JORDAN NATIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY (2013-2017) Since the government of Jordan (GoJ) also suffers from a chronic budget deficit, it is imperative that creative means be pursued to overcome the government’s inability to finance infrastructure development. As such, the GoJ needs to develop/promote modalities (BOO, BOT, BOOST, Joint Ventures, etc.) in which private sector investment can be recruited to continually upgrade ICT infrastructure and various required E-services. This will require that Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) be developed or negotiated and that commercial partnership and licensing models be identified and agreed upon and promoted to upgrade national telecommunication infrastructure to remain competitive with global norms. ICT is a knowledge based industry. As such, education, training and certification play an important role in determining sustainable competitiveness and longevity. Jordan already is well known for its university system. However, the university system is not agile enough to remain completely relevant with the demands of the ICT sector. The ICT sector needs to develop means in which ICT graduates can continually develop their skills to remain relevant for local ICT companies and to develop competitive products. Training and certification can be done through an independent professional development institute or cooperative existing training and educational institutions in cooperation with international technology providers and international operators. The benchmark of a knowledge base industry is the industry’s ability to develop intellectual property. This strategy has provided a variety of recommendations regarding IP. The strategy promotes identifying existing but unregistered/unidentified/unrecognized intellectual property concealed in existing ICT products and services and promotes registering them. It also aims to encourage local ICT companies to develop, register and promote and commercialize their own IP. Finally, the strategy covers the issue of ICT diffusion as a necessary requirement for economic growth. The strategy explicitly calls for developing intersections between the ICT sector and competitive economic sectors like pharmaceuticals, Architecture and Engineering and Clean Technology to identify issues which can be effectively addressed by ICT to improve the competitiveness of the individual sectors. It is through the effective intersection of ICT and the individual sectors that diffusion will be facilitated. Diffusion will be facilitated because developed ICT products and services will have obvious utility to the sectors. 7