technology and STEM as a means of empowering connection and problem-solving. It is connecting people at both the technical and human levels by providing the requisite infrastructure and building an education and social change process that fosters interaction between communities.

The United Arab Emirates Limitless Ambitions project has been developed by the General Women’s Union. In line with the nation’s long-term vision, women of the United Arab Emirates continue to make significant strides forward with the support of the nation’s wise and prudent leadership, making the United Arab Emirates woman a key partner in sustainable development and the ongoing rise of the nation. The United Arab Emirates General Women’s Union, guided by H.H. Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak, has been tirelessly developing and implementing plans, policies and initiatives to boost the status of women, and empower them to overcome obstacles that hinder their full participation in the building of the nation, in line with SDGs 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 16 and 17. Processes include developing strategies, conducting research and encouraging women’s participation in politics and decision-making. Aligning with the best global practices, the union’s key initiatives range from health education to technological literacy, social awareness and support, and equal opportunities. The focus is on participation, production and entrepreneurship, in addition to programmes to develop innovation and creativity in the new generation.

The United Arab Emirates project STEM for Refugees offers a timely and innovative solution to the education of Syrian refugees. Due to the growing vulnerability of Syrian refugee children and youths in Lebanon, the lack of quality and relevant education offered to them, and to the increasing livelihood challenges leading more children to drop out from schools and become exposed to child labour, exploitation and all kinds of threats, including early marriage (for young girls), the NGO Sonbola Group for Education and Development and The Little Engineer Corporation decided to put their respective expertise and efforts together and develop jointly a programme that helps those children and young adults re-connect with education and acquire relevant knowledge and skills through meaningful and insightful learning experiences. STEM for Refugees aims to bring hope, change and fulfilment to the lives of Syrian refugee and marginalized children and youths, and prove that quality education is possible at a time of conflict, in line with SDGs 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 16.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Smart Training Initiative (DSTI) is one of the Dubai Government Excellence Programme’s initiatives aiming to enhance the capacities of Dubai Government employees in government excellence knowledge and applications through the latest electronic and smart technology platforms. It thus relates to SDGs 4, 5, 8, 9, 11 and 16 as it addresses education, gender equality, economic growth and sustainable industrialization, etc. The training content is presented in a well-designed structure and flow, making the training more effective and enjoyable, and offers alternatives to suit and accommodate the user's preferences. DSTI offers training in both e-learning and smart app channels. The smart channel of this initiative utilizes mobility, interactivity and connectivity capabilities and smart mobile features to offer the convenience of training on a 24/7 basis from anywhere in the world.

C5. Building confidence and security in the use of ICTs

In Algeria, the Ministry of Vocational Training and Employment, in partnership with the Algerian representative of the International Computer Drivers License (ICDL) foundation, launched the project Local Mobile ICT Centres: An ICDL Certification Tool. Mobile ICT Centres are five ICT-equipped buses intended to provide local rural populations, especially women and unemployed youth populations, appropriate access to ICTs, to offer them training, information, new prospects of communication and access to networking, in order to improve their living conditions, their level of qualification, and more opportunities for employment. As part of the first part of the project, five of the buses are already functional in five southern Algerian regions, namely Adrar, Illizi, Tamenraset, Naama and Djelfa. The new added feature to the programme is that the Local Mobile ICT centres have integrated an ICDL Certification Tool. In fact, as a world premiere with respect to ICDL certification, the five ICT-equipped buses have been approved as ICDL training and testing centres. This project aids the advancement of SDGs 1, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10, reducing inequality within and among countries.

Also in Algeria, the Ministry of Post, Telecommunication, Technologies and Digitization launched a practical guide for online child protection. The guidebook is for parents, guardians and educators, and it has been developed to increase awareness and provide clear and understandable information regarding children’s online protection, the risks to which children may be exposed and the actions that parents and educators can undertake to protect and help children and understand how to take better advantage of ICT, while minimizing the dangers. In Algeria, access to the Internet is through the constantly growing “home network”, in addition to the emergence of 4G, which makes the Internet accessible to the greatest number, bringing innumerable benefits for children. However, the risk of online violence is growing along with the exponential growth of ICT use. To this end, it is necessary to reinforce the capacities to fight against this scourge through the construction of a chain (actions) of protection of the children on the Internet, and to define legal, educational, technical, organizational measures and measures of awareness, inspired from the good practices around the world. This project is in line with SDG 3.

Again in Algeria, the University of El Oued has undertaken the development of an Android application to combat the kid-napping of children based on modern technologies. Today, the kidnapping of children is a horrible phenomenon that has become a real problem afflicting all communities. The biggest challenge is that parents do not know when, how and where is this problem liable to occur. The whole world has been looking for a solution to this phenomenon, and numerous international symposia and conferences have been organized around this serious subject. As a solution proposed for the first time, the University of El Oued (work supervised by Mr Ghendir Said) has developed an Android app which is installed on a smartphone. The app is based on a remote monitoring system to track the children through GPS coordinates, and SMS services to keep parents informed of their children’s welfare. Thus, we aim to provide a contribution to the information society through low-cost security tools and technological means to ensure safe life and well-being to promote sustainable development throughout the world (SDG 3).

In 2011 the postal entity of Morocco, Poste Maroc, aware that digital services cannot be developed without the requisite technological, operational and legal measures, launched Barid eSign in order to satisfy the need for a certification platform to ensure the safety, integrity and probative value of all electronic exchanges. Through the development of Barid eSign, Poste Maroc is positioning itself as the first Moroccan electronic certification service authority and provider for dematerialized transactions. Through Barid eSign, Poste Maroc has reached the first milestone in its development strategy for digital postal services and positioned itself as a leader in the secured electronic correspondence/ exchange market.

The project’s goals align with SDGs 4, 9 and 17 by focusing on lifelong learning opportunities for all, sustainable industrialization and revitalization of the global partnership for sustainable development.

In Oman, Oman Public Key Infrastructure (Oman PKI) is a national initiative that establishes the infrastructure needed for all government entities to provide e-services in Oman. It serves to enable online transactions for citizens while raising the level of security and authenticity of electronic paperwork. It allows for the secure exchange of information through the high level of confidentiality obtained by using eID, mobile ID or USB Token. Oman PKI aims at providing a secure technology for information, documentation, electronic credibility and identification and user authentication as well as online transaction signature using electronic ID.

In this way, it ensures access to information and protects fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation (SDG 16.10).

The Ministry of Manpower of Oman created the Ministry of Manpower e-identity (e-authentication) service for the ministry’s employees in a bid to benefit from the e-services that were activated in 2015. The new service is related to the e-nomination of job seekers, e-licensing and e-authentication of Omanis' employment contracts. The service ensures high quality of security, accuracy and credibility, thus contributing to economic development, employment, etc. (SDG 8). The e-payment and upload services have been made active for 334 well-performing organizations of which 265 pay the fees electronically through the e-payment portal without the need to report to the ministry.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has launched the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs Security Awareness project, in line with SDGs 3, 4, 5, 11 and 16.

In support of its vision, mission and values, MoFA believes in the importance of developing advanced information security programmes to meet the challenges of the digital age, progress-ing through the adoption of secure and reliable information and communication technology (ICT), which it considers as one of its strategic ob-jectives. In addition, it believes in the importance of information as a strategic asset essential to its core mission and objectives, in which security is a critical element that is under potential and increasing threat. MoFA has a duty to protect its information and its information systems and to ensure that it can defend against any risk and cyberattack.

The Saudi information security awareness project is an ongoing process of learning that is meaningful to recipients and delivers measurable benefits to MoFA from lasting behavioural change. It provides high return on investment, and has a very significant positive impact on MoFA’s security. The project covers all MoFA employees worldwide, including at MoFA headquarters, MoFA branches in Saudi Arabia and 192 or more Saudi diplomatic missions all around the globe. In addition, it is delivered in a manner that fits the overall culture of MoFA and has the greatest impact on its personnel.

In the United Arab Emirates, the General Women’s Union, in partnership with the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood, launched the programme Digital Kid. Protecting children from the risks of the virtual world has become a multilateral responsibility. However, the parents assume the greatest part of such responsibility in raising the awareness of children about the optimum use of the Internet. Children are now exposed to molestation and invasion of privacy, and the provision of awareness programmes will reduce potential risks. Based on this, the Digital Kid initiative will contribute to promoting electronic culture and knowledge on the risks of using the Internet and how to avoid them. In addition, it will serve to raise awareness on the importance of building children’s capacities in the electronic field and boosting the skills of scientific research, discovery and self-learning, with the objective of eliminating the drain of brain power and resources in technology and qualifying and preparing future generations to contribute in the technology industry and master the art of technology. This programme is in line with SDGs 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 17.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) began implementing the DEWA Smart Power Plant System (SPP) Project in January 2016 with the aim of establishing a centre to gather data in real time from isolated power stations in order to establish a Generating Power Plants Distributed Control System using real-time and historical data to provide a holistic view of the operational, technical and economic condition of each plant/unit. Plant data can be accessed on the move via smart devices, PCs and laptops equipped with online plant monitoring, evaluation, reporting, performance calculations, dashboards, KPIs, and SMS/e-mail to support the decision-makers.

The project seeks to ensure reliable, sustainable and modern energy and the building of resilient infrastructure, and fosters innovation (SDGs 7, 9 and 11).

Launched by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Cyber Blackmail Campaign seeks to educate users in the UAE on the risks and potential consequences of careless Internet use and raise their awareness of the need for caution when sharing data on the web, especially with the remarkable growth and development of the online spaces made possible by modern technologies – spaces which unscrupulous users take advantage of in order to harm other people, violate their privacy and then use their personal data and pictures to obtain illegal financial gain.

As they help to build security in the use of ICTs, the campaign’s goals reflect SDGs 5, 11, 16 and 17 by addressing gender equality, promoting a peaceful society and encouraging the global partnership for sustainable development

C6. Enabling environment

Egypt’s National Programme for ICT-Inclusive Community Centres (ICT–ICC) for the Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) programme is the first national programme to utilize ICT to provide an enabling inclusive environment to support the inclusion of PwDs into mainstream projects to promote social justice (SDGs 1, 4, 8, 10, 11, 16 and 17). ICT–ICC represents a milestone in the approach of the Egyptian Government towards the projects directed to PwDs, as it shifts from projects directed only to PwDs to inclusive projects that serve their needs side-by-side with non-PwDs. Since PwDs were excluded for decades from capacity-building programmes, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology launched the ICT–ICC programme to transform community centres across the country to be inclusive by equipping them with accessible ICT infrastructure, Internet services, computer labs, and assistive technologies for different types of disabilities. In addition, the Ministry provided capacity-building grants to PwDs and non-PwDs in order to equip them for the job market, in cooperation with several reputable ICT and non- ICT companies, and to NGOs in a public–private partnership approach. Such an approach was effective in overcoming the several challenges facing the programme by leveraging the resources of the various partners. This programme is currently operating at 55 centres at eight governorates, and has delivered more than 16 000 capacity-building grants. Due to its impact, the project became part of a presidential initiative to empower PwDs using ICT, with a target of accessibilizing 200 centres at 20 governorates and providing 40 000 capacity-building grants until the year 2020.

In full cooperation with the persons with disabilities community, a number of prominent NGOs and the CIT Chamber of Commerce, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) in Egypt launched a Lifelong Learning (LLL) programme to help persons with disabilities find job opportunities. Such persons are currently not offered the kinds of training programme that enable them to meet job-market requirements and are consequently experiencing high levels of unemployment. The LLL programmes on offer range from basic IT and soft skills to specific technical skills that are specified by IT companies interested in hiring persons with disabilities.

The programme thus tackles such problematic issues as poverty, quality education, employment of specific people, etc. (SDGs1, 4, 8 and 16).

In Kuwait, the Tasdeed website is a service that was jointly designed by the Ministry of Finance (MOF), Kuwait Government Online Portal (CAIT) and a third party from the private sector. It is a convenient tool for collecting amounts owed to the government by individuals/entities (Kuwaiti citizens, other residents, corporations). The following goals have been achieved by Tasdeed as a service-oriented tool:

• The ability for individuals/entities (Kuwaiti citizens, other residents, corporations) to effect payments to government agencies (service providers/invoice departments) irrespective of time of day or location, simply and by various electronic means

• An increase in non-oil revenue

Tasdeed was introduced to enhance accounting receivables for services provided by government agencies. It has taken the lead in MOF Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation and has been rolled out in 42 government agencies.

In Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communications has initiated the Government Data Exchange (GDX), in partnership with Malomatia. Data exchange is vital to the QDG 2020 strategic objectives, which focus on better serving individuals and businesses as well as creating efficiency in government administration (SDGs 3 and 8). The GDX platform has been developed with the necessary components for data and information sharing within and across government entities, so as to improve government efficiency and collaboration and thereby deliver customer-centric end-to-end digital services.

In Saudi Arabia, the Capital Market authority with the Saudi Ministry of Justice and Saudi Securities Depository Centre Company developed an electronic connectivity system between the Saudi Capital Market Authority, the Saudi Ministry of Justice, the Saudi Securities Depository Centre Company (“Depository Centre”) and the Authorized Persons to automate the execution of judicial orders (Nafith System). The Capital Market Authority (CMA) stated that the electronic system, which connects CMA and the Ministry of Justice through a secure channel to automate the process of executing judicial orders, has reduced the average time for executing judicial orders by up to 85 per cent. The process of executing judicial orders, before adopting the Nafith system, was 20 to 25 business days; now, using the Nafith System, the execution of judicial orders is done within 3 business days. The automated system, which was developed by CMA and inaugurated by His Excellency CMA Chairman Mohammad Al-Jadaan, and Minister of Justice Dr Waleed Al-Samaani, aims to enable execution judges to carry out judicial orders through an electronic path connecting the Ministry of Justice with CMA. It also enables execution judges to carry out judicial orders relating to disclosure, seizure, lifting seizures and executing on securities and funds automatically to accelerate the pace of executing court rulings without any delay (SDGs 8, 16 and 17). The electronic link between CMA and the Execution Departments or Units at the Ministry of Justice, as well as the Securities Depository Centre Company (“Depository Centre”) and the Authorized Persons, started in early 2016. Receiving paper-based judicial orders from Execution Departments ceased on 11 July.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Ajman Digital Government launched the initiative Ajman Digital Transformation Programme, in line with SDGs 8, 9 and 11. With the aim of fulfilling the vision of Ajman 2021 – a “Happy society that will contribute to building a green economy backed by a distinguished Government in harmony with the United Arab Emirates Vision 2021, National Agenda and Spirit of the Union” – and the vision of H.H. Sheikh Ammar Bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, Crown Prince of Ajman and Chairman of the Ajman Executive Council “Towards an efficient Government, with reliable and integrated services that are available around the clock through different digital channels utilizing different innovative technologies and dealing with its customers as their partners”. Ajman Digital Government has developed a Five-year Digital Transformation Plan with a clear road map targeting the achievement of the following five objectives:

• digital transformation of 100 per cent of government services by 2018;

• digital transformation of 30 government services every 100 business days;

• digital transformation for all shared government services by 2018;

• an 80 per cent rate of adoption of digital services by 2018;

• increasing the efficiency of government spending by 20 per cent by the end of 2021.

The digital transformation plan is divided into two main components; the automation of 30 services every 100 days plan (the 100 days plan for short) and the 17 centralized initiatives that are distributed across four main themes, which are:

• Exceptional Customer Experience;

• Paperless and Integrated Government;

• Continuous Learning and Innovation;

• Enabling Policies.

As of today, the digital transformation plan was successfully able to achieve a 140 per cent success rate in its first 100 days plan, in addition to achieving the 2017 centralized initiatives plan with a success rate of 100 per cent.

Also in the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Land Department (DLD) and Dubai Smart Government, along with other partners, have initiated the programme Dubai Land Department Real Estate Blockchain. DLD provides outstanding services to all its customers, while developing the necessary legislation to propel the real estate sector in Dubai, organizing and promoting real estate investment and spreading industry knowledge. DLD has active organizations that include the regulatory arm, RERA; the educational arm, Real Estate Investment Management and Promotion Centre, and the Dubai Real Estate Institute; and the judicial arm, the Rental Dispute Centre, (SDGs 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12 and 17). The Dubai Government has chosen strategic technology to strengthen information exchange, interactions and innovations. Security, immutability, smart contracts and distributed features of Blockchain will allow different entities to participate in a network to execute, given the business process to achieve greater trust, ownership, simplification and speed. Real estate is helping Dubai to accelerate economic growth and build global branding. DLD has quickly understood the potential usage of Blockchain and envisioned end-to-end real estate transactions on it. Now DLD is the world’s first government entity to use Blockchain in real estate transactions. Title deed validation, registration trustee procedures and other internal DLD processes already use Blockchain. Involving other entities into Blockchain based on future processes and defining Smart Contracts for them are in progress now. DLD clearly sees that the real estate Blockchain private network will benefit all the identified trusted members in terms of cost, speed and innovation. DLD is in line with Dubai’s 2021 vision of digitalization and going paperless.

