The second edition of the Crown Prince Award for Best Government Service Application was launched, Minister of State for Institutional Performance Development Yasera Ghosheh announced.
The award is part of the strategic cooperation between Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the field of modernizing government services.
The announcement came after a meeting of the award's Higher Steering Committee, held at the Prime Ministry in the presence of Crown Prince Foundation CEO Tamam Mango, and representatives of the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, the Queen Rania Award for Distinguished Teacher, and the King Abdullah II Center for Excellence, with participation of representatives of UAE government via teleconference.
Ghosheh said that the steering committee approved adding five new sectors to the second edition of the award, namely agriculture and food security, youth, social affairs, refugees, and security and crisis management, while the first round included education, health, transportation, business environment and tourism, bringing the total of number of sectors to 10.
"The addition of the agriculture sector came in response to the Royal Directives to give it all due attention as it considerably supports national economy, particularly in crises that could affect global food security, as His Majesty stressed, during a number of field tours to agricultural enterprises in various regions of Jordan, the importance of ensuring a sustainable strategic food stockpile of the Kingdom," the minister added.
She called on university students to demonstrate their capabilities and come up with an app facilitating the provision of government services that meet the criteria of efficiency, effectiveness, usability and innovation, noting that registration will start in November for a period of two months while the results will be announced in March, 2021.
The award, valued at JD100,000, is provided by the UAE government, with JD50,000, JD30,000 and JD20,000 for the first, second and third place winners respectively.
UAE's Assistant Director General for Government Services Sector, Mohamed Bin Taliah, stressed that the exceptional circumstances imposed by the novel coronavirus pandemic reinforced the importance of investing youth skills to develop digital transformation strategies and e-government that would enable eligible countries with a solid technical infrastructure and smart government services to manage the repercussions of the global health crisis.
"Countries will be able to contain the repercussions of the pandemic by employing technology in vital areas such as telecommuting and distance learning, economics, health and other fields" he added.
