The State of Qatar Informative Web Portal

Jihad M. Alja'am, Khalid Al-Habsi, Attala AL-Yazory, Nasser Al-Sada, Mohamad Al-Souli
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Qatar University
Doha, Qatar

Abstract—This paper describes the electronic government project environmental research work. In infrastructure, the country is
in the state of Qatar known as Qatar Central Government Portal rapidly expanding and it will become very soon the richest
(Hukoomi e-Gov). It highlights the main online services that are country in the word. Investments in new construction are
offered to Qataris citizens and residents. The main objective of evident everywhere. Around 1000 new towers in Doha city are
the e-Gov portal, as claimed by its project manager, is to achieve expected to see the light in the near future. In addition, Al-
the highest performance in executing governmental transactions Wseel, a new modern city will be built in a period of 5 years to
electronically, through streamlined business processes and accommodate around 200,000 new residents.
integrated information technology solutions. Although this web
portal offers an important range of online services, it lacks
however, in information about the state of Qatar like schools and
education, entertainment, tourism and monuments, banking,
malls and shopping centers, hospitals and health care centers, etc.
Thus, an informative web portal about the country is needed. It
should be the main point of access to information about Qatar
and complement its e-Gov portal, Hukoomi. New visitors and
potential residents can then get the necessary information about
the previous facilities through this informative portal. Many
modern countries have developed their business and informative
portals. We discuss in this work the design and characteristics of
our proposed informative web portal about the state of Qatar
and we propose a disambiguation algorithm to retrieve the main
documents related to the user query.

Keywords: e-Government, e-Services, Qatar Web Portal,

Disambiguation.

