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CV Dr. Holger Frommert

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Curriculum Vitae

Germany and Spain 2012 - today

Since the end of 2012, I am usually back in Malchow for family reasons, because my mother needs help because of her age. I work from here on different projects, partly home-based, partly on-site. Over the last few years, I have worked on projects for InCompass-International Consultancy Services Ltd, but also developed my own projects on my own.

Examples of such projects are:

Peruvian Ministry of Interior Information Security Projects
Creation and revision of tender documents for Peru's biometric passport
Other projects for various Peruvian institutions
Various projects for InCompass-International Consultancy Services Ltd, including biometric registration and control of refugees for Greek authorities
Development of a decentralized doublet-free allocation procedure of National ID Numbers with coded personal information for the work of Civil Register Authorities in countries with underdeveloped infrastructure

In addition to these projects, I have created a web site for consultants that provides country information in maps and as links to further sources. The site is based on a link database that provides not only simple country information but also specific information such as energy, environment, crime and terrorism. This site is designed to help consultants get a picture of a country in the shortest possible time.

West Africa -Golf of Guinea States - Zone E and F
Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Cameroon 2016 - 2017

westafrika In 2016, I participated in a one-month maritime safety evaluation mission in the West African states of Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast of the Gulf of Guinea, which was tasked with defining a project to increase safety at sea. The Mission also visited the ICC co-ordination center in Cameroon in Yaounde for the whole Gulf area and in Douala the MRDC Coordination Unit for Zone D, which is the only area to have its own permanent operational unit in Malabo represents a prototype to other coordination centers. The actual project area, however, were the first 5 states. I was responsible for the IT and communication technology in this project.

In particular, the coast of Nigeria is a major focus of international piracy, with approximately 80% of the security incidents recorded in 2015 in Nigeria's national and international waters.

All previous projects were focused on supporting the national navy, and much less on the maritime police units of the riparian states. On the other hand, the approach I followed was aimed at including the investigation of the illegal structures on land, which are always upstream and downstream of the actions at sea.

It was designed to set up national data centers where relevant information from all stakeholders should be concentrated and evaluated. As an approach, the formation of a data warehouse was recommended, in which the stakeholder feed information and for them useful information - taking into account the data security and access rights - can be queried. These data centers should be located at trusted national institutions and, in turn, relevant information exchanged in a second step with the neighboring states and the other states belonging to the respective zone. Nigeria was proposed as a pilot project, because this country is on the one hand the problem focus, and on the other hand already has well-structured institutions. If the pilot project and the necessary software work well enough for the conditions in Nigeria, it can easily be transferred to other states with simpler structures.

For IT and communication, the involvement of the activities in the ongoing WAPIS project of Interpol and the national police authorities was examined and discussed. For various reasons, objective as well as subjective, this is difficult to imagine.

As part of the mission, the existing conditions of all involved stakeholders in the visited countries of the region were examined and cataloged.

Jordan 2014 - 2016

In 2014, as part of an EU project, I participated in the evaluation of a 2-phase tender for hardware and software for the support of the Jordan Energy Information Center. At this stage, the technical and financial suitability of potential candidates for the project was determined. My job was to support the evaluation by the Jordanian Commission. After the evaluation of the first phase, 6 companies remained, which were invited to submit their technical and financial offers in the second phase of the tender.

For the second phase, I have to revise and partially update the previously prepared tender documents. After the completion of the documents, as well as the offer, I was again commissioned with the evaluation of the technical and financial offers. The contract was awarded to the Chinese company Beijing North Star Technology Development Co. Ltd .. which made both the technical and the best financial offer.

I was then entrusted with the control of the technical implementation of the contract, which I executed until the handover of the Energy Information System (EIS) to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. The EIS is active and can be used by all interested persons under http://eis.memr.gov.jo/.

The EIS is designed in its project conception as an information system with web-based data collection - manual or structured data entry from files - as well as SCADA interfaces - for direct process data acquisition - of stakeholder information. As part of software realization, the process data of a solar farm of the ministry was directly recorded via the latter interface and is currently still connected.

In addition to these data, the EIS team will incorporate other data - international data, standards, etc. and linked to it by the central system for analysis. For external and internal analysts the information is prepared. In addition to these standard queries, the individual data is also used to create your own queries and links. These can easily be created using a built-in web-based interface and stored on the dashboard. The results can be saved as graphics or as tables - with export filters to standard programs such as Excel or PSPP - for further processing.

The content of the project was to supply and install the required hardware servers, routers, etc. as well as to program the software - Java applets and HTML code as well as standard libraries. A program of a Chinese energy company was tailored to the needs of the Jordanian Ministry of Energy.
The overall process was monitored by me and led to a very positive result.

Paraguay 2014-2015

In October 2014 I started in the IOM project (International Organization for Migration) "Proposals for the modernization of border management from Paraguay". The project had two phases, the first inventory in Paraguay. In this phase, the following activities were carried out:

Inspection and evaluation of various border checkpoints - airports, ports and ground - with a representative level of IT support and cooperation, nationally and bi-national,
Status assessment of central institutions of the Migration Police, including the IT sector and system,
Recording the tasks assigned to the migration police, and
Visits to the Identification department of the National Police, which is responsible for the issuance of national identity cards and regular national passports

In the following 3 months was prepared the basic information for the modernization concept for the management of migration flows in the country, based on the observations of the first phase. Components of this approach were:

Development of a control system based on IBM (Integrated Border Management) with special consideration of the national migration service, including the development of standards for its employees,
Proposals for coordination and improve cooperation with the National Police, including the internal data exchange,
Suggestions for improvement of the computer system - introduction of national identification number as a unique key field, and
Detailed proposals for a re-engineering of all visited border inspection posts - starting with the PCF Ciudad del Este (most difficult conditions) as a pilot project.

Central America 2011

In November and December 2011 I was contracted by the International Organisation of Migration to held seven bi-national workshops trying to show the requests of the Integrated Border Management and the reality seen in the border check points of the region. Additionally should be elaborated a evaluation of the visited check points and there should be mentioned possibilities to improve the border security.

