Ziik-Report No. 39 IT in Higher Education in Tunisia€¦ · Ziik-Report No. 39 IT in Higher Education in Tunisia Workshop Report Berlin, 9.-12.11.2015 ISSN 1619-3660

Ziik-Report No. 39

IT in Higher Education inTunisia

Workshop ReportBerlin, 9.-12.11.2015

ISSN 1619-3660

Organized by

Zentrum für internationale und interkulturelle Kommunikation (Center for international and intercultural Communication)Faculty IV - Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceTechnische Universität Berlin

Financed by

Editor

Tilman Schieber

Minutes by

Jonas BucherAlexander PlatzTilman Schieber

Photos by

Özlem AlagözDaniel EngelhardtMarius Mailänder

Technische Universität BerlinZentrum für internationale und interkulturelle Kommunikation (ZiiK)

Fraunhoferstraße 33-36, 10587 Berlin, Sekretariat FH 5-2www.tu-berlin.de/ziik

Januar 2016

Table of Contents

Preliminary..................................................................................................5

Monday, November 9th..............................................................................7

Meeting with Prof. Dr. Angela Ittel......................................................................................7

Tuesday, November 10th............................................................................8

Visit at the DAI-Lab................................................................................................................8

Workshop: IT in Higher Education in Tunisia......................................................................9

Prof. Horst Zuse: Development and History of the Computer.........................................10

Prof. Hamid Amiri: The Current IT situation in Higher Education in Tunisia..................12

Prof. Uwe Nestmann: What You Always Wanted to Know About TU Berlin....................13

Daniel Tippmann: German-Tunisian Academic Cooperation in IT and CS......................14

Wednesday, November 11th.....................................................................16

Dr. Frank Pallas: Computer Science and Society...............................................................16

Report: IT in Teaching and Reserach.................................................................................17

Report: IT Infrastructure....................................................................................................19

Report: Modernizing the Administration...........................................................................22

Thursday, November 12th.........................................................................24

Annette Kalbow: About Free Software...............................................................................24

Tilman Schieber: Summary of the Workshop....................................................................25

Final Discussion...................................................................................................................27

Preliminary

The Center for International and Intercultural Communication (ZiiK) has been having a productive relationship with Tunisia since a fact-finding mission in 2011. Its purpose was to analyze the situation in the area of Information Technology (IT) and Computer Science (CS) in Tunisia and establish contact with stakeholders from Tunisian universities.

This was the beginning of the cooperation with Prof. Hamid Amiri from the Ecole Nationale d'Ingǵeneurs (ENIT) who subsequently visited the ZiiK of TU Berlin from April 19th to April 25th 2015.

During this visit the idea of a workshop at TU Berlin was put forward. Its purpose would be to examine different avenues of cooperation in the areas of infrastructure, teaching, research and administration. During a further visit of members of the ZiiK to a DAAD workshop in Tunisia from May, 26th to June 2nd plans for the workshop were solidified and the concrete idea of an IT administrator program for Tunisian IT centers discussed and presented.

From November 10th 2015 to November 12th 2015, the ZiiK of TU Berlin invited twelve stakeholders from Tunisia, hailing from nine different institutes, to participate in a three-day strategic workshop.

During these three days, the invitees presented the current situation at Tunisian universities, infrastructure providers and in public administration and discussed measures for a demand-oriented IT concept for higher education in Tunisia.

I would like to cordially thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for fundingthis workshop.

I would also like to express my gratitude to H.E. Elyes Kasri, the Tunisian ambassador to Germany and his counsellor Mr. Zied Saadaoui for participating in the workshop.

My special gratitude goes to Prof. Hamid Amiri, head of the Tunisian delegation, without whom neither the workshop nor our continued cooperation would have been possible.

