 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 here in Bucharest, Romania, where I've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio today by Dr Saoud Al-Shawali, who is the Director-General of Policies and Governance and the Head of the National Space Programme at the Ministry of Transport and ICT for the Sultanates of Oman. Dr Shawali, thank you so much for joining us in the studio today. Thank you, Max, for giving us this opportunity to talk about the ICT sector in Oman. What are its strengths? What are its opportunities? I think I would start talking about the governance of the sector. In Oman, we have the principle of separation of authority. We define precisely in the sector who should do what. So we have the Ministry at the top in charge of drafting the legislation and the national policies and strategic direction for the sector. The Ministry is supported by the regulatory authority, telecom regulatory authority, which is in charge of regulating the telecom sector. They issue the regulatory execution and all these issues and then at the operational level we have the operators who are the licensee to provide the telecom services. The telecom sector in Oman has been liberalized since 2002 by the time when the telecom law was issued by a royal decree. Since then, the sector became partially owned by the government and partially owned by private investors. By 2005, the second and the actual liberalization started when we introduced the second operator who is fully private owners. So as we speak now, we have three telecom operators who are, we define the telecom operators in classes, class one, class two, class three, without going into those details. But the class one, who own the infrastructure and they provide the service, we have three at the mobile site, telecom operator mobile site. So that's how the structure of the telecom sector in Oman. The main strength is that in Oman we have the legislative base for the sector, which gives certainty for the investors, which gives certainty for the user of the services. It protects the right of all stakeholders involved in the sector. We have, in terms of infrastructure and coverage in Oman, mobile coverage in Oman reached 135% of the population. So all populations being covered by mobile coverage. And it reached also nearly 100% in fixed coverage. We have broadband fixed coverage. It reached something like 75%, okay. The telecom sector contributes to 1.7 of the national GDP. That is the telecom sector only, not including the IT industry. I mean, and it offers jobs for nearly 6,000 employees in Oman. That's all working in the telecom sectors. In the infrastructure side, the sector owns the maximum number of submarine cables in the whole region. Telecom operators in Oman own 20 submarine cables that connects the internet from east to west of the globe. This is a major internet gateway for the country and for the region, which, I mean, open the way for future expansion and investment in the ICT sector, including the data centers and cloud services. So these are the key things of the sectors. There are huge investment opportunities for local and foreign investors. I think it's not the right time now to detail that. But I mean, as I said, the legislation, the government incentives and support package for the investors, the infrastructure in place, all these bave the way for investment to flow to the country. Now Oman is embarking on a long-term development strategy known as Oman Vision 2040. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about this. Well Oman Vision 2040 is the true north for the whole national activities in the country. It was approved by His Majesty, the Sultan Haitham, just, I mean, by 2020. This Vision 2040 is a unique in the approach it was developed. It has a wider participation from all, I mean, from all, I mean, spectrum of the society. Individual, private sector, civil society, government, private sectors, defense, security. All those people participated in developing that this vision 2040. It starts by identifying the national priorities, what will be the socioeconomic sectors that will attract the attention of the government in terms of development and more investment to develop them. And then identify after that what are the strategies and policies that we need in place to support that national priorities. And then they identify pro- and clear governance, who should do what, who will be responsible about executing that particular program, what will be the reporting mechanism, just to avoid the duplication and at the same time to avoid an empty space where nobody is taking action, okay. And then following to that they identified programs. Those programs are divided across the various government entities and private sectors. They distribute the execution of the programs, they identify who is the owner, the leading in the execution and who are the supporting entities who are steered and toward those. And I think one of those which is falls within the ITU scope and within the ministry of ICT scope is the digital economy program. I was going to ask you, Oman has developed a digital economy strategy. Perhaps you could talk a little bit about the key pillars and the ultimate objectives of this strategy. True. I mean, ministry of transport and ICT has two arms. Transport and logistics, so it contributes toward Oman Fission 2040 from two arms. Transport and logistics, that is one side and ICT sector and digitalization from the other side. For the ICT sector to contribute efficiently, we develop the digital economy program. It has to be aligned with the Fission Oman 2040. In that, I mean, basically the digital economy program is the economic ecosystem that is enabled by the ICT product and services to enhance the productivity, to save time and resources, to do, I mean, to improve the life of the individual in the country because the ultimate objective is the individual, how they perceive the government services. This digital economy program is not, and it wasn't born just by 2021. It emerged over time. It started since 2003 when the government approved the EOMAN strategy. By 2003, the government started the digitalization of the services, moving from the paper and physical way of delivering the services to digital services. We call it electronic government and then that continues transforming many of the office-paced services to electronic through internet. That is enabled by enhancing the connectivity, enhancing the speeds of the internet. By liberalizing the sector, so the competition in the telecom sector will enhance the coverage, will enhance the speed, accessibility to the services will be much easier. By 2014, the government approved the national broadband strategy. So we have now the e-services, but we need