Under the High Patronage of His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Lebanon, General Emile Lahoud, “Towards e-Lebanon” Conference was held on June 13 & 14, 2003 in Beirut. Such event was organized by the Arab Regional Network of the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force (UN ICT TF), Banque du Liban and Talal Abu-Ghazaleh & Co. International (TAGI).
The Conference brought together a large number of national, Arab, regional and international participants representing stakeholders from the relative private sector, public sector, academia, civil society and international organizations.
The two-day conference had two main focal themes; the first one is E-Lebanon and the second one is the Arab World (Arab Region Network Meetings).
E-Lebanon covered the following sessions:
• Panel on National e-Strategy
• Network Readiness of the Public Sector
• Network Readiness of the Private Sector
• E-Society
• National e-strategy Framework
The Arab Meeting presented the following topics:
• The Arab Payment Gateway: the Secure Banking and Information for Lebanon project (SeBIL).
• Review of Arab and International Domain Names
• The ICT for development Initiatives in the Arab Countries: preparatory activities to the WSIS.
The sessions provided encompassing overview of the current status and future plans for the various enabling building blocks required for Lebanon to transition to an e-Nation on several levels: the telecommunications infrastructure and the roles of the private and public sectors, the legal infrastructure needed to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of the current and future e-Readiness implementations.
On the other hand, and from an Arab perspective, a review of Arab and International Domain Names was presented as well as the role of MINC (the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium of ICANN) is playing in the Arabization of the Internet. The experiences of Jordan & Egypt, and the IT/ICT initiatives of the Arab League, the World Bank and the Abu-Ghazaleh Cambridge IT Skills program for introducing the basic IT Skills in Arabic language for the Arab masses were presented and discussed with the audience.
The conference recommendations were announced by HE Dr. Nasser Saidi and Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh at the end of the conference and included the recommendation for the establishment of a National e-Strategy and Committee as well as other significant action steps related to the technical infrastructure, the legal context (e-laws and regulations) and the partnership between the private and public sectors.