Below is detailed information about these lectures:

PITA – The Palestinian Information Technology Association for companies hosted an event on 11/12/2011 that was attended by representatives of the Palestinian Private Sector, Academics, and representatives from many Ministries, to discuss the Palestinian E-Government Academy project. The meeting was moderated by Mrs. Heda Al Saqqa – Membership Manager in PITA, who talked about the importance of engaging the Palestinian Private and Public Sectors in the E-government Academy Project. Dr. Yahya Al Salqan – a board member in PITA, emphasized the essentiality of the project in serving the Palestinians and facilitating their matters of life.

Dr. Mustafa Jarrar gave a presentation about the Project that included a brief overview, followed by demonstrating the role of the training courses offered by the academy in supporting the project’s main goal, represented in developing the needed experience for building the Palestinian E-Government, which in turn would fulfill the needs of the private and public sectors in both technical and legal aspects required to carry on with the project.

For his part, Mr. Amjad Abo Zaid, the consultant of the Minister of Communication, showed the importance of the project for Palestine, not only as an E-government project, but also as a project that supports all E-services, and called for cooperation between all involved parties, to work together to achieve the project’s goals.

اجتمع ممثلين عن القطاع الخاص الفلسطيني واكاديميين وممثلين عن وزارة الاتصالات وعدة وزارات أخرى في مقر بيتا يوم الاحد 11-12-2011 لمناقشة مشروع اكاديمية الحكومة الالكترونية. وقد أدار اللقاء هداء السقا مدير علاقات الاعضاء في بيتا وقد تحدثت عن اهمية الشراكة بين القطاع الخاص والحكومة، وقد تحدث السيد د. يحيى السلقان عضو مجلس ادراة بيتا عن أهمية هذا المشروع في خدمة المواطن الفلسطيني وتسهيل شئون حياته

وقد قدم د. مصطفى جرار عرضا حول مشروع الحكومة الإلكترونية، وقد تضمن العرض نبذة عن المشروع تلاها شرح عن آلية التدريب التي سوف تتبعها الأكاديمية لدعم أغراض المشروع والتي تتمثل في تنمية وبناء القدرات والخبرات اللازمة في مجال الحكومة الإلكترونية، والتي تهدف بدورها إلى تغطية إحتياجات كل من القطاع العام والخاص في فلسطين من النواحي التقنية والقانونية اللازمة لبناء الحكومة الإلكترونية

ومن جانبة بين السيد أمجد ابو زيد مستشار وزير الاتصالات أهمية هذا المشروع، داعيا للتعاون المشترك بين كافة الاطراف؛ من جهات حكومية وجامعات وشركات القطاع الخاص للعمل على تطوير هذا المشروع وتحقيق أهدافه

Sina Institute for Knowledge Engineering and Arabic Technologies in Birzeit University hosted an academic team from the Republic of Korea. The purpose of the visit was to see the projects and the activities conducted by the Institute in the field of e-government and to discuss ways of cooperation. The director of the Institute briefed them about the mission and goals of the Institute, and the main projects that the Institute works on. He focused on the Palestinian e-Government Academy project, which is an ongoing project in the Institute. He explained the aim of the professional trainings that are provided by the project, which will help in implementing electronic services, especially for the Palestinian e-Government. He also discussed one of the most important achievements of the academy, which is “ZINNAR” the Palestinian Interoperability Framework, in addition to the main challenges that face the project.

At the end of the meeting, the Korean team expressed their appreciation of the idea of the project, and their intentions of implementing a training center in the Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology. They put forward ways of cooperation between them and the Institute to develop the training center, which will aim to train the government employees on using the electronic services offered by the project, and discussed the actions to be taken to support the project.

During the meeting, Dr. Jarrar presented the Palestinian e-Government Academy. The academy is established by Birzeit University as part of the TEMPUS-funded Pal-Gov project. The academy aims at building the capacity of the Palestinian private and public sectors in e-Government technologies. In particular, the academy intends to fulfill the needs of the Palestinian society in the technical and legal aspects necessary to build and maintain a Palestinian e-Government. This is done via (1) Training Programs (tutorials and academic courses), which cover the areas of Interoperability, Security, and Legal Informatics, (2) Consultancy for the private and public sectors in the area of e-Government and e-Governance, (3) Research, by which the academy aims to highlight and promote research problems and solutions and incorporate them to renovate and enhance the e-governance field, and (4) Publications that cover topics related to e-governance in order to make the exchange of technical knowledge and information possible.

Furthermore, Dr. Jarrar presented the Palestinian e-Government Interoperability Framework ‘Zinnar’. Zinnar (http://zinnar.pna.ps) was developed by six ministries and governmental institutions (in cooperation with the Palestinian e-Government Academy): Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology (MTIT), Ministry of Interior (MOI), Ministry of Finance (MOF), Ministry of National Economy (MNE), Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA), and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). Zinnar serves as an organizational/semantic mediator between heterogeneous governmental information systems and is also seen as framework/infrastructure upon which seamless e-government services are implemented.

