Corruption experience

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (Hornby, 1995), „corruption‟ means „corrupting or „being corrupted‟. In any sphere of influence, this implies dishonest interference with the intended agenda of the matter or creating illegal defaults in the process, often with concealed financial inducement. Corruption is a widely present phenomenon in many fields and in many countries, as revealed by journalistic and other more formal investigations. It can take various forms, such as political corruption, data corruption, corruption in the various public services, etc., typically based on bribery and the granting of favours. Any type of corruption is harmful for the process or service which is intended to be carried out for the benefit of individuals or the general public. The Qatar constitution, in Articles 129-131 and 134, declares assurance of independence of the judiciary and of each single judge; accordingly, in 1999, a Court of Cassation and the Supreme Judiciary Council were established. Later, in 2002, an independent public prosecution system was established, followed by an Administrative Court and a Constitutional Court in 2007, thus emphasising a clear development in the independence of the judicial system. In contrast, in 2002, Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim Al Thani was accused of accepting irregular payments from a British defence company; however, the investigation was terminated and the case was most likely settled out of court. Furthermore, in 2005, three senior figures including two ministers were dismissed from employment as a result of fraudulent activities. This provides strong evidence of improving transparency and accountability and an example of separation between public funds and the royal family.

Despite all challenges, Qatar has defeated corruption by a series of actions, such as being a signatory member of the United Nations Convention against Corruption in 2005. Also, in 2008, Qatar hosted the “Corruption-free Asia Conference”, to fight corruption and to improve transparency and accountability. As a result of Qatar‟s hard

work towards being a democratic country, Qatar received global recognition, demonstrated in comments made by the Managing Director of Transparency International, Cobus De Swardt, with regard to successful implementation of “first steps” in the state‟s fight against corruption. (Aljazeera, 2009)

According to the Corruption Perception Index 2010 (CPI, 2010), Qatar was recorded in the top 20 least corrupt countries in the world, where Transparency International ranked Qatar first among the Arab nations and 19th instead of 22nd recorded in 2009 among all 178 listed countries and reported that Qatar made significant improvement over the 2009 score. Furthermore, MENA reported that Qatar scored 7.7 among 178 countries, where 0 signified highly corrupt while 10 signified low level of corruption.

Qatar has not had a major problem at the grass-roots‟ level although some corruption was alleged, involving just a few senior figures of the political system (BTI, 2010), which is not very common in the history of Qatar. However, such instances of corruption are found very rarely in Qatar, and this facilitates the introduction of I- voting, which would be helpful to the population of the nation to overcome the digital divide where each voter has the equal access to services from the government (InfoDev, 2002).

5.4 Data collection method

This section examines the barriers to I-voting in terms of technical and non-technical aspects and the willingness of the society to introduce I-voting in Qatar. Towards this aim, a combination of data collection methods were used: (1) a literature review focused on discussion of the key findings and future directions for the I-voting initiative in Qatar, and (2) interviews with a sample of experts, voters and candidates used to support the literature and to obtain more recent findings on the aspects which could make the State of Qatar willing to introduce I-voting.

Three groups of respondents (voters, candidates and experts) were interviewed to explore the current voting system in Qatar and the difficulties faced with voting, along

Chapter 5: Qatar Toward Internet voting

with the feasibility of introducing I-voting, its opportunities and threats, how it would be implemented effectively and whether it could replace the current system. The first group of respondents were seven experts in the field of Information Technology (IT) and Information Systems (IS) within relevant organisations in Qatar. These interviewees provided a purposive non-random sample and were thus recruited by direct personal contact. The purpose of the interview was explained to each interviewee who was also provided with a list of the topics which it was hoped to cover. Confidentiality was assured in person and also in a covering note. Each interview was therefore semi- structured, was held individually and lasted 45 – 60 minutes, depending on job role, with notes being taken by the researcher. The interviewees preferred note-taking rather than digital recording, so they could feel comfortable and secure and could also review and comment on a copy of the notes taken.

The seven representative experts interviewed were as follows:

1. Head of IT department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) 2. Manager of Patient Care department, Ministry of Health (MOH) 3. Head of IT, Ministry of Interior (MOI)

4. Manager of E-services, IBQ Bank (IBQ Bank) 5. Head of ISP, Q-Tel (Q-Tel)

6. Manager of Incident Management, Supreme Council of Information and Communication Technology (ictQATAR)

7. Head of Prosecution, Supreme Judiciary Council (SJC)

Due to limited resources the researcher was only able to interview a small proportion of candidates and voters. A random sample of 4 candidates from the 2007 election and 6 voters, from different backgrounds was recruited using personal connections and convenience. These interviewees were briefed and interviewed individually, face-to- face. They were asked 20 questions on the following 10 topics:

1. The feasibility of I-voting in Qatar

2. Election procedure with or without I-voting

3. Willingness to participate in and barriers to I-voting 4. Government opinion and readiness

5. Legislation and laws regarding the e-project (I-voting) 6. The ability of the IT Infrastructure in Qatar to adopt I-voting 7. Political opinions on introducing I-voting

8. I-voting implications on security, privacy, accessibility, vote selling and the digital divide and recommendations to overcome those problems

9. Increased turnout of voters

10. The results of the survey conducted earlier in this research (see section 6.4).

These interviews aimed to review public opinions on I-voting in comparison with the experts‟ view to see whether people would accept I-voting technology and whether they believed it would be effective. Consequently, the information gathered from the interviews was then analysed qualitatively to identify the main outcome.

The sections below discuss the responses to the ten question topics.