January 2001

Israel

This is the final WWW Indicators report on Israel as the ESIS project ended in January 2001. This Master Report covers the whole period of the ESIS project surveying the Mediterranean Area, March 1999 - January 2001 inclusive. 

1. Background

Good sources for the number of registered domain names under the different categories used in Israel are available through the Israeli registrar, the Israeli Internet Association, (ISOC-IL) http://www.isoc.org.il . This provide valid data on the development of the Internet in the country. In contrast, regarding the number of WWW sites, for categories other that those generally used for domain registration rely on a variety of sources of varied reliability.

In continuation we bring both kinds of data.

Until January 2000 there was available a file with all domain names registered under IL. Since then we made an effort to obtain a report on the number of domain names registered each month in Israel in the different categories. Monthly data for the whole year 2000 were provided to us by the IL domain name registrar, the Israel Internet Association.

This data enabled us to calculate an estimate of the number of Web sites for each one of these domain names categories.

The most signficant observation is the extraordinary growth both of the domain names and the Web sites in the categories co.il and org.il.

The total number of domain names registered in Israel grew from January to December 2000 by 215% . The number of domain names under co.il grew by 217% and those registered under org.il by 213% . In all other categories the growth has been marginal. See sections 3 and 4 below.

These findings do not change our estimates from the last report (Q5) regarding the ESIS categories for Web sites – these categories do not include commercial sites were most of the increase has taken place:

Regional and Local Authorities: Almost all have now a Web site available due to a project carried out by the Union of Local Authorities in Israel; these sites include information on the Mayor; a Bulletin Board; General Information; History; Community Services; the Municipality; Education, Culture and Sport; Tourism; Commerce and Industry; Development Programs; Twin Cities.

The number of Government sites expanded although this doesn’t receive due weight in the number of Ministries presented in the table. Some expressions of increased government access can be obtained from the huge number of users of the Ministry of Finances Web Upon the announcement of a deep Tax Reform tens of thousands of users flooded the site to get the text and ask questions through the online help desk; the establishment of direct access by the Israel Land Authority to all land related regulations and registries; the establishment of a Web site for the Police and the intensive publicity campaign that followed it.

Significant developments can be identified in the area of commercial portals: the establishment of the MSN Israel Portal and the massive expansion of Internet Portals by the main newspapers: the Yedioth Aharonot YNET; the Markers.Com economic portal established by Haaretz. This in addition to the established main services like Walla; Nana; Tapuz and more.

2. Israeli Web Sites by ESIS Categories

Web Sites in Israel for the last three months (December 2000)

The Web is well used in Israel in the different sectors. As can be observed from the table brough in section 4 (in continuation) there was an extraordinary growth in domain names and Web sites in Israel in the last two years. However almost all of the growth can be explained by the number of names registered under co.il which is not relevant to the categories here adopted.

The trends that can be noticed in the table above are the following. All the universities and the academic libraries from the start make massive use of the Web to distribute information.

We can notice a gradual increment of Web sites by local authorities that at the end of the period, due to the initiative of the Local Authorities Association becomes massive with almost all of them having a Web sites.

Although significant progress has been made in the computerisation of the educational system the growth of school web sites is slow, going from about 3.5% in mid ’99 to about 17% at the end of the year 2000. We couldn’t identify significant changes in the presence of Hospitals/clinics, Museums and Libraries in the Web in the period although their presence differ : Hospitals/clinics at about 50% ; Museums, about 24% (we do not count as a Web presence simple announcements regarding the description, address, and hours of opening of the Museums in Israel – there are several such catalogs covering almost all the museums in Israel) ; Teacher Colleges Libraries at about 44% ; and a very low presence of Local/Municipal libraries in the Web.

Sources

The number of educational institutions is from the site of the program for educational networking of the Ministry of Education http://www.kishurim.k12.il David Carmi, the Marketing Director of Kishurim provided updated figures: 1008 schools connected, 85% of them by a fixed direct connection (Frame Relay) and the remaining either by ISDN to LAN (10) or by dial up. He claims that among them 200 schools have established Web sites using the EduWeb system developed by Kishurim. We get an estimate of the Web sites for schools (560) by adding the 200 of Kishurim to the number of Web sites of schools is that available at the National Site for Israel in Netdays Europe http://netdays.org.il (92) and visits to the main educational networks (Netschool (116), Keshev, Amalnet (37), ORT, Snunit (12), Tzafonet (20) and the file of Israeli schools available at http://www.jajz-ed.org.il(81) . The rough numer of 360 Web sites allows for duplications among the different sources.

