Senior IT Officer
International Monetary Fund - Middle East Center for Economics and Finance
Total des années d'expérience :26 years, 8 Mois
Summary List of Tasks and Responsibilities:
I. CEF Outreach:
1 CEF Website
- Course updates
- OAS application deadlines
- CEF Newsletter:
- Brochure Nezar (Backup Resource)
- Under Guidance of Director/Deputy Director
- Nezar does the actual update upon notification of responsible party
2 CEF Twitter account
It was suspended early on pending further review
- CEF Instagram account
- CEF Alumni Account on LinkedIn Nezar
- To link it to CEF Website.
- To link it to CEF Website.
3 Web-based Marketing of courses using HQ Adobe Connect Tool. Nezar/Course Administrator
II. IT (Senior IT Officers):
1 IT infrastructure installation/update/maintenance Colleague/ Nezar
2 Office equipment installation/maintenance Colleague/Nezar
3 Providing IT services for courses Nezar/Colleague Colleague/Nezar
- IT Course assignments done by CEF Director
4 “Help Desk” support for staff Colleague/Nezar Nezar/Colleague
5 Office Printers & fax machine; software & hardware maintenance Nezar/Colleague
6 Internet services Colleague Nezar
7 Access cards for staff and visitors issuance/management Nezar/Colleague
8 Website Maintenance, Development, Updates, and monitoring Nezar/Colleague
- Nezar carries out updates as required by CEF team.
9 Procurement of IT related services and equipment and managing related maintenance contracts. Nezar/Colleague Colleague/Nezar
- Each IT officer handles the procurement related to their respective tasks
10 Security Systems: (Access Control & Time Attendance Reports; CCTV & Recording; Automatic Door Opening upon Fire Alarm; Panic Alert System) Nezar/Colleague
11 Telephones (Phones Over IP software system)
- For example, setting name or extension on telephone devices.
Keep floater mobiles.
- Nezar/Colleague
12 Mobile Phone Support Colleague/Nezar Nezar/Colleague
- Setting Email over the phone etc.
13 Support Working/Meeting from home, Support Virtual Courses.
- Nezar/Colleague Colleague/Nezar
14 Conducts periodic visits to CEF premises, to check systems, most importantly Connections to HQ Systems. Nezar/Colleague
15 Moodle & Google Drive Support Nezar/Colleague
IT Manager
Computer & Electrical Engineering Dept
(During Masters Degree):
- Lecturer (Computer and Statistics for Non-Computer Science majors)
- Research Assistant
- Teaching Assistant,
• Key Responsibilities:
- Part Time Lecturer (1st year Introduction to Computers Course).
- Appointed to manage technology related projects as assigned by the IT sector
- Key Project: Correspondence and Workflow Automation (Across PAAET).
- Part Time Lecturer:
- e_Learning & Computers Course.
- Data Base Management Systems (Using Oracle) Course.
- Achievements:
* Debit Card Fraud Management System
* Data Warehouse System
* Credit Operations System
* Real Estate Dept Operations
* Budget Planning & Business Intelligence System
- Other Achievements:
* Reviewed Projects Dept Methodology
* Handled internal Audit review of Projects Dept
* Reviewed Contracting Management
* Built professional relationship with local & internationally renowned vendors
* Furnished experience in Business Development Activities
Provided consultancy services for following areas:
Information Technology
Private Placement Memorandum
Business Opportunity Analysis
Strategic Management
Assigned to direct corporate mission and strategy objectives for a software firm that provides pioneering and unique solutions for supply chain management; and specific solutions for automotive dealerships business.
Achievements:
- Collected and analyzed business requirements. Drove process all the way to generate sales revenue of 200, 000 KD with a budget of 100, 000 KD.
- Developed complete HR job descriptions and functional roles in addition to a Commission Plan. Applied ethical integration measures, motivating staff to upgrade their knowledge and maximize their performance by identifying their training needs and areas of improvement.