The following seven countries were included:

Belize
Costa Rica,
El Salvador,
Guatemala,
Honduras,
Nicaragua y
Panamá.

In the trip were visited 12 border checkpoints, mainly land border checkpoints, but also any airports and ports, the last specifically in El Salvador. The following border checkpoints were visited:

Melchor de Mencos - Benque Viejo (Guatemala – Belize)
El Florido - El Florido (Honduras-Guatemala)
Anguiatú-Nuevo - Viejo Anguiatú (El Salvador-Guatemala)
Agua Caliente – Agua Caliente (Honduras-Guatemala)
El Poy - El Poy (Honduras- El Salvador)
El Amatillo – El Amatillo (El Salvador - Honduras)
Guasaule – Guasaule (Honduras - Nicaragua)
Peñas Blancas – Peñas Blancas (Nicaragua – Costa Rica)
Paso Canoas – Paso Canoas (Costa Rica - Panamá)
Aeropuerto Internacional Tocumen – Ciudad de Panamá Panamá
Puerto Deportivo Bahía del Sol – El Salvador
Puerto Acalutja – El Salvador

The results were presented in the XXXV Ordinary Meeting of OCAM to the General Directors of the Migration Services of the seven countries, held on the 13.12.2011 in San Salvador.
An additional result was a small virtual library of documents and tools for the participants of the workshops to improve the knowledge and abilities – currently provisionally hosted under this direction – click the link to open the web site.

Spain 2010 - 2011

Since 2010 I’m Senior Associate of InCompass-International Consultancy Services Ltd., working there and for other enterprises mostly home based in the preparation of projects and the writing of consulting offers.

Two examples for my working content are visible in the following presentations:

Additionally I’m currently helping my daughter in her private projects in Alicante, attending mainly the IT part.

Moldavia 2008 - 2010

The Moldovan Project was initially planned to introduce the biometric Passport in Moldova. It was initially planned for 2006/07, so that the Moldovan authorities have had implemented the biometric passport by own founds and the emission was started one month before the project has started in Chisinau.

By the EU-Delegation was redefined the tasks of the consultants, trying to support the existing system and to promote the application for the new biometric passport.

The passport was type B, using the same booklets as before, mounting a plastic container with the ship inside, valid solution for low numbers of emission. The main problem was the legal part, permitting the application for a non-biometric or an biometric passport. Considering the significant higher price for the biometric passport the demand was very low.

The project was affected by different problems, as main problems must be considered:

There was a frequent change in the orientation of the EU-Delegation; the last substantial change was initiated 3 weeks before the end of the project. Here should be mentioned that this last change has enriched the project in a substantial manner, and similar changes were before also suggested by the consultants.
The project responsible staffs in the EU-Delegation were changing in the last 3 months of the project, not one of the former decision makers on delegation level was in charge in the final evaluation.
On Moldovan side was changing in the project time three times the government; the most of the counterparts were changed. Over the tree election time was no work possible, the Moldovan decision makers were waiting for the election results.

In the project were included the following Moldovan institutions as beneficiary:

Ministry of Information Development, especially the stat own enterprise “Registru”, enterprise in charge of the emission of national ID documents, including the production of the new national biometric passport, supplying central IT server technology and the required workstations and server for the local offices in charge of the biometric enrolment.
The State own Enterprise for Special Telecommunication – enterprise under the Prime Minister Office for the data security of national and international data security for the Moldovan Government and Public Key Authority for the emission of the biometric passports, mainly supplying server technology and financing the membership of Moldova in the ICAO Trust Centre to initiate the exchange of the international public keys for the passport control.
Moldovan Border Guard Service, including the control activities on the border, increasing their IT and control capabilities,
Moldovan Ministry for External Relations and European Integration, including the emission of passports in the consulates, including salvo conducts, and other register activities, supplying to the Moldovan consulates equipment for biometric enrolment,
Moldovan Ministry of Internal Affairs, especially the Migration Department, in charge of the emission of the refugee passport, etc., the Department for Fraud Detection, in charge of the verification of confiscated documents, and the National Interpol Office, especially for the control on the Moldovan-Transnistrian-Boundery Line. The equipment was mainly IT and control equipment for passports.

Task was lastly, after many different orientations, the development of a biometric master plan for the country, including our project as the initial part for the future development. So was planned based in the biometric passport, using the same equipment, the implementation of biometric ID card and joining all together later in a Biometric Population Register.

With the implementation in the consulates of Moldova it’s possible to enrol the passport applicants in place and to transmit the request to Chisinau, producing the passports centralised, distributing in the consulate later only the new biometric passports to the applicants. With the same equipment is possible to emit salvo conducts, identifying Moldovan citizen in the consulates and in a later step to implement biometric visas.

In the meetings was promoted the stop of the emission of the non-biometric passports. A corresponding change of the passport law was issued by the parliament and starting 2012 will be the biometric passport the only emitted travel document.

In “Registru” was promoted the change from the initial use of non-biometric passport booklets, using a sticker with the chip and antenna set, to biometric booklets.

Inside our project – focus biometric passport – was projected and included the supply of the required technology for the beneficiaries, incrementing their possibilities to work with the biometric passports and to increase the level of the border control. For all the required equipment was elaborated the technical description and the tender documentation.

In this project I was working as team leader.

Yemen 2010

In spring 2010 I was working in Yemen in a mixed project, human rights issues and civil register, with the Authority of Civil Status and Civilian Records inside the Ministry of Interior. The objective was to write the EU standard documentation for an new project, including the elaboration of the technical specifications of the equipment needs and the draft budget. The project was organised between the EU-Delegation and the Ministry of Human Rights of Yemen, meanwhile the entire civil register task was pending on the Ministry of Interior.

In these coordination’s we have had many problems, as example, I could travel to Yemen only 2 weeks later as the team, there was no possibility to get the required visa over the EUD or the ministry, later the local expert of our team could manage the problem.

