Cisco Systems: Technology Is The Catalyst For Government Transformation

Transformation requires a combination of technology and business process change

Manama, June 14, 2006 – As part of the Bahrain 'Cisco Expo 2006', Cisco Systems executives hosted a media roundtable discussion titled "Successful e-Government Initiatives and Secure Communications in the Middle East".

Cisco executives stressed that technology is the catalyst for government transformation and organizations that coordinate process reengineering, Internet business applications and advanced network infrastructure, achieve the greatest success with e-Government.

The roundtable discussion also highlighted three major findings:

• Public sector organizations that adopt best practices, experience 25 percent to 55 percent improvements in citizen satisfaction, efficiency, services volume and cost savings.
• Organizations that reengineer business processes before deploying applications, realize cost savings of 20 to 30 percent over 12 months.
• Organizations that re-engineer business processes after deploying applications are more likely to achieve half those savings.

Samer Alkharrat, General Manager, Cisco Systems, Gulf Region, further emphasized the importance of IP Communications technology as the groundwork for enabling process change for governments. "With IP telephony, governments improve service effectiveness by Speeding response time through user self-service, intelligently routing calls to the civil servant best qualified to help, transferring calls across organizational boundaries, to provide a more unified face to government, and gaining greater business resilience by rapidly restoring phone service when employees move or are displaced by disaster."

Cisco Expo is an annual forum where Cisco Systems and its partners share their vision, expertise and showcase their solutions to business decision makers, to give them an insight into how Cisco's technology can help them transform their businesses.