My thanks also go to the workshop participants from Tunisia for their presentations and valuable contributions to the discussion:

Malek Ben Ghorbel, Dr. Youssef Ben Halima, Walid Boudich, Abdelhkim Chattaoui, Mohamed Farrah, Wadid Foudhaily, Noamene Hassèn, Dr. Adel Hidri, Dr. Amine Kechiche, Dr. Akram El Kefi, Asma Naffeti

I also want to thank the guest speakers and contributors from TU Berlin:

Prof. Angela Ittel, vice president of TU Berlin,Prof. Uwe Nestmann, dean of students of Faculty IV of TU Berlin,Prof. Albayrak, head of the DAI-lab,Dr. Frank Pallas

Special thanks go to Prof. Horst Zuse for his keynote speech about the history of the Computer.

Last but not least I would like to thank the ZiiK Team for their help in organizing the workshop, preparing this document and contributing to the discussions and presentations:

Jonas Bucher, Nadine Ciolkowski, Daniel Engelhardt, Stefan Heil, Andrea Hillenbrand, Vanessa Hüber Annette Kalbow, Anne-Lise Papillon, Alexander Platz, Tilman Schieber, Daniel Tippmann, Agnieszka Zielinska

Dr. Nazir Peroz

Monday, November 9th

Meeting with Prof. Dr. Angela IttelOn the first day of the Tunisian delegation's visit, they were welcomed by Prof. Dr. AngelaIttel, vice president for international relations and teacher education of TU Berlin. She gave a short overview of TU Berlin and its international cooperations. She emphasized that strong international partnerships can only be built if concrete academic cooperations are central. A common research interest and exchange of faculty staff, students and researchers were in her experience the building blocks of every successful international project.

She offered a warm welcome to the Tunisian delegation and expressed her interest in hearing of the results of the plans for cooperations resulting from the workshop.

Prof. Amiri thanked her for the welcoming. He agreed with her points on successful cooperation projects and outlined the plans for cooperation with the ZiiK of TU Berlin that were already made on prior meetings in Berlin and Tunisia.

Prof. Ittel concluded the meeting by wishing the participants a productive and enjoyable workshop.

After enjoying the view from the Telefunken-Hochhaus, where many Institutes of Faculty IV and the Telekom Innovation Labs are situated, the group continued on a short campustour of TU Berlin.

Prof. Ittel welcomes the Delegation

Tuesday, November 10th

Visit at the DAI-LabAs part of a tour around the TU-Berlin Campus a visit of the DAI-Lab has been organized for the delegation. The DAI-Lab is headed by Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Sahin Albayrak, professor for Agent Technologies in Business Applications and Telecommunication at TU Berlin. It focuses on research and development of intelligent services and collaborates with a number of companies and industries. The results are real life applications and products such as smart-home solutions, electric-mobility solutions or cyber-security systems. The visit started with a presentation by Dr. Fikret Sivrikaya, a reasearcher and lecturer at DAI-Labs, who talked about the history, the research focus and the current projects of the lab. This presentation was followed by a tour through the research facilities and through the smart-home show apartment. Members of the Tunisian delegation were shown the different technologies in place and could get a first-hand experience of the different research projects of the lab.

Workshop: IT in Higher Education in TunisiaDr. Nazir Peroz, head of the Center for International and Intercultural Communication (ZiiK) and host of the conference, welcomed Prof. Amiri of the École Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Tunis (ENIT) and his delegation, Mr. Saadaoui from the Embassy of Tunisia, and Prof. Horst Zuse of the Lausitz University of Applied Sciences and lecturer at TU Berlin.

Dr. Peroz started by pointing out the importance of sustainable and secure IT structures for universities worldwide. He thanked the guests for making it possible to discuss these topics as they pertain to the situation in Tunisia. After an overview of the current state of affairs, he continued, measures could be developed jointly to establish such structures inthe areas of teaching, research and administration. The goal, he said, would be to work out a list of cooperation ideas that could be realized in future cooperation projects.

Dr. Peroz then thanked Prof. Amiri for his continued cooperation with the ZiiK of the TU Berlin and expressed his hope that that this workshop would lay the fundament for further cooperation.

