Page 150 - Are You Future Ready?

2.7
Middle East: Using

data to enhance

competitiveness

My trip to the United States to participate in the Esri User
Conference in July 2018 was very rewarding. The five-

day intensive conference showcased new geographic
148 information system (GlS) applications to 18,000 users
around the world. Some countries are racing to take

advantage of information technology and overtake others
via a gap jump, which is very impressive.

For example, when we talk about the Middle East, we
only think of oil and desert in the past. However, when

we saw the female custodian of Dubai’s IT policy at the
2017 Esri conference, she talked about how to shape
Smart Dubai, which massively subverted people’s previous

deep impressions of the region. This is not an individual
case. I met another outstanding Middle Eastern woman at
the conference in 2018 – H.E. Dr Rauda Saeed Al Saadi