The Ministry of Labour delegation included Ahmed Al Nasser, Deputy Director for Information Technology, Shuaib Al Hamadi, Head f IT Operations and Walid El Noqrashi, IT Consultant. The Ministry of Environment & Water delegation included Aisha Al Jesmi, Acting IT Director, Hunaidah Qaid, System Analyst, Mohammed Hafiz Uddin, System Analyst and Salim Pasha, Network Engineer.

The meeting was attended by Ahmed Ismail, Chief Information Consultant and Manal Al Affad, E-Services Coordinator at the General Information Authority.

The visiting delegations were briefed about Cloud Computing and the steps taken by GIA to provide cloud computing services to federal entities in the UAE which will result in substantial financial savings for the government entities. Adopting cloud computing saves government entities the cost of paying for license fees, hardware and software programmes.

Salem Khamis Al Shair Al Suwaidi, Director General of the General Information Authority welcomed the cooperation between GIA and the Ministries of Labour and Environment and Water. He said, "I would like to thank our brothers at the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Environment and Water and the other entities that have approached us and showed interest to learn more about Cloud Computing services developed by GIA and offered free of charge for government entities."

"GIA has adopted the Cloud Services initiative in its e-Government strategy for the next three years. We will provide many cloud services to federal ministries, authorities and councils. If applied in a comprehensive and correct manner, Cloud Computing will accelerate the pace f e-Transformation at the federal level in the UAE," Al Suwaidi added.

Among the Cloud Services offered by GIA, electronic hosting, file management and database systems, Intranet portals, e-mail service and meeting management system.