- Obtained 10 key prospects customers across automotive, leasing and finance companies and gained two new key local automotive dealer contracts valued over 100K KD contract value.
- Conducted a market study, designed the corporate profile, and devised proposals in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage.
- Drove the launch of the e-marketing tool and refurbished the Dhow website.
- Established alliances and business partnership with 5 local and regional market leaders, including Microsoft and other companies.
- Charged to overlook the ISO Certification process and Market Research Studies.
- Principal member of the Balance Score Card and Business Intelligence implementation team, reporting to the MD, board members and financial controller. Overlooked creation of Score cards and implementation of Business Intelligence software.
Directed a team of 5 and reported to the Group Manager. Planned and directed the operations of information systems, optimizing architecture and evaluating the performance and reliability of solutions as the main security and systems administrator for the group.
Achievements:
- Actively participated in corporate planning, formed effective policies, devised plans for security and access control of all systems.
- Supervised and inspected the installation, modification, testing and operation of all in-house developed software. Devised maintenance standards for electronic systems in (Finance, Vehicles, Inventory, and Service).
- Executed capacity and disaster recovery plans for the best performance analysis and tuning.
- Compiled ISD Policies, Procedures, and Operational Manual in conformance with (ISO 17799) covering Hardware installations, Software development, BCP, Data and Network security guidelines.
- Maintained the IT Balanced Score Card performance. Conducted the internal review of ISD Quality, established desired productivity levels and response time measures. Collated information, approved and produced BSC reports for management.
- Identified and assessed security vulnerabilities and prevented breaches, recommended remedies and conducted inspections as an internal IT auditor. Main security areas supervised included: HSE measures, Email Digital Signatures, Communications, Databases & Applications Systems security, Business Continuity Planning, Access & Change Control, Hardware & Physical Security.
- Successfully created a DMZ to monitor email access, established network rights, closed open ports in servers and eliminated leaks between Linux and NT.
- Implemented standards on in-house built software providing advice on a wide range of quality management issues decreasing risks and rework.
Committee Member:
- Balanced Score Card Implementation Team.
- Corporate Business Process Review.
- Corporate Disaster Recovery.
- Dept. Interviewing.
Charged to manage IT projects for financial systems, parts and services solutions and technical support assignments. Reported to Information Systems Manager.
- Responsible for managing, selecting and coordinating a professional team of 5 to complete all projects phases as per required business and technical specifications.
- Established high level design and functional specifications of required systems and coordinated deployment and operational issues with related parties.
- Developed and maintained various applications in IBM AS/400 for: Financial, Vehicles, Parts, HR, Service and Management Information Systems.
- Piloted operational management of a team of software developers, roles included: task allocation, systems integration, backup and security in addition to successful applications roll-out.
- Ensured timely delivery of projects, operations staff expert training to support and stabilize systems and ample maintenance measures for infrastructure and databases.
- Investigated solutions to reinforce tangible intended commercial objectives, completed evaluations of off-the-shelve Financial Systems to automate transactions processing.
- Charged to direct security measures, disaster recovery means and ensure the usage of proper licensing for copyright issues.
Major Projects:
- Initiated successful Quality Control measures for a newly developed Vehicle Management System.
- Excelled in applying Capacity Planning & Disk Storage optimization for continued operations of applications.
- Designed and implemented Finance Management Information System.
- Spearheaded a Fact Finding / System Analysis Project for the Development of new Automotive System.
- Directed a project for developing new Receipt System within Financial Application.
- Reviewed and recommended new Software for procurement (Financial, Vehicles).
- Pioneered a project to improve performance of AS/400 system - Operating system & Application wise.
