Update July 2000: Lebanon

Despite the unfavorable economic conditions still prevailing in Lebanon, the quest for better organizational structure aiming at more efficiency in private and public enterprises has continued, relying, in many instances, on ICT.

1. In the Public Sector

- The Prime Minister, Salim AL HOSS, following recurrent complaints from the business community concerning red-tape in the Administration has called for a conference entitled "The simplification of Administrative procedures and its influence in the development of Public Administration", held on the 8th of May. The event has been organized by the Lebanese Civil Service Council (CSC) and the National Institute for Administration and Development (NIAD) in presence of the Minister of State for Administrative Reform < www.omsar.gov.lb >. In his presentation, the Minister indicated that the present system was giving priority to "appearance rather than substance". He therefore called for the implementation of new methods and the adoption of the appropriate ICT infrastructure. Mrs Jamala NASSAR, head of the public relations for CSC, explained that a basic difficulty resided in the over-centralization and the overlapping of responsibilities.

- Economy and Trade Minister, Nasser SAÏDI, < www.economy.gov.lb > presented, early in May, the Government’s intent to create a comprehensive framework to encourage and modernize electronic commerce in Lebanon through its "EC 2000 initiative". This initiative is based on five main points that consist of:

• Encouraging the private sector to take a leading role in e-commerce;
• Avoiding the passage of new or unnecessary laws that could limit e-commerce activity;
• Modernizing the regulatory framework to facilitate and protect electronic commerce;
• Reviewing existing laws that might be inadequate;
• Adapting to international developments related to e-commerce.

- The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication is in dispute with the two private mobile phone operators: Cellis < www.cellis.com.lb > and LibanCell < www.libancell.com.lb >. This dispute has erupted in the press on many occasions and took a turn for the worse in the week of May 12th when the Council of Ministers rejected a 2.7 billion dollars to convert the BOT contract to two 20 year-licenses. An official declaration made by the Minister of Information, Mr Anwar EL KHALIL, stated that the Government planned to implement the legal and contractual conditions stipulated in the original deal signed in 1994. The Government, he said, wanted to collect revenues owed to it, thus alluding to the 600 million dollars that the MPT is asking the two companies to pay in compensation for allegedly exceeding the subscription ceiling outlined in the contracts. The Minister AL KHALIL also said that the Cabinet would submit a draft law to the Parliament allowing it to post a tender for a license of the third generation UMTS system. Cellis and LibanCell operate a GSM 900 and were preparing to introduce the GSM 1800 had the Government approved their licensing offers.

- An official report issued by the governor of the Central Bank (Banque du Liban) < www.bdl.gov.lb >, Mr Riad SALAMÉ, presented extensive statistics on the number of credit and debit cards issued in Lebanon. During the nine first months of 1999, this number reached 228 213 showing a 54% increase over the corresponding period of 1998. The number of ATMs rose 32% reaching 341 machines with 202 ATMs in the Great Beirut area alone.

The Central Bank has also authorized the introduction of the Smart Card: Visa Chip Card on May 15th. Seven banks operating in Lebanon have joined efforts to come up with this new service. The Smart Card introduces new features allowing support of more information and preventing fraud as it stores all information in a computer chip instead of the magnetic strip. The press release indicated that this Smart Card allows secure card payments over the Internet, which in turn will develop and promote banking services over the net. Lebanon, according to the same press release, is the first country to embrace the new chip-based card technology in the Middle East.

2. Professional Associations, IT companies, NGOs, ...

- The Professional Computing Association (PCA) < www.pca.org.lb > continued its leading role during this second quarter:

• It contributed hardware and software assistance for the installation of 1000 PCs in public schools as well as the implementation of a network to link 24 schools, these announcements were made during a press conference held in presence of the Minister SAÏDI.
• It also organized a seminar on IT in common with the Syrian Society for Information and Technology to which high-ranking figures from public and private sector attended.

