http://www.alestethmar.net/home/content/view/922/100/


above is the link for my article

Hope to know your feedback

Salam Suliman:

First, please forgive me if I'm going to be harsh on criticizing the "article".

Well, I want to know if that's the whole article posted there. It's less than a page long containing little to none useful info on the topic. So, the biggest weakness of the article, in my opinion, is its lack of information.

First, it needs a thoughough definition of a what an E Gov is. After reading the article, i still don't know what an E gov is.

Second, there isn't even one example of what it could be used for; what kind of services will it offer to the public? What benefits can the actual physical government get by implementing an E gov?.....etc. Alot of examples are needed to convince us of the importance of having an E Gov.


Then, after you explaining what an E gov is and what services it will offer..., then you need to evaluate the situation in Yemen. What has been done in this regard? What are the obstacles? What could be done? How are Yemenis going to benefit from the E gov? .....etc. Each one of those questions can be answered in one or more paragraphs.


Besides lack of information, the article had other weaknesses. Why do we need to compare ourselves to "neighboring countries"? Who cares if they have succeeded or not in implemented an E gov? We are special and have special situation that differs from any neighboring country. India? There might be a lot of poor people there, but the country itself is rich and one of hte biggest industrial forces in the globe!! There's basically no comparison.

I think that if we want to push for something, we should not compare ourselves with others. Instead, we should ask ourselves "why not do this or that?" not "Look, even such and such have this and that!". Why don't we have an E gov? We have blah blah blah (resources), we can have benefits blah blah blah(benefits)....etc. If we determine we can do it, then "why not?".


Finally, there were spelling errors, i guess.


I think it should be الى


?? اعداد؟ a growing numbers of what in Yemen?



??


Again, no hard feelings; this is just my personal opinion on the article.

Salam

Thank you for sharing this article, and as you requested i am happy to provide my feedback at the level of my understanding for your article.

First:

I salute you for having the courage and the spirit to write about such topics, i get happy to see that our youth are trying to help in spreading the knowledge, so thank you

Second:

I agree with Waleed, the article is short. I expected to see more on the subject. E-gov is a huge subject to write about, and you could have chosen a part of it to cover. There has been many initiatives in Yemen related to E-Gov, one of them was the UNDP Project, and Now the WB Project with the Treasury.
You could've included such information in your article to make it better.

Third:

There are many spelling mistakes in the article. I do not balme you for that, but the editor should've profread it before posting it on the magazine. other than what Waleed mentioned, here are what i spotted :


الاليكترونية

and the right spelling is:

الإلكترونية

وستستمر الأمور لدينا انه معنا حكومة اليكترونية .

It does not sound right

الدول الخليجية لازالت إلى الآن

the right structure is:

لازالت الدول الخليجية

هناك لأسف

the right spelling is

للأسف

على أدراج

the right spelling is

إدراج


بلاضافه إلى

the right spelling is:

بالإضافة

and also the punctuation marks... there are a lot missing.


Finally:

I hope you take these comments in a positive way, we can learn from each others.... I also hope that you can share yuor next article with the people here, i am sure they can be of a termendous help.

If you think you should write an article about E-Governance again, i can help you by providing some good papers (in English), you can use them as a resource for this article.

Thanks

Nice article Suliman.

Waleed and Ameen have provided enough feedback on the article. I'd like to mention that one of the main urdles towards e-Anything in Yemen is the lack of proper IT infrastructure. This is an article I wrote for Shabab Yemeni once, that elaborate more on this:


http://www.shababyemeni.com/en/index.ph ... 7&Itemid=5

hello Guys
Am really so honor and thankful for your concern over the article

Guys,the article is so short because i have been given one column in the magazine of investment which is a monthly column the space is so short I told them to give me much more space they have offered just that.

In addition,I tried to assume that E government is already spoken about but we don't see it on the ground because of so and so excuses.

I had met with some people in charge of E goverment in the Yemeni G Sector they are till now saying its A Cd programme and thats all.

some other says we are speaking about basic things and you mr sulaiman speaking about E goverment


Third

Comparing with other it has got some embeded inside meanning people who reads will understand what i mean.

We are approching GCC to join
We are Receciving Investors


But whallahi iam so proud to be among you guys and my article evaluated

you could refere to my previous posts on YSAA all of it carrys my privous article

as iam PHD CFA Reacher and University Sains Malaysia

Hello Suliman,

Great to have you back,

I wish you can share your future article with us, the guys here are more than happy to help..

