A. The National Information Centre participated in the annual meeting of the steering committee of the EUMEDIS Information Society in Madrid upon the invitation of Professor Fernando Aldana, the Spanish Representative. 15 representatives from the Mediterranean Region attended the meeting. Several subjects were discussed including regional projects to develop the information society. The most important project being the DISCOMED or discovering the Mediterranean which consists of several information technology applications in the Mediterranean regions especially in the field of electronic commerce, tourism and education.

B. The Centre also participated, in Brussels, in a meeting for the European Union Commission to discuss an initiative for the creation of focal points for the information society projects in the Mediterranean region. Twelve representatives from different Mediterranean countries participated in the meeting. The initiative is for supporting and funding Mediterranean projects in the information technology to be applied in different sectors including communication, tourism, culture, e-commerce, education, industry and health.

Participants discussed the action plan of the project and the activities of the focal points in the 27 countries.

The National Information Centre, the focal point for the EUMEDIS in Jordan, organized a one-day workshop for the EUMEDIS Initiative, on Wednesday, 16 February, 2000.

The main purpose of the workshop was to introduce the EUMEDIS Initiative to Jordanian IT organizations and institutions from the public and the private sector. The EUMEDIS Initiative provides funding for projects that promote IT applications in different sectors including health, education, business, and environment. The provision of funds is conditional and it requires that the organization that applies performs the project with other Mediterranean organizations and that the project is sustainable.

The aim of the Initiative is to promote coordination, sustainable development and partnership in developing the information society and the IT sector in the Mediterranean countries. The EUMEDIS Initiative is one of the large projects undertaken by the European Commission in the development of the information society.

Her Majesty Queen Noor patronized the Environmental Policy Coordination Seminar. The seminar gathered representatives from the government and the private sector and NGOs. The objective was to build partnership to achieve sustainable development in the environment sector in Jordan.

The seminar was held in memory of the late King Hussein. The main subject was the King Hussein Environmental Management Training Programme (KHEMTO) that aims at building an environmental infrastructure and develop the human resources to build institutional training capacities among different sectors.

The seminar was sponsored by the General Corporation for Environmental Protection

( GCEP) with the Canadian World University Service of Canada to raise public awareness on environmental issues and promote conservation ethics.

Participants, in a special workshop, were introduced to methods and procedures of creating sustainable policies and implementation plans.

As NIC improvement plan to maintain scalability and redundancy of Internet service to the public sector, NIC has installed a new earth station inside its premises to receive Internet traffic. This is a receive only service (simplex) called Digital Video Broadcast over Internet protocol (DVB/IP).

The operation was launched on February 21,2000 with (1-2) Mbps bandwidth in addition to the existing duplex two links.

The Centre participated in the First Jordanian Information Technology Forum that was officially opened by King Abdullah the second at the Movenpick Hotel in the Dead Sea. King Abdullah wanted the forum to provide a show-case opportunity for local companies to develop their full potential of the country’s nascent IT sector as a strategic engine of economic growth. CEOs and senior representatives of cyber-giants were present in the forum.

After a two_ day meetings and presentations by world IT leaders, Jordan’s First Jordanian IT Forum ended with deals and a clear long list of what should be done to develop this promising sector. The three basic dimensions being the IT infrastructure including education, communications cost and data network development.

The Business Software Alliance is taking legal action against Jordanian firms who use pirated computer software. The Company has given businesses in Jordan and software vendors a five months notice to rectify the situation. The government raided two software pirates and seized $110,000 worth of software compact disc. Criminal cases were brought against two companies. It is worth mentioning that the legislation for intellectual property rights was endorsed in Jordan in 1992. The government is moving faster to enforce the law. Pirated business and entertainment software is estimated to constitute 77 and 65% of the software market respectively.

People involved in the information technology sector welcomed the government’s move to exempt computers and software from customs duty and to slash duties on other electronic appliances. The aim of the government’s decision was part of a drive to curb the smuggling of electronic equipment into Jordan. It should encourage people to import goods through legal channels. The move is in line with the requirement of the World Trade Organization, which Jordan is joining in 2000. Also, the Press and Publications Department will lift censorship on software especially that software is available from the Internet and the government cannot control downloading.

The Ministry of Health, in its struggle to upgrade its equipment, has allocated JD

150, 000 to computerize the administration of Al-Bashir Hospital.

Her Majesty Queen Rania and the Minister of Education have been reviewing the plans for the introduction of the Queen’s initiative to introduce computers and information technology to schools and incorporate their use into the educational system. The plan is to have 1000 computers distributed across the country by the next academic year, followed by another 1000 for the year after. The initiative focuses on the importance on exposing students and teachers alike to computer technology as a learning experience and using the Internet as an educational tool. The Jordan River Foundation will be in charge of executing the program.

NIC operates a group of high availability multi-platform main servers managing Internet services (Web, Mail, FTP, DNS, etc) and NIS Database and system and network management. Besides, Internet technology is widely employed inside NIC LAN for staff connection. NIC provides several types of connections (dialup, leased lines, ISDN, and E1) depending on telecom infrastructure available at the geographical locations of different ministries, organizations, major universities, and community colleges which are spread around the Kingdom. For scalability and redundancy, the entire backbone is run as a single ASN and multi-homed by three internaticarriers. The core of this IP network is addressed by a group of very powerful routers and switches inside NIC premises. ATM, Gigabit, FDDI, and other technologies are applied in public sector organizations including state universities. As a licensed data service provider, NIC continues to interconnect central sites of organizations with branches located around Jordan to develop and maintain the electronic public sector.