But the lack of preparation of the mission in the Civil Register was still huger, there nobody had known from the mission until the EUD project manager has brought my colleague (he was travailing with the team before) to the Civil Register, 8 days after he arrives. All direct intents to contact before where not successful.

Considering that Yemen is since years in a nearly civil war situation and the Civil Register – better should be said a biometric population register with a low level of data (only any more as 1,9 million habitants have now the new ID-card, with biometric enrolment - 7,9% of the population) – is one of the main verified data sources, therefore with and important operative importance. Usually the project manager of the EUD must organize in such institutions the initial contact.

After my arrival the technical work with the Civil Register was going smooth, with only one problem, the exact number of existing equipment and more detailed information about the system was not transmitted from the beneficiary, consequence of the lack of the corresponding permission from the Minister, he was in the time of the mission in Marib, trying to resolve the armed conflict between a usual governmental loyal tribe and the government.

The attached presentation was held on the initial phase of the mission.

After the team has known from third part that there were a parallel project of the UAE with 60 times more budget and the EUD has known this fact without to say anything the base of trust was destroyed. The EU project manager could be a good one for NOG´s and human rights, but in the work with the government she was not helpful and not qualified. Corresponding errors in the technical content are evident and veritable.

The decision by the EU project manager to start with phase 2 of our terms of reference (ToR) - preparing the next, new project - and to postpone the execution of the evaluation of the existing conditions and results of former projects (phase 1 in our ToR) was one of the most controversial issues. The request was explained with time restrictions for the new project documentation.

The mission was broken up by the EUD after the team has finished the second part - the evaluation was cancelled. The results until the break-off were over handed. About the reasons for this step until now, final days of August 2011, there are still discussions.

PS: If there is more interest on the case, please contact me.

Ukraine 2010

The task was to prepare the EU standard documentation for General Budget Support for the border sector of Ukraine. The central point of the work was the elaboration of the Readiness Report, evaluating the sector plans and the macro-economical conditions for such support.

The special condition of budget support is that the financing sources are directly given to the Ministry of Finance of the country, and after this no more directly under control of the donor, the final application is decision of this ministry. To control the use of the transferred founds can be included a transfer by tranches, connecting the next one to improved conditions in the sector, expressed in performance indices.

On other hand, the instrument of budget support is seen by the EU under different aspects, from the development point of view it’s an apparently effective way to implement plans without higher costs – especially transaction costs, and it’s a political tool for the relations to the beneficiary country.

Coming to Ukraine in the months before the elections 2010 the government was pro-west, but the conditions in the country were not the best. There were no effective procurement roles implemented, the IWF has criticized the government of Ukraine in hard form about the debt and not existing conditions for a controlled cooperation, no finance minister in charge since more than 9 months, and high noon in the election campaign.

In EU delegation side was the political willingness to give the budget support under these conditions, a more political as content relevant decision. This willingness was indirectly mentioned in the briefing in the kickoff meeting and later confirmed thru the verbal change of the terms of reference, excluding the requests of an Integrated Border Management (IBM) explicitly in the evaluation. There is, outside of an not full implemented software for the integration of the IT systems (ARKAN) between customs and border guards, no relevant practical advance in the integration of the border services. An exception is the work of EUBAM, an EU project between Ukraine and Moldova, were the staff is intending to promote IBM, partially with very interesting results, but limited to the border between Moldova – Transnistria and Ukraine.

Considering this circumstances the readiness report of the team was a vote for certifying the readiness for a payment in tranches connected to an indicator based evaluation of the reached progress in the planned activities, permitting so the control over the implementation of the technically planned activities (procurement of hardware, software, equipment, etc. and the implementation of the same). This was the difference between the other initiated budget support projects in Ukraine, each of them 65 Million €, and our readiness report.

Our report was rejected by the EU delegation, all intents to get a reason for this was transferred to the consulting enterprise which has hired us and not answered. Also other intents to get an answer were not successful.

The consulting enterprise has send a new team “to finish the report”, which has had from the EU delegation the order to work without any contact to the Ukrainian institutions, working mainly based on our material. Their report was accepted, written with a clear statement of “YES” the readiness of the sector and the macro-economical conditions are given – without indicators and tranche evaluations.

PS: For interested in the issue, I have here both reports and I can facilitate them for your own evaluation. In February 2011 was stopped the financial support of the EU to Ukraine with similar arguments we have had included in our report, and a new, russian near government have at least a acting finance minister. (Original source Kyivpost 02/25/2011 or local PDF)

Central America 2009

In spring 2009 I was member of a evaluation and project defining mission of integrated border management in behavior of the EC in Central America.

In the tasks where included the following countries in alphabetic order:

Costa Rica,
El Salvador,
Guatemala,
Honduras,
Nicaragua and
Panama.

In the evaluation was a special focus on El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, considering that these four countries have done a first step in the CA4 contract, permitting that there citizen are crossing the national border using the corresponding national ID as travel document. There are also other contents in the CA-4 agreements, like visa political issues, but these were not so significant for the evaluation.

In the mission was evaluated the following issues, institutions and national standards of the six countries:

Central data coordination between migration control, customs service and national police (including the connection I 24/7 to Interpol),
Equipment of the involved institutions on the border control points for information exchange with third parties (Airlines, Transport Ministry, etc.),
Concepts for the deep area check of the border near areas,
Data integration on national and international level (CA4, Interpol),
Document security of the national passports and identification cards,
Existing cooperation agreements on national as well on international level (NAS, DEA, CA4, AMERIPOL, bilateral, etc.) and
Integration of other national institutions (Ministry of Agriculture, central services, ICAO, etc.)

In the analysis was included the migration service, customs service, national police, border guards and other related country specific institutions. The contacts where on technical level, as well on the vice minister level. Permanent counterparts were also the local national Interpol NCB´s and the police chiefs of the corresponding countries.