C7. ICT Applications

E-government

In Algeria, the Ministry of the Interior, local authorities and Territory Development initiated the project Electronic Municipality E-Commune. The future vision of municipality is an electronic municipality “E-Commune”, a municipality that switches into the digital area with dematerialized exchanges gradually replacing paper. The Ministry of the Interior, local authorities and Territory Development involved in this major modernization process with this huge project have to be deployed on the pilot site in 2018. Algeria still lags in the widespread use of IT, and in particular the implementation of electronic systems to facilitate citizen access to government services. However, the Government has encouraged the use of ICT to improve the socio-economic development and improve the quality of governance. The implementation of the E-Commune, a first milestone in the administration, is a real challenge and a model of the e-government to the municipality scale, in line with SDGs 3, 11 and 16.

The Direction of Trade of the Wilaya (Province) of Souk-Ahras in Algeria has developed a mobile application used in the control of the economic operators and traders. The mobile application connected to the database of traders will help the control of officers in the field to award offenders and allow them to record the data relating to official reports on the spot, and use data in the mobile application to computerize the drafting of the reports, and exploit them directly with the software used in the Department of Litigation and Legal Affairs. The programme will thus contribute to SDGs 10, 16 and 17. This project will:

• establish effective coordination between different control structures, by developing intervention strategies managed and disseminated through the mobile application, which will be a hub encompassing all technical aspects of control; and

• improve the warning network system for sensitive products that affect the health of the consumer, using the mobile application to take all the information relating to the detected products, and transmit it to the central administration and other agents on the ground.

Also in Algeria, the University Centre of Mila and LIRE Laboratory of Constantine completed the project FixIt: Mobile, a system for online complaints in Algerian prefectures. The use of ICTs has increased in different domains, notably in administration. In this project, we are interested in the use of ICT in Algerian prefectures and in the relationship between citizens and complaint services. Indeed, the citizen in his daily life faces many obstacles and problems that might limit his ability to be efficient. One of these problems is broken public facilities such as roads, sidewalks, streetlights, etc. These problems make him resort to providing many complaints to the prefecture by going and waiting in large queues and wasting a lot of time and effort due to the unorganized process of receiving complaints. Furthermore, officials such as the prefect cannot follow up in real time the resolutions of these problems and the executive institutions. For this, we propose a solution by developing a system called FixIt, based on Android applications, to provide a permanent connection between the citizen, prefecture services and executive institutions. This system allows the citizen to send complaints from his smartphone, by taking photos, videos and messages. On the other side, the complaint will be sent to the appropriate fixation executive institutions with GPS localization. At the same time, the complaint is sent to the prefect, who will follow the fixation process. This system will save time and effort, and will guarantee a fast resolution and good organization of the process. This application aids the advancement of SDGs 3, 11 and 17.

The Ministry of Water Resources and Environment of Algeria initiated the SIGMA project, which is a geographic information system (database) for the water resources sector, covering dams, wastewater stations, etc. The aim of the project is to make information about water resource infrastructures accessible to the public and enable concerned individuals to submit comments or rectify errors by sending requests to the Administrator. The SIGMA project relates to such issues as sustainable agriculture, healthy lives, access to water and sanitation as well as inequality within the country (SDGs 2, 3, 6 and 10).

Also in Algeria, the Natiional Social Insurance Fund (CNAS) has launched the El Hanaa space/account (El Hanaa means “serenity” in Arabic). El Hanaa is a service for socially insured persons, in two forms: as an accessible web portal (https://elhanaa.cnas.dz), and as an application for Android smartphones, allowing them to access a private account in order to track the benefits in kind and in cash paid by the National Social Insurance Fund. As such, it contributes to SDG 3.

A number of projects from Kuwait enable access to secure information and promote rules of law (SDG 16).

In Kuwait, the Public Institution for Social Security launched the web portal, which is an official online gateway that provides an array of services regarding retirement information and social security information for Kuwaiti and Gulf Cooperation Council citizens. The rules and policies for retirement and contributions, in addition to electronic documents and forms to be filled as needed, are available within the website. The Public Institution for Social Security web portal also provides a wide range of resources, including links to electronic services for individuals and employers separately, an unemployment registration page, and retirement and commutation calculators. News, instruction and ads are also part of the Public Institution for Social Security portal. This project serves the objectives of SDGs 3 and 16.

Also in Kuwait, the Minister’s Office of the State for the National Assembly initiated the Parliamentary Gate, which is a source of open data related to everything regarding parliamentary affairs for Kuwait. In Kuwait, democratic principles are embodied by informing citizens on what is inside the National Assembly, of discussions and the resulting laws and regulations in transparency and credibility, as the gate is considered the historical legacy of parliamentary life in Kuwait, because it includes everything from the beginning to the present day. The Parliamentary Gate has exceeded any system or any other specialized site with its content of data where there is no system, application or website that can deal with parliamentary affairs. Due to the Gate, we can follow up parliamentary matters. It has become a great reliable source in other ministries of the State, and there have been regular meetings between the Ministry and officers of parliamentary affairs in other ministries to discuss and display the latest services provided to the Gate and to facilitate their work. The Gate has been authorized by the Central Agency for Information Technology to be one of the applications that display on the homepage of the official State site. In addition, there have been other services added on the Gate’s website, which derives its data from the Parliamentary Gate. This project contributes to the advancement of SDG 16.

KGO - Kuwait Government Online - is a government portal which provides a web-based, easy-to-use, mobile-enabled, one-stop, multi-language, single entry-point to user-centric Kuwaiti government information and e-services. Available 24x7, KGO is the gateway and first point of visit when citizens (G2C), businesses (G2B) and visitors wish to find information and e-services provided by the Government of Kuwait. Multiple access channels via the web, mobile and other communication technology tools are established to ensure that KGO portal users can benefit from information and services. To maintain highest usability, performance and security rates, developers designed KGO according to international technical standards.

The portal was set up in partnership with a Steering Committee consisting of representatives from several government agencies (e.g. Central Agency for Information Technology; Kuwait Institute for Science Research; Kuwait University; Ministry of the Interior; Civil Service Commission), and with private-sector contribution for its design and implementation. It will help in achieving the objectives of SDG 8.

The initiative Sahem fi Altashrea was started by the Speaker of the Kuwait National Assembly (KNA) in order to extend public participation and was executed in-house by a team of KNA employees. One of the main goals of Sahem is to deliver citizens’ feedback to members of parliament via an easy mechanism and friendly format. Citizens are directly involved in policy making and changing the outcome of important discussions inside KNA committee meeting rooms. In addition, the entire Sahem process helps to enrich the democratic experience through direct interaction and sharing of opinions. Also, citizens find it very informative with regard to major upcoming projects discussed.

In Kuwait, the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) has created the Kuwait Finder, launched as part of its GIS programme. Kuwait Finder was released to equip Kuwaiti society with a localized GIS-based search engine, supporting address search up to individual apartment level, and by establishment name and business type. The Kuwait Finder application was developed by PACI to serve users’ needs, with the following functions:

• Search using PACI electronic number for building, apartment, etc.

• Search using area name, block number, street name or house number

• Search for points of interest like hospital, shop or mall, etc.

• Quick search through shortcuts for various different categories of entities such as shopping centres, schools or other activities and crafts

• Turn-by-turn voice navigation and guidance in Arabic and English

• Saving favorite places

• Information on social activities and their locations

• Both vector and satellite map display

• Sharing locations via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail.

The project is carried out in partnership with the Openware Information Systems Consulting company (Openware) and HERE maps, and serves SDG 11.

Again, in Kuwait, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) has initiated the Tasdeed project. Tasdeed is an oriented service that has been designed in collaboration between MoF, the Kuwait Government Online Portal (CAIT) and a third party from the private sector (KNET). It is a tool to facilitate the collection of debts owed to the government by individuals/customers (Kuwaiti citizens, residents, corporations). The project is in line with SDG 8.

In 2017, UNICEF Lebanon, together with several governmental partners, initiated the project Education Programme Monitoring System. This programme covers every refugee child who receives education services in the country, and has been proven successful in tracking each child’s educational history, dropout and retention rate, transition pathways between the different school systems, and other valuable indicators. The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has adopted the Compiler and uses its data to make programme decisions. The Compiler is an online platform created by UNICEF Lebanon to replace Excel as a tool for data collection. Primarily to support the Ministry in the collection of data, the Compiler was designed to support the rapid collection of student-level data. It is now an online platform to record students’ registration data in all Second Shift (including Prep-ECE), Accelerator Learning Programme schools and Child-Level Monitoring tools for Syrian children. The Compiler also allows the recording in real time of daily attendance of the children using an application uploaded on a tablet located in each school. Moreover, the attendance/absence database provided by the Compiler is used by the Min Ila Cash Pilot Programme to monitor the children’s absences and follow up on the cases where children are absent more than 10 days or drop out. In 2016, the Compiler was used in 400 public schools across the country and reached 145 000 children in Second Shift and 15 000 children in the Accelerator Learning Programme. This project relates to SDG 4.

In Oman, the eTendering initiative is based the Government’s national plan of eTransformation. It is a centralized tender management system and processes, helping to achieve higher efficiency and enhance elements of transparency and accuracy in government tendering processes, with considerable cost savings. The eTendering initiative makes it possible for government entities to prepare, float, evaluate and award tenders online, and allows companies to register/renew registrations with the Tender Board online, including printing registration certificates. The system facilitates online payment for tender purchase and submits technical and price envelopes digitally. A web-based solution built on Java technologies, it supports data integration, transparency and availability. The current phase of the project is to roll out to 50 government entities, with 29 already implemented.

All five key pillars of the National eTransformation vision – ICT governance, service delivery, internal efficiency and effectiveness, ICT compliance and organization improvement – have been effectively addressed.

The eTendering system is integrated with other government applications, such as the Ministry of Commerce Industry and the Ministry of Manpower. The eTendering system operates on the GCloud environment, is public key infrastructure-enabled as part of eTransformation initiative, and helps the advancement of SDGs 9 and 16.

The objectives of eTendering are:

• to provide a centralized tendering platform for government entities of Oman;

• to standardize the tendering process;

• tenders above 3 million OMR – GTB tenders;

• tenders below 3 million OMR – Ministry internal tenders;

• customized approval process for ministries;

• transparency in processing of tenders;

• paperless management of the tendering process;

• electronic payments;

• reducing time delays and manual interaction;

• reducing cost of tendering for both the Government and suppliers;

• spending analysis of government expenditures;

• increasing supplier participation and competition;

• providing bilingual (Arabic and English) information.

Also in Oman, the Public Establishment for Industrial Estates has created eProspect. This system, which caters for people seeking new investment prospects, provides a platform accepting online applications to invest in Oman's industrial estates. The platform immediately registers users online for them to start the process of setting up their business in an industrial estate. Investors are directed to the most suitable area matching their activity, and offered different types of properties depending on their requirements, such as offices or land, and the utilities required for the investment, such as gas, electricity or water. Since the launch in 2013, 1 410 applications have been processed through the system, which is relevant to SDGs 8 and 9.

In Oman, Oman Public Prosecution has set up the Judicial Orders System. E-case registration is achieved by integrating the systems of the Omani Public Prosecutor and both the Royal Omani Police (ROP) and the Public Authority for Consumer Protection (PACP) through the Oman government MPLS network. The rationale behind the service was to simplify and expedite the processes of case registration and issuing judicial orders by utilizing the Oman government MPLS network which is managed and operated by the Information Technology Authority (ITA). A simple judicial order that used to take at least 20 minutes to prepare now requires less than 5 minutes. Furthermore, it also reaches the designated ROP officer in few seconds with zero human interaction. This helps to strengthen Omani institutions, in accordance with SDG 16.

The Public Authority for Consumer Protection (PACP) of Oman leverages ICT and pervasive mobile technology through the Tawasul initiative, which encompasses the entire business process and system architecture to empower consumers by providing them with a way to lodge complaints and provide feedback and suggestions concerning any breach to consumer rights from anywhere and at any time. PACP was recognized as one of the best six practices around the world and taken as a road map by Arab countries.

The programme thus achieves gender equality by providing equal opportunities for citizens (SDG 5).

It also contributes to safety in cities and promotes peaceful and inclusive societies (SDGs 11 and 16).

The e-Participation Policy of Qatar aims at instituting the culture and practices of e-participation across government agencies and improving transparency and people’s participation, thereby assisting the State of Qatar in achieving its national development goals.

In Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communication has initiated the Qatar E-Government Portal, with the role of making government information and services more efficient and effective in order to be accessible to all citizens, residents, visitors and businesses. It also aims at raising awareness on the public programmes, events and news, and government initiatives, in line with the objectives defined by the Qatar e-Government 2020 Strategy. Through cooperation with government entities and public service providers, the Hukoomi portal allows users to access information and services online, easily and quickly. The portal provides a number of important e-services, as well as official documents, service application forms and general information. This project applies to SDGs 3, 4, 8, 9 and 11.

The Government of the State of Qatar has always recognized the value of engaging the people in governance processes. Qatar’s National Development Strategy 2011-2016 acknowledges that people are a country’s most valuable asset and their participation in political, social and economic spheres will contribute to sustaining a prosperous society (SDGs 11 and 16). Engagement with their people allows governments to tap into wider perspectives, sources of information and potential solutions to improve decisions and services. It also provides the basis for productive relationships, improved dialogue and deliberation and, ultimately, better governance. The objective of e-Participation is to engage people in development policy and decision-making processes through use of information and communication technologies.

Saudi Arabia has boosted several projects within this category.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Finance has developed the initiative Etimad Financial Portal, an electronic portal addressed to government bodies to provide electronic services. Government sectors can use Etimad to manage their budgets and contracts, and manage payments and government tenders. This project is in line with SDGs 8, 12 and 17. The private sector can use Etimad to apply for financial claims, purchase tenders documents and send their proposals. Etimad will provide the following electronic services:

• Contract approval: Government projects can send their project contracts for approval to the Contracts Follow-up Department at the Ministry of Finance.

• Budget display, booking and transfer: This enables government bodies to display the assigned budget for its projects, book the required budgets for running projects and perform budget transfers of one item of the budget from one project to another.

• Payment claims, request and order: This applies to the service of financial claims of suppliers and contractors, and aims to collect all financial claims, and review them with government agencies to facilitate the exchange process, where it requires ensuring that all financial claims are registered to the Government from all suppliers and contractors.

• Monafasat: This is a unified platform used by all government agencies for their procurement activities. Contractors can search for government tenders and send their proposals.

• Payroll: Government sectors can provide their payroll information to pay their workers electronically.

The Etimad portal was made for many reasons, including achieving Saudi Arabia’s 2030 Vision goals, such as:

• raising the efficiency of spending;

• increasing transparency;

• speeding up MOF services processes;

• providing one source for all government tenders;

• increasing the private sector’s involvement in government projects;

• providing a database for government purchases prices.

The Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia, together with the Information Technology Complete Group, initiated the project Teachers Affairs Management System. This project is considered one of the Ministry’s most strategic projects. It serves all teachers in the Ministry of Education and all schools and school districts in the various areas and regions within the Kingdom with a centralized system and database. The implemented solution is based on the latest technologies, and provides a magnitude of features and e-services, including four main modules: teachers’ main information and needs; teachers’ transportation between districts; teachers’ transportation between schools within the district; and new teachers hiring and distribution among districts. These modules are designed to serve the various teachers as well as school districts and Ministry-level administrators and decision-makers. The solution aggregates all data from the various sources, and provides real-time, accurate and comprehensive data and reports that serve the complete education community and facilitate planning, analysis and decision support across the country, in accordance with SDGs 5, 9, 10, 16 and 17.

