JORDAN NATIONAL INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY (2013-2017) Alignment with the Government of Jordan’s (GoJ’s) ICT Policy and Initiatives The Statement of Government Policy 2012 on Communications, Information and Postal Sectors focuses on the establishment and execution of policies to leverage ICT as a means for social and economic development. As such, the intent of this national ICT strategy document is to use ICT as a tool to improve economic activity and job creation. GoJ policy can be an effective tool to direct national efforts towards local ICT use (diffusion), increased ICT exports and increased job creation in ICT and ICT affected or improved sectors. Moreover, effective economic development can only come about if an effective and cooperative public and private partnership is developed and maintained. The GoJ embarked on several E-Initiatives (Education, Government Services and Health). The EEducation initiative resulted in several local companies developing internationally competitive products and services. A local content management system and Education management system was developed in and has been exported to the United States, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Another local company has developed Arabic Language based E-curriculum for science and mathematics. This company has exported its E-curriculum to Algeria, Morocco, Oman and Saudi Arabia, where it now is used in the education of over one million students. This same company has also branched off into mobile educational application development. One of the most recent E-Education applications has won a World Summit Award for mobile application development. Growth in E-Education would not have occurred without Government leadership. The E-Government initiative has resulted in less dramatic results over the past several years. The E-Government initiative needs to be aggressively reexamined. The Ministry of Public Sector Development (MoPSD) in collaboration with MoICT and other concerned government entities shall set priorities with regard to developing the public sector E-services and utilizing ICT infrastructure. MoICT needs to identify/study new modalities with which to attract private sector investment in developing and managing E-Government services. MoICT also needs to identify appropriate revenue sharing models to attract private sector (local and international) involvement in developing E-Government services. Successful development and launching of EGovernment services will lead to the development of new ICT based products and service management competencies which are likely to have export potential. To enable the many important GoJ supported E-Initiatives, the GoJ initiated establishment of a national broadband network (NBN) as a private governmental network in 2003 as a means to make computers and networks more widely available to the public and to launch and enable (EEducation, E-Health and E-Government). Due to fiscal constraints, the GoJ is facing difficulties in completing the NBN project. In addition, much of the NBN investment has remained unexploited by both the government and the private sector. To achieve the GoJ policy goal of making ICT services more widely available to the public, GoJ will have to harness the financial and business capability of the private sector (local and/or international) to complete the NBN and to make effective use of this infrastructure. As such, GoJ needs to identify priorities to be implemented, identify/study cooperative modalities with the private sector and develop and continuously communicate attractive revenue sharing schemes to increase private sector interest in completing the NBN as well as exploiting its capacity for GoJ and private sector use. 14