Around 70 percent of Dubai Government departments now have fiber optic connections for the flow of digital information, an official said.
The cables have been installed in the remaining departments, and all fiber optic connections will be ready in October, Col Nader Fekri, the IT manager of Dubai Police's General Traffic Department, told the Gulf News.
A team, added Fekri, is convincing government departments, who have existing web service, to incorporate their databases into the e-government project.
He said: "Fiber optic cables are high bandwidth micro cables for the flow of digital information. The majority of departments have them, and the rest are on the way."
Fiber optic cables are the backbone of the centralized General Information Network (GIN) that will connect all government departments and enable them to communicate with each other.
GIN will be based at Dubai Internet City because it has the infrastructure and the human resources, he explained.
On databases, Fekri said: "Dubai Police, Dubai Municipality and Dewa, for example, have web services. The challenge is to convince departments to incorporate their databases into the e-government main web server.
"The will help customers find all information on a department in one place. Customers then have one log-in. Each department will still have its own database, but we will provide them with the web platform that will communicate with all those databases.
"For example, residence visas have to be checked when driving licenses are renewed. It will be easy to do so when we have access to each department's database." – Albawaba.com
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