Update November 2000: Morocco

• A conference on computer science is to take place on the 3^rd of November on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the University Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah. It will emphasise on file engineering, the techniques of artificial intelligence as well as the imaging and their applications.

• Two seminars will take place, the first from the 9^th to the 11^th of October, the second from the 13^th to the 16^th of November, held by the department of computer sciences in the "Ecole Mohammadia des Ingenieur" (Mohammadia engineering school), the EMI. The first one will be on the topic of XML (eXtend Markup Language), which represents the future web language. The latter will focus on ASP (Active Server Pages) and Java Script.

• A National Commission in Electronic Commerce has been created by the new Secretary of State.

• WAP technology continues to popular with the press and it is now possible to receive several services, one of them, however, is free. Casablanca Stock market updates can now be obtained for free using a WAP telephone. The site contains such information as the number of global transactions, the 5 strongest shares, the 5 weakest etc. Practical information on the stock market is also available.

• A discussion forum has been set up by Mr Redouane Namous, the subject being e-commerce in Morocco. Following a recent conference on e-commerce organised by the Maroc Misoc internet association Mr Redouane Namous took the initiative to create a discussion forum dedicated to generating answers to the problems of implementing e-commerce quickly into the Moroccan community.

• The minister of national education will be signing a contract with VIVENDI soon on the subject of computerising the national schools. This will involve providing both online and offline resources, the offline services are in the form of CD-ROMs and teaching booklets, whereas online resources will manifest themselves as a biblioweb and possibly network products.

• The minister of industry, commerce and craftsmen (MICA), SEPTI and the finance minister have resurfaced the idea of a technoparc (project P@rc) and two sites have been suggested. Technoparc’s objective is to create a space where the information technology operators of different sizes can get together to develop the right conditions for mastering technology.

• The agricultural minister has placed his web site online. It will contain statistics on the production rates in agriculture, a news section and a search engine for the site.

• The minister of the Public Sector and of Privatisation has reactivated his online site.

• Orientation.com has updated significantly both the French and English versions of their African orientated web site so clients can move more smoothly and efficiently through the site.

• Maroc Telecom have also introduced two new services:

• The introduction of prepaid cards (ranging from 25 to 100DH). Customers will phone a freephone number and enter a confidential code, this can be done either from a private or public computer using a fixed network.
• Designed for companies, the second service, Frame Relay, a technology that permits a large bandwith (2Mb/s to 45Mb/s) for important transmissions. Companies pay a set price, no matter how much data is transferred either on the network or between connected sites.

• The communication group Cinemapresse Communication has decided to expand its borders to cover information technology with "Medi@ Online", a new sub-group concentrating on web material, especially the development of a site for the GSM WAP from Ericsson, the R320 (www.r320.ma).