PROCESSORS

ESRI announced that, coinciding with its acceptance into ESRI's International Distributor Program, GeoVision, the new geographic information system (GIS) division of Afghan IT company Liwal Limited, immediately committed itself to active participation in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Afghanistan. "Unfortunately, Afghanistan is a war-torn country with three decades of conflict that has effectively destroyed the country's entire infrastructure from residential neighborhoods to national highways. We are fortunate to be in a position to offer any help that we can to assist in the relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction efforts," comments N. R. Liwal, president of Liwal Limited. "With the opportunity to supply GIS software and services, our company can support GIS projects in Afghanistan whenever and wherever necessary. We are currently receiving inquiries for GIS products and services on a daily basis from a wide variety of public, private, and humanitarian agencies." GeoVision has forged a strong relationship with the Afghanistan Information Management Service (AIMS), a United Nations (UN) Development Programme project that was originally established to provide GIS, database, information management, and training services to the Afghan government and humanitarian community. GeoVision and AIMS are exploring the possibility of working together to promote the use of GIS in Afghanistan. With its extensive experience in GIS training, AIMS is well suited to become an authorized learning center for ESRI software training, while Liwal Limited, the parent of GeoVision, has extensive experience in sales, support, and application development. The partnering of GeoVision and AIMS would allow them to jump-start the process of implementing GIS throughout the country's public and private sector because the necessary expertise for software sales, development, and training would already exist between the associates. Continues Liwal, "Our relationship with AIMS is vital to GeoVision because it is AIMS' that introduced and spread GIS throughout Afghanistan. GeoVision plans to utilize AIMS' skills and network to continue expanding GIS education in our country. In the near future, GeoVision and AIMS will join together and offer a series of GIS software training courses." Although GeoVision is a relatively new division of Liwal Limited, core staff members have more than 10 years of experience using ESRI software for GIS projects. This experience is key to the division's ongoing work with a number of government agencies to develop a comprehensive GIS for Afghanistan. These agencies include the Afghan Geodesy and Cartography Head Office; Central Statistic Office; Ministry of Urban Planning and Housing; Ministry of Agriculture; Ministry of Communication; Ministry of Power and Energy; Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, and several others. Liwal believes that his company will change significantly as a result of its new ESRI distributor status. "Our work will change tremendously in both the GeoVision division and Liwal Limited, our IT company," he says. "GeoVision will have an impact on Liwal Limited because of the need for additional hardware such as more powerful computers, plotters, printers, and survey equipment. The fact that GeoVision is the only GIS software distributor in Afghanistan will allow us to easily expand our GIS services and consultancy work as needed." Concerning the future of GIS in Afghanistan, Liwal states, "I see GIS growing exponentially in Afghanistan. There are already 28 registered users of ESRI's software products, and each week we receive a number of new inquires for GIS-related products or services. We believe that there are additional GIS users in the country but have not, as yet, had the opportunity to contact them. GIS will grow much faster once the government of Afghanistan and our universities begin implementing the technology. Certain ministries and UN agencies are already in conversation concerning the creation of the Afghanistan National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and this will help expand the use of GIS in Afghanistan. Due to the number of INGOs, NGOs, UN agencies, and other donors in Afghanistan, there will be funds available to purchase the software, and slowly other markets for GIS will begin to open up."