The project will allow every Bahraini citizen to interact with the government, including making payments, through the multi-purpose smart cards. The Bahrain e-Government initiative has built up strong momentum, having initiated or completed major phases right through 2003.
This year will see some of the multi-layer projects enter the decisive stage before being made available to a wider audience. The government programme has attracted some leading IT vendors for the various phases such as IBM and Microsoft.
"Our approach is to work on fast-track projects that normally run for two to four months and can show tangible results rather quickly, and are part of a bigger project. In the past summer, we worked jointly with Bahrain's Central Informatics Organisation to consolidate and set up a robust e-mail infrastructure," said Samir Benmakhlouf, business development manager, Microsoft Bahrain.
"The project took less than two months to finish. Now many ministries and government agencies are ready to join this new infrastructure."
Microsoft is already working on the 'e-investor' project in Bahrain that would be the foundation for all business interactions with the government, plus the 'Business Intelligence' project to create national data bases for the ministries of health, labour and commerce.
The e-investor project is now in the second phase, and Microsoft has a consultancy agreement to deploy its solutions.
The Business Intelligence programme will enable decision makers in the government to have the right information in the right format from many data sources in the government. On its part, Microsoft will offer the tools to the government to enable decisions based on data analysis. Its technologies for this project are the on-line analysis services, the SQL database and Windows server.
In Bahrain, Microsoft technologies are implemented on the desktop, back office as well as the platform levels at the government level.
The Central Informatics Organisation, a key entity in the e-government in Bahrain managing the government-wide data network and infrastructure, has consolidated its servers on Windows 2003 and implemented Exchange 2003 for all government related online communication.
"We are looked at as a strategic advisor by many entities of the Government of Bahrain. We get involved in projects ranging from setting up IT infrastructures and intranets to addressing some of the most strategic issues of the government business such as the design and development of business intelligence tools to help in addressing the labour market dynamics," said Benmakh-louf.
Quelle: Gulf-News, 07.02.2004
