April '97
Focal Point of the Labour Information Sector
Survey of Computers Used in the Public Sector.
The 1997 Work Plan of the National Information Centre
Workshop on Environment Information Systems
Cooperation between NIC & Al Al-Bayt University
Reactivation of the Information Sector Committees
A message to our readers
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Surfing the Internet to find the required information is a hectic job and time-consuming. Sorting the amount of information can be a daunting task. Useless information gets in the way and one has to sift through it. Fortunately, there are new products all the time. Some of them help surfers find specific information of interest and sometimes, help deliver the required information to the net surfer, taking the pain out of information collecting.
The "push" technology provides better interfaces and more content. It delivers information directly to the requester's computer with less time-consuming surfing . "Push" technology works even when you are not on line and the information is stored in the cash for later delivery.
In this respect we will review the search engines' capabilities
and special features.
Subject directories:
Subject directories like Yahoo and Infoseek are the simplest type
of Internet databases. They contain documents that are identified
by subject categories, titles and keywords. The databases are
relatively small in comparison with other search engines like
Altavista because they are screened manually. Subject directories
are arranged in a hierarchy. This feature makes the subject directory
great for browsing.
Keyword indexes:
Keyword indexes are so large that they are maintained by robot
spiders. Altavista is one of the largest. Its index takes more
than 40GB and it contains 30 million documents and 10 billion
words. Keyword indexes provide quick access to large amounts
of information. However, the accelerating growth of the Internet
will not allow a comprehensive search on keywords.
Meta search tools:
A search is comprehensive and complete when meta search tools
are used. These tools allow access to several databases at once.
An example of theses tools are : Metasearch, FindIt!, SavvySearch
and many others. These tools query multiple search engines simultaneously
from one search query, and then return the result combined or
organized by search engine. The disadvantages of the Meta search
engines is that they are slow because they access many keyword
indexes at the same time.
Subject -specific search engines:
They search databases that are subject oriented. They provide better search results because access is more powerful. An example of subject-specific search engines are WebTaxi and The Internet Slueth. These search engines eliminate false hits by concentrating on one subject.
Following is a list of useful subject-specific search engines:
CollegeNet
A directory on U.S. universities and colleges.
http://www.coll:egenet.com/cnmain.html
Image Surfer
A database of online images.
Deja News
A collection of USENET news article.
This quick revision of the search tools available on the Internet
will help surfers improve exploring and effectively searching
the Internet.
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NIC Activities
Focal Point of the Labour Information Sector
The National Information Centre is training representatives from
various organizations in the Labour Subnetwork on Web page design
and editing. The representatives are from the Ministry of Labour,
Civil Service Bureau, Social Security and the Vocational Training
Organization.This team is transforming the aggregate information
of the Labour sector HTML, the Internet World Wide Web editing
language. The actual data comes from those organizations. The
produced information will be hosted at the focal point of the
subnetwork in the Ministry of Labour. The information will be
published on the National Information System Intranet home page
together with the web pages of all the organizations in the subnetwork
which are being implemented.
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Survey of Computers Used in the Public Sector.
The National Information Centre is conducting a survey on the
numbers and status of computers used in the public sector. A special
questionnaire was distributed to all the organizations. The aim
of the study is to find out what are the needs of individual
organizations in terms of information technology, the status of
equipment and systems, software, hardware, the need for training
and skilled human power and most important by the ability and
extent of applying methodologies and standards set by the National
Information Centre.
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The 1997 Work Plan of the National Information Centre
The work plan of the National Information Centre for 1997 includes a variety of activities one of which is a study and action plan to establish a Jordanian legislative information system. The objective of establishing this system is to make available to the users the laws and legislations and related subjects on-line. Another activity will be to establish the sustainable development subnetwork. Organizations that deal with sustainable development especially the environment, will be connected together in one subnetwork.
Subnetworks that are under construction such as the labour sector subnetwork, the industry sector subnetwork and the agriculture sector subnetwork will soon be completed. The National Information Centre will equip each subnetwork with the required software and hardware. However, the economic information subnetwork, which has already been up and running, is preparing for the second phase of implementation in connecting its information generating centres with the focal point.
Training is a vital activity for NIC. Twelve (12) specialised training courses will be conducted for employees in the public sector in the field of information technology. Courses include special training on Internet software and navigation. Also, NIC will conduct 5 workshops in different subjects related to information, networking and IT.
NIC will also continually upgrade systems of organizations in
the public sector and conduct studies to identify needs. Furthermore,
the NIC work plan includes the enhancement and upgrading of its
capacity to provide the services that are a major component of
its activities.
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Workshop on Environment Information Systems
The Centre participated in a Workshop on Environment Information Systems from 20-23/01/1997 that was held in Beirut Lebanon in the Centre of Scientific Research. The Workshop was organized by the International Scientific Association and fourteen specialists from Jordan and Lebanon participated in it. The objectives of the Workshop included the following:
The Centre participated in the GIS/GPS Conference '97 which was held in Doha/Qatar from 2-4 March, 1997. Following the main conference, two workshops entitled " GIS and the Internet" and "Introduction to GPS" were also held on the 5th and 6th of March . The Conference included twelve sessions on the following subjects:
The advanced Qatari GIS system was displayed on-line and attracted
many participants.
Cooperation between NIC & Al Al-Bayt University
1.Al al-Bayt Library on the Internet
A team from the National Information Centre visited the University
of Al Al-Bayt University in Mafraq, to help in constructing a
site for the library catalogue on the Internet. The technical
needs were identified in order to procure the required equipment.
The Hashemite Library in Al Al-Bayt University would be the university
library in Jordan to go on the Net. Surfers would be able to consult
the rich library catalogue about books, documents, audio-visual
material and all the Library holdings that are available on the
public catalogue. The Centre expects to complete the project early
this summer.
2.The University of Al Al-Bayt goes on the Internet
At http://www.nic.gov.jo/universities……
and voila! NIC is hosting a full web page for Al Al-Bayt University.
Yes, some of the subjects are still under construction, but it
is being edited continually. The page is edited and maintained
by the active research student Basil Al-Asmar.
3.Agreement between Al Al-Bayt University and the National Information Centre
An agreement to connect the Al Al-Bayt University to the Internet
was signed with the National Information Centre. The Centre will
provide the University with a 64kbs bandwidth. In the meantime,
the University will be able to use a dial-up connection until
the leased line becomes available. The agreement will be renewed
every two years.
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Reactivation of the Information Sector Committees
The sectors committees that meet to coordinate the flow of information between homogeneous information generating centres have been reactivated . This time the approach to coordination is much more transparent and the problem-solving is more vigorous.
The committees include the following:
The German Government represented by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) is funding a project called "Promotion of NIS" in Jordan. The counterparts in Jordan are the National Information Centre as the executing agency and the Ministry of Planning is the implementing agency. Together with GTZ, they will manage the project which involves the following public organizations:
Activities of different projects will be described in the upcoming
issues of "Numu".
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We cordially invites our readers to contribute in writing to Numu.
A special column for visitors will be added in the next issue.
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