UAE records 216% rise in use of digital signatures

The UAE government’s adoption of a proactive approach has resulted in a 216 percent increase in the use of digital signatures in 2023, the state-run news agency reported on Monday.

Giving a picture of the fast-growing digital economy of the Gulf Cooperation Council country, the report said blockchain use is also gain ground with nine banks, six exchange houses and three insurance companies adopting the technology during the same period.

Omar bin Sultan Al-Olama, UAE minister of state for artificial intelligence, digital economy, and remote work applications, affirmed that the government is developing and implementing initiatives and projects that lay the foundations of a pioneering digital economy. This economy combines national skills and technological solutions, forming an advanced model that contributes to achieving the targets of the national strategy for the digital economy, by multiplying the contribution of the digital economy to non-oil gross domestic product over the next decade.

He stated that the UAE government is intensifying efforts to accelerate the adoption of digital solutions, aiming through its initiatives and projects to envision and shape the digital future, enhancing the UAE’s leadership and global competitiveness in various fields.

He was chairing a meeting of the UAE Council for Digital Economy held at the Securities and Commodities Authority in Dubai.

The council reviewed the updates regarding several strategic initiatives aimed at supporting and accelerating the implementation of the UAE’s strategic objectives for the digital economy, in areas such as infrastructure, digital transactions, e-commerce, financial technologies, stimulating investment in digital sectors, attracting and developing digital skills, supporting small and medium enterprises and the latest developments in digital economy statistics gathering and the annual report on measuring the digital economy. It reviewed the development of digital infrastructure and the level of adoption of technological solutions, which have significantly increased in recent months.

The council further reviewed digital services in the federal network, which were launched to include voice-to-text and text-to-voice conversion, translation, analysis of different emotions, extraction of key phrases, language analysis, and services suitable for accessing high-performance computing resources for machine learning, deep learning, and other applications.

The council discussed topics such as the government service level policy, data center distribution and cloud computing deployment in Gulf countries.