e-Dirham the highlight as MoFI's GITEX stand proves a big draw for visiting government officials

There was huge interest from official visitors from abroad in the entire MOFI-led programme, which is rapidly becoming a model for implementing first class e-Government services.

Mr. Abdul Rahim Ismail Al Zarouni, Head of MoFI's IT and Administrative Department, said: "Several government officials from the Algerian, Bahraini and Sudan governments, as well as representatives from various public and private sector organizations, showed interest in the electronic services provided by the federal e-Government programme. They were especially interested in the possibilities offered by the e-Dirham smart card payments system.

"Understandably, many of them were interested in adopting a similar system and were keen to look at the possibility of transferring the new technology to their countries. Of course, they were also interested in the benefits of the system.

"We were able to tell them how the system can increase revenues and produce cost savings at the same time as reducing the time taken to generate precise statistics. Effectively, the e-Government programme can transform the performance of even those government services traditionally described as weak and slow."

The adoption of cutting edge e-Government technology by the UAE's Federal Government is a further sign of its commitment to providing the country with the best and most modern services available anywhere in the world. Mr. Zarouni said more and more countries are using this tool to enhance productivity and increase transparency and accuracy at levels of government.

The technology has been particularly useful in the government's attempts to collect statistics and the data on which many of its policies, planning and budgeting is formulated. Mr. Zarouni said that by participating at GITEX, the Ministry hoped to get feedback from the private sector and see the latest technology and investigate if there are applications we can use.

The MOFI team at GITEX revealed details of some of the new e-Government services that will be launched soon, such as the e-Gulf portal which has been developed by MoFI and all industries in the UAE in co-operation with Etisalat's e-Business unit under the umbrella of the strategic partnership between Etisalat and the Ministry.

MoFI also announced today that it had signed a contract with Peribit Networks that will lead to an enhancement of performance of the Ministry's network by reducing the document load, which has tended to slow the traffic on the entire governmental network.

Zarouni said that signing this contract will help reduce the time needed to process applications and will help provide feedback about the Ministry's future network needs for its future expansion.