Africom Technologies, a local company, along with two foreign partners, last week won a bid to undertake a USD-15-million project to digitalize the country’s justice infrastructure— the National Integrated Justice Information System, The Reporter has learnt.
ISYX Technologies, a Polish multinational, and Al-wad, a UAE company, are Africom’s global partners.
The project, to be launched within one month of contract signing, is expected to take two-and-a-half years to complete.
The foreign IT firms that specialize in implementing national integrated justice information systems for Mideast countries will work on most part of the project while Africom will customize the project and technologies to the local context.
ISYX is an IT solutions provider working mostly in Asia and the Middle East. It also manages service providers, design of ICT infrastructure and information security solutions, IT consulting, business process consulting, BCP-DR solutions, enterprise resource planning solutions, analytics, enterprise mobility and enterprise management.
The project will enable entities under the Ethiopian judicial umbrella to have an integrated IT system.
More than ever, the project is expected to address the ever-growing need for statistical data and management information system by the police, the prosecutor, the courts, correctional institutions and other judicial bodies, reads the project document.
The absence of a well-organized data center and information system affects every aspect of the effort to bring about a qualitatively better justice administration in the country, it was noted.
The project aims at creating an integrated justice information system in every ladder of the justice system of the country. It will implement ICT at judicial institutions at both the federal and regional levels.
This bid, floated by the Office of the Attorney General, was on hold for more than six months.
The Office opened the financial proposal of bidders on June 28, 2017. At the time, two bidders who passed to the financial stage listed their respective prices.
Accordingly, along the winning bidder, a second competitor, Asseco Group, a Polish multinational, submitted a USD 40 million bid.
After the financial opening, the bidding was put on hold, said a source close to the process.
It is to be recalled that a number of international IT firms have shown interest following the announcement of the bid for the development of the National Integrated Justice Information System early this year.
Accordingly, nine international IT firms, including Tecno Brain, Huawei, ZTE Corporation, Tech Mahindra, ISYX Technologies and Asseco Group, participated in the bid.
ISYX, along with its local partner, Africom Technologies, came on top at the technical evaluation stage. On the other hand, Asseco Group is among the top IT companies in Poland and is currently working with the Information Network and Security Agency (INSA) on modernizing the country’s billing system. It has more than 25 years’ worth of experience in providing IT solutions in Central and Eastern Europe. It also supplies software to vendors in Europe, taking the sixth place in the Truffle 100 ranking, according to its website.
Following the technical evaluation, which was mainly done by experts from INSA, the aforementioned two companies made it to the next level.
Africom and its partners will work on consulting, implementation as well as the development of the system.
The project is fully funded by the Ethiopian government.
