GIITC Training program commences

The Government IT Training and certification program (GITTC) that was formally sealed with a contract between the ITA and Certiport Inc., US commences its training schedule at the end of February 2009. In October 2008 the GITTC contract was signed between HE. Mohammed Nasser Al Khasibi, Chairman of ITA and Secretary General at the Ministry of National Economy and Mr. David Saedi, President and CEO of Certiport. This contract is to train about 93,507 civil employees in cooperation with the Ministry of Civil Services and the Ministry of Education over a period of 3 yrs. The GITTC is a project under the ‘National IT Training & Awareness (NITTA) framework which is a government, nation-wide eOman initiative aimed at developing ICT skills and increasing ICT awareness within the government and the community. The GITT initiative aims to provide ICT training opportunities to the civil service employees in order in enable them to offer electronic services to the public and the businesses. The project also creates employment opportunities for educated unemployed youth of Oman by enabling them to become certified digital literacy trainers. Through this agreement, the process of building capacity within the public sector to expedite the process of e-government implementation and create a pool of ICT skilled civil staff takes momentum. The project team visiting the three selected areas to start with and solicited the cooperation of the Directorate Generals and the probable trainers of the programs. During the 1st phase of the training project, over 300 centres have been established at the government schools under the Ministry of Education who are the key stakeholder of this program. About 7000 government employees been assessed for digital literacy training needs in the Muscat, Al Batinah and As’Sharqiya region of the Sultanate. Their current level of digital literacy has been identified as basic, intermediary or advanced. This will help to select appropriate the training to improve their skills to higher levels so that on the completion of the training program, they can be certified formally under the internationally accredited IC3 digital literacy certification. Certiport Inc.’s Internet and Computing Core Certification (IC³®) is a global standard for digital literacy. It plays a significant role in the global community’s program to become digitally connected and help bridge the digital divide. While most of the training centres are located within government schools and some others are located within government offices. From the entire scope of the project which covers 36, 17 entities will be covered during the 1st phase of the training. According to the contract the company had to acquire 200 trainers for the entire 3yr period and currently they have already appointed 43 IT Omani graduates as fulltime staff with the support of the Ministry of Manpower.

http://www.ita.gov.om/ITAPortal/MediaCenter/NewsDetail.aspx?NID=242

National implementation:

Ongoing from 15 Feb 2009

Oman's Ministry of Civil Services Oman's Ministry of Education Certiport Inc.

* The role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development
      * ICT for sustainable development
      * National e-strategies
* Information and communication infrastructure
* Access to information and knowledge
* Capacity building
* Enabling environment
* ICT applications: benefits in all aspects of life

• Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

• Training initiative