Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive

21As a result of the nature of composite indices that are relied upon to evaluate the availability of e-governmentservices or the readiness to provide them to citizens and the need for surveys on the ground to define the valueof their component parts, it is necessary to read the trends revealed by these indicator values with a considerableamount of caution and circumspection. It is worth pointing out the variation in values given on “e-GovernmentReadiness Index” developed by UNPAN for Mauritania, for example, in comparison with the scores achieved onthe index of “availability of e-government services” adopted by the Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM)for the same states. While the two indices differ from each other, they are without doubt connected in variousaspects, and it would therefore be expected that at least in terms of ranking the states they would conform toeach other within reasonable limits. Yet what can be observed is Mauritania coming in 162nd place out of 182states according to the UNPAN index, with Jordan in eighteenth place and Egypt twentieth for comparison, whilethe KAM index ranks Mauritania above Jordan and Egypt.22Without the knowledge giver and receiver being restricted to the same site.23World Bank, Information for Development Programme (InfoDev), 2005; British Educational Communications andTechnology Agency (BECTA), 2004; and Tinio, 2003.24To this end European states have relied on programmes such as the “European Computer Driving Licence”(ECDL) as a means to make teaching and administrative frameworks in schools acquire the appropriate skills.OECD plans also include subjecting ICT to develop teaching and learning methods.25Joint study on ICT in education, ESCWA and UNESCO regional office in Beirut.26Comprising word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing software, a calculator, and projectmanagement software.27Based on a country performance assessment scale ranging from one to seven.28World Bank, KAM database, http://info.worldbank.org/etools/kam2/KAM_page5.asp on 12 December 2008.29At the time of its inception this project included Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and Palestine.30See the website of the Supreme Education Council in Qatar, http://www.english.education.gov.qa/content/general/detail/7117 on 26 January 2009.31Some sources consider open universities to be virtual universities. This is not necessarily the case, however,though open universities tend to use some of the methods of virtual universities. On this basis, it is possible todeem the Arab Open University a virtual university. It was launched in 2002 with headquarters in Kuwait andbranches in Jordan, Bahrain, Lebanon, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.32See the website of the Virtual University of Tunisia, www.uvt.rnu.tn.33If Morocco and Algeria are disregarded, the graph permits the relationship between business internet use andper capita income in the Arab states to be represented by a straight line almost parallel to the horizontal axis.This indicates that there is no significant correlation between business internet use and per capita income.34Website of the World Health Organisation, Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, http://www.emro.who.int/Arabic on July 2008.35Website of al-‘Arab al-Yawm newspaper, http://www.alarabalyawm.net/pages.php?news_id=101464 on 28January 2009.36This graph shows consumption rates for paper in all its forms. Recent data on consumption of paper exclusivelyfor writing and printing are not available, and this is of greater significance in terms of the various forms ofcontent. However, the quantity of paper used for writing and printing is estimated at half of total consumption.The figure relies on 2004 data.37Unambiguous machine understanding of Arabic texts requires their vocalisation. Naturally, before beingvocalised, the sentences of an Arabic text must be parsed.38One Arab company has launched automated indexing and summarising systems, based on purely statisticalfoundations, that summarise the words present, define the subject of the text, and summarise the collectionof sentences that contain significant content. These systems, however, were developed on the basis of outdatedtechnologies, in terms of their use of either statistical linguistic models or analysis of the Arabic narrativestructure.39The Sakhr company has developed an Arabic speech engine. A large US company has also developed anArabic speech recognition system using a statistical basis. This system has been used to develop an automateddictation (speech to text) system, but the error level remains high and it is in need of automated systems formorphological, syntactical, and lexical processing in order to correct a larger proportion of errors.40The Chinese government has been a frontrunner in the use of open source software on all governmentcomputers. It has developed the Chinese version of the Linux open source operating system through the ChineseLinux Extension (CLE) project. Local government and city councils in many EU cities are also making use of opensource software.41The University of Aleppo has convened two conferences on open source software. These discussed aspectsrelated to the arabization of open source software and means to promote it within Arab societies.42E.g., the Taiwanese plan for the introduction of open source.43Building national capacity in a wide series of information and communication technologies represents a keyaim of development policies in all the countries of the world. The attempt to achieve this goal in the Arab statesmust be accomplished with an eye to priorities that take into consideration manifest and latent challenges.INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES IN THE ARAB COUNTRIES177