Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

SQU, ITA sign cooperation programme

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MUSCAT: Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) and the Information Technology Authority (ITA) signed “Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Capacity Building and Development” Programme.


This programme comes as the fruit of collaboration and synergistic efforts of SQU and ITA to build capacities and development of FOSS solutions.


The programme reinforces the strategic partnership between ITA and SQU; implementing the recommendations of the “Deployment Roadmap of FOSS in Oman” study; and to follow up on the recommendations of the 3rd FOSS-Oman conference, which was held at SQU in February 2017.


The cooperation programme was signed by Dr Ali bin Saud al Bimani, the Vice-Chancellor of SQU, and Dr Salem al Rizaiki, CEO of the ITA. Prof Hadj Bourdoucen, Dean, College of Engineering, Dr Ahmed al Maashri, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and officials from ITA attended the ceremony held on September 7.


The cooperation programme seeks to boost the awareness of the benefits of using FOSS solutions in public and private sectors; and to reinforce the role of FOSS in harnessing innovation and entrepreneurship. It aims at building capacities through training programmes on FOSS software, systems, and skills in order to localise these FOSS solutions and make them of more use to the country.


The other objectives of the programme include: encouraging entrepreneurs to adopt FOSS in developing solutions and application to promote national products; developing FOSS applications and solutions for the public and private sectors; and providing the necessary technical support; providing technical consultancy to projects that adopt FOSS in both the public and private sectors; developing regional cooperation to support the efforts of this partnership, transfer the knowledge, and localise this technology in the Sultanate; and cooperating in proposing projects to set the regulations that considers FOSS as one of the available alternatives in relevant tenders.


ITA and SQU have agreed to provide the required human resources from both parties in order to provide the necessary platform to achieve the objectives.


This shall be done in cooperation with other relevant entities in the public and private sectors.


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