Executive Focus: Striving to fulfil Jordan's IT aspirations

Dr. Fawaz Al Zu'bi is a minister who wants to lose his job and his ministry in five years time.

Why?

"For that would prove that I have been successful in reducing government to just a policy-making office," he answers, sitting back comfortably and gazing, but not really looking, at the gilded ceiling of the Royal Mirage's Gold Club lounge.

Al Zu'bi is Jordan's Minister for Information and Communications Technology.

"My real measure of success would be that, in five years, the ministry goes away, the government is reduced. Two years ago when I took over, I set out to do a job well. I have created the cooks and would like to get out of their way. Policy should be run from a small office," he said.

In two years since the ICT ministry was created out of Posts and Communications portfolio and he was plucked from the private sector by King Abdullah II, Al Zu'bi has sold off 40 per cent of Jordan Telecom, invited another GSM telecom services provider, Fastlink, a paging company and 12 Internet service providers.

By October, the minister plans to further dilute the government's 60 per cent holding in Jordan Telecom through an initial public offering (IPO).

Al Zu'bi has corporatised the ministry's postal arm with its own governing board and managing director, and now is awaiting a report on how to privatise it too. In three months, he hopes to have a final policy on how to do just that.

Apart from this, Al Zu'bi is credited to have brought 'e' and 'IT' to Jordanian homes.

"By 2004, everybody in Jordan will be connected," he claims, and should be believed.

A measure of Dr. Fawaz Al Zu'bi's success is his acknowledgement as the "eVisionary of The Year" during the Arabian Business eAchievement Awards 2001, which was held as part of Dubai Internet City's first anniversary celebrations.

In a gala ceremony, Al Zu'bi was honoured by General Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Minister of Defence.

Following are excerpts from an exclusive interview Dr. Fawaz Al Zu'bi gave to Gulf News while in Dubai recently.

Jordan's emergence as an Information Technology centre in the Arab world has been equally remarkable as has been the growth of Dubai. How did it all come about?

This is quite a big story and it's getting bigger and bigger because we are working hard on it. I think we have come a long way in the past two years since we started our planning and our strategy. Now we are in the midst of the implementation phase.

First of all, many of the laws that are directly related to IT and telecom are behind us. We have advanced a lot.

Basically, we are looking at how we're going to start building the platform or the infrastructure to carry our hopes and dreams.

We have restructured the Ministry of Posts and Communications to effectively emphasise the fact that Infor-mation and Communications Technology (ICT) is now going to be a driver for our future economy.

Two years is too short a time for a country to go through an IT revolution requiring an attitudinal change. What route did you take to achieve that?

Competition and liberalisation. We started with Jordan Telecom to lead the liberalisation of the sector. We conducted extensive studies in both mobile and fixed sectors, to see how the policy will evolve.

We wanted to build an infrastructure of world class services on all fronts and introduce competition to ensure better value, better prices and a better management culture.

We are starting to see new young professionals - our fruits. We have crossed an interesting barrier.

What is on Jordan's IT agenda?
We are starting work before the end of this year to build the infrastructure for e-government. The e-government initiative is about building a team.

We are connecting all Jordan-ians. We started a few months ago to look into all aspects of how best to connect all Jordanians. Education is the single most important priority, and the use of telecommunications and IT infrastructure to raise the development of education.

We are looking at training. The people's aspect is really critical. We have 40 IT centres throughout the kingdom and would have 67 by the end of this year, mostly in rural areas, and thus connecting all to the Internet including schools and universities.

By 2004, everybody will be connected.

But this would require cooperation from other arms of the government, other ministries, autonomous authorities, etc. How could you band together a diverse set of government bodies, each perhaps with its own agenda?

We are starting to look at things as a 'national effort' on all fronts. All ministries, all are working together to make sure the programme integrates into a national programme.

The aim is to ensure education and capacity to build up technology, to ensure teachers are trained. We have started to train government employees and hope to train 1,000 staff from 15 ministries between now and October.

Is it not only a massive programme for Jordan, but also an ambitious one considering that the country is regarded as impoverished in terms of resources and finances?

Good ideas always have backers. There is much money floating around in the world. There is lot of investment throughout the world in countries like Jordan. Our programme is very inclusive. Every level of our society gets included and is part of our programme.

Donors, the World Bank, lending agencies, our Arab brothers, IT companies, all show great interest. Financing is not a major constraint.

Perhaps, you could be looking at a bond issue?

We have not reached that level yet where we would be looking at an ICT sector bond. We cannot say that this might not be the case a year from today. E-government is getting big. Connect-ing departments is a humongous job.

How far has ICT reached into Jordan?

We have a way to go. We have 20 per cent mobile penetration and 17 per cent fixed line, but in terms of households, the rate is 85 per cent. Though Internet penetration is still low, we are seeing 100 per cent year-on-year growth.

Just two years ago, we had 80,000 mobile lines, now they are about a million.

What is Jordan's USP (unique selling point), its resource and its catchments area?

Some 55 per cent of our population is below 18 years. Jordan has 22 universities. More than 30 per cent of the population is in school, all learning English and IT early on.

We feel there is good ground for developing a serious effort in the IT area. IT is a means to enable all. There is a shift towards e-learning. We have a lot of capability in software development.

Our companies are doing world-class work. Our reach is global, and with our free trade agreement with the U.S., we are a conduit to the world's biggest market. We offer stability and people's skills.

We are creating an outreach which will effectively create an India or an Ireland in terms of ICT development.

So what do you plan to do next?

By the end of August, we would finish a stud