Minister of MoICT Visits NITC , 6/2/2007

 

 Engineer Bassem Roussan, Minister of MoICT and Chairman of the Board of NITC, paid a visit to NITC on 6/2/2007. The Minister was accompanied by an official delegation from the Ministry. The Minister was received at NITC by Dr. Haidar Fraihat, Director General of NITC, who gave a briefing on the Center's activities since 1993 when the Center was established. The Minister and the delegation were shown around and they were introduced to different departments including the Operation Center of the e-Government.

The Minister expressed interest in further developing the relationship with the National Information Technology Center to help implement objectives and aims of the IT sector in general & the e-government programs in particular.

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Launching of the e-Government Portal, 19/11/2006

On 19/11/2006, the Jordan e-government portal, which is hosted in the National Information Technology Center,  was launched under the patronage of the Deputy Prime Minister. The portal includes information and links to different websites on all the official departments in the government. The launching was attended by the Minister of MoICT, Minister of Public Sector Development, and officials from the e-Government project.

·        29/11/2006 A workshop entitled "Together to Bridge the Digital Divide" to train Knowledge Stations managers was held under the patronage of the Minister of Education, Higher Education and Scientific Research.

·        6-7/12/2006 Dr. Fraihat participated in a workshop, The Jordan ICT Forum, conducted by int@j in the Dead Sea.

·        Two Memoranda of Understanding were signed separately by the National Information Centre. One, with CADER, Change Agent for Arab Development and Educational Reform, and the other with the Developing Technology Academy. CADER has an educational program called "Education Diploma in ICT". It is a special training course in IT for academic people. The memorandum entitles CADER to use the facilities of the Knowledge Stations for training purposes. Concerning the second memorandum with the Academy, it also entitles the Academy to use the facilities of the Knowledge Stations to run their courses and hold their IT examinations. 

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Activities of the Center

·        Dr. Haidar Fraihat was appointed member in the Council of the Faculty of King Abdullah II for Technology in the Jordan University for the academic year 2006-2007.

·        21/12/2006 a group of government employees from Iraq Ministry of Municipalities and General Works visited the NITC.

·        16/12/2006 NITC attended the Jordan National Contest for First Lego, in the Dead Sea.

·        6-10/12/2006 NITC participated in the METS 06 exhibition under the patronage of Princess Basma, the honorary president of the Jordan Computer Society.

·        27/11/2006 NITC participated in the 12th Scientific Week entitled " Energy, Water, Environment for Man".

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Workshops

Consultation Workshop on Telecenter Stakeholders in the MENA Region, Cairo, 5-7/12/2006

NITC participated in a consultation workshop on Middle East and North Africa Telecenter Stakeholders in Cairo organized by the IDRC. The workshop discussed the results of the study about telecenters in the MENA Region. The NITC gave a presentation about the Knowledge Stations and their role in implementing socio-economic development in the local communities.

Tutorial for ccTLD Operators in the Arab World, Dubai, 19-22/11/2006

The National Information Technology Center participated in a tutorial for ccTLD operators in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 20-21 November 2006.  The tutorial was hosted by UAEnic and jointly organised by ICANN and ISOC. The agenda included updates on DNS related technologies, DNSSEC and IDNs and current registry activities including current registration policies, domain structure, hardware and software in use, staffing and relevant regulatory bodies, fee structure and future plans. Participants suggested that ICANN conduct similar regional meetings annually and share experience with other "advanced" ccTLD registries and to have a hands-on training for engineers and professionals.

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Services

Designing a Website for the Institute of Diplomacy

NITC designed a website for the conference that the Institute of Diplomacy conducted for the United Nations Conference for the State Parties to the UN Convention Against Corruption. The website served the participants to find information on subjects related to the conference.

Survey on Oracle Use in the Public Sector

Upon the request of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, NITC conducted a survey on the use of Oracle on 120 organizations in the public sector. The objective of the survey was to gather information for the Jordanian Government before they sign and formalize the relationship with Oracle.

Survey on Microsoft Use in the Public Sector

NITC conducted a survey on the use of Microsoft programs in the public sector. Results will be used by decision makers in the government to reevaluate prices, distribution and general agreement with Microsoft to protect the rights of Microsoft.

W2F: a Website to Faculty Project

NITC, as a major player in the National Committee in UNESCO's IFAP (Information Society for All Project) is planning a special IT project that will enhance the development of the information society. The project is concerned with allowing faculty of Jordanian universities to have presence on the Internet by publishing a personal web site under .name.jo. The project, W2F or Website to Faculty (W2F) will invite one thousand faculty members to register under .name .jo.  NITC will participate in designing the web site for the professor. Content will include information that the faculty member chooses and it will usually revolve around qualifications, experience, research and any other information that the professor wishes to add to his web site. The idea is twofold. One is to encourage Jordanian faculty members from different universities to publish their research on the Internet. Two, is to allow faculty members to exchange information with other university professors, locally and globally.

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Activities to Develop the NITC

• To develop NITC's financial and administrative functions, NITC is planning to computerize the two functions. A tender document on the requirements for computerization of its two applications has been prepared and published.
• To better serve its customers, NITC has recently increased its international internet link by adding another 4 MBs to its bandwidth thus doubling the bandwidth in 8 months which reflects positively on the quality of NITC's service to its customers in the public sector by around 25 %.  NITC is planning to further upgrade the capacity of this link during 2007 which will totally solve the problems produced by the bottleneck.
•  NITC is in the process of purchasing a new cache engine to enhance the performance of the Internet services by caching and storing the visited websites in its internal memory for a specific period of time. Waiting time during downloading will be minimal and this will reflect on the quality of the service provided to the recepient users from the governemnt sector.

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 Knowledge Stations Activities

§         10/9/2006 PMU of the Knowledge Stations organized a workshop for training for trainers. The objective aimed at keeping trainers abreast of IT technologies and applications and train them to train their users in the local communities to overcome IT illiteracy.

§         9/11/2006 the PMU of the Knowledge Stations organized a workshop on management trends for the managers of the KSs.

§         The PMU of the Knowledge Stations established 11 stations during the last six months. The stations are completely equipped with computer labs and other IT related equipment. Eleven people have been employed to run the Stations.

§         The Knowledge Stations signed different MoUs for different projects with different organizations. The following table shows the different activities and the implementation and objective.

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