M. Eng Project: Particle Swarm Optimization Based Positioning System. Supervisor: Prof. Mostafa Hefnawi. ECE, RMC Abstract: Traditional radial basis function neural networks (RBF-NN) models used in GPS/INS integration are based on gradient search methodology for network parameters update, which suffers from many issues such as learning rate and local minima. Particle warm optimization (PSO), on the other hand, is a powerful evolutionary algorithm that has fast convergence and robustness against local minima. This report, therefore, proposes the use of PSO technique in RBF-NN based GPS/INS, which will result in a simpler architecture and faster training procedures than traditional RBF-NN. The RBF-NN module is trained using PSO to predict the INS position error and provide accurate positioning of the moving vehicle. For this project, we obtained actual GPS and INS navigation data for the trajectory under study. We simulated Training the Neural Network during this trajectory. That is we simulated the availability of GPS signal data and trained the NN on this data. We simulated GPS outage during a known period in the trajectory under study, and simulated the prediction of that trajectory by the trained NN. The NN was trained once by RBF-NN algorithm, and the predicted trajectories were obtained. Similarly, the NN was trained by PSO-Based algorithm, and the predicted trajectories were obtained. We compared those predicted trajectories, in reference to the original trajectories obtained when GPS signal was available. Results showed that the use of PSO technique led to much more accurate prediction compared to original GPS trajectory, with a more stable prediction error that does not increase over time, rather, it falls in a specific range of small errors. The improved results, however, still deviate from original GPS path. Results were analyzed and conclusions were obtained, along with various suggestions for future research direction to further address the deviation and enhance the prediction.
Version 4.
Version 4.
GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) as a condition for admission into MBA. Verbal Score 32 (% below = 63) Quant. Score 35 (% below = 41) Total Score 560 (% below = 53) AWA Score 4.5 (% below = 37)
Merited a Grade A- (Excellent) for the MBA program. Major Projects: - Business Plan & Competitive Analysis: The case of a Local Information Systems co. - Statistical Multivariate techniques, an Airliner Passenger analysis Case. - Statistical Relationship between customer perception and attitude towards company. - Demand Forecasting Model for Burger King – Kuwait. - Advanced Corporate Finance & Stock Valuation (Kuwait’s top two Mobile Telecom Companies) - Malaysian Manufacturing: Strategies, Practices, and Performance.
OTHER COURSES INCLUDE: - April 2005: Team Work - April 2005: Customer Delight - March 2005: Communication Skills - February 2005: Time Management - January 2005: Selling Techniques - July 2002: Leadership Skills - September 2000: Power Builder programming language
• Stock Trading in the Kuwait stock exchange (KSE). 1) Introduction to stock trading. 2) Advanced Chart Reading and Technical analysis.
Completed Courses in: - Management - Finance - Accounting - Economics - Marketing - Quantitive Methods (Statistics).
Security Certified Program - Course1: Network Security Fundamentals - Course2: Network Security Defense and Counter Measures Technologies covered: Cisco, Linux, Windows, ISA, FireWall-1, IPChain, Win2000 VPN, Snort. OTHER COURSES INCLUDE: - June 2003: Microsoft hands-on workshop on Information Security - October 2000: SQL Server 2000 Data Base Administration - April 2000: Implementing and Managing Microsoft Exchange 2000 - April 1999: SQL Server 7.0 Data Base Administration
PUBLISHED RESEARCH PAPER: K. Saleh, Nizar Hajjaj, (A Java-based graphical system for protocol development), Proc. of the 18th IASTED International Conference on Applied Informatics (AI2000), Innsbruck, Austria, February 2000. (Based on Graduation Project: A Software Tool to Generate Network Protocols). Other Major Projects: 1) Simulation of Wireless Computer Network, using Simulation software 2) Design of a Computer Processor.
In-house training course on RPG and CL as the key programming languages on AS/400 platform.
Graduated the Bachelor Degree in Computer Science with minor in Statistics and Operations Research (Industrial Engineering). - Part time Research Assistant (RA) , Kuwait University, Dept of Statistics & Operations Research (1992-1993). Major Projects as RA: 1) Simulation Program, as part of a joint project with US Department of Defence. 2) Automation of Resource Allocation and Distribution, of a Local Charity Organization.