His Excellency the Minister of Communication and Information Technology Eng. Muhammad Jameel Mulla delivered the prize of Digital Distinction (Raqmi) – the branch of Electronic Health- to His Excellency the General Manager of Information Technology in the SFDA Dr. Saad bin Uthman Alkasabi during the celebration that was held on the last Tuesday afternoon 24-11-1428H, to deliver the Prize of Digital Distinction 2007, organized by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology in Madareem Crown Hotel in Riyadh.
The SFDA received the prize as a result of its hard work, continuous effort and big concern toward establishing its electronic website from its beginnings. The SFDA set three main goals to establish the site which focused on attracting visitors through providing new and interesting information, supplying accurate and authenticated scientific subjects and interacting with audience. Yet, it applied several mechanisms to achieve these goals.
In spite of the fact that the website is new as it does not complete its second year, more than 430 news and 120 scientific subjects have been added and several educational brochures have been supplied to facilitate viewing and copying them by visitors from all over the world. In addition, the number of its visitors has grown obviously; since the average of it has increased from 9000 visitor monthly (at the beginning of year 2007) to 20.000, which equals 230% growth rate. The web site visitors belong to more than 48 countries from all over the world, and visitors from Saudi Arabia constitute 59% from the total of visitors. The United States of America comes next with 11% while Egypt constitutes 6%, followed by the United States of Emirates with 5% and finally 3% for the United Kingdom.
About the website distinction, Dr. Alkasabi stated that concerning about the content of it before, while and after its inauguration leads to high and updated levels. The SFDA concerned about adopting special methodology to run the site since its beginning; by giving the specialized sectors in the SFDA an effective role in editing and running their own stuff also it lied the responsibility of establishing and updating the website on the shoulders of a specialized team. Moreover, the SFDA assigned a specialist of electronic publishing to run the processes of publishing; as immediate news updating and adding new services which help in attracting visitors of different levels, and assigned employees from different sectors of the SFDA to run and edit the news of their sectors. In addition, the high administration adopted the strategy of relying on the website as an information center for the SFDA through which recent news as well as explanatory and warning statements are published.