The “Maldives 2.0” Summit, held to implement the government’s digitalization policy, has concluded. The closing ceremony was presided over by President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu. The “Maldives 2.0” Summit was held from the 10th to the 12th of this month at Bandos Nasandhura. Maldives 2.0 is a program inaugurated under the special initiative of the President, bringing together all state institutions to work collaboratively to lead the Maldives towards revolutionary and reformative changes in the digital sphere. Maldives 2.0 is a project launched to usher the Maldives into a new digital era, aiming to provide fast, secure, and transparent services. This project aims to bring revolutionary changes to how government services are provided to citizens and how institutions are administratively run through digital means, with the goal of producing results within the next 3 years.
The ‘Maldives 2.0 Digital Transformation Summit’ was a summit held among relevant government institutions to strengthen the service system in this field. At this summit, important decisions were made regarding policies included in Maldives 2.0, such as strengthening cybersecurity, facilitating trusted digital transactions through internationally standardized digital IDs, establishing a data exchange layer for secure and instant transfer of personal information and data between state institutions, establishing a sovereign cloud for secure storage and archiving of sensitive information from state institutions, facilitating citizen-centric digital delivery of government services as much as possible under one roof, building a digitally future-ready generation, and expanding opportunities for Maldivians and Maldivian businesses in the ICT sector.
After discussions by relevant agencies at the summit, the National Digital Declaration based on these matters was presented to President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu at the closing ceremony. Speaking at this ceremony, Saeedha Umar, Managing Director of Trade Net, highlighted that the Maldives 2.0 Summit was a very successful summit. She noted the participation of high-level state officials and ministries, and the technical and constructive discussions that took place. She also mentioned that the summit revealed a great deal of interest among relevant agencies in achieving the goals of Maldives 2.0.
“We believe that we all need to work very closely together in the digitalization effort. And since this field requires building skills and expertise relatively, it was a major suggestion from the participants of this summit to make such summits involve many advanced countries in this field and include their experiences,” said Saeedha.
The summit featured presentations by 3 keynote speakers and 10 papers were presented and discussed. A special panel discussion related to this topic was also held during the opening ceremony. The President has decided to make Maldives 2.0 an annual summit.
With the reforms implemented through this project, services will be designed to be accessible with a few clicks instead of physical and digital queues. The government reveals that instead of the perception of separated islands in governance and service provision, and the feeling of using separate systems for service delivery, the citizens’ perceptions and experiences will be transformed to that of a country receiving services through a connected network.
