The Research Council’s (TRC) Smart City Platform, a collaborative initiative between TRC, the Supreme Council of Planning (SCP), Muscat Municipality (MM) and Information Technology Authority (ITA), has launched a local competition to design and develop an app that helps the entities that represent the government to control the spread of COVID-19 among the Omani community by monitoring those people infected with the virus.

The competition aims for the app to assist in the process of awareness, interaction and behavior change of all target groups used for the application; for example, the app can report on cases of violation of quarantine or innovative ways to communicate with those in quarantine or those suspected of having contact with those infected with the virus.

The criteria of the competition includes that the idea of the app should match the objectives of the competition, the quality should be designed in terms of user experience standards, interface design and digital accessibility, the app should be accessible to all operating programs, the app should be usable by the targeted groups, and lastly that the idea of the application and its features should be innovative and unique.

Interested applicants can submit their ideas through Smart City Platform’s website by Sunday, 5 April 2020. The evaluation will be done virtually either by WebEx, Zoom, GoToMeeting or others. The results will be announced on Tuesday, 7 April 2020, and the winning apps will be supported by the relevant institutions.ONA