E-Poupatempo: Learn many lessons while saving time
6/20/2006

With more than 18 million people, São Paulo, Brazil is the second largest city in the Western Hemisphere. There are more people living within city limits than in most countries. Transportation is expensive, traffic jams are common and the illiteracy rate is high. Facing these challenges and more, the state government was determined to find new avenues to best service its citizens. The idea was born to offer high quality government services to citizens by collaborating with several branches of state owned and public service companies with the goal to improve the life of São Paulo's citizens. Enter Poupatempo.

In Portuguese, Poupatempo means "save time". Poupatempo centers are places where people can go and take care of many needs at once. They can renew drivers' licenses, pay their phone bills, find information on medical services and employment, and in general have access to a variety of people and information. While Poupatempo centers offered greatly improved efficiency for São Paulo citizens, the government saw another way to streamline these processes through the Internet.

E-Poupatempo is a virtual version of the state run Poupatempo project, providing e-services to São Paulo's citizens. However, the offering of e-services only helps those with access to computers and the Internet. To make these services available to a greater number of people, the state government of São Paulo constructed a computer center where people could go to access the same services and information. However, with more than 18 million people, it was easy to see that this lab would have to grow, and quickly.

In February, AMD and the Administration of the State of São Paulo received an "IT Innovation" award for their E-Poupatempo initiative, which was nominated among hundreds of Federal, state and local Brazilian government projects. For details on the IT Innovation Award, click here.

Last October, through AMD's 50x15 Initiative, AMD, Telefonica and the State Government of São Paolo deployed Personal Internet Communicators (PICs) to improve communications in the borough of Santo Amaro. The PICs are connected to an AMD Athlon™ HP desktop that acts as a server to provide the PICs with printing capabilities. The response to the AMD powered e-Poupatempo center has been very positive, and with the trained staff available to assist users, even first-time computer users are able to take advantage of the efficiency enabled by e-services.

AMD's 50x15 Initiative, Telefonica and the São Paulo state government are using this AMD powered computer lab to gather information about the needs of Sao Paulo's citizens to improve their offerings of services in the future. The labs constructed here are making a difference and are paving the way for e-services to be used in other areas around the world, where populations are high and Internet access is low.

For more information on the installation and setup of this lab, download the complete learning lab capsule. The "capsule" document provides details on the full implementation of this lab.