better. We need integration between the different government entities and between the different service providers, because moving from physical to electronic, still there is a silo. Everyone is providing their part in isolation of others. We need to integrate them, but in order to integrate them, we need the supporting environment. The beginning, it comes to the connectivity. How you connect those different entities in a reliable speed, which is broadband, okay? Besides, and then by 2040 it was approved and the government established a government company, state-owned company, as a government arm to execute that strategy to make sure all government and non-government are connected to this broadband and then the citizens and the local have access to those services. We continue in the journey until by 2020 we said, oh, now we have many things in the place. We can move to the digital economy. We have legislation in place. We have the telecom law. We have, as we speak now, personal data protection law. We have e-transaction law. We have e-criminal law. That all law supported also by other policies when it comes to open data, the flow of data between the different entities. We have national cloud first policy. So we developed all that ecosystem. Now we bring all these together in digital economy, okay? Now the digital economy is not talking about electronic government, it's talking about smart government in which there is no duplication, in which there is an integration, in which there is cloud. So every entity is connected with other integrated in the cloud. So if, for example, a data X is required by 10 entities, me as benefits of the services I will not provide it 10 times, I'll provide it only one time. And the rest they can access it from the same place. That is the smartness. It enhance the efficiency and it reduce the time required to deliver the services. It reduces also the resources required to deliver the services. So that's how we move to government services. So the key things in the smart, I mean, in the smart governance is the integration between the different entities. So no one is working in silos. And of course reaching that we have gone through a journey by bringing all those together, identifying who are engaged in a particular services. We conducted workshops and labs locally to identify who is engaged. And to question, to challenge the business situation, I mean, is X entity really required to be part of that process? Or just it happens it is in the process. So if it's not required, then take it off, let them do something else. And oh, but an entity is supposed to be part of this, then bring them in. So we reprocess, we're re-engineering the process of delivering the services. Also the digital business and digital society. We cannot talk about the smart government without bringing the community, whether industrial community or civil community, civil society or industrial society, bring them up to speed because it is for them. If the government flourish everything and put them crystal nice and clean, but from the beneficiary side, no one can benefit from that. Then what for? It's a pointless. But I mean, we have done a parallel efforts. Smart the government, we're smart in the government, but at the same time we digitalized the society. In the industry, we identified in alignment with the efficient 2040, what are the priority socio-economic sectors? We started identifying what are the process there? How can we digitalize the process? How can we link them with the government, private and government, bring them together? And then at the same time, we continuously, since 2003, conducting awareness and upskilling for the civil society. How they become ICT-award. How is it ineligible? How to use it? How to contribute in this digital world? So that is basically, I mean, how we moved from fission 2040 to digital program. Digital strategy also have different programs within each. We have digital transformation. We have space program, which is I am leading. We have artificial intelligence and advanced technology. We have cybersecurity. We have a program focusing on the following, the infrastructures. We have E-business programs. And those programs are not all owned by the ministry. They have owner somewhere. We just bring them under one umbrella just to align the efforts because they fall within the digital economy. They have parts or large parts. They have big stake on the digital economy. For example, the e-commerce is owned by ministry of commerce. We just make sure we align. We supported them in terms of infrastructure what they need. We support them in terms of connectivity. We support them in terms of policy and legislation. So we are aligned. But they own it. They champion that one and we pack them up. Cyber security, we own it in the ministry and other supporting agencies are teaming with us. Space program is the same. We own it in the ministry, but other supporting entities are teaming with us. I wanted to ask you, you have been having a lot of conversations here at the ITU planning potential conference. I am sure with all the member states that are gathered here, you have told us a lot of things about Oman. What would your overriding message be to the member states here but also to our wider audience? Well, the government in Oman have made a lot of infestiments to develop the various socioeconomic sectors to make it attractive enough for the local and foreign infestiments. Besides that, the government also identified incentive packages. So we have, I can assure everyone who listens to us that we have everything in place in terms of legislation that protects the right, that protects whatever they put in the country or they take from the country is being protected. We have, I mean, global standards when it comes to policy and legislations, we have also eased the process of flowing, I mean, flying to the country. And we, I mean, we welcome. And if anyone has any questions or any concern about what is happening in the country or what are, they need further details, they are, I mean, pleased to, I mean, approach us in the ministry or approach ministry of commerce, which is in charge of, I mean, promoting their infestiment in the country. Dr. Sayod El Shwally, thank you so much for joining us in the studio. You've definitely given us a great insight into what's happening at the moment in South Canada, Oman. And we look forward to catching up with you again very soon. Thank you very much. It's really a great opportunity. I mean, as you and I, we wish it is a bit longer than that in which I can, I mean, express what we have in the country and make the message much better, much clearer. Thanks again for the opportunity and looking forward to meet again. Thank you. You're welcome. My pleasure.