1. WWW Indicators Update October 2000 - January 2001

The last three months of 2000 brought no new tendencies in the developing of Web sites. The creation of Web sites was intensified in the business sector and in the academic sector.

Universities became more active after the new school year began, and also small higher education institutions launched their Web pages.

A number of local municipalities were reached in this year by radiolinks or leased lines. It allowed some of them to show their presence on the Web.

The initial euphoria concerning the e-shops is decreasing now and companies are analyzing the results of e-commerce and adjusting their strategies.

Rather interesting is the fact, that along with big portals maintained by serious financial support, some small web pages of individuals have appeared that and follow the main ideas of portals. (http://www.idiot.lv or http://coollunx.xxl.lv)

The launching of portals is going on in Latvia and there are mainly news portals:

The first one of them was created by an ISP Delfi - www.delfi.lv. This site is now the most popular and also richest in contents. It offers news including weather forecast, e-shopping, free place for homepages etc. The information is offered in Latvian and Russian languages. Another ISP company – Apollo also has the news portal www.portal.lv with additional services.

The portal of the newspaper Diena www.diena.lv contains only news and information from the newspaper. The newest portal was created by National Television – www.tvnet.lv. It offers text information and also allows to watch TV fragments.

The portal of portals – www.kasjauns.lv comprises the contents of the four above-mentioned portals.

There also exist other specialized portals, for example, the portal www.jums.lv, that offers all information concerning real estate market in Latvia, but they are not universal enough to be considered as real portals.

Sources:

For total number of "population" - Statistical yearbook of Latvia 2000.
For statistics of web sites – Statistics of the academic computer network LATNET.
See also:

• http://www.mk.gov.lv/ for ministries;
• http://freepages.bigassweb.com/freepages/skola/skolah4.htm for schools

2. Evolution of the WWW Indicators over the whole ESIS II period

During the reference period 1999-2000 the Latvian Internet users increased their use of Internet. The use increases constantly.

The primary and secondary schools and especially their students always had serious interest in connection to the Internet. It became more and more possible during the last years. The government launched a new program concerning the computerization of schools. This program also allocates some financial resources for school connection to the Internet. As soon as the students have possibility to work on the Internet they began to think about the Homepage of their school, their locality or about their own homepage.

All high schools and universities are connected to the Internet at this moment. And almost all of them have found resources for creating their WWW sites.

In 2000 the last ministry of Latvia government (Ministry of Justice) launched its Homepage. Now all the Cabinet of Ministers is presented at the Internet.

There are surprisingly many local municipalities that have interest in the Internet and are thinking about their local organizations connecting to the Internet.

Hospitals and clinics use Internet connections rather widely for information needs and even for direct medical purposes, for example, online consulting of an overseas expert. However they have not found good reason to create their WWW sites.

Latvian museums got Web sites in 1997 when an Australian specialist put all the museums that were the members of Latvia Museum Association at the net. After that the definition of a museum changed and all local museums acquired the status of museums of state significance. These new museums have no web sites, that is why the percentage of museums presented online have decreased.

The needs of public libraries are not usually prioritized in Latvia. Nevertheless they are also participating in the development of the information society. The Soros Foundation Latvia financed the creation of 24 Internet Access points throughout all Latvia, located mainly in local libraries.

Other important tendencies in the development of Latvia’s Internet environment were the opening of Internet portals in 2000. This year the Internet banking activities started and now all the leading banks allow their users to connect to their bank accounts via Internet and to make bank transfers. The leading Power Company Latvenergo allowed paying for electricity by Internet in 2000.