Also in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO) developed the Takaad Mobile App Project. Quality mark labels are one output of SASO’s core business. It is a great help for those who want to produce top quality products and for consumers who want to buy high quality products. However, commercial fraud was a big challenge for SASO, as consumer protection is one of SASO’s strategic objectives. Fake quality mark labels were used by unethical traders and it used to be difficult to track those traders by the Ministry of Commerce and Investments. In addition, the Saudi Energy Efficiency Centre was facing the exact situation with their Efficiency Labels, which help consumers to make the right decisions when buying home appliances. The Takaad in (Arabic for “verify”) mobile application project took place to overcome this huge challenge by one simple step consumers need to take: scanning the label. While scanning the labels was extremely easy and fun for consumers, it hides the huge work behind it, and solved one of the biggest challenges that the three organizations mentioned above had been facing for a long time. The project was a success story, and SASO is currently working to expand the usage of this application to cover more products and to serve more consumer segments. This application helps advance SDG 12.

The Ministry of Labour and Social development in Saudi Arabia – in partnership with Microsoft, Elm, Linkdiv and Alrajhi Bank – launched the project Citizen Account, a nationwide programme derived from another national initiative in Saudi Arabia (physical balance programme), which is an integral part of the Saudi Vision 2030 plan. The original purpose of this programme was to ease the burden on citizens of Saudi Arabia from the expected economic reforms outlined in Vision 2030 to achieve the SDGs. The platform was launched on 1 February 2017, and is still accepting registrations. Since the launch of the programme, the Ministry has successfully registered more that 3.4 million Saudi households (13.2 million individuals). The registration process is very simple and doesn’t require much time. This programme is in line with SDG 7.

The National Information Centre in Saudi Arabia developed the programme Identity and Authentication Management. In the physical world, entities and organizations rely on physical credentials (ID cards, passports, or other documents) to authenticate the identity of individuals requesting various services. Individuals claiming a given identity present the credential to the service provider, who in turn authenticates the identity by comparing the individual’s face to the photo printed on the document. Similarly, in order to safeguard the rights and privacy of individuals, as well as maintain the security and credibility of service providers in the virtual “digital” realm (online), there must be a trusted mechanism to authenticate an identity claimed by someone requesting a particular service.

The Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia is the authority mandated, and trusted, as issuer and manager of identity credentials on a national level. The Saudi eID card project began in 2005, with the first smart card-based eIDs issued in 2008. The Ministry decided to provide a single identity, trusted, secure and scalable, with multifactor user authentication for eServices offered by the Government and businesses through multiple channels. Accordingly, the Ministry needs to create a National Digital Identity System to satisfy this goal. The National Information Centre set about evolving eIDs to become the single trusted secure access to eGovernment, financial and business online, as part of an identity and authentication management system. The project’s goal is to build a strong architecture to support digital identity, authentication and federation for both public and private sector service providers, and to solve several usability, administrative and security issues. The resulting eIDs have to be moved to a centralized Identity and Authentication Management system with the vision of “Trusted National Digital Identity for All”. The mission of the system is to enable National Digital Identity solutions and services, to safeguard the nation’s security, and facilitate online identity and authentication between people, service providers and the Government. Due to its nature, this project serves the advancement of SDGs 3, 8, 9 and 17.

In collaboration with the Saudi Company for Electronic Information Exchange (Tabadul), the Ministry of Finance of Saudi Arabia has created Saudi Electronic Government Procurements. The e-government procurement project is one of the projects under the broader e-government initiative in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The major goal of this project is to equip the country with a unified platform to be used by all government agencies for their procurement activities (cf. SDG 12). The Ministry of Finance is identified as the project sponsor responsible for preparing, executing and monitoring the project’s strategic plan; and the ministry has mandated Tabadul to execute, develop and operate the project.

In partnership with ARCOM and HP, the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs of Saudi Arabia has launched the Municipal Elections System (third session). The project aims in general to run the communications system, hardware and software for the electoral process in the main information centre in Riyadh and the headquarters of the local committees in the election centres in each district, so as to give the 16 local committees broader role in the electoral process through connectivity and integration with the main centre (cf. SDGs 5 and 16). The registration procedure and counting processes for voters and candidates go through a single centralized system across all local committees, by web and mobile apps. The system provides real-time reports and the dashboards during the electoral process for senior management.

The National Information Centre in Saudi Arabia has created Electronic Services for the Ministry of the Interior (Absher). This is one of the first projects implementing the e-government strategy in Saudi Arabia, allowing for a variety of e-services to be offered by different sectors under the Ministry of the Interior (MoI), such as traffic, civil affairs, GDP, etc., and facilitating access to services anytime, anywhere, through the MoI Absher e-portal. The widespread provision of e-services will support the attainment of SDGs 5, 8, 10, 11 and 17.

The Ministry of Justice in Saudi Arabia has launched the Justice Indicators Service. This is an online interactive service that provides enquirers with daily updated reports and statistics in the form of tables and graphs. It covers four categories of information:

• Real-estate Indicators provide information about current transactions in regions, cities and neighbourhoods during a designated period.

• Judicial Indicators report on the volume of work being handled by general, criminal and family courts in all regions of the Kingdom.

• Administrative execution Indicators report on the number of incoming administrative execution applications in the courts and departments of administrative execution in all regions of the Kingdom.

• Documentation Indicators provide statistics on documentation work in the judicial and civil notaries in all regions of the Kingdom.

This development is in line with SDGs 8 and 17.

The Ministry of Civil Service of Saudi Arabia (MCS) has set up Tawtheeq. Tawtheeq is a career incidents registration system that is being developed to:

• Enable government organizations to register their employees’ information and career incidents in an advanced, automated system

• Simplify and facilitate the process of documenting applications and incidents for MCS and other organizations

• Speed up the completion of requests, which saves time and effort on the part of both government agencies and ministry experts

• Facilitate tracking and follow-up of requests and their status

• Eliminate paperwork and manual transactions and the associated issues.

Tawtheeq is relevant to SDGs 8, 9 and 10.

The Ministry of Civil Service of Saudi Arabia (MCS) has launched Al-Tadrib wa Al-Ebtiath. Al-Tadrib wa Al-Ebtiath is an electronic training and scholarship (T&S) system designed to handle and support the T&S process. It has transformed the old, traditional process into a new, advanced and practical system, making the whole process much easier, faster and cheaper, and saving a huge amount of paper and files. In addition, the system accommodated integration between MCS and other government entities, thereby saving on logistical costs and making the process much easier than in the past. Al-Tadrib wa Al-Ebtiath is relevant to SDGs 8, 9 and 10.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia (MoFA) has launched its Secure Mobility Service. MoFA delivers government services through multiple channels to Saudi citizens, residents, visitors, corporate and business entities, as well as government agencies around the world. Formerly, these services were available through only limited channels, whereby beneficiaries had to be present in the designated location and MoFA employees at headquarters were immobilized in their offices all the time and unable to move around, which was highly restrictive. Outside headquarters, MoFA operates in a highly critical environment in which employees move between missions in around 120 countries, and their mobility is also constrained by the lack of a suitable technical solution. Accordingly, MoFA has embarked on a long journey to master the application of an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution in order to provide secure mobility for its employees and increase employee productivity. The secure mobility service is of relevance to SDGs 3, 4, 5, 11 and 16.

The Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage in Saudi Arabia has set up the Saudi Exhibition and Convention Bureau.

The Saudi Exhibition and Convention Bureau is working to become a single point of contact for all stakeholders in the exhibition and convention sector in the Kingdom, in order to regulate and develop the sector, encourage investment in the sector, and market the Kingdom as a destination for exhibitions and conferences. With this aim in mind, the first phase of the Exhibition and Convention Portal was launched on Sunday, 8 November 2015, to fulfil the following purposes:

• Facilitate all aspects of the process of issuing licenses for exhibitions and conferences in electronic form

• Provide a reference for the process of controlling exhibitions, conferences and premises, and collect and monitor statistics and information about important exhibitions and conferences held in the Kingdom

• Understand exhibition and conference sector behaviour, and ascertain demand and supply trends in the sector

• Provide information and support for communications among the partners in the exhibition and convention sector

• Support e-marketing for exhibition and conference activities.

The Saudi Exhibition and Convention Bureau will serve SDGs 8 and 9.

The Ministry of Education of Saudi Arabia has launched the Certificate Equivalence System. Certificate equivalence is an academic operation that entails evaluating all the technical aspects of an academic credential and matching it to the corresponding level and associated requirements in the hierarchy of academic degrees in Saudi Arabia. The certificate equivalence system enables Saudi students abroad having graduated from a post-secondary programme to submit an online request in respect of an academic credential on the basis of duration of study, courses and prerequisites. The system also allows graduates to follow-up their requests online, and helps staff and decision-makers review and control incoming requests and view a range of reports and statistics. All internal operations on the requests are automated, instead of being paper-based, a measure that facilitates requests for review and reference to previous actions taken on them. The system is relevant to SDGs 4, 5 and 10.

The Public Security Directorate in the Ministry of the Interior of Saudi Arabia (MoI), in partnership with the Elm Company and other MoI departments, has launched Kollona Amn, a system that allows citizens and expatriates to report any criminal offence or traffic violation through a mobile application. In the incident reporting process, a user can easily add an attachment (photo, video or voice message) plus information on the place of the incident (by choosing the current location). The incident reports are channeled to 39 operation centres, based on type of incident and geographical area of the incident reporter (user). Furthermore, the user should receive updates regarding the reported incident through the mobile app, by means of push notifications or text messages. The system supports the concept of sustainable cities and communities, as per SDG 11.

The National Information Centre in the Ministry of the Interior Saudi Arabia (MoI) has initiated Identity and Authentication Management (IAM). In the physical world, entities and organizations rely on physical credentials (ID cards, passports or other documents) for the identification of individuals. Claiming a given identity consists in presenting the relevant credential to the service provider, who in turn authenticates the identity by comparing the individual’s face to the photo printed on the document. In order to safeguard the rights and privacy of individuals and also maintain the security and credibility of service providers in the virtual, digital world (online), there must likewise be a trusted mechanism to authenticate an identity claimed by someone requesting a particular service.

Consequently, MoI has expanded its physical identity infrastructure to create a National Digital Identity platform delivering a single and trusted identity, supported by a scalable and robust architecture for both public- and private-sector service providers, with the vision: “Excellence in delivering a single, trusted national digital identity for all”. In this perspective, the mission of IAM is to enable national digital identity solutions and services, safeguard the nation’s security and facilitate online identity and authentication between people, service providers and government.

The project, which relates to SDGs 3, 8, 9 and 17, involves three kinds of partnerships: (1) Local service providers (government and private); (2) GCC identity providers - GCC service providers are reaping benefits indirectly through GCC national service providers as part of the GCC IDPs Initiative; (3) Solution providers, including vendors The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia (MoFA) has launched E-services for Saudis abroad.

As the number of Saudi citizens abroad increases (an estimated 10 million Saudis in 2016), the need for a platform that meets the needs of this growing community has become more pressing. Saudis abroad require consular and/or emergency services that may not be readily available at their locations. Even when a Saudi consulate or diplomatic mission is available, the presence of the individual requesting the service is required. This project aims to provide a variety of services via an integrated electronic portal that does not require an individual’s personal attendance.

With this goal in mind, the Fanar project was launched in 2011. Fanar aims to support and provide 68 of the services offered by MoFA to Saudi citizens abroad, while simultaneously linking these services to Saudi government agencies in the Kingdom. This project will serve SDGs 9 and 16.

Tawasul (E-contact system) is an electronic system that provides a reliable tool for communication between citizens, non-citizens and the Ministry of Education of Saudi Arabia (MoE) in order to handle complaints, requests or suggestions. Complaints and requests would be studied and analysed by the relevant MoE departments, and the results conveyed to the submitting parties. This constitutes one of the most important e-services, allowing people to contact the minister and all levels of the ministry and be assured of a response within a given time-frame. The creation of this system contributes to gender equality and the safety of cities and promotes peaceful and inclusive societies (SDGs 5, 11 and 16).

Instant Tele-Trials is the project launched by the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Justice aimed at the automatization of all e-services of the minister’s office, its branches, the courts and the notaries public in an expeditious and secure manner. Another part of the mission consists in activating linked services between the ministry and other sectors to provide modern technological services and exchange information and experiences. Private rooms for the Tele-Trials are prepared inside prison facilities and are connected with the data centre at the Ministry of Justice headquarters. Each Tele-Trial is executed under the supervision and management of the court in every city in order to ensure legitimate rights for the inmates and protect fundamental freedoms (SDG 16).

The Ministry of Health initiated the Online Toxicology Analysis Requests & Results System "OTARR" project that aims to implement a fully integrated online toxicology analysis requests and results system that automates all services provided by the poison control and forensic chemistry centres across the kingdom, including installation, configuration and integration with the laboratories information management system (LIMS). In addition, the project includes implementation and integration with call centre and IVR systems as well as the provision of medical libraries related to toxicology to PCC staff.

Thus, the goal of the project is to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being (SDG 3).

Five hundred government agencies located across the country interact intensively with the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to submit financial requests or receive financial services regarding their budgets, accounts and payment orders. Paper-based and face-to-face communications have caused great exertion to stakeholders and increased challenges to controlling government finance. In compliance with the e-government programme, MOF has accomplished this prime and first-of-its-kind project (MOFES) and implemented the MOF financial services as E-Services with a digital signature mechanism and system-to-system process. Currently, all government agencies are able to use financial services effectively, efficiently and simultaneously, which contributes to the development of resilient infrastructure as well as economic growth (SDGs 8 and 9).

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry exerts best efforts to be a completely electronic ministry, with its customers benefiting from its e-services without visiting its premises. One of its significant e-services consists in issuing, renewing and modifying the E-Commercial Register electronically within 180 seconds; the register is dedicated to about 1.3 million private sector entities. This makes it the fastest e-service of its kind worldwide. Dependent on integration with related agencies, it is performed through highly developed processes that have been re-engineered to help customers benefit from the service with no human intervention. It also adopts sustainability and helps raise the national economy relating to such issues as gender equality, economic growth and the protection of ecosystems (SDGs 5, 8 and 15).

The Saudi Tourism Portal was developed by the Saudi Arabia Commission for Tourism & National Heritage, in order to market Saudi tourism in both the Arabic and English languages. It provides a number of tourism services and other valuable interactive integrated content, such as tourist information, photos, short films and interactive maps to help tourists pre-plan their tours and interact with the site to learn more about the tourism destinations, events, programmes, tracks, seasonal offers and discounts. In addition, the tourist can benefit from the reservation services for hotels, flights and car rentals through the site. It also offers a prompt and secure client service by receiving tourists’ complaints. The Saudi Tourism Portal integrates with sub-sites, customer relationship management (CRM), mobile app and electronic information centres.

By offering all these possibilities, the project contributes to the well-being of the concerned community and relates to the economic growth of the country (SDGs 3 and 8).

The United Arab Emirates provided a significant number of innovative projects within the e-government category.

In the United Arab Emirates, Smart Dubai, the government office selected to drive Dubai’s citywide transformation into a Smart City, has announced the Smart Dubai Platform, a digital backbone powering the city in the near future, in strategic partnership with Du Telecom Company. The Smart Dubai Platform will be the central operating system for the city, providing access to city services and data for all individuals, as well as private sector and public sector entities. The Smart Dubai Platform is a unique undertaking for any city in the world. Several leading cities have established ICT platforms, but often limited them to specific uses or a single dimension. The newly-conceived Smart Dubai Platform unites city services, IoT, cloud services, Big Data and digital identity across all city dimensions to build the most comprehensive exchange point for government and private sector services, delivering unprecedented value for the city. The Smart Dubai Platform will be developed and implemented by Du Telecom Company, in an ambitious and unique public–private partnership model that will set new benchmarks for cross-sector partnerships for Smart City initiatives globally. The vision has consistently been to transform Dubai into the happiest city on Earth, congruent to SDGs 8, 9, 11 and 12. The Smart Dubai Platform forms part of the Smart City transformation. Uniting the city’s physical infrastructure, open and shared data, and citywide smart applications, the Platform will become the central “operating system” and nerve centre for Dubai.

Also in United Arab Emirates, the Smart Dubai Government Establishment has launched the DubaiNow Mobile Application, as a single smart citywide platform and single point of interaction for accessing city services. DubaiNow is a citywide mobile app available for individuals (i.e. citizens, residents, visitors) which covers the daily needs of individuals in the city and eliminates the need to use multiple interfaces, in addition to providing information for< potential visitors (DubaiNow can be accessed in any part of the world). It supports more than 55 key services provided by 24 entities from both the government and private sectors, including utilities and bills, housing, public transport, security and justice, health, driving, residency visas, education, religion, business and employment, donations, city information, and general public services. DubaiNow is citywide smart platform with a central payment gateway (DubaiPay) and a unified digital identity (DubaiID). It is also available through a portal http://dubainow.dubai.ae/. DubaiNow is relevant to SDGs 9, 16 and 17.

The Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (ESMA) is working on a number of new standards for the UAE for consumer goods sold in the country to ensure the safety of goods. The Tires Safety Control System and in particular tires RFID stickers ensure greater consumer protection by rooting out tampering and duplication in regard to tires. The sticker will have an RFID chip that will be damaged if the sticker is removed, making it impossible to reuse it. The sticker provided by ESMA will have all the specifications of the tire, including the brand name, country of origin, type of tire, temperature rating as well as traction rating and tread-wear figures. All the necessary details of the tire will be labelled on the sticker, including a barcode and a QR code which can be scanned using the app. A customer can check all the details of the tire by scanning the QR code using the app.

The project affords the development of effective and transparent institutions, ensures public access to information and protects fundamental freedoms – SDG 16 of the WSIS Action Lines.

In line with its strategic objective, the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) is committed to providing sustainable and seamless high-quality services to all citizens and residents in Dubai. Through its smart services, DEWA meets all customer expectations and needs. The DEWA smart application aims to serve more than 750,000 customers by enabling all its services on the app; the app also serves all segments of society including customers, consultants, suppliers, job seekers, government entities as well as unregistered users by providing them access to general services.

The DEWA smart app was introduced to provide sustainable and high-quality smart services to suit the needs of all Dubai citizens, residents and owners. DEWA achieved 100 per cent smart trans-formation in June 2014, with an adoption rate of 70.37 per cent recorded in 2016. The app, which provides reliable end-to-end services available 24/7, has been enhanced by enabling new services, offering new features and improving the user’s experience and journey through different engagement channels, including usability labs. As a result, it achieved a rating of 89.55 per cent in the DEWA app Customer Satisfaction Survey 2016, and a high score in the Smart Dubai Government accessibility assessment 2016.

The app responds to several SDGs, ensuring water access, modern energy for all and sustainable consumption and production patterns, the building of resilient infrastructure, as well as the taking of urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (SDGs 6, 7, 9, 11, 12 and 13).

Initiated by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, the Area Report is a powerful, automated reporting system tool prepared in-house using available information technology tools within the authority, including the geographic information system (GIS), internally developed database and other information technology tools currently under development. The Area Report serves as a proactive planning tool supporting the core business of the authority, which is the delivery of sustainable electricity services at a world-class level of reliability, efficiency and safety. The Area Report enhances electrical network expansion activities by providing more reliable information about the area under study with one click, thus ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all (SDG 7).

The Human Resources Information Management System in the Federal Government Bayanati is deemed an electronic/smart integrated system, providing self-services for employees and entities. All measures and procedures related to human resources in all federal entities are automated, according to the life-cycle structure of government employees: government performance management, financial management, training and development, transfers, irregularities, end of service and career planning.

The Bayanati System ensures inclusive, equitable, quality education, achieves gender equality, and promotes inclusive and sustainable economic growth as well as peaceful and inclusive societies (SDGs 4, 5, 8, 11 and 16).

The Sharjah Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SCCI) of the United Arab Emirates is keen to include in its membership all the companies and establishments practising an economic activity in the emirate, be it trade, industrial or professional. The Chamber follows the economic and civilizational development witnessed by UAE, regarding it as a matter that naturally requires change to the different services and activities of the Chamber. In order to provide efficient and effective services to its customers and alliances, it came up with the Membership and Certificate of Origin System project that offers a set of automated e-services through the currently in-place Jupiter application.

This new system relates to certain SDGs by building resilient infrastructure and promoting sustainable industrialization and peaceful societies (SDGs 9 and 16).

The Directorate of Public Works (DPW) project in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, aims to ensure modern and sustainable urban development. It works very hard to achieve this objective through the electronic and smart transformation of procedures in order to provide the best services and keep pace with the latest global developments in building construction and maintenance. Thus, DPW developed a mobile application Sharjah DPW that contains the directorate’s information as well as two main services, the Hotline, and Projects Payments. This will support collaboration between the customer, contractor and DPW employee, and later sections will elaborate more on both services (SDG 17). The project also contributes to the building of resilient infrastructure and promotion of inclusive societies (SDGs 9 and 16).

The Federal Authority for Government Human Resources (FAHR) is the legislative authority of the federal government concerned with the development of laws, rules and regulations relating to the human resources jobs in the federal government. According to the directives of the country's wise leadership, and to keep up with the United Arab Emirates vision 2021, the FAHR Smart Application emerged as an initiative to provide an integrated application that serves the human resources in the federal government and facilitates and helps the efficient conduct of the daily HR transactions and procedures around the clock. The application has achieved a 100 per cent smart transformation. Including 26 services (7 main services and 19 sub-services), it aims to provide different HR services and information and connect them to the HR information management system of the federal government “Bayanati” for the purposes of managing its operations and sequences of procedures efficiently and effectively through the “self-service” system.

In such spirit, the Smart Application provides quality education and gender equality, and contributes to the economic growth of the country, promoting inclusive societies and rules of law for everyone (SDGs 4, 5, 8, 11 and 16).

With the emirate’s desire to be one of the best countries in the world, the Sheikh Zayed Housing Programme (SZHP), United Arab Emirates, launched the Zayed Complexes project incarnating the idea of Zayed residential complexes in reaction to the recent but increasingly widespread recognition that with an increasing population there is insufficient land allocated for housing along with unstable construction material prices at country level. SZHP has therefore recently started to adopt the idea of building housing complexes as an alternative in support of UAE nationals. Residential complexes comprise groups of housing units built in a certain area and containing a set of basic services for residents, such as parks, mosques, schools and other service facilities. The Zayed Complexes application was developed on 24 July 2014 to provide a link between the applicant wishing to obtain housing assistance and the Sheikh Zayed Housing Programme through access to current and future projects, thus allowing the applicant to decide to choose and book his or her lifetime house.

Implementation of the project contributes to the building of resilient infrastructure and promotion of industrialization (SDG 9).

The Emirates Vehicle Gate (EVG) is an ambitious, innovative project in the United Arab Emirates. It provides all e-services related to drivers and vehicles by integrating government and private service providers together in one platform. The project supports the UAE e-government strategy and ensures that all government work is conducted according to a set of guiding principles that puts citizens first and promotes an accountable, lean, innovative and forward-looking government. EVG achieved a high level of impact and satisfaction by simplifying all processes, improving efficiency and strengthening relations with citizens at all levels. It meets the needs of citizens and businesses and achieved efficient allocation of resources, most importantly ensuring sustainability and business continuity.

Thus, EVG relates to a number of SDGs by fostering innovation, promoting peaceful and inclusive societies and revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development (SDGs 9, 16 and 17).

The United Arab Emirates Department of Transport Abu Dhabi smart application traveler information system “Darb” is designed to provide multimodal, real-time information and route guidance using the web (upgrade of DARB), mobile phones (new mobile DARB app) and satellite navigation systems (in-vehicle and OEM). Darb provides the public with basic interactive maps, showing public transport routes and timetables within a fast and user-friendly experience. Furthermore, the smart app provides the public with live road conditions, covering construction works, traffic detours and accidents and congested roads.

Moreover, the smart application provides various important services related to airports, such as the location of airport halls and flight schedules. Darb informs the public about parking lots and enables them to pay for Mawaqif services online. Among the distinctive services of Darb, the Book a Taxi feature allows the app users to book a taxi and set their pick-up location and destination directly from the smartphone.

All these services contribute to resilient infrastructure development, increased access to ICTs, and the fostering of innovation (SDG 9).

In Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communications, in partnership with Gemalto, has created the Qatar National Authentication Service (NAS), to act as National Identity Provider offering secure authentication, user registration, profile management and single-sign-on (SSO) for all e-government services. The main objectives of the project, in line with SDG 11, are to:

• Enable integration with government entities, creating an identity hub across government that helps drive improved IT capabilities leading to an improved end user experience.

• Provide identity management services across all government entities in Qatar that will scale up to meet the e-Government 2020 Strategy target of 100 per cent of government services online and 80 per cent of transactions conducted online.

• Develop mature account management capabilities to grant consumers complete control of the data stored in their NAS account.

• Support the development of a Qatar legislation (i.e. polices) to deliver a well-defined standard for data privacy and security.

• Ensure the NAS solution and integrated government entities follow good practices in security and can deliver the highest standard for consumers of e-services

• Support emerging authentication, authorization and SSO technologies (e.g. risk-based authentication).

Also in Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communications has launched the Government Financial Management Information System. The Government of Qatar undertook a government-wide financial transformation project, aimed at achieving the objectives of the Qatar National Vision 2030 by maintaining fiscal stability and avoiding financial crises through more efficient allocation of available financial resources according to national priorities. The project sought to integrate government financial management information systems in order to assist the government in planning and managing the country’s financial resources more effectively. The specific objectives of the financial transformation project are to improve:

• transparency and compliance with international best practices in budget management;

• accuracy, timeliness and relevance of fiscal reporting;

• ensuring that payments are made in accordance with the budget and within spending limits and cash constraints;

• timeliness and accuracy of banking and reporting revenue collections;

• availability of financial management and budget execution information to the legislature for decision-making; and

• fiscal sustainability through more effective and efficient management of cash.

The Government Financial Management Information System is to be established across all government entities in Qatar to meet the above objectives, and will contribute to SDGs 3, 4, 8 and 9.

E-business

In Algeria, the Direction of Trade of the Wilaya of Souk Ahras, in its Litigation and Legal Affairs Department, created a database concerning official reports and installed a programme to computerize the administrative procedures. For the computerization of the Litigation and Legal Affairs Department, the conception and creation of software was put into the department creating the following capabilities:

• creation of a database containing all the information concerning the reports sent to the legal authorities;

• computerization of counts and statistics, which is automatically taken from the database according to several criteria of choice;

• automating the printing of several documents and evaluating the activity of the control personnel;

• operation of the intranet, since the programme works by “Client Server”.

This project aids the advancement of SDGs 3, 10, 16 and 17.

Also in Algeria, the CACOBATPH social enterprise has initiated the project TASRIHATCOM – Portal Tele Declaration – a platform that allows users to submit different kinds of declarations, consult balances and pay contributions online in complete safety. TASRIHATCOM is part of the modernization strategy framework established by the CACOBATPH to develop and strengthen relations with its digital users, who will have the opportunity to fulfil their DAC (declaration of contribution base) and DAS (declaration of base employees) and CI (unemployment caused by bad weather) statements, remotely, through the use of ICTs. Available 24/7, this portal allows affiliates of CACOBATPH to make their statements safely, while sparing them the trip to the affiliate agency. TASRIHATCOM therefore provides a very positive alternative to the traditional paper-based system, offering a clear added value to relations between the Fund, the member companies and their employees, thus contributing to SDG 10.

Again in Algeria, the Research Centre for Scientific and Technical Information (CERIST), in partnership with the Laboratoire Stratégies d’Optimisation et Informatique intelligente, Tunisia, and the Femme, dével-oppement et solidarité sans frontières Association, Tunisia, has launched a project to help women in handicraft businesses adapt to ICT. In emerging countries, incomes are low, and women, either individually or within group, may be involved in sustainable handcraft or fair trade businesses, leading to a varying degree of economic mobility. This project, which has a bearing on SDGs 1, 5, 7, 8 and 10, aims to improve the socio-economic level of women in handicraft businesses, specifically in Algeria and Tunisia. It seeks primarily to assist craftswomen in their business activities through the use of new ICT technologies, e.g. to advertise their products, seek the best supplier of raw materials, and make the right sales and business decisions, by simplifying their communication with different actors such as suppliers, customers and other craftswomen.

In Egypt, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina developed the programme BA-Paperless System, which is developed to automate the different business processes within the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, covering human resources, financial, correspondence tracks, and other administrative business processes, while integrating it with existing enterprise systems. The newly implemented Enterprise Content Management System has given Bibliotheca Alexandrina a much greater ability to manage information securely. In addition, it has been able to standardize best practices, while ensuring that it meets its compliance requirements for both internal policies and external regulations. The goal of BA-Paperless is to achieve optimum compliance efficiency by reducing costs, increasing the employees’ productivity and decreasing the cycle time of each process. The system managed to facilitate the workflow for Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s employees, creating a more decent work environment. Bibliotheca Alexandrina has succeeded in automating more than 90 business processes to become the first fully paperless public institution in Egypt. Evaluating the automation of more business processes is considered an ongoing process, to be able to accommodate the various needs of the institution. It is also worth mentioning that the project can be implemented and replicated in all of the governmental institutions in Egypt. The system is an internal portal that could not be accessible from outside Bibliotheca Alexandrina for security reasons. This programme is relevant to the advancement of SDGs 8 and 9.

Authorized to disclose information on final goods and services, stating brands, prices, supplier name, offer and types of product, the Public Authority for Consumer Protection (PACP) of Oman has taken an initiative with the Marsad programme. The programme discloses the local, GCC and international prices of commodity items. Initially, the programme aimed to display 400 items for each supplier for consumers as well as key government officials. The number has been increased to 3 million now for government officials. Furthermore, the project aims to disseminate these prices to the public as well.

Thus, it meets certain SDGs dealing with economic issues, fighting against poverty and providing decent work for society (SDGs 1 and 8).

Another project Invest Easy is one of the showcase projects of Oman launched by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. It is an outstanding example of using worldwide best practices and standards to develop the country’s business environment (SDGs 8 and 16). It is a comprehensive collection of e-services aimed at providing investors and businesses with a single point of contact for their interactions with the government, from starting a new company to filing an annual report. The new simplified Invest Easy project has divided all the information and services into four areas; commercial registration, CR renewals, licensing and information availability.

In Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communications has launched the Landscape Report for Businesses. The “ICT Landscape 2016: Business” report reveals the trend towards the growing use of ICT among businesses over the past seven years, including through indicators such as computer penetration, Internet penetration, web presence and enhanced use of e-services and e-commerce, among others. In line with the worldwide trend, the ICT industry is helping to fuel the growth and diversification of Qatar’s economy. These findings are part of a broad -based research study that examines the current levels of ICT access and usage among businesses in Qatar and measures the development of the ICT sector. The study, based on a large-scale survey of 1 093 business establish-ments spread across industry sectors, was conducted between March 2015 and May 2015. In addition, in-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 300 ICT providers during that same period. This research provides data and material of interest for advancing SDGs 1 and 8.

In Qatar, the Ministry of Transport and Communications has created the Qatar National E-Commerce Roadmap 2015, which is the first national e-commerce blueprint addressing the four key pillars of e-commerce: governance, technology, e-payment, and delivery. The roadmap also outlines the current e-commerce landscape in Qatar, details challenges and inhibitors to success, and provides the framework to chart a path forward. It is the result of a thorough collaborative effort with local, regional and international stakeholders across the entire e-commerce value chain — from product creation to consumer receipt of the product — and its successful implementation is dependent on strong collaboration and coordination among the different stakeholders. The roadmap is a useful tool towards SDG 8.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Commerce and Investment initiated the project E-Commercial Register – 180 Seconds. The Ministry of Commerce and Investment exerts best efforts to be a completely electronic ministry, with its customers benefiting from its e-services without visiting its premises. One of its significant e-services appears in issuing, renewing and modifying the Commercial Register – which contains about 1.3 million private sector entities – electronically within 180 seconds. This makes it the fastest e-service of its kind worldwide. Depending on integration with related agencies, it is performed through highly developed processes that have been re-engineered to help customers benefit from the service with no human interference. It also adopts sustainability and helps raise the national economy. This project is in line with SDGs 5, 8 and 15.

Also in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage launched the Saudi Exhibition and Convention Bureau Portal, which is working to become a single point of contact for all dealers in the exhibition and convention sector in the Kingdom, in order to regulate the sector and development, and to encourage investments in this sector, as well as marketing the Kingdom as a destination for exhibitions and conferences (SDGs 8 and 9). From this standpoint, the Commission has launched the first phase of the portal of the exhibition and convention:

• facilitating everything related to the process of issuing licenses for exhibitions and conferences in electronic form;

• providing a reference for the process control of exhibitions, conferences and places of set-up, and monitoring and collecting statistics and information about important exhibitions and conferences held in the Kingdom;

• understanding the exhibitions and conferences sector behaviour, and knowledge of demand and supply in the sector;

• providing information and support for communications among the partners in the exhibition and convention sector;

• supporting e-marketing to exhibitions and conferences activities.

The Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia developed the Self-Service Human Resource initiative. The Ministry launched complete employee self-service, which includes more than 200 services to help more than 740 000 employees located in 48 different locations, to process their human resources services over the Internet from anywhere. Ministry of Education objectives for solving its business challenges are the following:

• Ensure that employees even in the remotest area get the best and most efficient services from the human resources department. Previously, employees had to visit the respective education department to get basic things done related to the human resources departments.

