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The E-Government Arab Sharing Portal (e-Gov@ASP) is an essential tool to realize the much-needed Arab-Arab collaboration on e-Government. ICTDAR is well aware of the many initiatives being deployed by governments of the region to build e-government services and programs, as ICTDAR provides active support to many of these projects. However, there is little or no sharing of experiences and lessons-learned. ICTDAR, believing that knowledge-sharing is critical for decision-makers in the region, has been very active in promoting such collaboration through regional workshops on e-governance including e-government.
However, there was also a need to create a tool that would be constantly available for use by Arab governments, decision makers, practitioners, and academics, and which would improve knowledge flow and availability of information. This prompted the development of e-Gov@ASP, designed as an e-government knowledge-sharing and collaboration platform. Its is intended to provide knowledge that enhances decision-making at the strategic and operational levels, and in addition stimulates the development of communities of practice and communities of interest.
The Portal, based on an Arabized version of Microsoft’s Solution Sharing Network, consists of three levels: Communities, Solutions, and Projects. Each level allows for announcements, calendar events, discussion boards, document libraries, and project tasks. The ownership of the Portal will ultimately be transferred to the Regional e-Government Institute (REGI), which ICTDAR helped setup and which will be operational in 2006.
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Objectives
ICTDAR has performed the following activities in order to chose, customize, deploy, and operationalize the Portal. ICTDAR will continue to manage the Portal until it is transferred to REGI in 2006.
1- Design of e-gov@ASP Portal
ICTDAR, in partnership with Microsoft, developed the structure and content of the portal. The portal structure consists of 3 levels: Communities, Solutions, and projects. Each level introduces announcements, calendar events, discussion boards, document libraries, and project tasks. Those specifications allow users to freely interact on any subjects related to e-government.
2- Determination of e-gov@ASP Content
- The portal content provides the following 3 services:
- Collaborative platform: Communities of Practice
- E-library
- Mapping of existing resources
Communities of Practice
- The portal consists of 6 Communities of Practice (CoP):
- Legal Framework community : The legal framework community is involved with resources of legal proceedings and legislations which are related to e-Administration and e-Government applications and services. The Legal Framework community includes resources from both the Arab and other regions.
- eServices/ e-Procedures community: The eServices and e-Procedures community is involved with resources of e-Services for businesses (Business to Business, e-Security, e-Learning), e-Services for government ( Immigration, e-Administration projects , e-Voting, e-Learning), and e-Services for citizens ( e-Environment, e-Learning, e-Tourism, e-Health, e-Transport, e-Billing).
- e-Policy/ e-Strategies: The e-Policy and e-Strategies community includes r eferences from Europe (European e-Government Conference 2003, European Union) and from the Arab Region.
- Human Capacity: The Human Capacity community is involved with resources of c apacity building for businesses (micro enterprises and SMEs ), capacity building for government (civil servants, technical staff involved in e-government applications), and capacity building for citizens (civil society, youth empowerment, women empowerment, disabled empowerment, elderly empowerment).
- Access: The Access community is involved with resources of access to information through Private-Public Partnership (partnership space for incubating telecommunications), Alternative Access (Community Radio), Wireless Access, and Arabized Local Content (Arabized ICT e-glossary, Arabic Domain Name System - DNS).
- Public/Private Partnership: This community is involved with references to the role of public-private partnership in the field of e-Government in the Arab Region.
e-Library
The Portal promotes the reuse and sharing of knowledge within and between governments to help reduce cost and reduce the time involved in implementing e-government solutions. By providing space for countries to host documents, best practices, projects, initiatives and products, e-gov@ASP fosters the sharing of information relevant to e-government practitioners throughout the region. Documents will be easily accessible through cataloguing and the search engine.
Mapping of Existing Resources
e-gov@ASP allows users to access an extensive collection of shared government applications, architectures, white papers, studies, plans, and references, where all material and intellectual property is shared amongst the community of peers and collaborators, supported by cataloguing and search mechanisms to quickly find solutions or share learning. By mapping the e-Government know-how available in the Arab region, the Portal will promote Arab IT companies and increase their potential for regional business.
3- Launching of e-gov@ASP
The e-gov@ASP was launched in November 2005 during WSIS 2005 in Tunis during a media event in the presence of Microsoft’s senior management, the Minister of Telecommunication of Jordan, ICTDAR and RBAS.
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