I. INTRODUCTION
The state of Qatar is currently playing a pivotal role in
many areas. In gas industry, the country is the second provider
in the world; in media Al-Jazeera Qatari channel is a leader in
broadcasting unconstrained, free and authentic news; in
science, Qatar has opened widely the door. Many well-known
universities have opened a branch in Qatar, like Carnegie
Mellon, Texas A&M, College of the North Atlantic,
Georgetown, Weill-Cornell Medical University, etc. In
addition, the new Qatar Foundation Scientific Park will be a
centre of excellence to conduct basic and applied research in
different fields. Qatar is focusing heavily on research activities
and electronic services. The government has decided recently
to allocate 2.6 of its revenue to research activities in all filed
that can serve the country, the region and the world. In
December 2007, the first conference for expatriate Arab Figure 1. The new towers being constructed in Doha City - Qatar
scientists (QFIRST 2007) took place at the Doha, the capital of
Qatar. This conference brought together leading Arab To facilitate the living of Qatari citizens and residents and
expatriate scientists and Qatari scientists and decision makers enhance the modernization of the country, the local authorities
to enhance the national research vision of Qatar and establish a launched in 2003 a large-scale IT project to automate its main
knowledge-based society and sustainable economy in the governmental services. This project known as Qatar Central
country. Three new research centers are being created which Government Portal (Hukoomi e-Gov), offers currently an
will focus mainly on information technology, paramedical and important number of online services. The potential user
(individuals or entities) can then initiate and complete a
demand for a specific task in only few minutes. These on-line
services beat standing in-line for long hours and reduce then
the number of visitors to governmental administrations offices.
Thousands of Qatar's residents prefer to use currently this
portal for their online services and the number of daily
transactions carried out through it exceeds all expectations.
Figure 2. Snapshot of the e-Gov Qatari portal www.e.gov.com.qa
Although the e-Gov web portal offers an important range of
online services, it lacks however, in information about the state
of Qatar. This can be justified as Hukoomi can be considered as
Qatari e-Business portal. It is clear that a complete informative
web portal about the country is necessary. Digital visitors can
have then one point of access to information about Qatar. We
aim in our project to design and develop an informative web
portal about the state of Qatar that will give information about
the main entities in the country. This informative portal will
complement the e-Gov portal which will contain at the end, all
the automated operations like business-to-business (B2B),
business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-employee (B2E).
II. THE QATARI E-GOV PORTAL 'HUKOOMI'
Many modern countries in the world have developed
transactional and informative web portals. For instance, in the
United States of America the main governmental portal is
USA.gov that offers a range of online services and useful
information about the country; in the United Kingdom the main
portals are Directgov (for citizens) and businesslink.gov.uk (for
businesses). Many U.S. states have developed their own portals
which provide direct access to eCommerce applications (e.g.,
Hawaii Business and myIndianaLicense [1]) agency and
department web sites, and more specific information about
living in, doing business in and getting around the state. Qatar
authorities have launched in 2003 a large-scale IT project
aimed to automate the main government services. A new portal
is designed, created and deployed. It connects Qataris people to
technology and enriches their lives. The new web portal puts
useful and innovative government services at the fingertips of
Qataris citizens and residents in the country.
Figure 3. Snapshot of the new e-Gov Qatari portal - Hukoomi
The current offered online services include the following:
(1) Driving License Renewal: This service allow the
user to renew the driving license or to declare the
lost of the license.
(2) Qatari Employment: This service allows Qatari
citizens to apply for jobs on-line. They can upload
their resume and a suitable job will be offered to
the applicant.
(3) Traffic Violations: This service allows drivers in
Qatar to check for traffic violations. The driver
can get all the information about his violation and
he can settle down the issue.
(4) Electricity and Water: This service allow
residents in Qatar to pay electricity and water bills
using credit cards (Visa,Mastercard).
(5) Zakat Fund: This service enables all Muslims
resident in Qatar to pay the annual Zakat amount
which is set to 2.5%.
(6) Health Cards: This service allows Qataris and
residents to apply for the renewal of their health
cards. These cards enable their holders to access
the public health institutions (i.e. Health centers,
Hamad Hospital) freely.
(7) Residency permits: This service allows residents in
Qatar to renew their residency permits.
 (8) Visit Visas: This service allows people to apply for digital progress and modernization of the country (i.e. a digital-
a visa to visit Qatar. based society). The main objectives of the ICTQatar are:
Service's
Agency Description of Service Topic of Service (1) Improve services to constituents: individuals and
Name
businesses.
Electricity This service is for the
Housing & Your
Bill Kahramaa payment of electricity and (2) Improve governance transparency: The potential users
Neighborhood