• Automate the manual processes to control efficiency and save time.

• Provide managers with key performance indicators to measure the productivity and efficiency of different human resources departments.

The solutions:

The Ministry of Education decided to launch almost all the services related to employees as online self-services through the Internet, which are available 24/7/365. With this solution, there is eventually no need for employees to visit the human resources offices. All these self-services have attached workflows for approvals; these workflows are designed to meet the Ministry of Education requirements.

These workflows are dynamic in nature and ensure that all the respective stakeholders related to that process approve the transactions. Dynamic alerts/notifications/SMS are designed to update the employee about the latest status of the process. Managers and human resources departments can generate online reports to review the transactions and measure the important key performance indicators. The Ministry increased the productivity, efficiency and proficiency of academic and non-academic employees by automating 100 per cent of human resources and administrative functions, by freeing resources to focus on core competencies. The project aids the advancement of SDGs 4, 5 and 17.

In Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO), working in partnership with the Ministry of Commerce and Investments (MoCI) and Saudi Label and Standards (SLS), has launched Takkad, a mobile application which enables consumers in Saudi Arabia to validate and verify the authenticity of a SASO quality mark and efficiency labels on products and to report fake SASO quality marks or efficiency labels The app is of relevance to SDGs 7, 12 and 13.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Justice has launched the Online Administrative Execution Service, an online service that allows beneficiaries to submit a request for a court order to be executed by filling in the details of the plaintiff and the defendant, and registering specific details of the court order such as its number, date, origin and type, with consultation from the selected courthouse to complete the application process. It has speeded up the overall process of administrative execution of court orders in the Kingdom, thereby allowing society to attain justice easily and swiftly, hence advancing SDG 16.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Justice has launched the Muwathiq, a very important service for the establishment of an agency’s or company’s contract documentation, which enables beneficiaries (individuals and companies) to incorporate their agencies and register company contracts at times that they were previously unable to do so at the notaries. This service helps individuals who are unable to visit the notary offices in person, for instance because of their work schedule or a physical disability, to benefit from the available notary services. An individual’s involvement in the transaction is confirmed by recording his or her fingerprint through a link with the “Absher” service (National Data Centre). This modern e-service is in line with SDGs 8 and 17.

Atta'a System automates the charities system in Saudi Arabia, converts them to electronic transactions and links them all in one system. Atta'a System offers several benefits and services for the Ministry of Social Affairs (the ministry responsible for charities in Saudi Arabia):

• Enhances the ministry's ability to supervise and follow up the work of charities

• Unifies the system used in all charities to ensure increased effectiveness of procedures

• Builds an accurate database for charities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The overall objectives of Ataa' system are:

• Integrity: Determines the disbursement of donations and charity funds and adjusts beneficiaries’ relations to charities’ staff

• Justice: Ensures donations and charity reach the beneficiaries, and aims to distribute donations evenly among beneficiaries according to the world poverty standard percentage in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

• Abstinence: Reduces the difficulties beneficiaries face so that they do not need to visit the charities frequently

• Transparency: Helps donors identify their money and ascertain who it will go to, and helps beneficiaries find out their share of donations

• Reliability: Fosters increased trust in the community work of charities.

The implementation of these goals is governed by a framework of information security, privacy and confidentiality, and is consonant with a significant number of established SDGs related to WSIS Action Lines.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Smart Navigation System is an initiative that revolves around developing a smart indoor positioning and navigation (IPIN) mobile application and solutions whereby users can use their smartphone to receive indoor voice-guided navigation and location-based information alerts to easily find and explore places and items in premises like shopping malls, museums or other large buildings catering to the needs of visitors.

Under the UAE-based start-up Smart Navigation System, the project relates to certain SDGs aimed at ending poverty, promoting economic development and sustainable industrialization as well as revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development (SDGs 1, 8, 9 and 17).

In the United Arab Emirates, Maqta Gateway is a state-of-the-art “ports community system” (PCS) that is designed in line with international standards and will serve the port and trade community by interlinking all the relevant parties involved in Abu Dhabi’s growing import and export trade business and facilitating information flow among them. These organizations include exporters, importers, ports, shipping lines, customs, and regulatory government agencies. Taking the “one-stop-shop” philosophy to a new level, Maqta Gateway will offer ports and eventually other trade channels a single point of contact and real-time information at any time of the day, even via mobile, significantly enhancing processing times and communication procedures. The Maqta Gateway is a crucial “bridge” for future business opportunities, both nationally and globally.

In such a way, the project meets a considerable number of sustainable development goals (SDGs 4, 8, 10, 11, 16, 17) on economic development, development of social life, business sector, global partnership, etc.

E-learning

In Egypt, the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank, in partnership with the Egypt ICT Trust Fund (an entity established by the Ministry of ICT of Egypt), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Ministry of Education of Egypt, has launched a project to support E-education for visually and hearing impaired students. The project exploits the power of ICT to break the vicious circle of social exclusion of people with disabilities. E-education was introduced in public schools for visually and hearing impaired students in Egypt, to improve their education quality and reduce the drop-out ratio. The project converted the curricula of the last two primary years (750 lessons) into electronic format, presented in sign language and audio files; deployed the e-lessons in schools (four schools); and shared them on a website, providing assistive technologies (around 142 000 visits so far). The project has prompted the government to consider generalizing the model to all schools for students with disabilities. This project helps in attaining SDGs 4 and 8.

Dr Salah Alnajem's Educational mobile application for iOS and Android smart devices provides a mobile tool which allows students and other users to join live and recorded lectures and webinars delivered by Dr Salah Alnajem at Kuwait University. The application allows users to participate and interact online in Dr Salah’s lectures thanks to videoconferencing, e-collaboration and virtual classroom technologies using HD video and audio in real time, thus offering worthwhile learning opportunities (SDG 4). The application also gives students access to Dr Salah’s learning management system (LMS), which allows them to download course materials, track grades, track attendance and sit online exams.

In Lebanon, the company Technology Sarl created the online initiative Ikraa Academy, developed with the objective of teaching the Arabic language to a wide audience around the globe, in line with SDGs 1, 4, 5, 8 and 16. Ikraa Academy has a long list of Arabic language courses, covering reading/writing skills, sciences, grammar and dictation rules, most commonly used Arabic words, courses to learn speaking Arabic and Arabic stories. Courses are appropriate for schoolchildren, adults who do not know how to read and write, and non-Arabic speakers around the globe who would like to learn the language. Ikraa Academy users register online for their courses and learn on their own. They can chat with teachers for support. Teachers can also create accounts to follow up on learners. The course uses audio and video techniques and are complemented with online assessments to evaluate user progress. Ikraa Academy is used by schools in Lebanon and also a vast audience around the globe.

In Oman, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has launched the Education Indicators System. The education indicators dashboard is one of the most important electronic tools used in making education decisions in MoE, as it offers analytical indicators in respect of more than 200 million statements on different aspects of education work. The electronic system takes its analytical readings from huge databases provided by the Education Portal. The dash-board helps decision-makers carry out accurate planning for the future. It thus serves SDG 4.

Launched by the Sultan Qaboos University, in Oman, The PresentationTube: A Network for Producing & Sharing Video Tutorials project aims to help teachers and e-content producers in Oman and many other countries to record and share quality video tutorials effectively. The project offers free presentation recording software and an online video sharing platform. The software allows educators to narrate and annotate slides and synchronize a variety of essential visual media. The online platform uses YouTube API technology to upload and stream video content. By the end January 2016, the PresentationTube project helped more than 15 000 educators and offered more than 3 500 quality video tutorials on various subjects and in many languages, including Arabic, English, Spanish, French and Malay.

Besides ensuring quality education, the project also contributes to revitalization of the global partnership for sustainable development (SDG 17).

In Palestine, the Al-Quds Open University created the initiative Introduction to Computer as A SMART Course. In 2016, after two years of preparation, Al-Quds Open University (QOU) announced for the first time the SMART courses model, and published the courses as Open Educational Resources (OERs) worldwide. Including the computer SMART course, eight complete courses are published online for both QOU’s students and learners worldwide. The computer course was offered for QOU students as a SMART course for the first time in the spring semester of the academic year 2016/17. And since that time, the course is offered each semester on 19 campuses of QOU in the West Bank and Gaza, and more than 8 000 students have been enrolled in this course so far. Moreover, the computer SMART course is designed and developed to take into consideration six principles: content modularity, diversity of learners, content interoperability, open accessibility, engagements and collaborations. The impact of these principles was clear on the survey results, according to the students. Also, the results indicated that the students’ attitudes have been affected. This project serves the purposes of SDGs 4 and 5.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Education developed the National Education Portal “iEN”, which is considered to be a safe and free-of-charge portal that supports digital empowerment in education and enriches digital content. It provides reliable e-educational services to all students, teachers, educational leaders, supervisors and parents. The iEN portal is built upon a solid infrastructure provided by the latest technologies with high connectivity tools to be the largest container for the educational materials and digital content that contribute to developing interactive e-learning content, that develops teachers’ capacities to use technology in the teaching and learning processes, integrating technology into curriculum and facilitating the student to learning basic scientific concepts by students. As the iEN mission focuses on the high-quality e-educational services, it provides simplified and attractive digital content to all students equally regardless of their citizenship, whether they are Saudi or non-Saudi, and overseas Saudi schools. iEN has proven its effectiveness and efficiency by bridging the educational gap at the southern border of Saudi Arabia due to the political circumstances, as iEN facilitates them to deliver the e-content to all students in order to pursue their education steadily. Hence, iEN has helped in solving the student dropout problem in the southern regions and ensuring sustainable education. Moreover, iEN is integrated with some mobile applications such as iEN quaran Quran (Mus-haf), (Alecso Apps Award 2017 for the best educational application in the Arab region). This programme is advancing SDGs 4, 9 and 17.

In Saudi Arabia, the King Saud University (KSU) endeavours to spread e-learning in order to provide a distinguished education. Thus, the Digital Courses Development Initiative conforms to international standards and meets the local educational needs. This initiative aims at providing appropriate tools for developing the faculty members' digital content (SDG 4). Its purpose is to develop their courses and train them in terms of updated methods and international specifications for developing their courses and managing them within the framework of the principles of instructional design and quality requirements.

The Doroob Program (meaning “paths” in Arabic), is another comprehensive national project in Saudi Arabia offering a complete range of technology-enabled tools and incentives, including theoretical knowledge through e-learning, practical experience through on-the-job training and certifications approved and recognized by major companies in the country. The programme aims to achieve a qualitative leap in the field of national employment, increasing the employability of the population, thus supporting the country's objectives for employment, “Saudization”, and achieving job security in the private sector (SDGs 4 and 8). Doroob helps to achieve the objectives of WSIS Action Line C7 – Information and communication applications: benefits in all aspects of life (E-learning).

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, in partner-ship with V Heart Tech Sdn Bhd, Mohd Fazidin Jabar and azid21@gmail.com, has launched Three-dimensional, multilingual and multiplatform virtual learning for Hajj and Umrah. This project aims to train people to perform the rituals of Hajj and Umrah correctly, and reduce as far as possible common mistakes made by people in the pilgrimages, through step-by-step learning techniques using the three-dimen-sional potential of sound and written text, as well as seeking to define non-Muslims who cannot visit the holy places in the sense of pilgrimage. The project is relevant to SDG 4.

A number of projects from the United Arab Emirates help to achieve SDG 4, on access to quality knowledge and education for all.

In the United Arab Emirates, AR Master Software and Design is a company that is investing heavily in Microsoft HoloLens, which is fundamentally a holographic computer built into a headset which lets users see, hear and interact with holograms within an environment such as a living room or an office space (SDGs 3 and 4). It is one of the latest wearable devices that support mixed reality technology. We have started a bundle of HoloLens applications that serve the following six different sectors:

• health;

• space;

• oil and gas;

• tourism;

• military;

• police.

The firm’s investments in Microsoft Hololens apps will increase productivity of each of these sectors from the bottom line, while streamlining vast public and private services and products through:

• facilitating training of personnel in several sectors;

• reducing lag and lead times in public service operations;

• improving health care through training healthcare professionals in daily practice;

• accomplishing long-term government strategies such as space missions;

• increasing national production at an economic level;

• providing a more secure environment for citizens and residents in the nation;

enhancing overall services and more from both a provider and user perspective

In the United Arab Emirates, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Smart Learning Programme has launched smart school transformation, undertaken in cooperation with the Ministry of Education (school principals and teachers), and home/society and global education and learning experts, and serving SDGs 4 and 5. The Smart School Transformation Framework (SSTF) has been developed as a systematic frame-work to improve the outcomes of learners and the community through effective strategic leadership of ICT in schools. The framework aims to develop a critical, strategic and unified understanding of the role and value of ICT. Furthermore, it provides an understanding of the role of technology for advancing student-centered teaching and learning. The framework strives to establish effective monitoring, evaluation and coaching skills in order to drive effective use of ICT. This enables education leaders to act as agents of change so as to promote effective use of ICT across the wider school community.

The United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) depends on ICT, as it is critical to its academic and administrative success. The UAEU has devoted a lot of energy to implementing the Mobile Solution for Enhancing Teaching & Learning project that allows the university community and society to stay connected to the university’s systems and services both on and off campus. It allows students, the faculty, staff and the public to stay connected with the UAEU network wherever they are and gives them easy access to UAEU resources while on the move using their tablets and smartphones, and includes real-time transactional services that support students in their academic programmes and student life.

Thus, the project accomplishes SDGs 4 and 9 on ensuring quality education and building resilient infrastructure.

The Dubai police created a Virtual Learning project by employing cutting-edge video-game technologies to create innovative virtual incidents ranging from crime scenes to traffic accidents to hostage scenarios in an engaging way. It allows the trainee to learn by doing, and to harness his skills in a safe and practical environment. The importance of such an innovative approach was realized early on as a means to enhance and support traditional learning methods. The Dubai police researched and developed many virtual products that have been replicated in many different fields and are shaping up a technological transformation in the methods used in learning in the police domain and beyond (SDG 4).

In the United Arab Emirates, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office is backing smart learning through e-games. The Khalifa Student Empowerment Programme launched an initiative that promotes learning through smart electronic games. The initiative supports the learning and educational process through video games, which are considered the best way and means to promote learning and awareness, thanks to their widespread availability on various devices and operating systems (Apple, Android, Windows) and because they contain educational messages for adults and children presented in a fun template. The initiative is considered an innovation and a smart way to improve the quality of education, helping to offer the wider community an affordable and enjoyable means to access educational content, in line with the thrust of SDG 4.

In the United Arab Emirates, the General Civil Aviation Authority has developed the Future Aviators website, at http://www.futureaviators.ae/. This activity forms part of the Emiratization campaign targeting the Emirati students and their parents, on the one hand, and the education system (teachers, principals and education counsellors), on the other, to raise awareness about the aviation sector and the potential career opportunities it offers for Emiratis. The aviation sector is considered to be one of the little-known sectors for a lot of people not only in UAE but in the world at large, leading to a shortage of staff working the in the sector. The website contributes to meeting SDG 4.

E-health

The Social Security National Insurances Fund of Salaried Workers (CNAS) of Algeria innovated the Evolution of the CHIFA System project based on use of the advanced technology chip card – the Chifa card. This is one of the measures taken to modernize the management of social insurances, improving the quality of services (SDG 3). The CHIFA System project focuses on two main areas:

• The first is based on the electronic health card – the CHIFA card-, a central database, a production site CHIFA card and proprietary applications for health professionals

• The second is related to the high availability the CHIFA system, through the establishment of back-up sites and duplication of connectivity.

Under government strategies for the simplification and facilitation of administrative procedures, the CHIFA system has evolved with the remote updating of CHIFA cards among health professionals.

In Algeria, LaSTIC Laboratory, Batna 2 University, has launched the Sensor-based system for the de-tection and self-treatment of nocturnal hypoglycemia with diabetic children, in line with SDG 3. The system's mission focuses on timely detection and automatic treatment of nocturnal hypoglycemia with young diabetic patients. Hypoglycemia occurs when the glucose level in the patient's blood is very low. It is particularly dangerous when it happens during a patient's sleep at night, and may even lead to the death if it is not treated urgently. The current solution to this serious healthcare problem relies on the patient's parents, who have to measure – once or twice a night – the glucose level in their child's blood and give him or her something sweet to eat (or drink) if it is found to be lower than the accepted rate. Our system intends to deal seamlessly with nocturnal hypoglycemia through two wearable modules: a hypoglycemia detection module and a hypoglycemia treatment module. The detection module includes a heart-rate sensor, while the treatment module contains a glucagon reservoir and a subcutaneous injection tool. When hypoglycemia occurs, the heart rate increases substantially, and this will be detected by the heart-rate sensor, which then orders the treatment mod-ule to inject the glucagon. If the problem persists and the glucagon reserve is consumed, the sensor sends a warning message to the parents' smartphone and/or to the house to trigger an audible alarm.

