MSC Malaysia to host largest ever Saudi public sector delegation at Gitex 08

The public sector delegation from Saudi Arabia, one of the largest at Gitex 08, represents and includes some of the most senior Saudi officials from the Ministries of Defense, Finance, Health, and the Interior, as well as the Kingdom's Communication and Information Technology Commission, the National Guard, Riyadh Development Authority, Saudi Food and Drugs Authority, and the Saudi Industrial Development Fund.

According to research from analysts at IDC, Saudi Arabia is expected to spend $20bn this year on ICT solutions. Spurred and supported by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a significant percentage of that figure is earmarked for the public sector, to provide functional eServices to the Kingdom's citizens and businesses.

One of Saudi Arabia's leading IT decision makers Engineer Ali Al-Soma, Advisor to the Minister of ICT and Director General of the Saudi e-government program, said that Saudi Arabia's streamlined rules and regulations have attracted more foreign investments but the Kingdom still needed to fully develop its human capital.

Al-Soma said:

"The local ICT industry now contributes more than five percent to the Kingdom's GDP, but our goal is to create an economy based on knowledge and learning. That's the basis for our increased spending, and we're keen to explore ways of working with countries such as Malaysia who were the first to pioneer and pilot e-government initiatives."

Malaysia's Electronic Government initiative was launched in 1997 to lead the country into the Information Age. With the aim of improving how the government operates internally, as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. Malaysia's huge e-government initiative began in 1997 with the launch of the Multimedia Super Corridor's E-Government Flagship Application. Since then, the Malaysian Government has made large strides in areas such as electronic procurement, project monitoring, and human resource management.

For example, the Malaysian MyGovernment portal, an initiative spearheaded in 2003 by the Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) took the top prize in the public sector award category at the 2008 Global ICT Awards.

In addition to that, the Malaysian world E-Government (EG) ranking has improved immensely this year. By far, out of 198 countries, Malaysia has progressed in the Brown University (BU) Global E-Government Report from the position of 157 (2005), 36 (2006), 25 (2007) to 11 (2008) with a score of 42.8.

This steady rise in ranking is accredited to an assessment of all government portals and websites undertaken by MDeC of which they adopted the criteria by BU.

"Malaysia was one of, if not, the first to understand the concept of e-government, and what it can do for both individuals and businesses. We sincerely welcome all of our Saudi guests as they look to develop solutions that fit the needs of Saudi society," said MDeC CEO Badlisham Ghazali.