During the meeting, the participants discussed further cooperation opportunities especially between the Palestinan e-Governemnt Academy and the Estonian e-Government Academy, particularly, on the topic of Information Security. Also, Mr. Astok presented a proposal of Training workshops where the Estonian Academy is to provide training to transfer know-how and skills to Palestinian governmental employees. The proposal comes as part of the Palestinian- Estonian cooperation program.

The director of the Sina Institute for Knowledge Engineering and Arabic Technologies, Dr. Mustafa Jarrar presented the institute’s experience in cooperating with Europe and overviewed the institute’s prior and ongoing projects, including the FP7-funded SIERA project on developing multilingual and multi-cultural knowledge sharing portal; the TEMPUS-funded PalGov project to establish the Palestinian e-Government Academy, the Google-funded Wojood project to develop tools and APIs for Arabic language processing, the Italian-funded GovSeer project on Interoperability of government services, among many other projects.

He also emphasized that connecting EU and Arab researchers is essential, in order to increase the economical and social cooperation and cultural exchange between the two regions; and that Birzeit University was the first Palestinian university which joined EUMED Connect (in 2007). Dr. Jarrar said that Palestine is an eligible country in most EU research funding programs (e.g., FP7, TEMPUS, Erasmus Mundus, among others); and despite of the political situation, Palestine is one of the most active Arab countries in such programs.

The conference was opened by H.H Sheikh Nahayan Mubarak Al-Nahayan, Minister of Higher Education & Scientific Research, UAE, HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, Chairman of ASREN, Jordan, H.E. Adam Kulach, Head of Delegation of the EU to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, KSA, H.E Dr. Sultan Abu-Orabi, Secretary General, Association of Arab Universities, and by Mr. Fahem Al Nuaimi, CEO, Ankabut, UAE; where all of them stressed on the importance of advancing the research and education capacity of the Arab region within the knowledge age.

A draft of the status report on Arab e-Infrastructures is available both in Arabic and in English. All presentations can be downloaded from the conference program, the photos can be downloaded from the Conference’s Facebook page.

Dr. Katrin Nyman-Metcalf, the  chair of Law and Technology Department at the Law Faculty in Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, and the consultant at the Estonian e-Governance Academy, visited Sina Institute and Faculty of Law at Birzeit University  to discuss joint cooperation opportunities.

Dr. Metcalf first met Dr. Khalil Hindi the president of Birzeit University, Dr. Asem Khalil the dean of Law and Public Administration faculty, and Dr. Mustafa Jarrar the director of Sina Institute for Knowledge Management and Arabic Technologies. Two other meetings were then scheduled with members at the Faculty of Law and Faculty of IT to discuss possible joint research and capacity building projects with Birzeit University. In addition to discussing several topics of interest in the field of IT laws frameworks, including the issues of privacy, human factor in data protection, cyber security, digital transactions, and legal and ethical courses, among other topics. Dr Metcalf also reflected on the Estonian e-government experience, and discussed several matching points between the Estonian and the Palestinian e-governance experiences.

It is worth mentioning that Sina Institute was the coordinator of several projects aiming to build the Palestinian e-government services. Such projects include Zinnar, building the Palestinian e-government interoperability framework, and the Palestinian e-Government Academy, providing capacity building and training services in the domain of e-government.

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed (at the end of the First National Conference on e- Governance and e- Services) between Sina Institute at Birzeit University and four Palestinian Ministries: Ministry of Information Technology and Communication, Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Transportation, and Ministry of Local Governance. This MoU aims to sustain what have been achieved in the “Palestinian e-Government Academy” Project at Sina Institute, at the national level.
The signing parties agreed to institutionalize the academy, to become a legal body and help these, and other, ministries on how to build e-governmental services. The foreseen mission of the academy is to provide: (1) consultancy and innovative solutions, (2) advanced training, and (3) studies and research, about topics related to e-governance and e-services.
From the governmental side, the agreement also stated that the singing ministers will provide all necessary support (legal, administrative, technical, financial and fundraising) to help the academy achieve its mission.
A board of directors is established to steer the academy, headed by the Minster of Communication and Information Technology. All other parties will be also members of the board (ministers or deputy ministers).
The technical management of the academy will be led by and located at Sina Institute in Birzeit Univerity.

A team from the Palestinian e-Government Academy visited STARLab at Vrije University Brussel in Belgium, as part of PalGov activities funded by TEMPUS. The visit lasted 8 days (from 16/6/2011 to 23/6/2011). During the visit, several researchers from STARLab presented the courses and exercises given by the teaching staff of the VUB in relation to the PalGov project, in addition to presenting topics and case studies related to ontology and semantics, ORM, Ontology based data matching, DOGMA tools, as well as several projects and research issues were discussed with the PalGov Team.