In the mission was evaluated the following issues, institutions and national standards of the six countries:

Central data capturing system of the migration services,
Coordination between migration control, customs service and national police (including the connection I 24/7 to Interpol),
Equipment of the involved institutions on the border control points for information exchange with third parties (Airlines, etc.),
Concepts for the deep area check of the border near areas,
Data integration on national and international level (CA4, Interpol),
Document security of the national passports and identification cards,
Existing cooperation agreements on national as well on international level (NAS, DEA, CA4, AMERIPOL, bilateral, etc.) and
Integration of other national institutions (Ministry of Agriculture, central services, ICAO, etc.)

Based on the assessment analysis, in which was revised all capital airports and any selected land border checkpoints was developed a project targeting the improvement of the integrated border security. In this content was given all required technical specifications for equipment and internal function of the system. The results were present on the XXIV Extraordinary Meeting of Chiefs of Police of Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean.

Other important point of the tasks in the project was the connection of the Interpol standard solutions MIND and FIND to be able to detect internationally wanted persons, lost and stolen travel documents, etc. To reach this objective was before the mission start a deep briefing in Lyon and the local Interpol NCB´s as well the regional Interpol representatives were our permanent counterparts.

The results of the analysis was the base for the EC project, for which was elaborated all the required documentation according the EC standards.

Jordania 2008 - 2009

In Jordan I was working for the EU-Delegation with two different consulting enterprises in three projects as short term expert, all IT relevant.

The first project was with new founded National Ombudsman Office, defining the requests for an effective complaint management system, including there workflow and document management facilities. Based on the design was developed the budget request and the requests for the countrywide system, permitting the population appeal at least in the corresponding province capital and over internet. Here was a web based solution in connection with MS SharePoint recommended and later implemented.

The second project was oriented to a similar complaint management system in the National Centre for Human Rights and the update of their web page. For the complaint management was implemented on central side the required hard- and software and the web site templates were designed.

The last small project was to support the library of the Juridical Institute of the Ministry of Justice in Jordan, permitting an internet access to the Human Rights relevant literature and links to national and international relevant organisations. For this task was developed a web interface, including all sources of the library, using the data stored before in the ISIS system of the library.

For all institution was also defined the training needs of the acting staff.

Nicaragua 2008 - 2009

In 2008 - 09 I was working in a project of the EU-Delegation in Nicaragua on the evaluation of the requirements of the National Civil Register Service inside the Supreme Council of Elections (CSE) to fortalice the existing register system and to support the emission of the new national biometric ID-card, project also executed by the CSE. Objective of the mission was to elaborate the EU standard documentation, Action Fiche, Logical Framework, etc., including a first estimation of the costs of the project.

In the studies was defined the following initial situation:

The Civil Register activity is technically supported in a very heterogeneous level, mostly depending of the support of the local administration and their access to national and international projects,
In any 20 municipal administrations was developing a Swedish project including special software for this tasks, in others were used Excel to have an index system over the register activities, meanwhile in other registers all work was done manually and based on the books,
The registration level was significantly different between the Pacific and Atlantic cost provinces. The registration gap was especially high in the RAN and RAS – the northern and south autonomous region of the Atlantic cost, resulting of the low population density and the tribal structure in these indigenous areas,
The central level of the register was more focused in the microfilm production of the books, the IT support was low, mostly as consequence of the lack of interest of the Civil Register administration,
The emission of the new National ID Card was started in the capital Managua, and any province capitals as pilot project of a Spanish project, executed by the CSE and the Spanish enterprise, Transtools, for the extension of the project to the other provinces where no financial reserves,
The Spanish project was defining by the software development a central and workstation base the technological standard, which should be implemented in the part to be realized inside our project, trying to avoid double work or incompatibilities in the countrywide solution.

Based on the existing equipment for the register activities was defined the minimum standard of technical equipment for an Civil Register Office and included in the supply plan. Also was included the acquisition of mobile workstations for the use in NGO or governmental initiatives in the field, especially in the Atlantic cost and the central in Managua. The software requests were coordinated with the CSE, the Swedish project and Transtools, with the target that the central level was assigned to Transtools inside the existing Spanish project and the local software to the Swedish project. The first coordination meeting between the involved parties was held our on initiative.

In the evaluation of the Spanish project were suggested small changes, but mostly evaluated as base for the additional support by our project. There were included all hardware and software for the extension of the enrolment to all municipal capitals, maintaining and extending the production of the cards centralised in the CSE. Initially was suggested to join the both activities, civil register and enrolment for the ID card, but by existing administrative problems couldn’t be maintained this proposal. Only with the portable data stations was this compromise possible, means the mobile workstations have now also the required equipment for the biometric enrolment.

Considering the special importance of the biometric ID-card emission, detecting so multiple enrolment of one person under different identities, permitting in combination with the civil register all time differed registering acts (late birth registration, family status changes, etc) a effective support to the administrative system of the CSE. Therefore was decided to implement on central level the search capacities of an 1:N fingerprint search system, one of the most expensive components of the project.

For all technical and administrative activites was done the technical specification and the budget.

The project was combined with NGO activities to increase the awareness of the importance of registering activities, especially birth as well as death registration.

Spain – 2006 until now - Freelancer Organisation and IT

Currently I’m living with my family in Spain, more exactly in Alicante and I’m working again as freelancer in the consulting area. There are 3 focus issues I’m attending currently, which are:

IT works in the area of optical sample recognition for shooting stands to get the real results on base of the image of the target
Security and IT consulting, especially under application of biometric methods, integrating different scanning devises into a unique system
Publishing and updating Web-pages for local and international users

My family and I am locally flexible to move without bigger problems, if there are long term contracts or tasks – in the case of short time contracts we prefer to stay in Spain.

Afghanistan – 2004 – 2006 - Ministry of Energy and Water

Over Decon I was assigned to a World Bank project inside the afghan Ministry of Energy and Water. The IT project was embedded in the Program Implementation Support Unit (PISU), which was founded to speed up and coordinate the investment projects in the afghan energy sector, executed by different enterprises, financed by different donor organisations or governments.