Mr. Saadaoui agreed unreservedly and stressed the importance of a scientific cooperation between Tunisia and Germany. He explained that a cooperation of German and Tunisian universities has already started and is supported by policy makers. By the same token, he emphasized that in addition to the French influence, German input is very welcome in order to diversify influences from abroad. In particular, Mr. Saadaoui wants to enable a cooperation between the universities of Tunisia and TU Berlin. Prof. Amiri concurred and suggested to have a project cooperation based on the determined friendship between the two tiers.

Dr. Peroz Mr. Saadaoui Prof. Amiri

Prof. Horst Zuse: Development and History of the ComputerProf. Horst Zuse introduced himself and surprised the audience with the fact that 75 years ago the world's first programmable computer was developed in Berlin by his own father, Konrad Zuse. Among others, he showed pictures of himself as a child in front of an early mechanical memory computer in 1949 (Z4) and the MareNostrum supercomputer in Barcelona. The Zuse Institute Berlin (Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik, abbr. ZIB), which is named after his father, is founded to implementresearch and development in the field of information technology and serves to remember his name. Professor Zuse told the audience further, that in the early times of the history of computers those computing tasks were done by women who then worked as computers, working with logarithmic tables (in German Rechenknechte).

Prof. Zuse then briefly outlined a few more historical facts on the first electronic computers, relating to the time of the Second World War and the need to cipher and decipher coded messages. Germany developed a system of teleprinter encryption at Bletchley Park to protect their communications within the army, all across Europe. On the other hand, Colossus was used by the British to analyze the Germans' Lorenz cipher. IBM also developed a general purpose electro-mechanical computer, namely the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, or Mark 1, which was used in the war effort by the Americans and yielded the record size of 45m. The English developed another machine, the famous ENIAC, which used much less memory than Konrad Zuse's machines at the same time.

Prof. Zuse

Konrad Zuse was enrolled at the Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg, how TU Berlin was called at the time, and studied first engineering, then civil engineering, graduating in 1935. In 1936 he built the Zuse Z1 in the living room of his parents in Berlin-Kreuzberg. It was his own idea, not at all supported or requested by the German government. He pointed this out because it is commonly misthought that Z1 computer is a product of military research. In 1938 the Z1 was finished, the first floating point computer of the world. He rebuilt the Z1 in 1987, again made only with metal sheets cutted with a jigsaw. The first functional, digital, and programmable computer is the Z3 which was built in 1941.

In 2008 Professor Horst Zuse started to rebuild the Z3, based on the simple question he has been asked so many times: “What is a computer?“

The workshop participants with Prof. Zuse (9th from left)

Prof. Hamid Amiri: The Current IT situation in Higher Education in TunisiaProf. Amiri first gave an short overview of the history and geographic situation of Tunesia, and reminded that there are 13 public universities in the country, with about 350 000 students, among which 80 000 in the ICT field.

All universities are located in the north of the country and well interconnected. The CKK (Centre de Calcul Khawarizmi) is at the heart of the implementation of the University National Network and is responsible for the backbone infrastructure in Higher Education.Several points describing the current IT situation were stressed out. First, the bandwidth in Tunisia has increased dramatically from 2008 onwards because of the extensive use of fiber optics, mainly coming from Italy and France. Furthermore, a new platform for Emailservices has been deployed in Zimbra, allowing among others document sharing, calendaring and mobile services. Finally, he also pointed out that IPv6 is already being deployed currently.

Prof. Amiri then presented the key objectives of the Strategic National plan for digital Tunisia 2018. Its main goal is to make ICT a major force for social and economic development: citizens quality of life will be improved through the wide adoption and better use of digital technologies; high speed Internet connectivity will allow a better access to information and knowledge; and Tunisian enterprises will more systematically integrate ICT. An other important goal of the plan is to gain international visibility: Tunisiaaims at reaching rank one in digital development in the Arabic world.

In conclusion, he underlined the fact that good infrastructures already exist, but that some areas, such as online services, capacity building and security, still need to be improved. He expressed his confidence that the collaboration with Berlin, and especially with the ZiiK, is a decisive step to overcome these weaknesses.

