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 The amount of material available in Arabic on the web
is relatively small…For people whose only language is Arabic, this presents a
major limitation
Egypt places high regard in preserving Arabic e-Content that forms the basis of
intellectual and cultural inspiration for future generations. Arabic e-Content
permeates and compliments all other areas of e-Content material, and is seen to
provide an opportunity to increase export possibilities in content material and
provide opportunities for content producing businesses to develop in Egypt.
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- Fekr Rama Portal
- National Archives of Egypt Project
- Egyptian Radio and Television News Website
- Arabic e-Content for Books and Software
Initiative
- Science and Technology Portal
- Community Development Portal
- National e-Content Award
- CultNat
Fekr Rama Portal
Fekr Rama (www.fekr-rama.com)
is a new web portal that provides rich Arabic content in the fields of culture,
education, heritage, religion, sport and the arts for Arab and other audiences.
A collaboration between the Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology (MCIT), Al Azhar, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of
Information, the Egyptian Publishers Union and the e-Learning and Applications
Union, the site was launched in March 2008.
The result of two years of preparation, Fekr Rama currently contains more than
6,000 titles, 3,000 of which are free to access. By 2009, some 20,000 titles
will be available.
The portal contains e-books, magazines, directories, news and audio files, as
well as animation for children and programs that promote learning.
Fekr Rama, derived from Panorama El-Fikr El-Araby (Arab Intellectual Panorama),
focuses on Egypt as a pioneering civilization in the spread of knowledge and as
a role model in preserving Arab heritage for future generations.
 Project Updates
National Archives of Egypt Project
The National Archives of Egypt (NAE) Project is a partnership between the
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Center for
Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) and various Egyptian
IT companies.
Project Objectives:
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To preserve the physical condition of national archives by
producing watermarked, high-resolution digital images of 130,000 valuable
documents, thereby reducing the need for physical access
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To produce digital versions of the more than 90 million
documents held by the NAE for inclusion in a database currently containing over
25 million records that can be searched and accessed via the NAE intranet site
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To develop a web portal (www.nationalarchives.gov.eg)
providing easy access to national archives in a digital format
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Project Updates
Egyptian Radio and Television Union News Website
The Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) news website (www.egynews.net) delivers up-to-date and reliable international, regional and local news in Arabic in all categories in a dynamic, easy-to-use and visually attractive manner. The website offers users a variety of services including in-depth coverage, live streaming, desktop alerts and website customization.
A collaboration between ERTU and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the project involves the creation of an electronic archiving system, including the digitization of more than 10,000 hours of material in a pilot digital library project.
The website was launched to the public in October 2007.
Project Updates
Arabic e-Content for Books and Software Initiative
The initiative aims to support the private sector working in the ICT
industry in Egypt, improving competitiveness and creating new job opportunities
for youth in the ICT field. The strategy depends on designing, implementing and
marketing an Arabic e-content portal, with a target of 2,000 titles and 400
software programs.
The project is a partnership between the MCIT, the Egyptian Publishers Union
and the E-Learning and Business Applications Union.
Project Updates
Science and Technology Portal
This project aims to make the scientific and technological content of the
Academy of Scientific Research and Technology available to the global
scientific community using state-of-the-art ICT. Egyptian science and
technology literature will be scanned to international scanning and
documentation standards and archived in PDF and/or XML format. The portal will
be bilingual and scanned articles may be retrieved using the search tool
available on the portal.
The portal will also make science and technology information from ENSTINET
databases available to the scientific and academic community, as well as
interested Egyptian citizens. Portal users will be able to conduct a variety of
searches on portal content, published documents and other related web sites. In
addition to academic theses and research in science and technology, the portal
is expected to present biographical databases, Egyptian achievements, prizes
and awards, awareness material, news, and other features available to the
global scientific community.
Project Updates
National e-Content Award
A National
e-Content Award aimed at encouraging individuals, private institutions
and civil society to advance and enrich the Arabic e-content industry in Egypt
through competition was launched by ITIDA in 2005. E-content productions in the
domains of online learning, training and human development, culture and
heritage, government, health, finance and business, and lastly entertainment
were judged by a committee of independent experts in software development and
content evaluation. Winning productions were nominated to participate in the
World Summit Award for e-Content Developers, held on the sidelines of the World
Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia in 2005.
Project Updates
Community Development Portal
Community Development Portals (supported by the ICT Trust Fund) are hosted
at IT Clubs whereby NGOs collect and upload content with very specific local
relevance. The Arabic language Community Development Portal (CDP) project was
launched in 2004 under the name of
Kenana Online, with pilot projects run by NGOs in Minya, Damietta, and
Gharbiya. CDP aims to provide locally relevant information that helps people
improve their standard of living. During 2005, time was devoted to increasing
content and the number of hosting and information collection nodes.
The portal now provides communities with information under five headings. These
include the Small and Medium Enterprises Centre, which gives
information on starting a small business; the Skills Centre,
which lists vacancies, news and events and has access to training materials;
the Civil Society Centre, which provides information on how to
establish and run a civil organization, NGO or university group; the Agricultural
Centre for information about agricultural and animal matters such
as agricultural machinery or the breeding behavior of various species; and the
Family Centre , which deals with family planning, basic health and
disease, drug addiction, dieting and exercise.
CDP also provides email services, discussion forums and messaging facilities,
and other services as the need for them becomes apparent. IT clubs and thirty
interested NGOs and CSOs, in the five governorates of Gharbiya, Minya,
Damietta, Assiut and Giza, have CDP information officers to help visitors use
the Internet, create and use email, build websites, write CVs, search for jobs,
and acquire basic IT skills using the tools and information available on Kenana
Online. The ICT Trust Fund has also been funding support for Small and Medium
Enterprises (SMEs) through the portal in the form of ideas, feasibility
studies, advice and marketing tips.
Project Updates
CultNat
The information available online about Egypt’s natural and cultural
heritage is now very extensive and of a very high quality, thanks to the Centre
for the Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage
(CultNat) which was awarded an international prize at for the best
e-content practice at the World Summit Award (WSA), held on the sidelines of
WSIS 2005.
MCIT is giving ongoing support to the creation of a database and digitization
of the holdings of the National Archive of Egypt (Dar Al-Watha'aq). In addition
to this, a new area of cooperation has opened between MCIT, Cairo Governorate
and CultNat. This will document the governorate’s cultural aspects by upgrading
Cairo’s geographic information database to include an investment map of Cairo,
a tier on antiquities, historical sites, special natural sites, traffic
networks, open and green spaces, and other projects that serve to enhance
operations in this field. The agreement includes documenting Cairo’s
architectural and artisanal heritage, in addition to compiling information for
Cairo to be uploaded to the Organization of World Heritage Cities website.
CultNat is also involved with MCIT and Luxor City in creating replicas of
Luxor’s temples in a project called Little Luxor, along with another called
Culturama, emphasizing Luxor’s heritage and tourist attractions. A partnership
between CultNat and IBM created Eternal Egypt, which combines the most
important locations, artifacts, people and stories from Egypt’s history into an
online interactive multimedia experience. Three years in the making, the
project has so far produced multimedia animations, 360 degree image sequences,
panoramas of important locations, virtual environments, three-dimensional
scans, real-time feeds from webcams and thousands of high-resolution images of
ancient artifacts. These all weave together more than five millennia of
Egyptian culture and civilization.
Project Updates
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