So the IT part had two parts, to support the task of the PISU, giving support to the PISU staff, and to build an IT base of the ministry, including the training aspects of the local staff.

Based on an IT survey of the existing IT equipment, a plan for the ministry was developed to build a network. Initially the Ministry had about 20 PC´s with one shared internet access, using only mail as corporative application, mostly web-based. The status of the equipment was precarious, virus infections and not used equipment and software was stored without being used.

After changing the ministry location prepared a project for a ministerial network, including voice communication. The project was changed as the Ministry of Communication installed a basis network so that this project was used as future reference, optimising the resources of our project to improve and complete the network.

At the time I attended the project the number of PC´s grew up to nearly 90, where about 70 were included in the network, including two different internet access points and a file server. There were installed additionally a print server, a telecommunication server for voice, and some other equipment. Parts of the equipment were joined to the government network, still under control of the Ministry of Communication.

Additionally, a information inventory was done, capturing all existing information in the different dependencies of the ministry, and starting with the personal database projected, in case of the personal database also implemented, giving therefore the ministry the possibility to develop distributed corporative applications.

For the local user training material was prepared in Dari for a Windows basic course and an AutoCad course. Both curses were given for the current user of the ministry and the enterprises inside the energy and water sector (WAPECA, PCU, etc.). The material was published, so that all interested organisations and groups can use this as starting option, trying to complete the material successively more.

Based on these activities I was assigned from the representatives of the donor organisations to be chief of the coordination group for Capacity Building, which acted weekly to coordinate all activities of the different donors in this sector.

Additionally, we attended all the maintenance needs of the internal IT equipment, as well for all enterprises which are forming part of the ministry.

For the PISU, support was started to georeference the existing equipment of the water and power sector, including generation and transmission equipment, substations, etc. The most exact result was the Kabul City Network plan, including the existing, planned and future use. This data should be transferred in a future to a GIS system, completing the required data by the construction enterprises and the electrical network utility DABM, as main owner of the equipment.

For PISU, an intranet was developed and installed, giving the internal user inside the ministry, as well the external user, donor organisations, enterprises, etc, the possibility to consult the stored data. Inside this data collection, more then 6000 documents, partially historical data (20%) and current project information were published. Problematically was that the most of the donors are very restrictive in supply the required information, using the shared part of information, but not supplying the own one. Meanwhile there are no pressures from the same administration of the ministry and this will not change to a better way. Therefore, considerably more existing projects were identified, based o the assignment of ID-numbers of the Ministry of Finance, as the ministry was really attending – any 30% more.

Also was developed and hosted a web site for PISU, where the new projects are published and give additional information for the bidders.

Additionally we gave user support, especially in the geographic and drawing issues, as well as in the confection of reports and other documents. Also the evaluation of bidding documents, especially in IT or process control related issues was included as example for the new National Dispatch Centre, or other contracts in execution etc. The same support was given for external, mostly short time experts, in obtaining the required information and all project relevant issues.

Lebanon – 2003 until 2004 - Ministry of Energy and Water

I was assigned to an EU project in the Ministry of Energy and Water in Beirut, fulfilling the task to analyze the information needs of the Ministry and the future National Energy Control Authority. Based on an analysis of the existing information in the different levels and the plans for the future – implementation of the National Load Dispatch Centre of EdL –the possible handling of this information and the sharing between the different institutions in the sector was defined, according to the specific tasks.

The difficulty in this assignment was the different interests in the sector, so it was very difficult to get the requested set of information and define exactly the current possibilities and the additional needs to be included in the new system. Giving this situation I was suggesting different possibilities, considering the privatisation as case, but also the status quo, trying to give for both cases an effective working system, supporting the decisions on each of the levels inside the Lebanese energy system.

The contract in Lebanon was with Decon on behalf of MVV.

Germany – 2001 until 2003 – working as freelancer in Consulting and IT

Back in Germany I was working as freelancer for general business consulting and IT in different enterprises, trying to establish my family in Malchow, a small city in a pretty environment in the north of Berlin, working mostly for Berlin based enterprises, but also for local and Hamburg based ones. A small part of international contracts was realised, especially as connection of my former works in Peru, there were still contacts with RENADESPPLE and IOM, but also in other countries. Giving the nature of a distance work with limited possibilities to make in site checks the importance of these works was limited.

In this time I worked for more than 50 different enterprises, interesting and mentionable projects I have had 3 – the other tasks were more conventionally, economic calculations and evaluations or web, design and pre-printing works.

Mentionable projects in this time are the followings:

Elaboration of business project for biometric equipment combination and the development of the corresponding software with TechNet Berlin
Participation in the elaboration of a project for a central maintenance system for Syria inside a EU project for Decon – in the bidding Decon was winning the contract, but the project was before the start cancelled by the EU
Business consulting and implementation of an IT network in one of the biggest agriculture companies, the Agrargenossenschaft Malchow

This was the first time I was doing anything in the agriculture sector and for it was amazing for me to see the high technical level in the modern agriculture. The modern combines are doted with GPS and able to report directly from the field the results of the field, as direct value and in the average by hectare. All these data can be integrated in special programs for a statistical evaluation and give advice for other operations, like fertilization, etc. The firstly underestimated task was really challenging. The result was so satisfactorily that I’m still attending issues of this cooperation.

In 2003 I was ask by Decon to take an assignment for project in Lebanon.

