Overview July 1999: Algeria

In Algeria, concepts of national policies of information and national system of information have a relatively ancient foundation.The law n° 98-11 of August 22, 1998 on scientific research and technological development enhances and accelerates the development of national networks of information and telecommunication (Art.3). One of the main player in the algerian IS society is the CERIST with a number of projects and promotional actions.

In spite of this evolution, the so-called policies have not been followed by implementation of technical and institutional instruments. The national documentary system endures incoherence and institutional fragility. This phenomenon increased from the end of years 80 with the passage of a centralised socio-economic system to a more and more decentralised system. In spite of this insufficiency, several acquirements are made up at different levels :

• Institutional level: creation of national councils of the statistical and the geographical information, development and implementation of national policies of archives and apparition of a new generation of systems of information.

• Telecommunication area: creation of the DZ network PAC X25, introduction of the optic fibre (1987-89), introduction of the mobile radio-telephony of the GSM type and integration of the technology of multimedia diffusion.

• Legal plan: enactment of laws on the statistical national system, the legal deposit, the Internet ëprovider ' and on statistical identity number, its generalisation to the register of township, taxes, social security.

• Technological domain: connection of Algeria to Internet and constitution of networks Intranet.

• Research level: creation of research poles on information and data processing in the ëCeristí and development of research in document sciences.

• Products and services areas: development and hosting of the Web sites, the diffusion of the technical and scientific information regarding to all its aspects, production of catalogues, documentary engineering and advent of an active private sector in the domain of data banks.

• National program area: Algerian catalogue of magazines, theses and monographs, Algerian scientific abstract ASA, DZ-INET network of regional site interconnection, Alstinet network of documentation, academic network of research ARN, national agencies of Issn, Isbns and Isrns (Cerist), documentary network of the Cnat.

• Training area: post-graduation studies on technical and scientific information and continuous training in the subject performed by the Cerist.

In spite of these achievements that some are identified as innovations, they all progress within an hostile environment characterised by an institutional fragility beside human resource insufficiency.

The index created by the number of national identification NIS will be a basis of investigations into sectors. The passage from the system of amounts economic Algerian Scea to the system normalised of Nations United Scn93 knows a beginning of execution.

The Arn network has for purpose to promote local Intranet networks. It affords good background for valorisation activities and development of access services and exchange of information between universities.

The recourse to telecommunication technologies and the data transmission digitalisation allow at short term the virtual library development.