IT Experts: Crown Prince's Directives Constitute a Significant Boost to Jordan's Digital Transformation Journey

They explained that the use of artificial intelligence in the health, education, and transportation sectors helps to anticipate challenges and make decisions, while the automation of routine procedures helps to reduce errors and increase efficiency.

His Highness had emphasized during his chairmanship of a part of the Council of Ministers session last Wednesday the importance of continuing to develop successful experiments emerging from the National Council for the Future of Technology, such as the Digital Health Center, which provides telemedicine services, and the "Sind" application, which has achieved clear progress in digital services for citizens.

His Highness pointed to the need to improve data management in the government sector to benefit from artificial intelligence tools in analysis, extracting indicators, and making accurate decisions at the right time.

The representative of the communications and information technology sector at the Jordan Chamber of Commerce, Engineer Haitham Al-Rajabah, confirmed that the directives of His Highness the Crown Prince represent a significant boost towards a digital, data-driven government that employs artificial intelligence to improve service levels.

He pointed to the importance of linking and unifying government databases and increasing their accuracy through the establishment of a national system for government data governance, based on unified standards for data definition, quality, updating, and determining the owners and authorized users, alongside building a unified government integration layer that allows the interconnection of government systems through application programming interfaces and a unified digital identity, eliminating the need for citizens to submit the same documents and information at each government agency.

He explained the importance of creating a government intelligence platform, as a direct technical translation of the directives to employ artificial intelligence in analysis, extracting indicators, and supporting accurate decision-making at the right time.

He said that expanding successful experiments, such as the Digital Health Center, represents an important axis in the coming phase, whereby they are developed into a national digital health network that connects hospitals, health centers, rare specialties, and supports appointments, transfers, and remote consultations, with the employment of analytics and artificial intelligence in areas permitted by medical and legal regulations.

Al-Rajabah noted the importance of establishing a system for measuring the performance of digital services, based on clear indicators, such as average completion time, number of steps, percentage of transactions completed entirely digitally, number of times a citizen visits an institution, percentage of failures, user satisfaction, service abandonment rate, and government cost per transaction, explaining that cybersecurity and privacy are part of the design of digital services from the outset.

For his part, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Information and Communication Technology Companies (INTA), Fadi Qatishat, confirmed that Jordanian companies possess the expertise and capabilities necessary to meet the needs of institutions in digital transformation and artificial intelligence, stressing the importance of leveraging these capabilities to translate the directives of His Highness the Crown Prince into more efficient government services.

He said that linking databases between ministries and institutions, ensuring their updating, accuracy, and secure exchange, contributes to reducing repetitive procedures, speeding up citizen transactions, and providing a basis for information analysis and support for government decisions.

He called for building on the experience of the (Sind) application by expanding services and improving their ease of use for different segments of society and developing proactive services such as notifications of the imminent expiration of official documents and vaccination appointments.

He pointed to the importance of training government staff in data analysis, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity, and enhancing the roles of data scientists and digital transformation experts, to ensure the sustainability of development, explaining the association's role in strengthening communication between government agencies and Jordanian technology companies and highlighting the capabilities of member and emerging companies, thereby opening the door to benefiting from their expertise in developing solutions that meet the needs of institutions and citizens.

Qatishat affirmed that INTA can contribute to identifying opportunities for cooperation, knowledge transfer, and linking government needs with local expertise, thereby supporting the sector's participation in digital transformation projects and accelerating the development of services, including telemedicine and financial services.

For his part, IT consultant and expert Engineer Abdul-Hamid Al-Rahma said that His Highness's interest in digitization is directly linked to the citizen's life, confirming that His Highness's chairmanship of the recent Council of Ministers session and his raising of digital transformation and government services issues confirm that this file is receiving direct attention at the highest level, extending the continuous royal support for the development of the electronic government and the construction of a modern state.

He added that the (Sind) application, with its ongoing updates and development, has become a qualitative leap in the journey of electronic government services by bringing together a large number of digital services and documents on a single platform.

Al-Rahma pointed out that Jordan possesses the infrastructure and competencies capable of achieving the desired digital transformation, affirming that His Highness's interest and follow-up of this file makes technology a real means of developing state institutions and providing services more quickly and easily, improving the citizen's life by saving time, effort, and money.