Commission Holds a Digital Object Architecture Workshop, and the Inventor of the Internet Presents His Vision on New Transformations in the Telecom and IT Sector

The Communications and Information Technology Commission and the National Information Society Committee organized a Digital Object Architecture workshop, which aims to address the importance of managing information on the internet amid the continuous and growing reliance on electronic transactions, as well as new technology trends such as the Internet of Things and Cloud Computing, and the resulting accumulation of a huge amount of information.

His Excellency Eng. Habib bin Khidr Al-Shangeeti, Acting Governor of the Communications and Information Technology Commission and Chairman of the National Information Society Committee, opened the workshop's activities, which were moderated by Eng. Majed bin Mohammed Al-Muzaiyen, Director General of International Affairs at the Commission and Secretary of the National Information Society Committee, and in which the inventor of the protocol underlying the internet (TCP/IP), Dr. Robert Kahn, participated, along with experts from the United Nations specialized agency for telecommunications and information technology, who presented their vision on new transformations in the telecommunications and information technology sector, with the participation of specialists from the public and private sectors.

The American scientist Dr. Robert spoke about the beginning of the idea of the internet more than 40 years ago, when he was working at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the United States of America, noting that efforts at the time focused on providing connectivity between computers and devices in general. It has recently become clear that the issue of information management is one of the most important fields, which led the scientist Robert to begin working on a new idea he called "Digital Object Architecture." The inventor of the internet expects that, with the huge amount of information imposed by technical developments, this idea will be the focus of attention of specialists in the near future. He added that the advantages of the new idea, including enhanced information security, and support for multiple languages including Arabic, have contributed to the spread of applications based on this idea in more than 75 countries across six continents.

It is noted that the daily use of digital object architecture covers many fields, including intellectual property, publishing, the Internet of Things, big data, research and development, entertainment, food manufacturing, and many other fields.

The visit of the American scientist Robert to the Kingdom comes in light of the rapid development witnessed by the telecommunications and information technology sector regionally and internationally, as the mobile telecom services penetration rate among the population reached about 171%. The rate of internet service usage also increased at high rates over the past years, exceeding 63% by the end of 2014. The volume of data used also doubled, reaching more than one billion gigabytes, via mobile telecom networks, at a rate of approximately 3 terabytes per day.