Prof. Uwe Nestmann: What You Always Wanted to Know About TU BerlinProfessor Uwe Nestmann is head of the chair Models and Theory of Distributed Systems at TU Berlin, as well as dean of student affairs at the faculty Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. TU Berlin originates from the Prussian mining academy Bergakademie Berlin created in 1770 at the behest of King Frederick the Great. The field of computer science started 200 years later with founding of the Institute for Cybernetics.

TU Berlin has more than 33,000 students, more than 1,800 Professors, and has gained another eighteen percent of international students in the winter semester 2015/2016 compared to summer semester 2015. At the moment there are more than 1600 computer science students (BA, MA, Dipl), with steady numbers in all semester terms. There are fourteen collaborative research centers at TU Berlin, as well as twelve research training groups. Its budget exceeded €450M in 2013 including €174M from external founding. At the faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, at average over seventy PhD titles are awarded per year. TU Berlin professionally supports the founding of startup companies, and has done incredibly well in that area.

Prof. Uwe Nestmann (l.) answering questions about TU Berlin

Daniel Tippmann: German-Tunisian Academic Cooperation in IT and Computer ScienceAfter warmly welcoming all guests, Mr. Tippmann began his speech by giving a brief introduction to the Center for international and intercultural Communication (ZiiK) of theTU Berlin. It was founded in 2000 at the Faculty for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of TU Berlin to provide an academic platform for international and intercultural aspects of Information Technology (IT). Today, the ZiiK performs counselling of international students, provides subject-specific tutoring programs and conducts teaching and research in the field of computer science and developing countries.

The ZiiK, as Mr. Tippmann went on, also realizes a number of international projects to support and cooperate with countries like Afghanistan, Congo, Cameroon, Iraq, Mozambique and Tunisia in the field of IT and computer science. All these projects aim atestablishing sustainable IT structures in the partner countries. Sustainable IT structures, as Mr. Tippmann further explained, mainly consist of the following pillars:

• IT education, including both academic education for computer scientists and

vocational training for IT professionals like IT administrators, web masters, network technicians etc.

• IT infrastructure, like the establishment of university IT centers, network design,

setting up network services, power supply and IT security measures

• IT management, like consulting and conceptual planning in the area of IT, and

supporting and modernizing the administration

The German-Tunisian academic cooperation of the ZiiK, as Mr. Tippmann stated, dates back to October 2011, when a team of the ZiiK went on a fact-finding mission to visit institutions and representatives of higher education in the area of IT and computer science in Tunisia. Aim of this visit was to evaluate the demand of the Tunisian higher education institutions in the area of IT.

Mr. Tippmann then went on to speak further about the establishment and components of the pillars of sustainable IT structures in the field of higher education:

Regarding infrastructure, it would be crucial to provide suitable buildings, reliable power supply, network connectivity and sufficient Internet bandwidth, but also IT libraries and of course the necessary equipment like hard- and software. Mr. Tippmann stressed that the use of Open Source software is highly recommended in this context, as it provides a number of advantages especially for the education sector.

In the field of IT education, as he went on, lecturers are to be trained and prepared on aninternational level. IT curricula should be developed in a demand-oriented way to serve the needs of the society. Regulations and policies in this area would have the task to

support academic research and education as needed. Also, international cooperation with other education institutions would be an important driver for the institutions. In particularly, the concept of a German-Tunisian university should be realized in order to allow a prosperous academic exchange between the two countries.

For the management, as Mr. Tippmann explained, clear structures have to be establishedin order to increase transparency and effectiveness and to support and supervise teaching and research. This includes, as he mentioned, the definition of clear areas of responsibility and of rights and duties of all university members. He also highly recommended the employment of efficient and reliable IT-based management systems and the training of the personnel in this area.

Mr. Tippmann stated that another important aspect would be sufficient funding which should mostly be provided by the government, but also be donor countries, NGOs and private companies and sponsors.