Payment water bills.
This service allows holders of understand their rights and freedoms.
passports of certain countries Working in Qatar
Business Ministry of
to get direct entry visa Visa & Entry Besides providing useful services, the portal facilitates the
Visa Interior
without obtaining previous Requirements communication between Qatar residents and government
visas at borders of the state departments. In fact, online forms can be completed and sent
Ministry of
Change
Economy
This service allows you to
Doing Business in directly to the concerned department which takes the necessary
Company change the address of a
Address
and
company.
Qatar action very quickly.
Commerce
Exit Permit
This service is to provide The system is very easy to use. In fact, the potential user
for Ministry of
residents sponsored by Personal Documents can sign in and chose a login and a password. He may then
companies or government Transport & Travel
Sponsored Interior
organizations with Working in Qatar select a service and fill-in a given form with his/her
Residents
permission to leave Qatar. information like his/her name and the Qatari ID number plus
Family Visit Ministry of
This service provides visas
Visa and entry other information according to the selected service. The system
for families visiting the State
Visa Interior
of Qatar.
Requirements will check the validity of the information and allow then the
Hamad user to complete the transaction. The system enables the user to
Health &
Health Card
Medical This service allows you to
Environment select different delivery methods whenever the service
Corporatio apply for a health card
n
Relocating to Qatar generates deliverable items. For instance, if the users select the
Heavy renewal of his health card or driving license, he can select to
Vehicle Ministry of This service provides heavy get these items directly at home or at any convenient location
Driver's Interior vehicle drivers with visas
Visa
in Doha city against a very low amount of money (i.e., it is
This visa is issued upon currently set to 11 Qatari Riyals ≈ $3). An SMS will also be
arrival at the border for sent to the user whenever his requested items are realized and
citizens of 33 countries, and
Joint Tourist Ministry of the beneficiary is authorized Visa & Entry
ready to be delivered. In a recent interview the e-Gov IT
Visa Interior to travel freely between Requirements manager claimed that the number of electronic transactions
Qatar and the Sultanate of conducted on the current e-government portal has exceeded
Oman for the visa period for
one month
one million since its creation and deployment in 2003 where
Qatar This service makes it possible Relocating to Qatar half a million transactions were done in 2007.
Post Box
General to have an on-line PO Box Visa and entry
Online As the first version of the Qatari e-Gov portal (Fig. 2) didn't
Post Office where mail can be tracked requirements
This service allows Qatar offer much explanation about the services, mainly how to use
Qatar University students to Education &
Registration
University register or de-register their Learning
them effectively, a new version of the e-Gov web portal with a
courses nice and different look has been designed and deployed
Renew
This service enables citizens Personal Document recently (January 2008, Fig. 3). It gives precise and detailed
Expired Ministry of information about each service offered through the portal. The
and residents to renew their s
Driving Interior
License
expired driving license Transport and travel number of online services is currently 37 under 11 main service
This service is for the issuing
Personal Document
categories. The new portal entitled Hukoomi has a good
Ministry of of free visas requested by interface that reflects the traditional Qatari architectural design.
Official Visa s
Interior ministries and government
establishments
Transport and travel The portal gives information about the latest news about the
This service allows seamen to government like the Emir's degrees and other governmental
Seamen Ministry of
get special visas in Relocating to Qatar issues. We can see also a government calendar of events that
exceptional cases when they Visa & Entry
Transit Visa Interior
arrive and need to move from Requirements summarizes all the events that will be organized in the country.
border to border However, the user will not be able to click on a specific day of
Track and Qatar
This service allows users to the calendar to see the corresponding events or the previous
track and trace (Registered
Trace General
Mail, parcels, and Mumtaz
Relocating to Qatar events in different years. A well customized search engine has
Service Post Office
Post). been set up which retrieves pertinent information relative to the
The Zakat Fund service user query with a given percentage. The higher the percentage
allows all internet users to Family and
Zakat Fund Zakat
donate many types of Zakat community
value, the higher related content of the retrieved documents
and charity electronically vis-à-vis of the user query is. The display is done within the
portal main window which gives a professional view. As
concerning the e-services, we can see now detailed instructions
This project has greatly improved the government services
given to the user informing him about how to proceed. A drop
in Qatar. It is currently managed by the supreme council of
down list labeled with "How do I …?" is added to the portal
information and communication technology known as
which allows the user to get the necessary information about
ICTQatar. This entity aims at planning and implementing
the following services:
electronic services and technologies that contribute to the
(1) Apply for a health card,

