Tech "Evangelists" design e-Government

Microsoft Concern is determined to take part in the computerisation of the Romanian society, as specialists from Redmond were in talks with the heads of most ministries this week, Joseph Jonas, Microsoft technical evangelist, told Ziarul Financiar.

The creation of the Romanian eGovernment version is actually the first project in the governmental strategy Microsoft would like to play an active part in, based on its experience in this field.

“The eGovernment project in Great Britain started in 1996, with completion estimated for 2005. Microsoft began work on this project a year ago, as several other companies previously chosen by the British Government to handle it, had failed.

The project is called UK Gateway and we have already been asked to do in several European states at least part of what we did in Great Britain.

After taking charge of the project, Microsoft completed the first stage in a matter of 15 weeks. This stage, which Romania is also interested in, consisted in building a more efficient communication system to link the ministries together,” Jonas said.

“We are expecting that only four of the 20 projects debated by the Group for IT Promotion should be set as priorities,” Jonas estimated. The next stage will be organising tenders.

Of the four projects, Microsoft is to choose two and come up with its own solutions for tenders. “All in all, we’d hardly have any competition for the bids in question. But companies such as Oracle, IBM or Sun Microsystems could compete with us for certain parts of a specific project,” Joseph Jonas added.

US-Tech Evangelist, the expert group, which includes Joseph Jonas, promotes the new Microsoft technologies among the company’s clients and partners. Jonas is only one of the dozens of Romanian software specialists working at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond.

Known as Iosif Ionas in Romania, the IT expert left Romania in 1990, and, after several experiences in Germany in Canada, joined Microsoft a year ago.