(2) Number of Web sites indicated in iGuide ; universities and colleges available at the Academic Site of Israel at http://www.ac.il

2a - Web sites of Teacher Colleges available at the National Teachers Colleges Network : http://www.macam.ac.il

2b - Information on Regional Colleges available at: http://www.tau.ac.il:81/colleges . Their sites available at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs site: http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il

2c - Sites accessible at the Academic Web of Israel http://www.ac.il

(3) The sites of the Ministries are available either at the Government Portal : http://www.info.gov.il or at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il

(4) The number of local authorities in Israel is from Central Bureau of Statistics Statistical Annuary for Israel (1998) . The table is available at the CBS web site in: http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton//st02-13ab_h.shtml . There are 61 Municipalities; 148 Local Councils; 51 Regional Councils in the pre-1997 Israel territories; 7 Regional Councils in the post-1997 territories. The Web sites were found both at the Union of Local Authorities in Israel http://www.cityindex.co.il/city_sys/index.asp with 256 sites established by the Union for each Local Authority and complemented by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il (independent sites – 66 Local Authorities).

(5) The Ministry of Health maintain only a list of governmental hospitals and the main Health Insurance Cooperatives. Comprehensive lists were obtained and conflated from a commercial site: http://www.doctor.co.il/hospitalslink.htm and from the Maccabi Health Insurance Cooperative site: http://www.maccabi-health.co.il/services_guide/hospital.html The list of Web sites was obtained from the Ministry of Health site: http://www.health.gov.il/code/kishur.htm for governmental hospitals and from the Clalit Health Insurance Cooperative site at: http://www.clalit.co.il/hospital/hosp2.htm

(6) The list of museums obtained at http://www.rakia.com and http://www.travel2000.co.il . The museums and archaeological museums sites obtained at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs site: http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il

(7) The sites of Academic libraries is available at the The Israeli Library Network at: http://libnet.ac.il/~libnet/net/librarys.html . In addition to the libraries listed here there are about Special Libraries in Israel; their Periodicals Holdings are available at the Unified List of Serials; such libraries are internal libraries of institutions and businesses and should not be expected to establish public available catalogues or Web sites. The Union List of Serials lists over 99,000 different serial titles held by over 170 special libraries and collections (see http://libnet.ac.il/~libnet/uls/ulsinfo.htm).

(7b) The list of Teachers Colleges Libraries connected is available at: http://www.macam98.ac.il/library/ (7c) The Training Centre for Public Libraries in Isael (http://www.icl.org.il) estimates unofficially that the number of public and local libraries in 1200 ; There are reason to suppose that several of them have Web sites embedded in the Web sites of their local authorities (municipalities); however direct links have been found for only for 10 such local libraries.

Source: iThe iGuide site provided sites sorted by domain names http://www.iguide.co.il/sites/sites.htm until January 2000. From 2000 we have estimated the number of Web sites using the latest percentage (for January 2000)of Web sites for the number of registered domain names in each category (co.il, ac.il, k12.il, net.il, muni.il, org.il)

4. Israeli Institutions Domain Growth (January 2001)

Sources: iGuide Israeli institutions domains growth http://www.iguide.co.il/stats.htm . In the original site you will find the domains partitioned by secondary level: co.il; org.il; ac.il; k12.il; gov.il; net.il; muni.il; com; net; org; edu; israel.net

The iGuide site hasn’t been updated since January 2000. A file with the registered domain names in Israel was usually available at the Israel Internet Association web site (http://www.isoc.org.il)which is the IL ccTLD registrar. This file is not and will not be available again. The Israel Internet Association has provided since September 2000, for ESIS-IL, the number of domain names registered monthly in Israel since January 2000.

* Until December 1999 the total number of domains include domains registered abroad by Israeli institutions – com, edu, org and domains managed by Actcom under israel.net .