The realization of all these aspects, as he stated, would establish fully functional IT structures. In order to reach this goal, a thorough IT strategy would have to be developed. This IT strategy, as he explained, would be to cover the creation of a legal framework for higher education, to define responsibilities, to establish efficient IT infrastructures and to provide demand-driven education and further trainings. He highlighted that the advancement of talented young people, the modernization of the administration and the coordination of IT projects would be essential parts in this.

This way, as Mr. Tippmann finished his speech, we would eventually achieve quality, sustainability and compatibility in the field of higher education.

Daniel Tippmann Dr. Frank Pallas

Wednesday, November 11th

Dr. Frank Pallas: Computer Science and SocietyDr. Pallas opened his presentation by enumerating the manifold relations between computer science and society, like business models, internet policy, social networks, information security, data privacy and protection, intellectual property, etc. His research focuses on information security with its multiple dimensions security culture, ethics, privacy. Dr. Pallas then explained to the audience the many components of the so-called web science, as opposed to computer science. This is at the intersection of computer science and the sciences of nature with economics, law, media, political science, sociology, AI, and socio-cultural aspects. It also includes their manifold applications. Just like engineering focuses more on the technical aspects of how to build things, and architecture focuses on how to use things in the best possible way. He described computer scientists as system architects as they create the space where people interact with each other. They have a responsibility to be aware and communicate what consequences IT systems like surveillance or data collection have for the society.

Computer Science and Society is established in the TUB curriculum with 6 credit points. Every computer scientists will be confronted with societal questions – they should be prepared. One should have established ethical guidelines of responsible professional conduct, as organizations like ACM, German Informatics Society have already published manifests with that title. Dr. Pallas mentions further that it should be ensured that interrelations between technology and society are covered in the curricula at universities.

After Dr. Pallas' presentation, the participants brought up and discussed the following relating issues:

• Experiences in Tunisia with an initiative for internet governance

• The topic of surveillance, especially that of the USA and the cooperation of the

German government with the NSA

• German data protection laws and the question whether Germany can store

specific data

• Cooperation of TU Berlin with security researchers

• How open source can improve security

Report: IT in Teaching and ReserachPresented by: Dr. Akram El Kefi, Dr. Amine Kechiche, Dr. Youssef Ben-Halima,

Dr. Adel Hidri

The presentation began with Dr. El Kefi describing the current state of Tunisia's higher education system: 178 institues of higher education, among them 13 universities, currently train 37,000 students in ICT. Since 2007 the universities use the LMD-System (Licence, Mastère, Doctorat) which had been adopted from France and was similar to the degree structure of other European nations.

Next, the different programs available at each level in Tunisia in the area of ICT were introduced:

• Bachelor IT Networks

• Master Network Engineer

• Networks Research Master

• Doctoral studies in advanced networks or security

The different topics in these studies were summarized and the speakers concurred that there was a well-functioning academic education in Tunisia. However it is leaning strongly toward a theoretical education. This segued to the next part which outlined the main problems at Tunisian universities. Mr. Kechiche mentioned first of all the disparate infrastructure between institutes and the lack of a common administration approach. He continued that there were only a few administrators trained to maintain this infrastructure. Additionally they lacked proficiency of diagnostic tools and security training. Other skills that were needed in the IT administrator staff were people who couls set up IT services. As examples he enumerated file servers, common profiles, a printing quota, a teaching platform. Help for setting up practical labs and practial exams was also sorely needed. Teachers, he continued, were hampered by the lack of a reliable IT-based communication infrastructure. This prevented them from collabarating and communicating with students. They also focused strongly on a theoretical education and there was not enough practical teaching. In the case where courses were tought practically, mostly proprietary tools were used and the students were not educated on open software.

Students, Mr. Kechiche continued, used outdated material, had to bring their own devices to class and suffered as well under the lack of a practically minded education.

