Shareef has been actively involved in Maldives’ e-Government development since NCIT was established in 2003 by the Government of Maldives as the main government agency for the development, promotion and propagation of IT in the country.
“One of NCIT’s greatest achievement is the continuous development and deployment of Government eLetter Management System (GEMS), which is now used by all national government agencies and over 50 per cent of local government agencies for official communication,” says Shareef.
Besides improving communication and making government processes more efficient, GEMs has saved the Government close to MVR40 million (US$2.6 million) last year in administrative cost.
GEMS has received regional recognition last year at the FutureGov Awards where NCIT was awarded Public Sector Organisation of the Year for the SAARC Region.
“Our target is to get all local government agencies on board to use GEMS for all their official communications by the end of this year,” he notes.
NCIT aims to extend the use of GEMS outside of the public sector. At the moment, a number of government-owned enterprises are using the system to communicate electronically with the Government of Maldives.
“Given GEMS’ success, we want to customise and bring this system to every household so that citizens can communicate efficiently and securely with the Government easily.”
Another recent achievement, continues Shareef, is the Expatriate Online Services or Xpat, which aims to bring transparency into the management of expatriate labour in Maldives.
Launched last year, Xpat enable individuals and businesses to perform work permit and quota related online transactions round the clock.
“As a country that depends on tourism and construction, we have a big population of expatriate labour. It is important for our stakeholders to be able to make applications, track application status, and make payments online,” he says.
“This online services platform is founded on the principle of open government and transparency, so that employees and businesses can easily access data that the Government has on them,” he adds.
Looking ahead, Shareef and his team have three key focus: security, cloud and human resources.
“Maldives, as a small island and developing nation, is in a unique situation where cloud technology and principles may offer many advantages,” he concludes.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Kelly Ng
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 25.03.2014
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