Dissipating of funds in Bulgarian Judicial System
 
Saga Technology

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The detailed audit of IT in Bulgarian Judicial System by independent experts has shown that there is no unified integrated information system, there is dissipation of funds and low quality products have been implemented. The audit was made under the order of Minister of Justice Miglena Tacheva. In a week the Supreme Judicial Council of the Republic of Bulgaria should decide how to change the IT policy in the system. The Unified Information System for Counteracting Crime of all judicial organizations and mainly in 180 courts was planned 10 years ago but the results are poor in spite the big number of donation programs. The implemented software differs court by court and thus the data exchange is hindered.
The evaluation made by three independent IT experts also said that one of the reasons for unsatisfied results of IT implementation is the lack of quality project management.  The main tenders were made under PHARE program between 2002 -2005 when minister was Mr. Anton Stankov.
 
25% growth of Bulgarian IT market in 2007
 
it FORUM

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The IDC data, presented during a press briefing in Sofia, show 25.1% growth of Bulgarian ICT market in 2007. The prognoses are for 14.9% average per year growth in the next four years. The main IT clients are government, financial and telecom sectors and this trend will stay in the next few years, according to the analyzer. IDC also advised IT companies to put more efforts in fast growing segments of manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade. The situation in retail is that the most companies have tracking systems but not analyzing tools and in high competitive environment they will turn their attention to more modern instruments. Also healthcare and utilities are developed mainly under state projects but the separate organizations will need ERP systems for more efficient management of their activities.
The main hindrances before IT market development according to IDC are the shortage of skilled labor force, non-efficient foreign investment and corruption in public tender.
 
David Holding to implement document management in 54 municipalities
 
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Today the applications of the four candidates in a public tender of Ministry of State Administration and Administrative Reform were opened. The tender was named “Delivery and implementation of information system for improvement of administrative services and work processes in the municipalities”. The highest benchmarks 92.33 achieved David Holding. The company offered a price of 100 000 Euro. The weight of the price is 50% in the final ranking; the other 50% are given for functionality.
The goal of the project is the implementation of integrated automated information system in 54 municipalities for better administrative electronic and paper services for citizens. The IS should be centralized, to be in compliance with operational requirements of municipalities and European recommendations.

BARS to organize a discussion “Which is the better technology?”
 
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Bulgarian Association of Software Developers is organizing an open debate among the leading experts in .NET and Java which technology is better in database access and object relational mapping. The idea is to gather professionals to exchange information about the world trends and news.
The discussion will finish with fight with inflated boxing gloves. The .NET team will present the new technologies in .NET Framework 3.3 - ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ. Java team will present ORM technologies, used from years in Java Persistence API (JPA) and Hibernate platform. The referee will be Svetlin Nakov, chairman of association. Every team will have fans and also independent audience will be presented – they also will participate in debate.
 
e-Signature to be mandatory for big companies
 
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The Coordination Council for Information Society will propose to Bulgarian government to make the e-signature mandatory for big companies. Also steps will be taken for financial motivation of citizens to use e-signature and to communicate electronically with the administration. This statement was made by Plamen Vachkov, chairman of Bulgarian State Agency for ICT. The results of implemented e-services were reported by Maria Murgina, chief executive of National Revenue Agency – 47% of companies are presenting VAT reporting electronically, 25% presenting income declarations via Internet and 16% of employers registered new labor contracts also via Internet.
 
ICT system for Bulgarian Army is under consideration
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Bulgarian government has approved a new military project, which aim is building information and communication system for the entire army. Under non-official data the project will cost 400 million BGN (200 million Euros), paid form military budget.
The new system will allow voice, data and video transfer as well as compliance with other NATO systems. The priority will be given to communication systems for the contingents working out of Bulgarian boarders.
The deadline of the project was 2017 but now it is put off for 2022 and minister will explain why the term is prolonged in time. Interest to project is already shown by several companies from Italy, UK and USA. 

Public Tenders
 
Ministry of finance: Planned orders for 2008
 

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Saga Technology is a publisher of PC Magazine Bulgaria, itFORUM, Information Security&Storage, ICT White Papers, ICT Catalogues.