Peru – 1997 until 2001 – Working in a multi-ministerial environment – based in the Ministry for Public Affairs, General Attorney of the Country

In Peru I was assigned from 1997 until 1999 to the Ministry for Public Affairs, General Attorney of the Country, to give support to the institutional reconstruction of the ministry, executed by the Executive Commission of the Ministry. In the moment I was integrated to the Ministry I was given the following assignments:

Elaboration of the plans of a database based intranet for the project control of more than 250 different projects contained in the ongoing process of the justice reform in the country and implementation of this project
Organizational studies to the working process of the prosecution offices inside the ministry, called Project New Prosecution Office Model.
Decentralise the prosecution office and assigning police districts to each office, maintaining a nearly equal labour charge
Organisational studies for a algorithm for the assignment of cases to the supreme attorneys offices
Evaluation and restructuring of the central information system of the ministry (SIATF – Sistema de Apoyo al Trabajo Fiscal), including the software for the Central Office for Forensic Medicine
Elaboration and implementation of an Intranet of the Ministry, focused in the process charge, staff information and case assignment
Execution and evaluation of procurement activities for all the IT- and communication equipment for Lima and all provinces
Daily support of the IT department and the Executive Commission

The Intranet Project Control was a new tool for the project work, working with a report database, which should be updated by each project team periodically. The projects out of time or with resource conflicts were given as special report, opening the intranet, new starting projects were focused the first time, etc. In the year 1997 this was a goal, giving also external users access to the data, using tunnelling and VPN-technology.

A second task was the reorganisation and data analysis of RENADESPPLE, the “Registro Nacional de Detenidos y Sentenciados a Pena Privativa de Libertad Efectiva”, a 1990 created register of the persons detained and / or condemned for the criminal act of Terrorism and Treason of the fatherland. The register was created with USAID help, but abandoned in 1995. In RENADESPPLE are joined all the ministries and institutions involved in the process, this are:

Ministry of Defence (in any parts of Peru the military is fulfilling police tasks) (Ministerio de Defensa)
Ministry of Interior (Ministerio del Interior)
Ministry Public Affairs – General Attorney (Ministerio Público – Fiscalía de la Nación)
Ministry of Courts (Poder Judicial)
Ministry of Justice – Jails system (Ministerio de Justicia)
Ombudsman (Defensor Público)
Parliament of Peru (Congreso de la República)

The first task in this project was the evaluation of the existing system, programmed in Foxbase for DOS and with a data entry based on telephone and radio calls. The database was highly inconsistent as result of different spellings of the names of the registered persons and other reasons. So it was very common that a detained person was giving a wrong name in the first instance which was opening a record, and in a later instance, the person was identified correctly, and so on.

Resulting on the survey was elaborated the following for RENADESPPLE:

Making consistence of the database, mounting the system in reverse form, assigning a detention as opening a event or record
Eliminating different spellings of one backward identified person
An interesting result was that any 1300 persons were “lost” between detention and the prisons – a result later nearly correct verified by the Congress of Peru
Configuration of the modem connections between the different instances of the chain of RENADESPPLE
Georeferenced evaluation of the data with MapView an Excel (until version 2000)
Extension of the system to drug offences
Conception for a new system under ORACLE
Different other related tasks

A special problem in the initial phase of the project was the different data and the restrictions to access the data of the involved institutions. But resolving also collateral problems in these institutions the required permits to access the data was given.

The collaboration with RENADESPPLE was all the time in Peru, even in 2003 from Germany.

From 1997 to 2003 – also working later after my return from Germany, I worked for the Ministry of Interior, especially for the Peruvian migration service – Dirección General de Migraciones y Naturalización. In the ministry I was assigned to the Central Procurement Department (OGA) and the IT-Department, but mostly working for OGA, especially in biometric projects. The special tasks for biometric relevant data as assigned by the Minister to my group any days after my arrival in Lima, consequence of the problems in the handling of so called “Homonímias”, the massive repetition of name and surname of the citizens, abused especially in the criminal cases and in the emission of ID-documents. So I was assigned the project development and execution of a biometric based passport system, winning so a better control over the border crossing persons. In the same project it was also included that the passport should be readable by machine. The project was designed and realized in 2 years at first in Lima and later implemented in the regional dependencies in the country.

Based on this project, which included fingerprint, hand geometry, digital photo and digital sign, as well special elements for security documents, a big number of additional applications for the ministry were developed, mostly designed or revised by my working group.

Over the connection with the Peruvian migration service, and the requirement to evaluate the data of the migration services, the contact to IOM was given. So we have done in 1997 the first centralized activities to make consistent the captured data and in the project SIMICA the first consistent overview about migration movements between 1990 and 1996 was giving. I was involved in the project until 2002 as technical advisor, responsible for the data treatment and the first evaluation. In the progress of the projects the evaluation of migration movements of Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia, was included. In case of Venezuela the evaluation was only partial. Each year, a yearbook of these data was published. Also there was a yearly convention, in which I was actively taking part, giving an overview about the status of the changes in the IT-base of the Peruvian migration service and the results of the SIMICA evaluation.

From 1997 until 2001 I was working also as consultant for the Peruvian Navy, Marina de Guerra del Perú, specifically for the Direction of Telematics and Communication (DIRTEL). From the year 1999 until 2001 also as project counterpart and project manager for the supervision of contract in the IT area between the navy and private enterprises. As consultant I was responsible for the elaboration of the bidding documents for the new IT systems, involved in the bidder evaluation and in the definition of all technical aspects of the systems. Mostly the administrative systems, like Personal, Maintenance, Procurement, Health Care, etc. were the work scope. Considering that the change from mainframe based systems, elaborated in the early 80th, to decentralised PC-based distributed systems in three tier architecture, the task was very intensive in budget and requirements.

In the operative systems my involvement was obviously lower, considering my status as foreigner. In relation to this, I was directly involved in the security part and in the installation and elaboration of the navy intern mail service, based on MS Exchange and the Intranet, permitting so over transaction servers a direct access of internal data from all palaces where the navy had the dependencies, including the special forces, fulfilling police tasks in the interior of the country.

With this background, and the fact that retired staff of the Peruvian Navy was working in many official civil institutions in key positions I received the order to help in IT problem and after bigger incidents in these institutions. So I had to analyse different problems in these institutions, two of them more extensive, in INRENA - Instituto Nacional de Recursos Naturales – I worked with my team 4 months in 1999/2000 and OSINERG - Organismo Supervisor de la Inversión en Energía – 5 months in 2000.

