Integrated Planning Information System, a Basis for National Information

Ato Assefa Dagne, Managing Director, Cybersoft

Abstract

Policy formulation, development planning, monitoring and evaluation are information-intensive processes. They are also important for the sustenance, development and growth of a nation. Almost every kind of information about the nation is required, and only an appropriately designed and developed, automated system with a powerful database management can provide it. To this end, Cybersoft has researched and designed an Integrated Planning Information System (IPIS) for MEDaC at the national level and BoPEDs at the regional level. This paper discusses the salient features of the major IPIS sub-systems and how they contribute to addressing the "information poverty" issue of Ethiopia.

Biography:

Assefa Dagne is a founding member and Managing Director of Cybersoft p.l.c. He is also a Lecturer at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Addis Ababa University. Assefa obtained his B.Sc, degree in Electrical Engineering from Addis Ababa University in 1993 graduating with the best score of the year and receiving the Universities Chancellor's Medal. Subsequently, he obtained his Master of Philosophy degree in Computer Applications (Software Engineering) as the Medal winner for best performance scoring 90.3% from the University of Roorkee, India. He also received a certificate in Systems Programming from the same University.

Since 1997, he has been lecturing at the Technology Faculty of the Addis Ababa University (AAU) in the new Computer Engineering Stream Program, which he and his colleague introduced to the University. He has also provided numerous courses to information technologists in such institutions as the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Airlines, National Computer and Information Centre of the Ethiopian Science and Technology Commission.

His research activities include the area of knowledge engineering - fuzzy systems and neural networks, conflict early warning systems, multilingual systems and computing with Ethiopic characters, pattern recognition- speech and character recognition, object-oriented approaches to the manipulation of mathematical functions.