Information and Communication Technology Center (ICTC)

ICTC was established in 1998 following a decision from the university council. It is considered as one of the most important centers that serve the university in all technological and communication aspects. It has the responsibility of technical development of programs regarding administration, financial, academic, and community service. It links the university to the most up-to-date technological resources.

The University has the most extensive and elaborate technology network in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, what is currently considered to be a big burden is the large costly intranet that has been implemented by the only telecommunication company in Palestine (PALTEL). ICTC consists of four departments: Networking and Technical Support, Training and Development, Software Engineering, and Multimedia and Graphic Design Departments. See Fig. 2.

Mission
To effectively conceive, develop, implement, utilize, and manage appropriate information systems in order to provide integrated and coordinated quality ICT services to Al-Quds Open University in line with its vision, mission and objectives.

Objectives
The objectives of the ICTC can be summarized as follows:

1. Developing the infrastructure of the University's intranet to fully satisfy the needs of the running computerized systems.
2. Preparation of ICT labs and computer labs to serve the education and research purposes
3. Software development of computerized systems to the various University's administrative and academic tasks.
4. Smooth and timely migration to the e-learning era. The ICTC has completed the first phase of developing an academic portal for the university.
5. Developing and maintaining the website of the university http://www.qou.edu.
6. Closer interaction with the community including other universities and educational institutions.
7. Improve communications media between university branches and its regional educational centers via solving problems related to network overload.
8. Ensure secure flow of data and information.
9. Provide e-mail service to QOU's staff.
10. Provide internet service to QOU's staff and students.
11. Produce multimedia packages for students to use in order to enrich the educational process.
12. Establish a central database for all the regional study centers.
13. Help the research units via providing necessary computing tools.

Achievements
ICTC has achieved many projects that serve the objectives it was established for. We can summarize some of these projects as follows:

1. The widest computer network (Intranet) in Palestine as a higher education institution. See figure 6.
2. Development of Educational e-Portal: in-house open source developed with the highest available technologies.
3. Hosting the Eumed-Connect line; a direct link between UK and Palestine with 45Mbps shared between the Palestinian Universities.
4. In-house development of all QOU’s systems, including accounting, registration, HR, honours, student affairs, and many other systems.
5. Development of the e-courses hosted on Avicenna Portal Project funded by Eumedis and European Union. See the link: http://pleiad.qou.edu.