- Cisco Systems Inc., a US computer giant and global leader in networking for the Internet, is opening an office in Lebanon. The Beirut office will report to Cisco’s regional office in Dubai and will have around ten employees. Cisco has reached an agreement with the American University of Beirut to designate it as a member of the regional Cisco academy network while pursuing similar arrangements with other local universities.

- The Business Software Alliance (BSA), a US based association for the implementation of the IPR laws, has taken action against some local businesses. Lawyer Walid NASSER, BSA’s attorney, stated in a press conference: "the BSA has resorted to take legal action using the provisions granted by the Lebanese copyright law. The provisions allow two outlets to protect copyright holders, the first through the Ministry of Economy and the second through public prosecutors. The BSA has used both".

The Regional officer of BSA for the Middle East, Mr Ashok SHARMA, stated from his part: "We have carried out more seminars, meetings, advertisements in Lebanon than in any other Arab country in the region. It is time for us to move into the legal sphere if we are to get things done".

- An NGO recently started to fight corruption, has announced its action plan after a meeting with the President of the Republic General Emile LAHOUD. Out of twenty general recommendations, the founder of this NGO, Mr Oussama SAFA, who is also the Lebanese branch president of Transparency International and the co-founder, Mr Maher SALLOUM, said that they are stressing presently the following steps to be considered as preliminary requirements:

• Improving the salaries of Government employees;
• Restructuring the Lebanese Public Administrations;
• Passing a law on illicit wealth;
• Strengthening the role and independence of the judiciary;
• Preventing political interference in Public Administration affairs;
• Strengthening civil and political awareness;
• Restructuring some economic sectors towards privatization.

This NGO has also launched a website < www.kullunamassoul.org.lb >; the name meaning "we are all responsible".

3. Regional and international organizations

- On the 15th of May, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) < www.escwa.org.lb > launched a two-day expert panel on the theme "Information Technology and Development Priorities: competing in the Knowledge-based economy". Substantive contributions (around twenty) were presented during four sessions under the themes of:

• The emerging knowledge-based global economy,
• The economics of information and communications technologies,
• The projects for realizing digital Arab economies,
• The relevant technology transfer / acquisition policies and future developments in telecommunications.

In particular, the participants examined the frameworks for new policies and strategic initiatives from the perspectives of governmental and non-governmental organizations. They debated the major effects on sustainable socioecomomic development of the telecommunications technologies and their applications, including distance learning, telemedicine, alleviating poverty, etc.

- The World Bank has approved a 56.6 million dollars loan to the Lebanese Government to upgrade the education sector. The funds will be earmarked to a project to build schools for 20 000 primary and secondary students, provide 130 000 students with new technologies and train 20 000 teachers. Mrs Bahia HARIRI, Member of Parliament and head of the Education Commission in this Parliament have announced this initiative to the press.

4. Universities

- Under the sponsorship of the AUPELF < www.lb.refer.org > organization (the association of universities teaching partially or totally in French), the faculty of engineering at the Saint-Joseph University < www.usj.edu.lb >organized a seminar on distance education for engineers in the Mediterranean region. All participants stressed the point that the infrastructure in not good enough to encourage any initiative in this perspective and that the methods of teaching have also to adapt to this new way of communication. Some participants raised the issue of the cost of such networking due to the monopolistic pricing structure presently in effect. The privatization issue of telecommunications was considered as the beginning of the solution.

- At the Lebanese American University (LAU), < www.lau.edu.lb >a seminar was held early in April, where professional of the IT industry, both private and public sectors, met to examine the position of the Lebanese Software Production. Many possibilities to improve this production quality and quantity wise were considered. The seminar ended with recommendations to create a council representing the different sectors: educational, governmental and software companies to further their cooperation and lobby the Government for update laws and increased support.

Later in April, another seminar was held to discuss the arabization aspects of the Internet. A senior adviser to the UN-Economic and Social Commission made the guest presentation for Western Asia (ESCWA), Dr Mohamed MRAYATI. Specific topics were discussed, in particular: the Arabic translation, speech synthesis, CD publishing, distance learning and culture-ware. Another important field of research was that of security coding cryptology.