Involving multiple ministries, five projects have been identified as high priority by the Steering Committee responsible for the e-Government initiative, and could be initiated in another six months or so. Set up last April, the Committee submitted the transition plan for approval late last month. IBM is acting as the consultant for the overall project.
"These projects are being approved by the Steering Committee, who will then decide on the schedule for the tendering. Based on the feedback, the initial budgetary estimates for the e-Government programme will be drawn up and sent for the approval of the Cabinet," said Dr Mohammed Khalfan bin Kharbash.
The tenders for the various components of the project will be looked at keenly by the IT industry, which has given initial estimates that it will run into hundreds of millions of dollars given the complexity and enormity of the task at hand.
On whether separate laws will be brought in to effect the changes, the Minister said: "These relate to cyber laws and how information is sourced through the Internet. There is a resolution to this effect from the Cabinet and the ministries concerned are working on it."
The UAE is one of a handful of Middle East countries to have put in some distance on the road to implementing a viable e-Government programme. Apart from the federal one, Dubai has a venture of its own designed to come fully on line next year.
Other Gulf states are in various stages of their own programmes, those of Bah-rain and Saudi Arabia being the most notable.
"We see the initiative as being strictly long-term. However, we believe that the first phase will be completed in three years or so for the wider society to feel the full benefits from its implementation," added the Minister.
According to Dr Kharbash, the first phase will spread across ministries before narrowing down to specific programmes taken up by individual ministries or government departments during the second phase.
Management of human resources and documentation will be among the first tier projects, according to the transition plan. The transition plan also states the need to create a 'programme' and 'change' management teams in the next two months.
This will lay the groundwork for framing IT policies and organisational decisions.
The programme management team will "start with a strong component of imported experts rather than internalised", according to the plan.
Quelle: Gulf-News, 22.01.2004