Another programme in Algeria, the Personal Medicalcard, is based on the idea a magnetic card, or an element of the Chifa card, where electronic medical prescriptions (medical identity) are initialized. This medical card will contain personal information concerning the individual’s state of health (chronic diseases, medical prescriptions, hereditary diseases, new symptoms, allergies). Electronic registers will be created, to include all information from all different parties: doctors, pharmacists, hospitals. As soon as there is a new disease, a special programme issues an alert so it can be treated quickly. The information is established and processed in one centre, by specialists in the medical domain and scientific research. The centre will also provide all the regions with different information on economic, social, medical and scientific issues.

This will help in obtaining urgent information for different treatments easily and quickly, thus ensuring healthy lives and sustainable consumption and production patterns (SDGs 3 and 12).

In Egypt, the ICT Trust Fund-UNDP developed and launched the Telehealth Services for Remote and Rural Areas in Egypt Programme. Despite the forward strides made over recent years in the Egyptian health ecosystem, the major challenge is the centralization of services in the country’s major cities, leaving isolated and rural communities with less than adequate medical services. The Egypt ICT Trust Fund-UNDP launched the programme in 2009 to provide better health services with good quality for people who live in poor and rural areas. It connects clinics in rural areas with central hospitals in the nearest big cities as well as main hospitals in the Capital (such as Paediatric Hospital, Alexandria University and Kasr ELAini Educational Hospital). The programme includes hardware installation with satellite Internet connection, as well as remote doctors training and consultant specialists hiring online. The programme served Siwa Oasis in the western desert and the Nubia area on the southern border. About 520 patients benefited from five clinics established in the two rural areas. Also, 48 doctors were trained. The Siwa project won the AGFUND prize for its uniqueness in application. It serves the advancement of SDGs 3, 8, 10 and 17.

Also in Egypt, Marwa El Nokrashy has launched the Telemedicine for Remote and Rural Areas in Egypt (TRRA) programme. Despite the forward strides that have been made in the Egyptian health ecosystem in recent years, the major challenge resides in the central-ization of specialized medical services in the country’s major cities, leaving more isolated and rural com-munities with less than adequate medical services. Accordingly, the Central Department for Community Development of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) launched the TRRA programme in 2009 with a view to providing better healthcare services and enhancing the quality of people's lives through a telemedicine solution. The programme served the Siwa oasis (average population 23 000) and the Nubia area (average population 50 000) and is now expanding its resources to cover all remote and border areas across Egypt. The project, which serves SDGs 3, 8, 10 and 17, is carried out in partnership with the Ministry of Health; Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT); Ministry of Higher Education; Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University; El Kasr El Einy Hospital World Health Organization (WHO); Arab Gulf Fund for Development (AGFUND); Vodafone Foundation; Orange Group CSR; Arab Doctors Union; and local NGOs in Siwa and Nuba.

In Jordan, the Computer Information Systems Department Faculty of Information Technology and Computer Science initiated the project IoT Smart Home, using eye tracking and voice interface for elderly and disabled people, fulfilling SDG 3. There are millions of elderly and disabled people around the world who can’t use the home appliances by themselves and therefore rely on other people to help them control appliances. As an example, many people in wheelchairs or elderly people who have trouble bending can’t reach switches to turn on and off the lights. Another example is where blind people or ALS patients who suffer from paralysis can’t move around to turn on a fan or heater or any other appliances. Another example is deaf people who cannot hear the doorbell and Alzheimer’s patients who might forget to turn off the gas in the kitchen. For elderly people or people with disabilities, making homes accessible is key to promoting independence and having the freedom to live as they choose. This project aims to develop a prototype of smart home for elderly and disabled people using IoT to control the home appliances by adding voice and eye-tracking interfaces.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) of Oman launched two projects that concern the health system of the country. They relate to such issues as economic development, equality in the country, contribution to sustainability and accountability of institutions and cities in the country (SDGs 10, 11 and 16).

The first project launched by the MOH, the healthcare information system (HIS) "AL Shifa System", can be defined as a comprehensive, integrated information system designed to manage the operation of the medical, administrative, financial and legal services in a hospital or networked healthcare units. The MOH has a comprehensive healthcare services management system (Al-Shifa 3plus) automating most processes of healthcare delivery in MOH hospitals and health centres to the extent of almost making them paperless. There are currently 200+ public healthcare institutes adopting this system across the Sultanate, benefiting around 85 per cent of public healthcare seekers in Oman. This “great success” encouraged the decision-makers of the non-MOH governmental healthcare providers to adopt the system too (MOH, 2012b). The “Al-Shifa 3plus” HIS is a client-server system. It is a fully integrated graphical user interface application system for hospital management. The objective is to have a connected, consistent and cohesive national healthcare services management system working within a defined legal framework that regulates the confidentiality and privacy of e-health information.

Another project from the MOH of Oman, the Ministry of Health Portal, is part of the strategic plan for the digital transformation of the Ministry of Health. The ministry aims to keep up the Sultanate’s trend to transform to e-government, as well as to develop the quality of the government health services. It also intends to reduce the digital gap and transform many services in order to ensure integration with various public and private institutions. The portal contains more than 100 e-services and is a joint cooperation between the Ministry of Health and the Information Technology Authority.

In Oman, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has created the e-Health Portal, which allows citizens to access vital e-services such as scheduling appointments, blood-bank services and employment services to name but a few. The automation of services has dramatically reduced processing times. The portal supports 114 e-services, with 81 transactional services, 30 of which are for the public, 23 for employees, 8 for the government and 63 for private companies. An additional channel of delivery of services to the e-health portal is offered by the e-Sehaty mobile application, which supports several e-services for citizens and patients, including informational, interactive and transactional e-services. This e-health development is relevant to SDG 3.

In Palestine, Al-Quds University has launched the Electronic Nose for lung-cancer detection.

Lung cancer is one of the malignancies causing deaths worldwide (e.g. 1.59 million in 2012). This makes it the most common cause of cancer-related mortality. There are a range of non-invasive diagnostic techniques used for cancer detection, but the problem with those currently available is that they are expensive and are not suitable for general screening purposes. In many cancer conditions, early detection increases the chances of successful treatment. An electronic nose (an e-nose is a device that identifies the specific components of an odor and analyses its chemical make-up) specifically designed for capturing and analysing breath samples maybe the best solution for detecting the presence of cancer as a first-stage diagnostic technique.

The India-Palestine Centre team working on the project, which relates to SDG 3, comprises ten specialists in different fields: embedded systems, networks and security, desktop applications, and mobile applications.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Health has developed the project Central Appointment System, which provides an improved end-to-end scheduling experience for primary healthcare centres and hospital services, eliminating patients’ need to visit the hospital multiple times to manage their appointments. The centralized integrated scheduling management system allows the patients to see all their scheduled appointments across all Ministry of Health facilities, and has improved patient engagement through multi-access channels (mobile, web, call centre), notifications capabilities and real-time updates. Reductions in no-shows lead to better clinical services utilization, potentially reducing emergency room visits for non-critical cases by directing patients to alternative service options. This project supports the implementation of SDG 3

The Ministry of Health (MoH) of Saudi Arabia innovated the Treatment Abroad system that allows for the e-submission of treatment abroad requests from more than 24 agencies and approval by the High Medical Committee and Minister of Health. The system automates five main processes divided into 28 workflow steps and provides means to facilitate communication among all related parties. The system provides the MoH management with dashboards, KPIs and statistical reports to help in the processes of decision-making, capacity planning and improvements, thus providing quality access to the health system of the country (SDG 3).

The Gezira Family Medicine Project (GFMP) was initiated in 2010 in Sudan, as an in-service training model for Sudanese doctors enrolled in the project and the training programme. The main objective of the programme is to improve the quality of health services provided in primary care (SDG 3.8). To achieve this goal, around 300 Sudanese doctors are recruited, trained in family medicine by means of a two-year in-service master’s degree programme, and relocated to different urban and rural areas. The Gezira Family Medicine Project represents a modern model in family medicine training that responds to local needs. The project copes with the regional strategy for upscaling family medicine training. Information and communication technology is a cornerstone in performing such a mission. The GFMP will hopefully provide a suitable model for other low-income and middle-income countries that share healthcare challenges similar to those in Gezira state, Sudan.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Salama Programme created the Dubai Health Authority Electronic Medical Record in June 2007, with an expanded vision to include strategic oversight for the complete health sector in Dubai and enhance private sector engagement (SDG 3). Dubai Health Authority’s aim in Dubai is to provide a smart, accessible, effective and integrated healthcare system, protect public health and improve the quality of life within the Emirate. Keeping the strategic plan in mind, the Authority’s mission is to ensure access to health services, maintain and improve the quality of these services, improve the health status of nationals, residents and visitors, and oversee a dynamic, efficient and innovative health sector. Prior to 2015, Dubai Health Authority renewed major parts of the legacy Hospital Information System. The legacy system is known as SAM, with a pharmacy application (iSoft) and application integration engine (Open Link). In 2015, Dubai Health Authority embarked on its transformation journey to replace its legacy systems with a state-of-the-art Electronic Medical Record (EMR-Epic) and Orion Rhapsody Application integration engine. These systems shall be used at all Dubai Health Authority hospitals and clinics. Additionally, the Authority also began to enhance customer experience through digitization. The customer experience enhancement was achieved through implementation of Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management, and mobile applications which were separate projects that ran in parallel to allow for systems to integrate and complete the customer experience. In February 2016, “Salama” – Dubai Health Authority’s Electronic Medical Record – was inaugurated by His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Bin Rashid, and a commitment by DHA was made to complete the project by January 2018.

The Dubai Health Authority in the United Arab Emirates also launched the E-Health Initiative, transforming Dubai into a leading healthcare destination by fostering innovative and integrated care models and by enhancing community engagement.

Values:

• Consumer centricity – To prioritize the individual experience in the care delivery process through a coordinated set of services that are tailored to the needs, safety and preferences of the consumers, and their families and caregivers. Individuals, with their families and caregivers, should be involved in decisions about their care and treatment.

• Efficiency – To maximize the value of healthcare services delivered by pursuing efficiency and appropriate allocation and utilization of resources.

• Engaged and motivated workforce – To create a work environment that can motivate and attract a talented healthcare workforce. The aim is to create an engaged, attentive and accomplished workforce that provides distinctive and compassionate care and foster patient trust.

• Accountability and transparency – To be accountable for delivering high-quality healthcare services that are accountable to the communities served. A system of responsibility and accountability should be put in place to track the process of health-related decisions and ensure that the process and results are transparent and clear to the public, patients, healthcare workforce and the communities served.

• Innovation – To embrace an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to clinical care that strives to enhance the lives of the communities served.

• Excellence – To aspire to the highest standards of excellence and professionalism in the provision of care.

• Access – To facilitate access to the world’s medical knowledge and locally-relevant content resources for strengthening public health research and prevention programmes, and promoting women’s and men’s health, such as content on sexual and reproductive health and sexually transmitted infections, and for diseases that attract the full attention of the world, including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, in line with SDG 3.

Launched by the Ministry of Social Affairs of the United Arab Emirates, Nomow is a free smart application which detects any type of developmental delay in children aged five years or less, within five developmental areas: physical, mental, communication, social and daily life skills. It is applied by parents using a smartphone before the child’s referral to specialists as part of an early-intervention programme. The idea of the application is to reach children who are under the risk of disability, in order to provide them with necessary services and then bridge the gap between their developmental skills and their ages, thus preventing any deterioration in their developmental skills at early ages.

The application relates to SDG 3 by ensuring healthy lives for children, as well as SDG 17 by revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development.

E-employment

In Kuwait, the Public Authority of Manpower of the Government of Kuwait initiated the project Ashal Service, a unique electronic service, especially to business owners and companies. It facilitates the procedures of recruitment of workers and the clearance of all transactions electronically on the website. Business owners must register on the E-gate (ashal), and automatically an SMS massage will be sent to their mobile phones, with a username and password. Ashal had around 40 services, and many advantages and features, as follows:

• All transactions regarding participating employees in the private sector are available through an online portal with easy follow-up.

• An SMS will be sent when the transactions are done, along with the status of the transaction.

• There is a full archive of the Commission’s transactions and employee data.

• Electronic payment of all transactions is available.

• Call centre and chat service are available 24/7.

• New users can register online, and there is online reset and change of password.

This application is in line with SDG 8.

Also in Kuwait, the goal of the Manpower and Government Restructuring Program (MGRP) is to support and encourage Kuwaitis to work in the private sector, and find innovative solutions for the development of national employment (SDG 8). A further goal is to direct the national workforce towards approaching non-governmental organizations and supporting small businesses. Services provided include:

• Financial benefits for Kuwaitis who work in the private sector

• Summer training courses in private companies for students

• Nominating Kuwaiti job seekers and fresh graduates for vacancies in the private sector and paying them allowances until they work

• Opportunities for employees discharged from the private sector

• Free training courses for those willing to work in the private sector

• On-job training for private sector employees

• Specialized training upon private company’s request

• Following up on the quota of Kuwaitis in the private companies to ensure that they have the maximum number of Kuwaitis.

In Oman, the Ministry of Manpower has developed the E-identity service. E-authentication services (PKI) for the ministry's employees was introduced in a bid to benefit from the e-services that came on stream in 2015. The new service relates to e-nomination of job seekers, e-licensing and e-authentication of Omani employment contracts. The service ensures a high degree of security, accuracy and credibility, and serves SDG 8.

In Oman, the Ministry of Manpower has created the Advanced Manpower Management system. This single sign-on system provides information for nearly 2 million employees working in 179 000 private-sector enterprises in Oman. It has three main services, with 28 sub-services, and integrates electronically with 26 government entities. E-employment is designed as a single access point to all employment services, automatically matching resources to vacancies. The e-work permit is designed as a single point for processing foreign worker permits online. E-complaint and e-claim is designed as an interactive platform allowing people to report labour violations by employers. The system serves SDG 8.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Education initiated the Safeer Graduates Programme through the efforts of the Ministry to consolidate the relationship between the educational sector, students and graduates on one hand, as well as societal organizations on the other hand. The Ministry, through the Safeer System, has built the programme for graduates to certify this partnership and establish channels of communication between the graduates of study-abroad programmes and the various societal organizations through which the graduates’ information will be provided to employers and the societal organizations concerned. In addition, the system has been developed to provide career opportunities for graduates who wish to present their CVs at the Safeer Graduates Programme. The Ministry of Education’s commitment is focused on creating channels of communication between graduates and the various entities to present their CVs without involvement in the recruitment process. The Safeer Graduates portal receives two types of users: graduates and entities. Safeer Graduates plays an important role that creates a fertile environment for recruitment and training in order to upgrade graduates’ skills to serve the national development and vision of the Kingdom. This project is closely related to SDGs 3, 5 and 8, promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all.

The Ministry of Education of Saudi Arabia created the #YourJob_and_YourScholarship Program in order to address the critical need to create a partnership between the job market and Saudi students around the world. The third stage of Saudi Arabia’s scholarships programme targets alignment of the job market, scholarship graduates and the Kingdom’s vision of moving to a knowledge-based economy. It is a massive employment/scholarship programme to create over 50 000 job opportunities while advancing citizens' education to higher levels of knowledge and capabilities.

This effort was designed to further develop Saudi Arabia’s information society commitment to gender equality, citizens’ education and empowerment, and social justice among citizens (SDGs 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10).

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Civil Service (MoCS) has launched Jadarah, an electronic recruitment system serving Saudi citizens seeking jobs in the public sector. Jadarah is complete sys-tem that can be used by government organizations, to register their staffing needs; by citizens, to register on Jadarah and respond to recruitment campaigns; and by MoCS staff, to verify applicants’ information and manage recruitment processes. The project is relevant to SDGs 8, 9 and 10.

