September 1,2001

Cybersoft Releases IPIS

Cybersoft successfully deployed an Integrated Planning Information System (IPIS), the most complex system ever developed and successfully implemented in Ethiopia. The system was installed on a wide area network connecting different Zones of the Amhara Region with the Bureau of Planning and Economic Development (BoPED) of the Amhara National Regional State (ANRS). The system meets over a thousand set of functional requirements or use cases and consists of more than seventeen subsystems.

The development of the first version of IPIS took about forty man-years of effort on the part of Cybersoft alone. Cybersoft deployed more than thirty high-level professionals to participate in the development of the system. The system was developed in a Joint Application Development (JAD) approach with extensive and intensive participation of professionals from BoPED-ANRS and the Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation (MEDaC) throughout the development cycle thereby increasing the professional effort put on the system to over 60 man-years.

The Wide Area Network (WAN), which consists of a Local Area Network (LAN) having three servers and 127 nodes at the head office plus ten other LANs each having a server and ten nodes in each of the ten Zones of the state, was also designed and implemented by Cybersoft.

The development of IPIS is a turning point in the application of information technology for national, regional, and zonal development planning and policy formulation that has a great potential to easily grow to an Integrated National Information System.