In OSINERG - Organismo Supervisor de la Inversión en Energía del Perú – I was assigned the task to revise the security system in the administration level and the structure of the information stored in the Oracle-Database, as well as the security for the data access. Reason of the assignment was the massive data loss in an incident to be analysed.

After the analysis, the reasons of the information losses could be defined and based on it, a more efficient control and backup system was proposed, using mostly the until this moment not employed configuration possibilities of the server and the Oracle database. In an additionally part, the required changes in the Energy- and Liquid-Fuel database were proposed, based on a evaluation of the internal structure and the real existing workflow in the institution.

In the case of INRENA - Instituto Nacional de Recursos Naturales – the initial situation was different; there I was assigned to make the studies for a web-based projects control system. INRENA is the beneficiary of different internationally projects, financed by international or bilateral contracts. Taking the Intranet Project Control of the General Procurator and any works in the Navy as example, was required to develop a similar solution for INRENA, taking care of the specific conditions of this projects. The required analysis was executed; the suggestions for the database structure, the Intranet and the security requirements were given in the final report.

The implementation of the system was assigned to a private enterprise. As I know, this is the unique case that one of my projects was not finished with the required achievements; the solution was not implemented – as I know. Reasons of this fault were mostly the followings:

Change in the direction of INRENA
Problems to coordinate the report process between the different involved organisations

Especially the last point was crucial, the coordination between own dependencies, other institutions, NGO´s and international donors was very difficult, general roles couldn’t be established as easy as in strong centralised military or similar institutions.

With the political instability of the year 2000 / 2001 in Peru, the working conditions becoming day by day poorer. My work there was technically, but with a big recognition and political support, giving that the most of the projects must be reported directly to the corresponding Minister, also distinction were given by the political leader, these instability was affecting my work. Many political counterparts were changing day by day, the new incoming political leadership was looking our projects with the idea to find there problems and hidden aspects. In consequence of these effects I was limiting my involvement until March 2001 and taking later the decision to quit there, considering the communication with the new political leaders as limited, still with good technical contacts, but too much politicized.

Colombia – 1994 until 1997 – Working with CIM and the CVC

In Cali I was assigned to the CVC – the Corporación Regional Autónoma del Valle de Cauca. This corporation was a regional development corporation, founded in 1954, based on the experiences of the Tennessee Valley Development project as a corporation between governmental, local Colombia, and the greatest generator of electrical energy.

In 1993 was taken the decision to privatise the energy sector and to incorporate the rest of the CVC as dependency of the new founded Ministry of Environment. So EPSA was founded in December 1995 – as energy utility and CVC was incorporated to this ministry.

In this situation I was hired by the department of “Organisación, Métodos y Sistemas” (OMS) of the CVC in 1994. The department was in charge of the IT and organisational development.

The situation in the IT area in this moment was characterised in CVC, like in many other places, OMS was focused only in the IBM mainframe, executing the payroll program and any other selected tasks, meanwhile in the other departments, the first projects for local networks were started, including PC applications and database under exclusively control of the respective departments. As a result, we run into duplication of data, with duplication of maintenance and in many cases with different data for the same issue.

On the other side, the planned separation of the electrical sector from the CVC, and massive personal reduction produced a certain institutional instability, with strikes and occupation of parts of the installations by unionists.

With my professional background and new in the CVC I was selected mainly to work on the unbundling of electrical sector, as first step to the privatisation. The advantage for the CVC was to have there a person, outside of all groups of interests, and only work with the facts.

These tasks, starting in 1994 until 1995 were one part of my daily work, starting with the collaboration to the development concepts, until the preparation of the staff list was part of my tasks, giving support to the different involved departments of the CVC.

In the IT area we have started in 1994 to recover the area, making a survey of all resources in the CVC, including the regional dependencies outside of the head office in Cali. This survey included the hardware and also the applications and data managed in the corresponding dependency. Based on this I developed a plan to join the existing islands to a corporative network with direct access to the existing mainframe application data. Considering that the CVC have the entire department as area of jurisdiction, the plan should include WAN characteristics.

After the separation of the energy area from the CVC the German government decided that I should stay in the public part, considering that the government couldn’t support a private enterprise.

In the 3 year I was working in the CVC I have had the following tasks:

Participation in the unbundling of the CVC in order to privatise the energy production
IT-Survey inside the entire institution
Network planning and elaboration of the tender documents for the procurement of the required equipment (more then 250 PC, 2 mainframe and other related materials), preparing the test environment for the selection process, etc.
Installing the network and Exchange Server as base for the mail service, as well for the first corporate applications
Conception and implementation of a training program
Collaboration in the institutional GIS system, based on ArcInfo and georeferenced data evaluation
Conception and project control the IT System “Balance Production, Use and Ex- and Import” for sensible products – dual use
Support planning and control for mainframe and PC systems
Modernisation of the Oracle based systems

The contract in Colombia was finishing very fast, by political reasons from the German side, a short time before there was said the project will go on for other one or two years, but in a short time I was getting the advise to finish in Colombia and the order to move to Peru for other contract.

Germany – 1990 until 1994

Coming back to Germany, and this was a much different Germany from the one I have left in 1984, the chance to go back to the IHZ was no more real, the opinion was that all vacancies were frozen until the university would have new instructions.

Two of my friends (also graduated in the IHZ) and me found the Betediq GmbH for technical diagnostics. But the time was bad for our start, all the east-german power plants had the same insecurity about future, and so they didn’t signed any contract. Also, in the western part of Germany there was a big scepticism about eastern enterprises. In order to survive, my friends changed the working content of our enterprise to a trade company. This was the sign to go out and to look for a new task.

In September 1990 I started my work in the Premium GmbH Berlin, a consulting which was working in 95% for the Treuhand Gesellschaft, the organisation which organised the privatisation of the former east-german governmental enterprises. Special focus of the Premium was the construction material industry, a very energy intensive industry.

