At the heart of IT solutions, E-enabling the FEI

Since the election of HRH Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein to the FEI Presidency, the FEI has endeavoured to provide a framework where the pillars of the President’s Manifesto may be delivered.

A project in that regard was set up in March 2007. One of the goals of its this project was to “E-enable the FEI” by defining an IT strategy that would help the FEI to develop over the next few years, not only focusing on today’s IT infrastructure and applications, but also regarding the medium and long-term goals of the organisation.

A project relating the needs of the FEI and the IT solutions was presented and approved at the General Assembly. The key elements are summarized below.

One of the main findings was the inability of the current IT structure to meet the specific needs of the FEI. Some of the points raised were:

- The excessive time spent transferring data manually, from paper, letter, email, etc into different application (and vice versa) as well as the potential for error which this created.
- The lack of automatic and continuous reporting

As a result, the IS department was busy editing and transforming data in several independent applications leaving no resources to development and IT support.

In order to address the current deficiencies over time, a new web portal application will be developed as the core of the new IT strategy. It will contain the following main functions:
- Support for all core processes of the FEI and its stakeholders. This functionality should include web user interfaces as well as web services to integrate with other systems.
- Collaboration support to allow the FEI and its stakeholders to efficiently work together even in the existing distributed environment.
- A content management system that allows the integration of the current web site with additional functionality (such as video conferencing and streaming, podcasts, NF specific web pages, other media).
- Several other applications that allow for commercialisation (web shop, contract management).
- A powerful reporting tool that provides management information in a timely and accurate way.

The new web portal will be entirely built based on Microsoft technology (complemented by some special applications e.g. for reporting), offering powerful and easy customisation. It was estimated that hard and software costs would be relatively low compared to other solutions, and development resources easy to find. Development, operations and maintenance of the new system will be outsourced to a capable IT service provider.

Following this approach, and in close cooperation between FEI and its stakeholders, the new web portal and the IT strategy could be implemented within a period of 18 months. Provided necessary steps are taken quickly, a first release will be made available by the end of 2007. The new web portal would provide value not only to the FEI and its immediate stakeholders, but also to the general public, especially the young.

Getting connected, the FEI takes a huge leap towards providing better IT solutions in order to ensure an effective and helpful FEI that can grow and evolve with the change of time.