We are re-constructing the fourms now, and we will have a special section for talents like yours, and we wish you become part of that.

Thanks

Sorry for the late reply, but sometimes I miss such interesting posts.

This response could be long so I suggest you go to another topic, because brother Yemenreform is about to start talking to himself again.

1- That template for the Istithmar site is excellent. I am not sure who is working on the site, but they did good job. I would recommend it for ShababYemeni.com.

2- I know its not polite to start with the negative, but the article was kind of short and had some spellings errors.

3- I loved the topic and my mind started wondering about the potential of e-government and the obstacles we have in yemen. (Here the morning caffeine starts kicking in. Not Starbucks)

This why I recommend that you do a series of articles on the topic and interviews with members of the government and the technological elite at our universities.

Here are my thoughts
The Obstacles:
A- Yemenis are not technologically savvy. Very few Yemenis will benefit from this service because many of them are not connected to the internet.
B- There is unstable electrical power supply that makes difficult for Yemenis to conduct government business online.
C- We should not compare Yemen to China, India, or gulf countries, because we have special circumstances and problems.
D- I am sure there are more complicated obstacles that my simple mind cannot comprehend at the moment because of all the enthusiasm. We will keep those for later.

The way forward:
A- This service can be brought to the regular person on the street that does not have a landline or a modem or a computer at home.
There are many shops that connect to the internet in many of our major cities and they serve a reasonable number of our population. If we were to license these shops to conduct government transactions online (for a convenience fee ) their computers and network connections would need would need to be tested for virus and spyware vulnerabilities as well as a thousand other security holes.

Lets not forget the potential for cell phones as another way to access banks and conduct digital transactions including e-government.

B- If this service was provided to foreign investors the benefits would result in increased jobs for the regular Yemeni worker and college graduate.

So you see from above how e-government can start by benefiting the rich and can be made accessible to a reasonable number of city dwellers and maybe villagers that have wireless cell phone connections.

Examples of e-government transactions:
1- for the average person and small businesses. Can you imagine not having to take the day off and waste gas and stand on long lines to pay your utility bills. I am sure there are many more examples to save time and money.

2- For foreign investors. I think the government has done a lot to lure foreign investment into Yemen. This would be the icing on the cake. It would be nice to have the ability to submit applications and receive feedback online of any deficiencies and address them in minutes by using email. You only need to show up once to bring any original documents and officially sign the papers.

Somewhat Off-Topic

I think we should compare ourselves to other countries and consider our special circumstances and beat them.
If you think about what can Yemen do in this new industrialized world? Can we open glass and steel factories and export commodities to the world? Well, it has not been easy.

It is easier to use "Yemeni brain power" . That is the easiest commodity we can export out of Yemen. It does not take a lot of startup money or machines or natural resources to begin exporting digital materials through the internet.

India has been able to use this digital power at minimal cost and maximum benefit. It is called outsourcing. There are people that are paying thousands of dollars for digital software and code modules that can be easily done in yemen for a competitive fraction of their cost in Europe and America.

As an example, I know someone who was trying to professionally redo their company website and was getting outrageous in the thousands of dollars for his small business. He found a company online that was welling to do for less than a thousand. After the product was delivered and he was happy with it at that price, he found out that it was done by a programmer in India. This company in New York was using programmers in India for its contracts and making a good commission in the process.

The skills that were involved in designing the site could be taught any Yemeni university in less than a year. Can you imagine if that was a Yemeni college student that did that job. I don't see why not. Sure there are more complicated programming jobs like Java and C++ and that would need more years to master

Other things that use "Yemeni brain power" are in the media
Yemen has great poets and religious leaders.

We might not have the sexy females, but if we use our media outlets well enough we can become a credible source of information. Better than CNN and Aljazeerah. Our students in theater should think more creatively on how to address social issues around the Middle East and make better shows that will make Bab Al-7arah look like Baraktna

These are all dreams, but there is no reason why they can not become reality with some basic initiative, planning, and support.

Please, let me know if you managed to read the whole thing and be kind and polite with your responses.

best regards to sulimanco for keeping the dream alive

Wow! Thanks Yemenreform for the rich reply! It's gr8 to hear from u again.


Thanks, Osama for the article.



Salamz