What Comes After “Sanad”?

For years, we complained about lagging behind in the field of e-government services. Many countries that started years after us managed to leap ahead of us in just a few steps.

This wasn’t due to a lack of skills or human talent — many of the countries that developed e-service platforms actually relied on expertise from Jordanian expatriates. The problem lay in government agencies’ inability to keep pace with change, and in governments’ failure to fulfill their responsibilities. There was also another dimension to the issue: a lack of awareness about the importance of technology in driving change and improving the quality of services provided to citizens.

The COVID-19 crisis marked a turning point in officials’ awareness and outlook on this issue. The need to deliver services remotely and communicate with citizens through technological channels, given the impossibility of direct contact, put state institutions face-to-face with the challenge of rapidly transitioning to e-service systems.

The Economic Modernization Vision picked up on this shift and the need to provide an integrated digital transformation program for e-services.

The “Sanad” app began as just an idea about six years ago, with modest capabilities that amounted to little more than a digital ID. It then developed rapidly over recent years, until it recently became a fully integrated services platform — sparing citizens the need to visit dozens of government departments, and delivering services at record speed. What used to require days of visits to government offices and institutions, along with the associated costs, wasted time, and the hassle of moving between offices while pleading with employees to process a transaction, can now be done almost instantly.

“Sanad” has become one of the top 15 applications of its kind in the world, and is now competing for an international award organized by the International Telecommunication Union. This nomination represents recognition of the Jordanian app’s success in enabling digital access to government services and speeding up transaction processing.

This journey won’t stop here. The world is undergoinga massive, accelerating digital revolution that leaves no room to catch one’s breath. The shift into the age of artificial intelligence will sweep away all traditional forms across broad sectors, foremost among them the services sector.
The Ministry of Digital Economy is continuously developing “Sanad,” constantly adding new services. But the time will soon come when the app begins developing itself, independent of officials’ wishes, thanks to AI technologies.

Within just a few years, AI and robots will take over the jobs of millions of people around the world. In the view of experts, digital transformation powered by AI now looks like a historical inevitability, leaving humans no room to compete with technology. This means plans to modernize public administration and develop employees’ capabilities will become meaningless, so long as modern technologies are capable of doing the work faster and more skillfully.

Of course, this transformation won’t happen at the same pace in middle-income countries like ours as it does in developed nations. But technology and automation programs spread quickly, and could enter our lives within just a few years. Looking at previous stages, we’ve already begun to feel, as individuals, that we manage most of our affairs through our phones — needing nothing more than the tap of a button to buy what we need, complete our transactions, and get medical or technical advice.

When the Sanad app launched in 2020, most people viewed the step with a great deal of skepticism, caution, and indifference. Just a few years later, no citizen can do without it or afford to ignore it anymore. Everything connected to our lives has become tied to this app. And we can only imagine what our lives will look like five years from now, when our entire existence falls under the grip of artificial intelligence.