On 3 November, before the working sessions of the Cisco Expo 2010 conference in Kyiv began, a ceremony was held to award the best IT projects implemented in Ukraine using Cisco solutions in 2010. For the fourth year running, this ceremony has been an integral part of Cisco Expo and serves as a kind of indicator of how IT innovations are being adopted by Ukrainian companies.
The jury named the solution integrated by Softline for the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine the best project in the "Departmental Video Telephony System" category. It is the first video telephony project of its kind in the Ukrainian public administration sector to connect all territorial units of a single organisation nationwide. Moreover, video communications are now used by all of the agency's staff, not just its management.
The project became part of two stages of implementing the "e-government" concept at the Main Department of Civil Service: "electronic civil servant" and "electronic ministry". Its main goal is to provide modern secure telephone communication and the ability to hold virtual meetings via a video and audio conferencing system between staff of the central office and the regional offices of the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine.
As a result of the project, an information infrastructure has been put into operation at the Main Department of Civil Service and its 27 territorial departments. It includes a departmental IP telephony network with access to the public telephone network in every region, and a system for organising and holding video conferences for more than 400 employees of the central office and territorial bodies, with the ability to stream weekly video conference meetings online on the agency's portal. The launch of the video telephony system has allowed the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine to raise communication with regional department staff to a higher level, while reducing the time and money spent on business trips and on resolving work matters.
Presenting the award, Cisco Director of Information Technology Dan Sullivan stressed that "the technological changes now taking place in telecommunications will be the main drivers of reforming and modernising business processes around the world".
It is worth noting that this Softline development has been recognised as the best twice. The project to build an IP telephony system at the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine was also named the best at the 4th International Conference on Corporate Communication Systems. Receiving the award, Denys Terebii, Director of the System Integration Department at Softline, said:
— The project is unique for the public sector. One can only admire the determination of the customer, who took on such an interesting and complex project. We can see from many solutions that video telephony is a standard for all employees of an organisation. It is not just an add-on for holding meetings, but a tool for everyday work.
Volodymyr Dunaiev, Head of the Information and Analytical Department of the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine, in turn commented on the project's results:
— I would like to thank you for such a high appraisal of our project's results. When we started it, we set a global goal, and it was not based on the financial component. Our task was to improve the efficiency of corporate interaction between our territorial departments and the central office, since we run a huge number of joint projects involving our regions. And I want to point out that interaction has grown by an order of magnitude! Especially given the limited budget for long-distance calls and the limited budget for business trips. With IP telephony we have solved all these issues.
Softline JSC has been operating in the IT market since 1995. It specialises in developing highly complex software products and is a partner of global brands: IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Teradata, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Oracle. Softline specialists have developed and implemented 40 modern software products and specialised solutions and completed more than 500 successful projects in finance, telecommunications and communications, energy, utilities, public administration, industry and transport.