The Riyadh-based Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO) said in a statement that it will hold urgent discussions with Member States and digital economy experts to address the implications of the global IT outage that disrupted vital operations around the world, affecting businesses including airlines, banks, broadcasters, software providers, and more.
In a statement reported by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the nine-country organization said: “The high level of impact the world witnessed as a result of the unfortunate outage is alarming and indicates the dire need for a more effective and agile international digital cooperation.
“The incident raised questions on continuity and sustainability in a world rapidly moving towards being highly dependent on digital channels and platforms. It is very crucial that the international community develops proper policies and protocols to mitigate the risks of such incidents and ensure the continuity of at least essential operations”, it added.
The DCO Secretariat General called for an urgent deliberation to “capture the lessons learned from this incident, assess its impact on national digital transformation plans, and plan practical steps to ensure that relevant stakeholders across sectors are aligned and ready to deal with such mishaps.”
The DCO is an international organization concerned with enhancing cooperation in all fields driven by innovation and accelerating the growth of the digital economy. It was established in November 2020 as part of Saudi Arabia’s efforts during its presidency of the G20 to promote the growth of the digital economy and digital transformation around the world.