This research work is sponsored by Qatar National Research Fund (Grant

#2-2-71-UREP-3 and Qatar University.
 (2) Apply for a passport,
(3) Apply for an exit permit,
(4) Apply for residency visa,
(5) Book a sports hall,
(6) Enroll for Islamic institutes,
(7) Locate a place,
(8) Get a driving license,
(9) Get electricity and water bill,
(10) Learn about consumer rights,
(11) Pay electricity and water bills,
(12) Register of birth certificate,
(13) Register for schools,
(14) Renew residence visa,
(15) Report a lost passport,
(16) Update pension details and finally
(17) Contact Hukoomi.
We didn't find in the new portal Hukoomi any
information about its history like the establishment date, the
team work and the future development of other new
services.
III. THE INFORMATIVE WEB PORTAL
The e-Government Qatari portal is still limited to e-
Services and it provides currently in its new version the user
with detailed information about the offered services. As the
digital visitors need information about the country entities, it is
necessary to complement it by an informative web portal that
gives detailed information about the following topics:
• Education: Schools, Universities, Research Centers,
Institutes, scientific parks.
• Hotels Resorts: Hotels and Residential apartments.
• Restaurants: Restaurants, Gourmets, Fast food.
• Entertainment: Cinemas and Clubs (Doha Club, Dana
Club).
• Media: Newspapers (Al-Watan, Al-Raya, Al-Sharq),
Journal and Magazines.
• Government: Public Services, Fire department and
Ministries.
• Cars: Auto Dealers, New Cars, Used Cars and Rentals.
• Health: Doctors, Hospitals (Hamad Hospital, AL-Ahli
Hospital, American Hospital), Medical Centers and
Clinics.
• Business: Commercial Centers (City Center, The
Center, Villageo, Landmark, Dasman, Carrefour), and
Stores.
• Banking: Banks, Finance, Loan and Credit.
• Tourism: Tourist Sites and Monuments.
Our informative web portal will group all the previous
entities in a well-organized structure. In fact, any modern
country needs currently an effective and well developed web
portal that regroups the most useful information and electronic
services in one entity and unique entry. Visitors can then access
this informative portal from anywhere in the world and got the
main information about the state of Qatar. This informative
portal can complement the e-Government portal (Fig. 3) to
have a complete web portal about the state of Qatar.
Figure 4. Snapshot of our Informative Web Portal.
The main concern in this project is how the information
should be modeled, structured and retrieved? How they can be
controlled and managed efficiently? How to archive the web
pages? How to track the visitors? How the ambiguity can be
removed from the user queries in order to retrieve the most
pertinent information? How to convert static information to
dynamic so the system can manage the site automatically, for
instance, control the links between the pages, set a posting and
removal dates for the electronic pages, allow the portal visitors
to make an efficient search and display the retrieved
information in a well organized way.
An open source content management system CMS (Plone
[2]) is being studied in order to be used in the development and
management of the informative web portal. We have selected a
CMS, because it provides a single environment for designing,
building, testing, and deploying the portal. However, such a
CMS is very general and needs to be customized according to
our effective needs. The customization work requires a deep
investigation and heavy work. The four co-authors of this paper
who are senior students at the department of computer science
and engineering of Qatar University are working in this
direction. They are developing new features that will allow
structuring the results of a search in different convenient ways.
The customized system should allow performing the following
tasks:
• Importation and creation of documents and multimedia
material (i.e., sounds, texts, images).
• Identification of key users and their content
management roles.
• The ability to publish the content to a repository to
support access to the content for information search
and retrieval.
• The ability to publish the content to a repository to
support access to the content for information search
and retrieval.
• The ability to assign roles and responsibilities to
different content categories or types.
• Definition of the content workflow tasks (i.e., set the
skeleton) that can be coupled in the future with event
messaging so that content managers can be alerted to
changes in content.
• The ability to track and manage multiple versions of a
single instance of content.
• The ability for visitors to become members and receive
regularly a newsletter. They may also create a forum
about any topic and exchange information with other
visitors.
We work on the customization of the open source content
management system. We develop our own subroutines and
scripts to store and control the electronic information in a non-
proprietary form. We gather the data from different sources
(i.e., Qatar tourism agency, planning council, etc.) and propose
a coherent model that allows a quick retrieval of information.
We will set and customize the search engine of the CMS to
retrieve the requested links and documents. In addition, we will
work on the removal of ambiguities from user queries in cross-
language information retrieval. This is an important axis of
research and new developed algorithms can be incorporated
within any global search engine over the Internet. The
European community launched in 1991 the first cross-language
project known under the name EMIR (The European
Multilingual Information Retrieval). Many interesting and
valuable works followed. Davis [4] proposed an efficient
method that uses a dictionary-based query translation. He
proposed two algorithms that perform direct disambiguation in
order to select the best translation equivalent. He applied a part
of speech tagger to the query, which allows selecting only
those equivalents from the dictionary that have the same part of
the speech. It then measures the similarity of each source
language query term and the remaining equivalents to aligned
sentences in a parallel corpus. Disambiguation is preformed by
selecting the equivalent whose sentence ranking is most similar
to the source language term. Semmar et al. proposed in [5] an
interesting cross-language information retrieval system based
on linguistic and statistical approaches.
We have developed in [3] an algorithm for disambiguation.
We will improve it and incorporate it within the developed
portal. The main idea of our algorithm is to get the feedback of
the user when the query is found ambiguous. Our algorithm for
query disambiguation for Arabic-English cross language
information retrieval can be summarized as follows:
Let QA = (a1,a2,…,an) be an Arabic query where a1, a2,…,
an are the query terms. The following steps will be repeated for
every term t = ai in QA.
1. Represent the Arabic term t by a list of its
synonyms and related words At = (s1,s2,…,sm) using
a machine readable Arabic thesaurus.
2. Translate The term t into English by using a machine
readable Arabic-English bilingual dictionary, using
every match strategy, i.e. for every Arabic term t all
matched English terms Et = (e1,e3,…,ek) are considered
as possible translation.
3. Every English translation ej in Et is replaced by a list of
synonyms and related words in English ESit =
(p1,p2,…,pr) using a machine readable English thesaurus.
4. Every translation ej and its synonym and related words
list ESit are translated back to Arabic using a machine
readable English-Arabic bilingual dictionary using first
match strategy.
5. The similarity between the Arabic term t vector At
(synonyms and related words list) and retranslated
vector of each ej in ESit is calculated using the well
known Cosine Formula.
6. The set of translated terms ej that score a similarity
greater than a threshold with t based on the two vectors
(At and ESit) similarity calculation is considered as the
most appropriate translation of t.
7. If none of retranslated vectors ESit yield back the Arabic
term t or present a high similarity to the Arabic term t
representation vector At, a first match translation
approach is applied.
An on-line bi-lingual English-Arabic dictionary like Al-
Qamoos [6] can be used in the translation process. An online
Arabic thesaurus form www.Ajeeb.com can be used in the
process of Arabic term synonyms and related word
identification process. The on-line Merriam-Webester
thesaurus can be used in the identification of the synonyms and
related words for an English term.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This publication was made possible by a grant from the
Qatar National Research Fund (Grant #2-2-71-UREP Third
Cycle) and another grant from Qatar University (Research
Funds). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors
and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Qatar
National Research Fund or Qatar University. The authors
would like to thank deeply Qatar University and Qatar National
Research Fund (Qatar Foundation), for their support.
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[1] State of Indiana Web Portal http://www.in.gov/ai/licensing/
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Query Disambiguation Method for Cross-Language Information
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Information Sciences, Volume 2, Number 2, 2002, Pages 58 – 68.
[4] M. Davis: New Experiments in Cross-Language Text Retrieval at
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Conference (TREC-5).
[5] Nasredine Semmar, Faiza Elkateb-Gara, Meriama Laib and Christian
Fluh: A Cross-Language Information Retrieval System Based on
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[6] AL-QAMOOS, Sakhr IT company http://www.sakhr.com/