Abu Dhabi Education Council's (ADEC's) Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector, celebrated the completion of its five-year strategy plan, with the implementation of 47 different projects and strategic initiatives that all help cater to teaching and learning requirements necessary for a knowledge based economy.

Under the patronage of Dr. Amal Al Qubaisi, Director General of ADEC, the ICT Division celebrated its achievements, which helped categorise ADEC as offering one of the best ICT infrastructure across public schools, in addition to announcing the implementation of several business applications which resulted in the automation of hundreds of processes across the organisation.

During the event, more than 250 school leaders were invited to learn more about 31 different achievements ADEC's ICT division has completed in 2014 alone. A few of these important ICT achievements include: virtualisation, disaster recovery, infrastructure services, Office 365, Adult Learning Centers, New and Refurbished Schools, Schools Information Management System (SIMS), Online Student Registration (OSR), Private School Licensing, Online Customer Services (OCS), Private School Staff Information System.

Hamad Al Dhaheri, Executive Director, ADEC's Private Schools and Quality Assurance (PSQA) sector, spoke about the huge accomplishment. He said: "During the last few years, ADEC has invested heavily in improving the physical environment of our schools, through the implementation of a comprehensive plan to build and refurbish schools so that children can enjoy an environment that is conductive to learning."

He further added: "As of that context, ADEC's ICT Division is now considered one of the best ICT infrastructures in a public school system, with the aim of continuing its focus towards leveraging world-class ICT solutions to enhance teaching and learning outcomes across all academic areas. This cannot be done without the support of teachers, administrators, parents and most importantly our major technology partners, who have worked around the clock with ADEC to ensure top-notch ICT related projects are delivered on time."

During the event, school leaders, ICT partners and sponsors, were given in-depth information on some of the projects and strategic initiatives that ADEC's ICT Division recently completed. Attendees were offered a description on how ADEC transformed its entire physical server infrastructure to virtual, which helped cut down on server provisioning window from six months to 30 minutes. ADEC's Disaster Recovery is another huge project that added to the ICT Divisions accomplishments – the site hosts critical business applications that are required to function within minutes in case a disaster may occur.

A major milestone for schools was the development of Office 365, which provides every single student across ADEC's public schools, with a cloud-based productivity software including MS Microsoft Office, Cloud Storage, e-mail and social networking services.

Additionally, ADEC has completed a fully automated ICT infrastructure solution that includes networking, connectivity, printing, photocopying, phone and audio visual devices, across 21 Adult Learning Centers, seven refurbished and eight new schools.

Parents and students are now able to enrol in any of ADEC's public schools and Adult Learning Education Centers through the OSR. Additionally the OCS helps members of the public to apply for single or multiple service requests. End users can also pay online for services applied for. Customer service representatives can review, reject, approve and process requests and send to a customer via courier services.

All private schools can now submit documentations regarding new teachers, principals, vice principals and other staff members, under hiring requests which require ADEC's approval. The private schools staff information system also enables private schools to manage current staff information and submit termination requests to ADEC.