An innovation system aimed at students of higher education institutions in Oman has won the award for the best Arab government project for the development of education in the first edition of the Arab Government Excellence Award.
Held under the supervision of the Arab Administrative Development Organisation, a non-profit entity affiliated with the League of Arab States, over 5,000 government applications from several Arab countries vied for the award.
Oman’s innovation system aims to support and encourage innovators to use technology, provide them incentives, protect their intellectual property rights and help them find supportive bodies to establish new startups that add value to the national economy. The innovation system, which was launched by the Ministry of Manpower (formerly), aims to support the higher education sector - namely the technical and vocational colleges - through an open data portal linked to the sultanate’s digital transformation strategies and its National Innovation Strategy.
The portal has been designed to provide services to beneficiaries currently numbering 174,000. The services include an innovation acceleration programme, innovation lab and a registration service aimed at enhancing students' participation with their entrepreneurial ideas and registering innovation requests.
Oman’s innovation system has also ensured sustainability by training more than 3,000 specialists and holding 100 workshops. Additionally, there are innovation units that have been established in technical colleges with the provision of the required resources and big data. With this, the culture of innovation has now spread to over 15 colleges and 45,000 students.
Source: https://muscatdaily.com/Oman/388935/Oman%E2%80%99s-innovation--system-adjudged-best-in-Arab-world