According to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the Gulf Cooperation Council e-Government Executive Committee has decided to launch the GCC e-Government Portal and the e-Security Network in March 2015. This coincides with the GCC e-Government Ministerial Committee Meeting. The decision was taken during a GCC Executive Committee Meeting, hosted by Qatar on February 18. Every GCC nation already has its own e-Government portal. These include: www.saudi.gov.sa, www.government.ae, www.bahrain.bh, www.e.gov.kw, www.oman.om, and www.gov.qa. During the meeting in Doha, the participants discussed a preliminary list of services to be included in the GCC e-government portal at the initial stage, in addition to the latest developments with regards to the networking project among the GCC countries, in the framework of the strategic guidelines of the Gulf e-government portal. The link is ready, infrastructure has been mobilized and necessary legal procedures are being taken to launch the project. Saudi Arabia submitted a report on the network and terminal linking of the GCC countries and the areas that may benefit from this network. The Kingdom had previously undertaken the building of a secure e-government network for GCC countries, which includes the GCC Unified Traffic System to be applied and the GCC e-Government programs, by linking the six e-Government programs of the member countries that link all government agencies in each country. The Kingdom also submitted a proposal for the linking of the GCC countries through the e-government program of each country, via a secure cloud, ensuring that each e-government entity in each state would be the unified channel for the exchange of data between local sectors. This proposal will reduce cost and effort, will provide a safe environment for the exchange of data and will allow each country to communicate directly and confidentially with the other country during the exchange of data within the cloud. In addition, it will avoid any obstacles relating to the identification of the host country during the data exchange. For his part, Ali bin Saleh Al-Soma, Director General of the Saudi e-Government Program (Yesser), provided a press statement after the meeting of the Gulf Cooperation e-Government Executive Committee, pointing out that the GCC e-Government network would link the e-government programs in the GCC countries, aiming to provide an easy, mutual exchange of civil service data between the GCC countries. “The network will serve GCC citizens directly in all of the services without the need to move from one country to another. The services that were reviewed during the meeting include traffic violations, business and corporate establishment services, as well as the country-to-country customs and tendering services and some mobility services at airports,” said Al-Soma. “We will arrange for a list of all the services that will be launched by the Portal according to priorities.” The Director General of the Central Agency for Information Technology in Kuwait, Abdullatif Al-Surayie announced that the pilot linkage has been launched for the networks of some countries, namely Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He added that the remaining countries would join the network by the first week of March.
