Jordan Times
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
E-solutions unit to be
set up in Yarmouk University
By Jumana Bississo
AMMAN — Universities in the Kingdom are to enter a new era of technology with
the first “e-solutions development and implementation unit” to be set up in
Yarmouk University, Minister of Information and Communications Technology (MoICT)
Fawaz Zu'bi said on Tuesday.
An agreement was signed yesterday between the MoICT, the Ministry of Higher
Education and Yarmouk University to unveil the unit, which will “service a broad
spectrum of both private and public sector stakeholders and enable professors
and students to innovate in the deployment of e-solutions,” according to an
MoICT statement.
“This unit at Yarmouk University serves as an innovative model that will both
build the capacity of Jordanian IT students by involving them in the deployment
of real-life applications, as well as accelerate the deployment of e-solutions,”
explained Zu'bi, who is also the minister of administrative development.
“Students will undertake actual projects required by institutions related to IT.
It is all encompassing, and hits on one of the weaknesses of students [in the
Kingdom], who are only exposed to such concepts in theory,” said Khaldoun Naffa,
head of the e-government programme management office at the MoICT.
“There is a great need for qualified people to get the job done,” he told The
Jordan Times.
The unit will be set up at the Academic Entrepreneurial Centre of Excellence at
the Hijjawi College for Engineering Technology at the university, where
management, quality assurance processes and a site for the unit will be
provided, according to the statement.
“E-solutions is very important in today's world, and will open the door to
numerous opportunities, especially for students in their final years at
university who will be venturing out into the working world in the coming
years,” Yarmouk University President Fayez Khasawneh said.
“We want our graduates to be ready to face the business world at international
levels,” he added.
The project is divided into two phases: Setting up the solution development
unit, which will be completed in four months, and the e-services unit which
students will be able to use by early next year, explained Naffa.
The unit's first project will be to initiate a “unified application system” to
be adopted by public universities across the country by summer 2005.
The system will facilitate Tawjihi graduates' application to public
universities, Minister of Higher Education Issam Zabalawi said.
“The e-service will optimise the unified acceptance process, reducing time and
effort for both students and the ministry,” he continued.
“The service will be launched in July next year, we didn't have the time to
implement the application system for this academic year,” Naffa said.
The unit was funded by the MoICT, Yarmouk University and three private sector
companies: Sun Microsystems, Gartner Consulting, and Savvytek, which invested
JD330,000; JD120,000; and $150,000 respectively, Naffa told journalists.
“By involving the private sector, this project serves as an example of the
emerging public-private academia partnership in advancing Jordan's ICT agenda,”
said Zu'bi. The Ministry of Higher Education is also undertaking two other
reform projects to advance the educational system.
“We are currently working on developing MIS [management information systems] in
universities, the internal operations of the ministry and the higher education
sector, as well as electronically linking up all public university libraries,
which will take about two years to implement,” Zabalawi told The Jordan Times.