I was hired for the energetic evaluation of these enterprises and as Chief of the IT-department. In the Premium GmbH I was working until November 1993, taking part in the privatization of more then 20 enterprises, conducting 7 privatisation projects directly. But the task was limited in enterprises with chances to be privatised; step by step we must suggest closing more and more enterprises. In 1992 most of the good enterprises had been made private or the process was still ongoing.

My tasks in the Premium GmbH were the followings:

Energetic evaluation of the production facilities of the enterprises,
Evaluation of the level of process automation and the IT equipment of the enterprise
Economic evaluation of the enterprises, creating different scenarios for the future development and suggesting (base on the results) the steps required for the future private owner or for the Treuhand to invest into the enterprise, trying to improve the value of the enterprise for the future privatisation,
Elaboration of credit documentation required by the banks to finance the planned development under private or governmental direction,
Building the internal network of the Premium,
Final elaboration or supervision of all outgoing documents in DTP-programs, like Page Maker and drawing programs,
Creation of internal applications for document and product management.

Additional to these tasks I was working on my own as teacher in the pool of CCC GmbH Berlin. This enterprise was assigning teachers to governmental and private education enterprises from Berlin and Brandenburg, mostly to give IT courses for unemployed engineers and technicians. Such courses were assigned for 2 or 3 weeks each 3 months.

I developed a special relation with GeoNet Berlin GmbH. This was a mailbox service, especially focused in the connection between Germany and Russia, with a big list of clients, like Mercedes, BMW, GTZ, governmental institutions, etc. For this company I designed the materials for selling, the presentations for the Hannover Messe, for the Cebit, etc., as well as the evaluations for credit and governmental support programs.

In November 1992 my wife was faced bad times in Berlin, especially concerning the confrontation with neo-Nazi. So we looked for a new assignment outside Germany.

In 1993 I signed with CIM – Centre of International Migration – a German governmental development program financed by the Ministry of Economic Collaboration – a contract to work in Colombia. After a 3 month preparation course for the assignment in Colombia in the DSE in Bad Honnef my family moved on March 1994 to Cali, Colombia.

Cuba – 1984 until 1989 – working in the Cuban Energy Sector

From 1984 until December 1989 I worked in Cuba, first until 1987 in the power plant "Nueva CTE Habana" in Santa Cruz del Norte, Habana. Then, I worked until 1989 for TECENERGO, a scientific service enterprise of the Cuban Ministry of Basic Industries, which is also responsible for the power industry.

In both assignments I worked for the department "Automated Control Systems" - SAD - mostly in IT-oriented projects. In the power station I developed systems for the plant, whereas in TECENERGO the applications I developed were used in the entire country.

At this time in Cuba I worked on the following projects:

In 1984 and 1985 I was a member of a permanent work group to develop software for the control of the Russian supply of parts for the power plant which was in this time under construction. At that time the connection between Habana and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) was done by modem in order to transmit the data of the supplied parts.
From 1985 to 1989 I was member of the working group “Temperature and Mass Balances - Automatic process control”. The group was in charge to connect NEC PCs to the plant units to capture the process values (150 analogue and 30 digital values). Based of these values, the heat balance of the units was calculated and hints were given to the unit operators seeking to minimize the specifically heat consumption.
From 1985 to 1989 I was in charge of the development of a system for the metrological control of the measurement equipment of a power plant. In 1986, the system installation was mandatory for all plants of the Ministry of Basic Industries in Cuba.
From 1984 to 1987 I was in charge of the group “Technical diagnostics”, which worked in two directions,
- Preparing the conditions for the implementation of a standard for the damage data recovery and maintenance planning based on the East-German TGL-standards (Classification mostly based on the same Russian equipment) including the organisation and IT-support
- Preparation and pilot test on rotation equipment (big pumps and motors) for technical diagnostic based on periodic vibration control, including IT-support for the data storing and evaluation
From 1987 to 1989 I was performing the same job as member of the same work group on higher level, preparing the same for the country, including the implementation of the damage data recovering system. A 15 minutes loop was additionally included In the online data recovering system for a post mortem analysis.
Additionally I was at the same time in charge of the elaboration of an offline IT-system fuel economy – with interpretation for maintenance needs.

My scheduled 4 year contract was extended on my wish to move together with my family from Cuba to Germany. Meanwhile I knew my present wife and we had our first daughter. In October 1989 we obtained the necessary permits from the Cuban government to marriage, after waiting for this document more than 16 months. On the same month we had our wedding party and in December 1989 we moved to Germany.

East Germany – until 1984

During my childhood, I went to school in Leipzig. After the 10th class in 1971 I moved to Hirschfelde to study Technical Process Management and to finish high school. After that, I served in the military for 18 months.

I started pursuing my academic education in the Engineer High School of Zittau (IHZ) on 1976 and graduated with a Bachelor of Economic Engineer on 1980. I specialized in Economy of Power Generation, Transmission and Distribution. My diploma thesis was entitled: "Contents and Distribution of Work during On-Site Maintenance of 500 MW Units". All certificates were obtained with "Suma cum laude".

In 1980 I accepted an offer to join IHZ as a Scientific Assistant in the area of Ergonomics and Measurement and stayed there for 4 years.

In IHZ I worked as a teacher in measurement technology since 1983 after finishing my dissertation on micro-movement research for reactor welding as basis for robot programming. Additionally I helped in the office of international studies in the program for Spanish speaking foreign students, improving so my language skills in Spanish.

The title of the dissertation was "Organization and Productivity during On-Site Maintenance of 500 MW Units". In February 1984 I defended my Ph.D. thesis with the predicate "Cum laude".

In that time in Germany, any person wanting to work at a university would need at least 4 years of work experience outside academia. So I left IHZ to have later a chance to come back and get a full teaching position.

Following a very good offer, I moved to Cuba on November 1984 to work in the basic industry.