Also in Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Labour and Social Development has developed Electronic Advanced Services for Enterprises (EASE). The EASE labour-sector project currently serves more than 11 million working citizens and expatriates, 18 per cent of whom are female, and supports more than 1.8 million enterprises. Since 2007, it has offered a transparent, direct and easy-to-access communication channel that contributes to securing labour and employee rights. Over this period, an incremental increase in employment opportunities has been achieved through the EASE project, helping to boost the developmental renaissance in Saudi Arabia. By 2016, it had prompted an exponential increase of 723 per cent in female recruitment opportunities in Saudi Arabia.

The project, which addresses SDG 8, is carried out with a number of partners: National Information Centre, Saudi Ministry of the Interior; Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Saudi Ministry of Commerce and Industry; Governmental Services Bus Centre (Saudi.Gov.sa portal); Saudi General Organization for Social Insurance; Saudi Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs; Department of Zakat and Income Tax; Saudi Council of Engineers; Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) - support for project-management consultation; Boston Consulting Group (BCG)- support for ministry workflow and policy restructuring; Peppers and Rogers Group (PRG) - support for ministry services and e-services re-engineering; Ernst & Young (E&Y) - support for ministry strategic planning and development; Palladium Group - support for ministry strategic planning and development; Horváth & Partners Management Consultants - support for ministry strategic planning and development.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Education has launched Ien Future Leaders. The ministry is seeking to optimize investment in its human resources and give qualified staff the opportunity to apply for leadership roles, in or-der to prepare the next generation of educational and management leaders capable of developing education-al services and reviving education, accompanying Saudi Arabia’s wide-reaching development march, and helping national efforts to hoist Saudi Arabia into an advanced place amongst world nations. The project is consistent with SDGs 4, 5 and 10.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority initiated the programme Our Future Career Guidance Tool. The youths of today are the leaders of tomorrow, and as the technology arm of the Government, it is one of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority’s responsibilities to enable them through technology to make the right decisions that align with the United Arab Emirates’ vision for a self-sustainable country in a post-oil economy. We focused on bridging the gap between the world of education and the employee market by creating and applying a system that enabled youths aged 16–18 to become ambitious, determined and well prepared for their future careers (SDGs 4, 5 and 8). The “Our Future Career Guidance Tool” was carefully developed and engineered to cater to the needs of the evolving nation of the United Arab Emirates and the world as a whole. With the help of the Ministry of Human Resources, the system has been fed with valuable information regarding the market needs and, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, we reached out to the many students in this country. As a result, the system has enriched and enabled the youths in the United Arab Emirates region to become successful people once they start pursuing their careers, overcoming issues such as unemployment, low expert rates, and overall employee performance. It removed the uncertainty and hesitation among students and put them on correct career paths at a young age.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Police initiated the Smart Recruitment project which aims to provide a fully electronic mechanism for dealing with the entire job application process – from the department’s vacancies, to submission of applications, posting of resumes, management of interviews, sending of job offers, tracking of applications, receipt of correspondence, setting of dates for interviews and finally the selection of eligible candidates.

The project meets SDG 8 by achieving productive and full employment in the country, providing the necessary conditions to contribute to its economic growth.

E-environment

In Algeria, the National Agency for Water Resources, in partnership with the African Development Bank (AfDB), has launched a project for the establishment of a geographic information system, with the following main objectives, consistent with SDG 6:

• structure all water resources data in a single repository for the exchange of information

• implement a GIS to facilitate decision-making and water resource management actions and interventions; and

• launch and implement the GIS.

In Algeria, the National Sanitation Office (ONA), in partnership with the EU Support Programme for the sanitation and water sector (EAU II), has launched the deployment of the national geographic information system for sanitation. ONA is modernizing by adopting a national sanitation-oriented GIS, as an aid to strategic decision-making, and a means of optimizing in-field interventions at local level by mapping heritage remediation in this GIS database. These achievements, which help to advance SDGs 3 and 6, have been possible thanks to the human and material resources mobilized by ONA, and technical assistance provided by the GIS expert of the EAU-II support programme

In Jordan, the Princess Sumaya University for Technology initiated a Smart City Environmental Monitoring Ad Hoc Network and Analysis Relying on Data Mining and Big Data Techniques. A new integrated environmental monitoring system suitable for smart cities initiatives was designed and implemented to carry out real-time measurements on board a set of moving vehicles. It is composed of an arbitrary number of electronic measurement units, a smartphone application to relay collected data, and a cloud Central Processing Platform to perform analysis utilizing data mining techniques and big data algorithms. Each electronic measurement unit consists of an electronic circuit that incorporates an ultraviolet sensor, an air particles concentration sensor, a temperature sensor and a humidity sensor (and can be expanded to include many other environmental parameters) that all interface to a microcontroller. Bluetooth is employed for communication between the electronic measurement unit and the smartphone application, while a 3G/4G cellular communications network furnishes the wireless connectivity to the remote Central Processing Platform. When the collected data reaches the designated cloud server (Central Processing Platform), it is immediately stored for subsequent analysis. Finally, big data statistical analysis (clustering and classification), mapping and plotting are performed to deduce correlations and to facilitate inferencing. Moreover, the scalability and low cost of selected components of this realistic system make it very feasible for large-scale deployments in the context of smart cities initiatives, ad hoc designs, or educational projects. This programme advances SDGs 3, 11, 13 and 15.

The Environmental Monitoring Information System of Kuwait (eMISK) is an ambitious system initiated by the Environment Public Authority (EPA) of Kuwait. It aims to establish, build and maintain a comprehensive geo -environmental database for Kuwait along with an enterprise-level geographic information system (GIS) for accessing, updating and analysing the environmental data. This geo-environmental database is made available through eMISK to decisions makers and stakeholders, outside agencies and the public at large.

The main goals of eMISK include raising awareness at all levels of Kuwaiti society in regard to the values of the environment, and placing authoritative scientific information at the centre of decision-making (SDGs 11, 13, 14 and 15).

In Morocco, the Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Faculty of Sciences and Techniques of Tangier developed the project Disaster Emergency System. Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms that are the essence of life. It also means protecting the individual against serious threats or danger. Therefore, we need to develop new ways of thinking to design better solutions and new intelligent systems that solve our current problems and help people in their survival, their lives and their dignity. In this context, we present in this project a new concept to create an adaptive system to save lives and help the individual in all kinds of danger. The main objective of this system is the implementation of a new intelligent system that serves to provide services in a fast and efficient manner. It also helps them to cope with less damage or guide their choices using a suitable solution based on the environmental data integration; and based on IoT according to their profiles and situation in line with SDG 3. Our interests are the trust, efficiency and quality of our system, which will guarantee proficient operation, depending on the services offered by the system before, during and after the disaster. The essential objectives of the Disaster Emergency System are to: (a) reduce the probability of accidents; (b) warn the public about the behaviour of the disaster or emergency; (c) reduce the severity, if the disaster occurred despite the taken precautions; and (d) provide an automatic and adaptive navigation guide.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) has launched the E-Licence programme. E-licence is a smart solution that automates the process of obtaining FANR’s core business services. It enables organizations to register, apply and check the status of their appli-cations for services online; and FANR to receive, track, control, create, maintain, inspect and decide on those applications. The services covered by this smart solution include:

• Applying for a licence for a regulated activity using radiation sources

• Applying for an import/export licence for radiation sources

• Notifying FANR of the transport of radioactive materials

• Providing FANR with inventory lists

• Providing FANR with dose records

• Viewing inspection schedules and reports.

The e-licence programme, which addresses SDGs 9, 11, 13 and 17, aims to improve the services pro-vided, enhance sustainability, protect the environment, create and maintain databases and spatial data, minimize risk, maximize emergency preparedness and optimize response, provide better control and instantaneously updated and precise records, and share such records with relevant national and international organizations as deemed necessary.

The United Arab Emirates adopted the concepts of "e-government" and "smart government" as part of the UAE Vision of 2021, in the firm belief that the provision and development of e-services is no longer an option, but a pressing necessity and a national commitment, which the ministries and governmental organizations are striving to fulfil, with the aim of developing and smoothly delivering their services to all beneficiaries, and increasing their contribution to enhancing UAE’s competitive capabilities at the international level, taking advantage of the advanced infrastructure and the in-creased level of awareness of use of smart technologies.

With this in mind, the Ministry of Environment and Water (MoEW) has introduced a comprehensive e-framework based on a multi -channel communication network, transforming all its services into smart services in record time. In this context, MoEW has implemented M-Environment, a smart reporting application developed as the ideal analytical tool, which helps decision-makers to analyse and monitor work progress, e/m-applications and the extent to which the service level agreement is dynamically applied, on a map of the country, along with a detailed screen with the associated statistics. M-environment aims to:

• Encourage and increase agricultural areas in the country

• Facilitate re-engineer the procedures governing the services

• Provide the latest technologies, such as online payment and multiple channels for service

• Enrich the animal wealth

• Encourage and preserve the wealth of fisheries.

The M-Environment application is an innovative tool to help sustainability and reduce the time, effort and resources needed to complete requests, by enabling the M-Environment app on different platforms and channels. It contributes to building resilient infrastructure, safety in cities, combating climate change and desertification, and conserving oceans, seas, etc. (SDGs 9, 11, 13, 14 and 15).

E-agriculture

In Egypt, the National Research Centre has developed the Smart Climate Agriculture Farming by using Internet of Think, Geographical Information Systems Big Data and the Expert Agriculture System. Smart farm technology exposes farmers to a wealth of new possibilities that could increase their production. The information available to them through wireless sensors could contain data on livestock, crops, soil, environmental conditions, machinery and many other factors. These elements constitute very critical components of production in every farm (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11 and 17). A better understanding of this information puts the farmer at an advantage compared to a farmer without this technology. This platform provides out-of-the-box components and application programming interfaces to dramatically reduce time to market and efforts to develop smart farming solutions, projects and sustainable development. The platform is device-agnostic. This solution can feed and analyse the data from any sensor, connected device or application. One can save up to 90 per cent of development time for smart farming projects by using Internet of Think, Geographical Information Systems Big Data and the Expert Agriculture System.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) initiated the Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM) programme that serves Somali government institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), development agencies and UN bodies engaged in assisting Somali communities whose lives and livelihoods depend directly on water and land resources. The programme aims to provide high-quality water and land information, crucial to relief, rehabilitation and development initiatives in Somalia. The use of ICTs to accelerate, improve and multiply the effects of this work has been a hallmark of the programme since the beginning and remains a key component.

The project is linked with a considerable number of SDGs, fighting against poverty and hunger, ensuring healthy lives and access to water, promoting economic growth and sustainable industrialization, etc. (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 13 and 15).

In Sudan, the Gedaref Digital City Organization (GDCO, a civil society NGO) and its partners have developed an e-agriculture project. Owing to significant variations in crop prices and lack of information, farmers sell their crops at low prices. Moreover, there is severe conflict between farmers, shepherds (nomads) and the forestry department. The e-agriculture project is a public-private partnership (PPP) for community development. It provides good opportunities to invest in telecentres for better sustainable development. The project’s objectives are as follows:

• Development of agriculture through ICT

• Development of national and global online crop marketing, including for illiterate farmers or those with poor computer skills, to help them sell their products (SDGs 1-5)

• Exchange of knowledge and best practices between farmers to establish strong partnerships in the interests of improving agricultural practices so as to increase crop yields and reduce the cost of crop production (SDG 17)

• Enhance capacity building and improve the quality of training in the agricultural sector, thereby promoting the country’s economic growth (SDG 8)

• Develop the e-map of the Gedaref State’s natural resources to help farmers monitor their farms from any location via satellite (GPS), thereby reducing inequalities between them (SDG 10)

• Disaster control and conflict resolution between farmers, shepherds and the forestry department (SDG 15)

• Achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and pursue the SDGs.

In Tunisia, I.T.Grapes has created the Seabex e-monitoring and smart automation system for agriculture, which aims to help farmers make a better use of avail-able resources (especially water, energy and fertilizers) and to produce more, in larger quantities, with better quality, and at less cost. The implementation to date is only the visible tip of the iceberg. Seabex in its current phase constitutes the first step towards the digitization of agriculture. Where we used to talk about drip irrigation, today we talk about smart irrigation and smart agriculture. To create a sustainable world it is necessary to be able to access the right information at the right time and act accordingly. Seabex’s mission is to make agriculture more accessible and more productive, with appropriate use of natural resources, in order to build a safe future in terms of water and food. The system is being developed in partnership with the governmental Agricultural Extension and Training Agency (AVFA) and the Institute of Arid Regions (IRA) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, and advances SDGs 2, 3, 6, 12, 13, 14 and 17.

E-science

In Kuwait, Abdel-Majeed Safer, in partnership with Ayman El-Sharkawey, has developed the histonano.com website (HNS), designed to educate readers interested in specific nanotech-nology-related subjects, and of particular value for scientists and researchers. Ever since its inception in 2012, feeding and continuously updating the website’s substantive content has been ongoing. The HNS attempts to identify, certify and pro-vide in-depth information to researchers, as well as offering the latest textbooks, journals, graphics and videos, to enhance users’ knowledge. The results of published papers concerning HNS are currently being compiled as an ongoing and active. The website serves the objectives of SDG 4.

In Saudi Arabia, the Tatweer Company for Educational Services (T4edu) launched the project Muslims’ Contributions Portal, a safe and free national portal that is aligned with Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 and considered as an effective e-solution to achieve the educational objectives. The portal is available globally for all schools’ students and teachers equally, regardless of their citizenship – whether they are Saudi or non-Saudi, including refugees from Syria and Yemen, and even overseas Saudi students – to enhance their innovation and creativity capabilities. The portal idea was inspired by the fact that many scientific inventions in various fields were originated by Muslim scientists. Hence, this valuable heritage has to be retrieved and presented to encourage our students’ innovation and creative thinking. Thus, the first release of the portal was developed to include 50 contributions from the Year 180 AH up to the present. These contributions were selected carefully, based on their relevance to the academic syllabuses, and they cover 12 different fields, including medicine, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, mechanics and others. The portal interfaces design was inspired by the ancient Islamic architectural style. The contributions content was designed educationally by experts in Instructional Design. The portal represents the contributions in an attractive way, with a knowledge presentation approach featuring, for example, video clips, interesting games and experiments from daily-use materials. It targets developing students’ skills in building creative self-guided inquiry activities. The portal’s content is accessible for all interested people and can be utilized in classrooms by teachers. Finally, all users are free to submit their feedback and recommendations on the frequently updated scientific content. This portal helps the advancement of SDG 4.

C8. Cultural diversity and identity

In Egypt, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina initiated the project Memory of Modern Egypt, which is an attempt to create the ultimate digital repository for culturally and historically significant material pertaining to the modern history of Egypt, starting from the French military expedition upon Egypt in 1798 until the end of Anwar Sadat’s era in 1981. The material was gathered and digitized from the collections of specialized libraries belonging to eminent Egyptian politicians, authors and historians, as well as content from numerous institutes and private collections related to the modern history of Egypt encompassing the past 200 years. Memory of Modern Egypt content has been scanned, catalogued, indexed and made compatible with optical character recognition, in order to create a repository that is fully searchable and accessible to the public and scholars, to ensure knowledge dissemination and enhance the promotion of learning opportunities for different generations. Moreover, it was considered as a way to promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation in 2005. There are two navigation axes. The first allows users to navigate through five main entry classifications: rulers, prime ministers, subjects, events and public figures. The second allows users to browse material by entry type, with 14 different categories available: photos, documents, articles, news, maps, speeches, books, audio, video, adverts, covers, currency, stamps and medals. Links are established between these two axes to ease the location of material of interest when they exist in more than one category. The repository sets out to become the definitive resource for Egyptian historical material and designed to allow the continuous accommodation of new resources whenever available. As such, this project is in line with SDGs 4 and 9.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Egypt also initiated the programme Bibliotheca Alexandrina Virtual Museum, which is an application developed by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, in the framework of constructing virtual museums which could be easily replicated and applied in all Egyptian museums. Fulfilling the mission of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina to endorse the dissemination of knowledge, the project uses the latest ICT technologies to preserve the natural and cultural heritage, while ensuring effortless accessibility to different cultural collections for future generations (SDG 4). The Bibliotheca Alexandrina Virtual Museum application depicts the Antiquities Museum located at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina with all its artefacts, and promotes the museum experience through a simple presentation of the archaeological and historical data. In addition, the project has several features that connect the different storylines of multiple museums worldwide and avail them to users all around the globe, in the comfort of their own homes.

In 2015, Egypt saw the start-up of Kotobna, the first online self-publishing platform in the Arab world, which has published more than 400 e-books, downloaded more than 25 000 times. Kotobna is an MIT Enterprise Forum Pan-Arab Region competition winner 2015. Its partners are Mohammad Gamal and Sherif Shaker. Kotobna helps to advance SDG 4 in the Arabic-speaking world.

