As part of the Estonian–Palestinian governmental cooperation program coordinated by the Palestinian Ministry of Telecom and IT, a delegation from the Estonian e-Government Academy visited the Palestinian e-Government Academy Project at Sina Institute on Monday, the 12th of September. Among the Estonian delegation was Dr. Arvo Ott, the executive director of the Estonian e-Government Academy and Mr. Hannes Astok a former member of the Estonian parliament and expert in e-Government. The meeting was also attended by several people from the Palestinian Ministry of Telecom and IT and the director of the Estonian–Palestinian governmental cooperation program, Mr. Waseem Abed-Allah. From Birzeit University, the meeting was attended by Dr. Ali Jaber, the dean of the Faculty of Information Technology, Dr. Mustafa Jarrar, the director of the Palestinian e-Government Academy Project, and several faculty members.
During the meeting, Dr. Jarrar presented the Palestinian e-Government Academy Project. The academy is established by Sina Institute as part of the TEMPUS-funded Pal-Gov project and aims at building the capacity of the Palestinian private and public sectors in e-Government technologies.
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. 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.
