Intel Corporation today commended the Dubai Municipality for the 'holistic approach' that it has adopted as its strategy for IT deployment across all departments. This approach spells out that IT Managers should realise the importance of performance in both the back-end and front-end architecture, maintaining regular three-year refresh cycles for desktop PC's to help minimise the long-term costs associated with legacy equipment. The Dubai Municipality's recent deployment of 400 DELL OptiPlex Gx270 PCs, all based on the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor with Hyper-Threading technology was undertaken in line with its drive to deploy a state of the art infrastructure that will support the rapid rollout of cutting edge e-government municipal services in the Emirate.
'Dubai Municipality currently offers one of the most extensive portfolios of e-government services in the country. With one of the largest user populations in the government, counting around 2,800 PC's, we had to make sure that we have the IT configuration that allows our workforce to handle incoming queries and process internal work as fast as possible. This latest purchase of 400 Intel based Dell PC's comes to ensure that our users are provided with the best machines to carry out their daily tasks, as we increase the number of e-services and become even more sophisticated in our IT requirements' said Mr. Mohammed Abdulkarim Julfar, Dubai Municipality's Assistant Director General Office - Technical Services.
Dubai Municipality is amongst the Dubai's government top agencies in terms of the number of e-government services that it provides. Prior to the purchase of these PC's, an internal Dubai Municipality committee evaluated the various options available in the market. A key criterion was that the computers must possess the latest processing technologies to ensure that all external users, whether businesses or individuals, can gain the fastest possible interaction with the Municipality's e-services. The committee also agreed that the PC's must have the fastest processing capabilities for all internal applications, including personnel, purchasing and warehousing programs.
Ferruh Gurtas, Business Development manager for Intel in the Middle East and North Africa said, 'Dubai Municipality is fully committed to providing a first rate service, as demonstrated by its drive to ensure that its workforce benefits from the newest technology to support the roll out of e-government resources. Ageing computers have a limited capacity in handling resource-intensive applications; actually, they often constitute a burden on support desks and increase maintenance overheads, leading to a more complex and costly infrastructure. The older the PC, the higher the maintenance costs because more time, human resources and components are required. Even if the back-end infrastructure has been upgraded, its performance is limited when the front end is equipped with older workstations'.
Recent statistics from the Dubai Municipality report that the number of people using e-services in Dubai is increasing. The Municipality currently offers around 55 different services, covering a wide array of disciplines, such as no objection certification services, testing of building material, food import and re-export service in addition to informational services. More services are about to be launched.
Quelle: AME Info, 21.10.2003