It is worth noting that all partners in the PalGov project are developing four tutorials related to Interoperability, including: Process and Data Modeling, Data Integration and Open Information Systems, Process Integration and Service Oriented Architectures, Ontology Engineering and Lexical Semantics. These tutorials will be offered to the public and private sector in Palestine, in a few months, to help implementing e-government services in Palestine.

Sina Institute for Knowledge Engineering and Arabic Technology invites you to attend

The Palestinian e-Government Academy Training Kick-off Event

As part of the Palestinian e-Government Academy project funded by Tempus, and in cooperation with the Ministry of Telecom and Information Technology and the General Personnel Council, Sina Institute in Birzeit University has the pleasure of inviting you to the Kick-off event of the professional training sessions. These training sessions are directed towards building e-Government services, especially the Palestinian e-Government. The program is made of 6 courses (about 300 highly advanced and specialized training hours). The tutorials were developed throughout last year by Palestinian specialists in collaboration with highly reputed European scientists, and were tailored to fit the needs of the Palestinian society. These training courses aim to enrich the public and private sectors in Palestine with the needed skill and knowledge to build the Palestinian e-Government with skilled Palestinian hands.

Date and Time: January 31st, 2012 at 9:00 am

Place: Training Room in Najjad Zeenni IT Center of Excellence, Birzeit University

Note: The tutorials will be recorded and published for the public benefit

Training Program

Tutorial 1: Data and Business Process Modeling

Module I: Conceptual Data Modeling
-  Information Modeling
-  Object Role Modeling (ORM)
-  Advanced Integrity & Business Rules
-  Rules Contradictions and Implications
-  Optimization, transformation, (re)engineering of conceptual models.

Module II: Business Process Modeling
-  Business process identification.
-  Business process modeling and mapping.
-  Business process optimization, re-engineering, management .

Tutorial 2: Data Integration & Open Information Systems

-  XML and Namespaces
-   DTDs and  XML Schema
-   RDF and  RDFS
-   Ontology Web Language (OWL)
-   SPARQL, RDF Query Language
-   RDF Stores, Oracle Semantic Technology
-   Data Integration and Fusion
-   Data Schema Integration
-   GAV and LAV Integration
-   Data Integration and Fusion using RDF
-   Identity Management and Linked Data
-   Semantic Web and RDFa

Tutorial 3: Process Integration & Service Oriented Architectures

-  Service Oriented Architecture
-  Xpath, theory and practice
-  Xquery, theory and practice
-  Web Services, theory and practice
-  REST Protocol and Principles
-  SOAP Protocol and Principles
-  WSDL – Web Service Description Language
-  ESB – Enterprise Service Bus
-  Service Integration Patterns
-  BPEL – Business Process Execution Language
-  UDDI – Universal Description, Discovery &Integration of Web Services

Tutorial 4: Ontology Engineering and Lexical Semantics

-  The Need for Sharing Semantics
-  What is an ontology
-  Ontology Engineering Challenges
-  Ontology Double Articulation
-  Ontology Modeling Challenges
-  Stepwise Methodologies
-  Zinnar – The Palestinian eGovernment Interoperability Framework
-  Lexical Semantics and Multilingually
-  WordNets  and Lexical databases
-  Arabic Ontologies

Tutorial 5: Information Security

-  E-government security & ISO27000 standards.
-  Internet Risks and Attacks
-  Authentication
-  Certificates and Biometric Authentication
-  Firewalls and VPN
-  Federated Identity Management (FIM).
-  Access Control
-  Auditing

Tutorial 6: Legal Informatics and IT laws

-  Introduction to Law
-  Ethical and Social Issues
-  Introduction to ICT and E-government
-  Intellectual Property
-  Privacy and Data Protection
-  Digital Signature & e-Evidence
-  IT Contract
-  E-Commerce (e-Transactions)
-  Cybercrime
-  E-archiving

This launching ceremony came after the Faculty of Information Technology at BZU won a financial support of half a million Euros from the European Union, within the TEMPUS program. The core idea of the project is to prepare qualified Palestinian human resources in the area of e-governance, through capacity building programs at the ministries and governmental bodies and non-governmental organizations, as well as companies and private sector institutions, aiming to establish a Palestinian Academy for Electronic Governance

The Minister overviewed the vision of the Ministry of Communications and its role in building a network of relationships with a group of European universities, stressing that this project represents a unique case, as a result of the exceptional Palestinian conditions, in terms of the state of siege, checkpoints and barriers to movement, stating: “this project will contribute to the provision of services to refugees inside Palestine, In light of the division between the West Bank and Gaza, and the refugees in the neighbouring Arab countries and Europe.