In Jordan, the UNICEF Innovation Lab in Lebanon, UNICEF Innovation Lab in Kosovo (United Nations Security Council resolution 1244-administered Kosovo), UNICEF Jordan, UNICEF Syria, UNICEF State of Palestine, and national and international NGOs and governments have initiated the Engagement Monitoring System, a real-time monitoring mechanism that monitors the outputs and quality of Youth Asset Development Programmes in Jordan, Palestine and Syria. The Engagement Monitoring System was developed by UNICEF Regional Office in partnership with UNICEF Kosovo and Lebanon Innovation Units. Designed to be user-friendly, the Engagement Monitoring System is based on innovative open source technology. The data entry is done through KoBo and the visualization is done through Power BI. These two tools have been integrated into a unifying platform through web technologies. The Engagement Monitoring System has been developed to track the three aspects of the programme based on the Positive Adolescent Development Theory of Change: programme coverage, programme outputs and programme quality. The monitoring activities of the Engagement Monitoring System involve systematic quantitative and qualitative data collection throughout the project; this enables stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of project implementation, identify strengths and weaknesses, learn from successes and challenges to improve the quality of the programme for young people, and be accountable for programme performance results. By doing so, UNICEF and partners will be able to make informed decisions to improve the ongoing adolescent engagement programmes and enhance the formulation of future engagement interventions, and also contribute to SDGs 3, 4, 8, 10 and 17.

Also in Jordan, the Because I Care project is a digital sisterhood, an online portal that acts as a nonprofit. The portal was launched on 1 January 2015 in Amman. It is active in gathering all knowledgeable women from different sectors, experiences and backgrounds in one online forum. It believes in women’s power, change, self-reliance, social responsibilities, and limitless motivation. Because I Care mostly trusts that human natural calling is to “CARE!” Because I Care’s future aim is to be the one and only female task force in Jordan, and to support the “Care Act”, driven by women, ideas and projects, as its higher purpose is to create a digital sisterhood. Through the website, users are enabled to create their own profiles, Surf VIP Women’s profiles through the online directory, engage with knowledgeable women through the Highlighted Faces corner, share CVs, create public discussions, establish connections, build networks, share interests, and announce activities, business ideas, corporate social responsibility and training. This project is in line with SDGs 10 and 16.

In Palestine, Visit Hebron – Palestine is a Palestinian youth initiative dedicated to promoting the city of Hebron in Palestine though unique online resources, mainly a website www.visithebron.ps and a social media account www. facebook.com/visithebron, although we also offer postcards, a city map, posters and other souvenirs. Hebron boasts a number of landmarks, including its old city, holy sites, markets, the Russian Church, Abraham’s Oak and other sights. One of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities with a history spanning over more than six millennia, Hebron has seen its share of great events and civilizations that have left it with a tremendous cultural and human heritage. The project is in line with SDGs 10, 11, 16 and 17.

UAEPedia (uaepedia.ae) is the online encyclopedia of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) created by the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA). UAEPedia documents the rich culture, history and heritage of the Emirates along with the selfless leaders whose vision shaped the country. It aims to be the only authentic knowledge repository about the UAE providing information in Arabic – the native language of the land. UAEPedia is the first collaborative effort for preserving, enriching and spreading awareness about the cultural diversity and identity of the UAE. It is being developed in collaboration with 15 federal government entities. Each entity has assigned one or more “knowledge ambassadors” to contribute to UAEPedia by adding new articles and enriching existing ones.

The encyclopedia thus ensures inclusive and equitable education, contributes to the safety and inclusivity of cities and promotes peaceful societies (SDGs 4, 11 and 16).

C9. Media

In Algeria, Algeria Broadcasting has launched a project to increase television broadcasting capacities. As part of the digitization of the broadcasting infrastructure, Algeria is deploying a national TV broadcasting network. This migration to digital terrestrial television, in addition to offering more programmes with better quality, will allow the deployment of broadband wireless access and therefore boost ICT capabilities.

In Jordan, the 360Moms.net enterprise developed a project creating Arabic original content around parenting and children’s mental and physical health. The 360moms.net project was started due to a need to solve a problem that current Arabic content around parenting and children’s mental and physical health is mostly outdated, or translated from unknown sources. Parents can easily make bad decisions based on bad content. We believe that adding original high-quality trusted content will change a whole generation, because it all begins with good decisions made by parents. Empowering parents through knowledge will create a thriving generation. We created the only online parenting platform in collaboration with some of the best experts in the world, in a personal and transparent approach. Our content is brought to users in the form of articles, videos and workshops. We launched 20 months ago, and have already published 1 700 original articles, and have 56 000 followers, without any marketing budget. We also organize monthly workshops for parents. This project supports SDGs 8, 10 and 17.

In the United Arab Emirates, the M-Government TV Program was created by the Prime Minister’s Office committee as part of the m- Government Initiative of May 2013, launched by H. H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. It is a weekly TV programme dedicated to the m-Government Initiative. As such, it highlights the progress of the initiative in terms of m-transformation and provides information about the new ways of accessing government services while stressing the ease and convenience of the innovative technology. Being accessible to a large public, the programme contributes to the reduction of inequality in the country and promotes a peaceful and inclusive society, giving everyone equal access to information (SDGs 10 and 16).

C10. Ethics

The awareness training initiative by the Khalifa Empowerment Program for Students in the United Arab Emirates is designed to create a programme at the national level that provides awareness in the fields of Internet ethics, Internet safety, cybercrime and best practices in the use of social media. The 360 Degrees of Student Awareness programme synergizes the efforts of over 50 governmental organizations in the interests of creating a developed and ethical generation of UAE citizens. The project contributes to several SDGs by ensuring equitable quality education, resilient infrastructure, the provision of lifelong learning opportunities for UAE citizens and revitalization of the global partnership for sustainable development (SDGs 4, 9, 16 and 17).

Dubai Police has employed cutting-edge video-game technologies to develop Electronic Awareness Games for communicating awareness messages and strengthening the national identity and sense of belonging in the United Arab Emirates. The project uses innovative and engaging methods for delivering notions of awareness to the community in the form of games which serve to communicate messages, concepts and lessons in awareness and to strengthen national identity among different sectors of the community, especially students, through video games running on smart devices. The games contain awareness and learning messages in an interesting, enjoyable and fun form for both children and adults.

The project is fully in line with SDG 16 on ensuring quality educational content for everyone and the promotion of a peaceful and inclusive society.

In order to strengthen the State’s endeavours to serve as a model and an example in the provision of care and attention to children in the areas of education, health, culture and security, and to encourage institutional creativity and innovative ideas, the Ministry of the Interior of the United Arab Emirates launched the smart wearable technology service known as the Hemayati Child Protection project. It is a creatively and innovatively styled smart band that enhances smart security concepts for the protection and care of children.

The project ties in with several SDGs on healthy lives, quality equitable education, peaceful societies, building resilient infrastructure and safe and sustainable cities (SDGs 3, 4, 9, 11 and 16).

In the United Arab Emirates, the Khalifa Empowerment Programme for Students, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) and the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), has launched Aqdar CYBER C3. The exponential rise of Internet use in the UAE has given the country unprecedented access to a world of information and ideas. While government and individual institutions’ firewalls offer some protection against the threat posed by sites and social media platforms that are ideologically and culturally inappropriate, the rapidly evolving nature of the Internet makes it essential that all members of the UAE community become well-informed digital citizens. CYBER C3 provides a fully integrated programme of information, aware-ness and understanding for students in grades K-12 and in higher education that empowers them as responsible and thoughtful users of the Internet. The programme helps to achieve targets under SDGs 4, 9 and 16.

C11. International and regional cooperation

In Algeria, the Algerie Telecom Company has launched the Trans-Saharan Fibre-Optic Backbone initiative. The project is closely linked to the African highways project to serve the continent. The most interesting thing is that we exploit the civil works involved to get the fibre and we will build two highways: one for the exchange of goods and the other for information exchange. The scope was restricted to the trans-Saharan section and connects six countries: Algeria, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Tunisia. The Trans-Saharan Fibre-Optic Backbone has been attached to the Trans-Saharan Highway project comprising transcontinental road projects in Africa being developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, and the African Union in conjunction with regional international communities to connect all population concentrations, on its path through roads to other parts of the country and logically to the outside world by means of: telephony, digital television and data network, including Internet. The new Trans-Saharan Fibre-Optic Backbone will connect the localities and multiply the international passages through the backbone:

• from Chad to the exit of the Red Sea in Sudan;

• from Chad to the exit of the Atlantic Ocean in Cameroon;

• from Niger to the Benin exit (Cotonou) of the Atlantic Ocean;

• from Niger to underwater exits linking Burkina Faso (Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Senegal (via Mali));

• from Niger to the exit of the Mediterranean via Algeria;

• from Niger to the Nigerian exit (Lagos) on the Atlantic Ocean.

In its complexity, this project supports SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16 and 17.

Also in Algeria, the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO)–Maghreb'2014 project has been launched, entitled Fourth International Symposium ISKO-Maghreb'2014- Concepts and Tools for Knowledge Management. The objective of the ISKO–Maghreb chapter is to contribute in understanding the factors that organize knowledge and the phenomena that affect the information society. Actions to be undertaken by the scientific ISKO society must take into account the socio-cultural and economic environment. Going from information to the knowledge society, it requires interaction with science and technology associated with academia, and the private and government sectors. Therefore, education, science, culture, communication and information technologies remain the major themes covered by the ISKO–Maghreb Symposium, towards development of knowledge management, skilled leadership and collective intelligence. In a friendly atmosphere, hospitable and open to exchange, the international symposium ISKO–Maghreb was thought to enhance the scientific society ISKO with academia and the practitioners in the Maghreb countries and worldwide. The duty of good governance is to consider sharing of knowledge related to scientific and technological progress. This programme is in line with SDG 17.

In Palestine, Al-Quds Open University launched a project promoting OER Concepts, Reuse and Practices in the Arab Countries, in line with SDGs 4, 5, 8, 16 and 17. A self-learning open online course called OER SMART Course has been developed according the results of the needs assessment that were conducted between August and September 2017 in Palestine and Jordan with the objectives of:

• raising awareness about OER concepts, use and evaluation;

• enhancing Open Educational Practices;

• understanding the creative commons licenses;

• designing SMART learning scenarios for OERs;

• understanding the international guidelines to adopt OER in official education.

This project was proposed by Al-Quds Open University in Palestine with a partnership with the Ministry of Education in Jordan and funded by the UNESCO Cairo office. The main targets of those workshops are:

• building the capacity of the 40 experts (academics, teachers and decision-makers) to act with confidence as trainers in OER, also disseminating the OER course to their colleagues and students;

• establishing an OER movement and community in Palestine and Jordan, which can be expanded to other Arab countries, forming the basis of an Arab House of OER.

In the area of disability and technology, after being a member of the focus group on the Regional Arab ICT Centre for Persons with Disabilities, and recognizing that ICT services can provide engineers/ researchers with many new ideas, the Association of Digital Development of Tunisia established the Zero Group Accessibility for Access to Information and Knowledge project, which works to encourage regional, national and international cooperation among various stakeholders and provide them with specific actions aimed at improving the status of persons with disabilities in the context of ICTs for increasing access to education, knowledge and information, e-learning, public information, social services and, ultimately, job opportunities. The Zero Group’s objective is to highlight and reduce dig-ital ignorance among all persons, with or without disabilities, by providing learning platforms, mobile learning and cloud computing, as well as training for IT professionals such as educational program-mers, software and content developers and web designers. More details can be found in the following useful links: http://bit.ly/1RE4EAv; http://itu150.org/story/july/; https:// www.youtube.com/watch? v=wvzR88W1wZw; http:// on.fb.me/1S09cl5; http://on.fb.me/1SCoM6g; https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FoPJ898O8zE; http://on.fb.me/1Kvr5ju; http://bit.ly/1KvsZko; http://bit.ly/1JqGAOP; http:// bit.ly/1S0eZHn .The project, which is carried out in partnership with the Ministry of Communication, Technology and Digital Economy in Tunisia, thus relates to a number of SDGs, touching upon such issues as poverty, education, gender equality, access to modern energy, safety of cities, promotion of peaceful societies and revitalization of the global partnership (SDGs 1, 4, 5, 7, 11, 16 and 17).

During the past decade and since the establishment of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), which is the Administration of the United Arab Emirates at ITU, the country has been at the forefront of regional and international cooperation, contributing to ICT Development in the Arab Region. Whether in terms of assistance in the implementation of specific regional and international ICT4D projects, the chairing of regional groups in the preparatory processes for major ITU conferences, the hosting of all major ITU events over the past five years or support for the implementation mechanism of the WSIS outcomes (i.e. the annual WSIS Forum including the WSIS+10 High Level-Event), the UAE’s TRA has been at the forefront, having thus earned its reputation as a key facilitator and credible partner among the ITU Member States. In the interests of further enhancing its role, TRA looks forward to taking this international cooperation to higher levels in the future (SDG 17).

As the United Arab Emirates moves towards its aim of being an information economy, and towards the Ministry of Interior’s vision of smart government, the importance of cybersecurity awareness cannot be underestimated. Over the past decade, the Biennial International Cyber Crimes Conference (IC3) has been the premier cybersecurity conference in the Gulf region, attracting an audience of leaders, decision-makers and professionals in the field of cybercrime and information security. Past conferences have seen high-caliber speakers who have delved into, analysed and elucidated issues relating to information security and cybercrime at the operational, tactical and strategic levels. The topics covered have included online financial crime and money laundering, cyber fraud, compliance, privacy and identity management.

The conference relates to the global partnership and collaboration in order to combat cybercrime (SDG 17).

Also in the United Arab Emirates, the IPv6 Roadshow provides hands-on training in IPv6 deployment. Working with governments and industry in the Arab region and technical experts from around the world, it provides practical capacity building to network operators. Launched in 2011, the Roadshow is a joint initiative of the RIPE NCC (Ripe Network Coordination Centre) and MENOG (Middle East Network Operators Group). A total of 30 events have been held in nine countries across the region, providing instruction to some 1 000 participants. A "train the trainer" programme (whose first graduate delivered an IPv6 Roadshow in November 2015) will see the initiative evolve to meet the growing demand for IPv6 capacity building and empower local technical communities.

The programme provides quality education, promotes sustainable industrialization and fosters innovation (SDGs 4 and 9).

Conclusion

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) remains committed to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process, and to implementation of the WSIS goals beyond 2018. ITU recognizes and highly appreciates the extremely valuable contributions made by stakeholders to enable the continuation of WSIS monitoring and reporting. There can be no doubt whatsoever that, in today’s fast-moving world, innovation and efficiency are vital to success. Accordingly, the WSIS Stocktaking Report in the Arab Region 2016-2018 shares with you the most recent updates and success stories in the WSIS stocktaking process of this region.

The Web 2.0 WSIS Stocktaking Platform continues to foster implementation of the WSIS outcomes and to facilitate exchange of information among 350.000 members representing governments, the private sector, international organizations, civil society and other stakeholders. As the Web 2.0 platform continues to flourish, so does the promotion of social development and economic growth through ICTs. We continue to maintain and improve the WSIS Stocktaking Database, which contains around 10,000 entries this year. This encouraging outcome reinforces stakeholders’ belief in and commitment to the WSIS Stocktaking process and their desire to share best practices.

In addition, the WSIS Overall Review called for close alignment between the WSIS process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, highlighting the crosscutting contribution of ICTs to the SDGs. In this context too, WSIS Stocktaking is evolving to become the unique global process for the collection of information on actions carried out within the framework of WSIS, while underlining their contribution to implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

We are also pleased to announce the launch and official WSIS Stocktaking 2019 call for updates and new entries relating to new ICT-related projects, via our WSIS Stocktaking platform. All stakeholders benefit from the sharing of interesting case studies, as this undoubtedly facilitates the transfer of knowledge, experiences and models for project implementation. The WSIS Platform helps to create partnerships and to provide greater visibility and add value to ICT projects all around the world. The many and varied stakeholders who have implemented innovative projects and contributed to the success of the WSIS Stocktaking process deserve our sincere gratitude. We urge all stakeholders, along with all Member States, international organizations, the private sector and civil society, to continue submitting such contributions in the future as WSIS pursues the ongoing stocktaking process and prizes contest.

We trust that readers will find this report on the ICT developments in the Arab Region insightful, and sincerely hope that it will inspire them to participate in the construction of a broader and more inclusive information society for all.