Speech of the General Supervisor of Official Media, Minister Dr. Ahmed Assaf, at the First International Conference on Digital Transformation

Since the Corona pandemic, the shift towards digitalization has become a preoccupation for all countries and institutions, and global spending on digital transformation is expected to double over the next 5 years, from about 500 billion in 2020 to more than 1,000 billion in 2025.

There is no doubt that digital transformation and people's orientation towards media and smart devices has led to fundamental changes in the processes of consuming media content, and it is no secret that newspaper distribution, listening to radio and watching television have declined in favor of digital content.

The digitalization of the media industry may have begun through websites and digital television, and passed through social media, but it will not end with experiments employing artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality.

Today's global expectations in the media industries sector are that media organizations will spend more than half of their budget on digital ads, especially since the average time a person spends using the phone per day reaches more than 4 and a half hours during the current year 2023.

Experts and specialists in the field of digital transformation and media industries discuss many emerging fields that have begun to flourish in the era of digital transformation, and among these areas I will mention 6 of them:

1. Live broadcast videos and the ability to be on the site or venue of the event, especially through digital platforms.
2. The growth of institutional revenues from subscriptions, especially those that provide content commensurate with the browsing time that the viewer desires and chooses from a diverse list of content.
3. Personalization of services As long as we talk about digitalization, the consumer here is more individual than collective, as in the case of television, and the more the content of media is able to personalize the message to the recipient and embody his tendencies and desires, the higher the effect will be.
4. Going towards the Metaverse, and there are experiments to integrate the Metaverse with media productions, such as digital narration techniques and virtual reality experiences.
5. In addition to the Metaverse, there is a rise in the employment of artificial intelligence in newsrooms and others through the development of the programming language and algorithms of artificial intelligence to write news stories for the production of video clips, etc. An example of this is the current rise of the Chat GPT application.
6. Cloud services in storing and collecting data, especially in the Palestinian case and the threats of the occupation. Palestine TV has been alerted early to provide copies of its data and visual and digital productions through secure cloud services outside Palestine. All these developments and transformations can help in cooperation between different platforms. For example, through some digital technologies, the Palestine TV page can broadcast and share material on the pages of other ministries or institutions by means of the techniques of linking accounts and pages, and targeting the audience of these pages and their followers.

Ladies and Gentlemen

There is no doubt that the digitalization of media is undergoing radical transformations, and even within the digital itself, there are transformations. Website browsing is declining globally in favor of social media platforms and the new developments that follow. For example, there are Arab news websites that have more than 50 million visits per month, despite all funding policies and harmonization of content to be attractive to the browser, but some of these sites lost more than half of their visitors to social media platforms, all in less than 10 years only.

If we confine the conversation to the official Palestinian media, it is true that the financial crisis of the Palestinian Authority and the occupation’s piracy of clearing funds limit our ability to implement digitalization projects. Nevertheless, we have come a long way over the past few years by strengthening our digital presence on various social media platforms, with more than 50 accounts and pages for television on digital platforms in 7 languages we address the world, and the English page alone exceeds 45 million accesses every month.

Ladies and Gentlemen

There are more than 3.7 million Internet users in Palestine, and it can be said that Palestine is gradually entering digital services. In the government sector, there is a “Hukoomi” program, which started with the introduction of 17 electronic services as a first stage for the digitalization of government services. These are related to the Ministry of Communications, Interior, Land Authority, Transportation, Health and others. It is assumed that they will be followed by additional digitalized services to save time, effort and money for citizens and government institutions.

The goal of digitalization is not transformation itself as much as it is priorities and needs in the areas of sustainable development, reducing bureaucracy, increasing efficiency and digital literacy in various fields. At the level of state institutions, there is a need to study the country's priorities in digital transformation, especially in light of the current crises, lack of funds, and the occupation's seizure of clearing funds. At the institutional level, each institution needs to study its transformation requirements, especially since some of these requirements contribute to saving money and effort, such as converting administrative forms into digital.

Some institutions whose services have been digitalized, unfortunately returned months later to paper services, and the reason may be the lack of sufficient promotion of their digital services to the citizen. It may be necessary to provide incentives for those who submit digital requests, such as shortening the waiting time and completing the work faster, or providing a specific financial discount that motivates the citizen to turn to digital services, and other ideas that can motivate people to switch to digital services.

In Conclusion, we renew our thanks, appreciation and support for this important conference and those in charge of it, and we wish you success for the good of our people and our country.