Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 02 | Page 21

FEATURE

Al Taqnyah Business Solutions is an application developer and system integrator , primarily working in specific market segments including public sector , government , judiciary and justice . Within Al Taqnyah , there are four business divisions including enterprise solutions , process consultancy , professional services , and networking infrastructure .

“ Our specialisation is enterprise solutions ,” says Mahdi Alami Hamdan , Al Taqnyah ’ s Technical Manager . When engaging with a potential client this covers all the domains of electronic transformation from portal development , form digitisation , process management , document management . In short , digitising or automating manual processes . For Al Taqnyah , the enterprise solutions division is its core business offering .
A key part of its ability to deliver for customers is based on its vendor technology competency . Al Taqnyah ’ s solutions are based on open source , Adobe and Microsoft platforms , amongst others . “ It is the customers option to choose what they want ,” explains Yassir Al Naeem , CEO of Al Taqnyah Business Solutions .
In the early stage , the target was to identify any institution that was wanting to migrate from conventional systems to automated systems . An early break came when Al Taqnyah was shortlisted by Dubai Courts for implementing its e-notary application , a first of its kind in the region . Working with Dubai Courts helped Al Taqnyah expand to other areas of the justice and judiciary system . Engaging with Dubai Courts also prompted Al Taqnyah to remain focused on automation , e-governance , integration , development , security solutions , amongst others .
Al Taqnyah is now into its ninth electronic transformation project with Dubai Courts , and the technology team managing the project is now the e-justice division within a bigger e-government division . “ So now we are e-government experts and e-justice gurus ,” quips Alami Hamdan , adding that this happened by chance .
Being based out of Dubai and working on projects for Dubai Court had a positive spin off for Al Taqnyah . “ The fact that Dubai is leading these changes in the region gave us a good reference , since anyone looking for something new will come to Dubai ,” says Al Naeem . Working on providing solutions for Dubai Courts proved a good reference and Al Taqnyah was chosen for the automation of Sudan Judiciary , under the government of Republic of Sudan .
“ We have now finished phase one and we are about to start phase two , which is a bigger project because it covers automation in the whole judiciary system ,” explains Al Naeem about their involvement with Sudan Judiciary . A larger population base and an increasing effort by governments to automate their processes , has encouraged Al Taqnyah to look at additional opportunities in Africa .
An important aspect of such automation projects inside Africa is the need to start from legacy systems and sometimes upgrade or modify them or coexist with them , while moving forward . Being a systems integrator , Al Taqnyah is able to meet this requirement and integrate with older systems that may be available at the start of such projects .
In the case of UAE and the Middle East , it is the other way around . With governments in various stages of moving from e-government to m-government to smart government , enterprise application and integration players like Al Taqnyah need to be able to straddle the full scope of these requirements .
Al Naeem points out that Al Taqnyah was one of the first companies in the UAE to be build the interface to directly retrieve digital encoded information from the Emirates ID card into a digital form . “ We have been considering these points and the need to go forward and not to go back . Digital signatures and online signatures are well recognised and implemented within our solutions .”
At present , 85 % of Al Taqnyah ’ s customer base is from the public sector .
Sudan Judiciary project The end to end modernisation of the Sudan Judiciary project was divided into three phases . Phase one was initiated by
Al Taqnyah in March 2015 . Since it was a big project it was essential to break it down into phases to track and monitor the progress , and for the customer to validate the changes and benefits .
The project planning was done with the following two assumptions . The first was there was a significant change from conventional processes to automated processes . The second was that changes to a certain judicial process are not necessarily possible , since the process reflect the law and cannot be changed without changing the law . Hence any changes have to be made within the permission of the law .
Remarks Al Naeem , “ The change management required was not a big challenge , which involved training people and convincing them that this is the future .” However , the technical training programme was kept separate from the user training programme . There was also a train the trainers programme support for a year .
Phase one of the Sudan Judiciary involved upgrade of the most important application involving land registration as well as development of new applications . The complete scope included the following : Online Portal ; High Courts Case Registration and Management ; Lawyer , Notary Information Management Systems ; Land Registration System ; Document Management System ; and Correspondence Management System .
The overall phase one project therefore included new development , upgrade of an existing application , end to end integration , and single window access . Considering the limitations of working within defined judicial processes and older technologies , “ It was not difficult to integrate and utilise what they had before and to make ready a platform to integrate any new services ,” clarifies Al Naeem .
Process discovery Before initiating the development or upgrade of any of the applications and the process of automation , it was essential for Sudan Judiciary and Al Taqnyah to go through an exercise called process discovery . Since the current state www . intelligentcio . com INTELLIGENTCIO
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