CSC Europe, the London-based division of the systems integrator Computer Sciences Corp, has won a $3m contract to build a Police Command and Control System to replace the one destroyed in the Gulf War. This follows work done by CSC on a technology strategy for the rebuilding of Kuwaiti Government ministries (CI No 1,630). At the beginning of the conflict, computer tapes were smuggled out of the country – one under a car spare tyre – to enable reconstruction of the country’s information technology system almost immediately the Allies left. After hostilities ended, paper records had been destroyed, leaving only electronicallly-stored data. This led, according to CSC, to a dramatic increase in the pace of the introduction of technology. Most government ministries and agencies had their hardware physically stolen and equipment that was nailed down was destroyed wantonly. Here the state-run oil industry fared better than most: the oil industry is run largely using Digital Equipment Corp equipment, which proved unpopular with the Iraqi invaders. However many government buildings, particularly those relating to security, police and defence, were gutted. Keith Davies, CSC Europe’s newly-appointed managing director of Kuwaiti operations, sees the extent of destruction that took place, when considered alongside Kuwait’s vast resources, as providing an opportunity for rapid technological advance. He claims that Kuwait has leap-frogged generations of technological development and now stands at the head of the queue for new technology. Starting again from scratch does have its advantages. For instance government ministries now use information across organisatonal boundaries, avoiding unnecessary expense by ending the duplication of tasks by several staff in separate government departments. The Police Command and Control System will provide operational command and control via incident reporting, case management and forensics information. Systems are to use computer aided software engineering and CSC has undertaken to train Kuwaitis in software engineering management as well as providing long term support.
