Mayor of Amman, Eng. Omar Maani, recently launched, in Al-Abdali area, the “Amman Explorer” project which was executed by the Greater Amman Municipality’s Department of the Geographic Information System (GIS).
GAM’s new project aims at enhancing and developing the quality of municipal services to meet the public aspirations. Maani called the new project “a positive step towards coping with the world’s technological advances, to serve the best interests of the citizens.
Director of GAM’s GIS department, Eng. Hassan Al-Kiswani briefed the Mayor about the project, explaining its objectives that aim at saving the Municipality’s time and effort, enhancing the efficiency of its operations, and providing up-to-date and precise information through better use of available means.
He said the project comprises plenty of services that can be directly used through the internet, such as searching for an address by mentioning name of the street and number of the building, or seeking for certain pieces of lands and basins, as well as looking for the land-use regulations in Amman.
The project also provides users with the service to search for: Amman’s significant sites, the Municipality’s property tax instructions, and street infrastructure services. It also helps citizens to file their complaints directly on GAM website, during which the complaint will be referred to the concerned parties in the Municipality. Complainers will be directly responded to through their e-mails or the SMS service on their mobile phones.
Al-Kiswani said that any citizen living in Amman can inquire about the services provided by the project by visiting the website (www.ammancitygis.gov.jo).
Meanwhile, GAM has concluded its operations to link all of its 27 regions with the GIS system, to produce electronic organizational blueprints for their locations. Al-Kiswani said that Amman’s regions can produce organizational blueprints based on unified and precise data for the land-uses and streets. He added that citizens can have organizational blueprints for their required locations in few minutes, thanks to the GIS project which utilizes a comprehensive database and site information record specialized in organizational rules and land uses.
It is worth mentioning that GAM’s GIS department has recently received the “Outstanding Achievement Award” in the category of Geographic Information Systems, by the International GIS Community. The criterion for awarding the prize was based on best performance and layout.
The World Bank’s field survey of 2009 for Amman proved GAM’s successful efforts in using the GIS system by developing consolidated information and basic structure of the City’s site locations, in accordance with the international standards.