H.E. the Minister of Communications and Information Technology Eng. Mohamed Jamil Mulla signed on Tuesday January 19, 2010 (4 Safar 1431H.) a contract for the management, operation and maintenance of phase 2 of the Government Secure Network (GSN) project. The contract was signed with Ittihad Etisalat Co. (Mobily). The project aims at meeting the requirements of e-Government Program (YESSER) in managing, operating and maintaining GSN according to internationally adopted standards and in accordance with the technical standards and specifications prepared by YESSER. The project covers the execution of GSN infrastructure, GSN required components, GSN data security centre, GSN control centre in addition to the management, operation and maintenance of GSN according to international standards.
In statements following the contract signing ceremony, H.E. the Minister expressed his thanks to those in charge of the project and urged them to exert their utmost efforts for the success of the project. He also thanked government departments that took part in the project’s first phase and called for continuing cooperation for the implementation of the second phase as per the timeframe set by the e-government Program (YESSER).
H.E. the Minister pointed out that this project is one of the key bricks for realizing the leadership’s desire for having government departments shift to e-government transactions which enable them to exchange services and data among them in an easy way in addition to the support of joint e-services projects.
For his part, Eng. Ali Al-Samaa, the Minister’s advisor and director general of e-government Program (YESSER) said that offering service through e-transactions, requires first of all the establishment of a safe and secured mechanisms, adding that this was realized by the different phases of GSN. He noted that GSN is one of the basic components of the technical infrastructure of e-government transactions in the Kingdom.
He pointed out that the project represents phase 2 of GSN, adding that the first phase includes the linking of 43 government agencies through main government departments. He explained that within the new contract more than 100 government agencies will be linked with e-Government Data Center, in addition of enabling e-government program (YESSER) to be a link between the government agencies and standardize the links between government agencies and reduce that cost.