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With the management and administration changes that have taken place in various departments of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture (MMAA), the Center for Geographic Information Systems (CGIS) is pleased to announce that Qassim Mohammed A. Al-Ghanim has been appointed Head of the Center. A former assistant head of the country's Land Information Center(LIC), Al-Ghanim was appointed to the position by HE the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture (MMAA), Ali Bin Saeed Al-Khayarin.
Al-Ghanim, a Civil Engineering graduate from the University of Qatar has been involved with GIS since 1990 when the country began the implementation of the technology. He has contributed a great deal to the technology's growth and development. In fact, in his role as assistant head of LIC, he was instrumental in co-ordinating the implementation of GIS throughout MMAA's Planning Department. He was manager of the Electronic Place Finder (EPF) project, a popular consumer GIS developed by the CGIS in 1992. He held other senior Government posts before taking the helms as head of the Center on April 3, 1997.
Although he has been in the midst of the action, Al-Ghanim admits a long and hard task ahead of him.
"Qatar has created the first and only nationwide GIS. But having been involved with GIS for the past seven years, there is still a lot to be done to have complete data automation in all the agencies to ensure a nationwide use of the system. We need to evaluate the system, improve the strong points and strengthen the weaker ones. Strengthening the interaction between the agencies involved in the GIS technology is also a necessity," says Al-Ghanim.
As the system's demand increases and its use expands, Al-Ghanim intends to recruit more Qatari nationals whose involvement in the GIS stands at five per cent, into the organisation.
"Improving the facilities of the training center to create awareness among people and have a proper training strategy to meet the demand of the use of the system are essential elements inorder for us to achieve our goal. This requires starting from the bottom like having High school to the university level involvement in GIS activities . Employee training will also be initiated at our training center," Al-Ghanim adds.
The ultimate goal of GIS is to enable the society in general to get involved in the use of the technology. "Giving the public the benefit of using GIS via the internet to access information brings out the true societal GIS and this is what we would all like to see in the near future," concludes Al-Ghanim.