AMMAN (JT) - A three-day conference mandated to produce a national paper on ways to advance e-business, e-banking and e-learning opened on Monday with around 400 participants.
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Minister Fawaz Zu'bi asked representatives from academia, government institutions and the private sector to concentrate in their deliberations on what he termed the three pillars of the country's e-revolution: Access to, creation, and export of knowledge.
Both the private and public sectors share the responsibility of making Internet access as easy and widespread as possible, said Zu'bi, deputising for His Majesty King Abdullah at the opening ceremony.
As part of efforts to enable larger and larger segments of society to access the worldwide web, the e-minister pointed to “Connecting Jordanians” — an initiative by the ICT and education ministries in cooperation with private sector players to connect and intraconnect over the summer 3,000 schools across the Kingdom.
As for the e-revolution's two other pillars — creating and exporting knowledge — the role of educational institutions will be crucial, Zu'bi said.
“Creating and exporting knowledge remains a big challenge,” he conceded. “We are capable of it, but we must first correct the basis. In the next couple of days, [I ask you] to look at ways to transform learning institutions, and develop R&D capabilities,” the minister told participants.
Educational institutions are called upon to play a pivotal role in spreading a knowledge-based culture and laying the foundations for a knowledge-based economy, since “they hold 30 percent of the Jordanian population, and that is the portion of the population responsible for Jordan's future,” Zu'bi stressed.
Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, who addressed the opening session in his capacity as head of the UN ICT Task Force, agreed that more changes are necessary in school curricula and educational institutions to push forward the e-revolution.
“We must link ICT reforms to broader educational reforms,” Abu Ghazaleh said. “It would be an extremely dangerous mistake to look at computer literacy as a stand-alone subject,” he noted, emphasising that computers should be integrated tools used in all classes.
The conference's host, Al Ahlyia Amman University President Amin Mahmoud, assessed the impact of the spreading of Internet on higher education institutions.
Mahmoud, whose university recently opened an IT faculty, urged educators and policy makers to remember that, in the Internet era, “economic growth is a process of accumulating knowledge."
Jordan Telecom CEO Pierre Mattei, whose company is the conference's main sponsor, ensured that connections are already in place for the 60,000 computers in the country's 300 public schools. With copper lines in a first stage, and a bandwidth depending on demand later on, 200 schools will be connected each month, Mattei said.
“All these schools will be interconnected together in an Intranet network and connected to Internet, allowing [for] distance learning,” he announced.
In a second phase, schools, universities, and IT community centres will be connected with optical fibres, the Jordan Telecom CEO pledged.
Officials, IT entrepreneurs, bankers, businessmen and industrialists as well as education leaders split into 10 subcommittees, each dealing with different issues from payment gateways to system integration, from human capital development to regulatory framework.
Each subcommittee was charged with submitting an action plan, stating deliverables itemised against time schedules and details of any prerequisites or consultancy services that might be required for their implementation.
A national action plan encompassing all recommendations will be unveiled on Wednesday.
King Abdullah, considered the champion of ICT development in the country, launched bold educational reforms last year, envisaging the teaching of computer skills and English language in all public and private schools from the early grades.
The educational reforms came in tandem with a national strategy for the development of the IT sector — the Reach Initiative — that seeks to create around 30,000 IT-related jobs and attract $550 million in foreign investments by 2004.
The Reach Initiative, a joint public-private sector effort, has also received the King's endorsement and support.