The presentation then suggested some ways how the Tunisian higher education system could profit from a cooperation: Tunisian professors could be certified abroad in important topics like crypto or security and thus be enabled to transfer their knowledge to the students in their universities. IT administrators could take a training (e.g. 4 months) to get hands-on training on networks and their security. After this training they could work in a company or educational institution (e.g. for two months) where they put

what they learned to test by working on real projects

Tunisian students would profit from an open source culture, trainings and improved infrastructure. Students that learned new concepts like next generation networks or cloud computing in a master's course abroad would have acquired much needed knowledge.

In conclusion Dr. Ben-Halima said that this two-pronged approach: a master's program and an administrator training seemed like sensible goal to strive for in a cooperation.

Dr. Akram El Kefi Dr. Amine Kechiche

Dr. Youssef Ben-Halima Dr. Adel Hidri

Report: IT InfrastructurePresented by: Malek ben Ghorbel, Abdelhakim Chattaoui, Noamene Hassèn,

Mohamed Farrah

Mrs. Ben Ghorbel started the presentation by giving an overview of the national Internet infrastructure in Tunisia. She explained how Tunisia was connected via submarine cables,which peering agreements existed and what technology was used by ATI, the Tunisian internet agency. She continued with usage and bandwidth statistics and described the current status of Ipv6 deployment and QoS efforts.

Mr. Chattaoui from the Computer Center Khawarezmi continued with an overview of the IT services provide to higher education. The CCK in Manouba, he explained, provided Internet to all public research and higher education institutions. To that end it offered core networking infrastructure, services like email and website hosting but also monitoring and security services. He said it currently had a capacity of 10 Gbps of which 3.3 were currently consumed. Some further topics were the CCK's personnel situation, itshistory, the network equipment in place and additional technical details.

The next part of the presentation focused on the security and monitoring efforts currently taking place within the RNU, the Tunisian university network. Besides hardware-based security measures like layer 4 and layer 7 firewalls, software-based measures like antivirus and VPN services are in use.

Malek ben Ghorbel Abdelhakim Chattaoui

Mr. Hassèn continued by introducing the services provided for the higher education institutes. He started with the e-mail services that are currently used by 28,000 users andexplained how this is realized technically. He emphasized that open source operating systems (ubuntu and centos) and software (like postfix and dovecot) is employed. Mr. Hassèn showed diagrams illustrating the virtualization infrastructure in place and then explained how hosting was offered to 303 Tunisian websites. Additional services like an SMS gateway and grid computing were shortly mentioned.

Mr. Farrah then explained what the situation of IT in Tunesian schools looked like. He started by introducing the Tunisian Education Network (Réseau Educatif Tunisien) which links the Ministry of Education with High Schools and other educational institutions. He said the network had currently 11 points of presence throughout Tunisia and offered services like

• Registration for the national exams (e.g. baccalaureate) via web or sms

• Remote Monitoring (via video) of the national exams.

• Publicatoin of exam results via SMS or web.

• Mail services

After this presentation, there was a lively discussion. The representatives of Tunisian universities pointed out that the infrastructure is not providing enough services to highereducation institutions. The email service for example is hardly used and students and lecturers feel that they get hardly more than internet access from the central infrastructure providers. The speakers responded that many services are indeed provided and it is the universities' responsibility to make sure they are used. It was then agreed upon that there should be a central strategy that coordinates a better implementation and adoption of services.

Noamene Hassèn Mohamed Farrah

Dr.Peroz (l.), H.E. Mr. Kasri and Prof. Amiri (r.) in discussion

The group discusses the Tunisian IT infrastructure.

Report: Modernizing the AdministrationPresented by: Walid Boudiche, Asma Neffati, Wadid Foudhaili

Before the presentation, the Tunesian ambassador HE Mr. Kasri and the consul Mr. Saadaoui joined the workshop and were present during the rest of the day.

Mr. Boudiche from the CNI (Centre National de l'Informatique) began by summarizing the history of the Tunisian administration, beginning in the times of ancient Carthage andleading to today's e-government initatives that have its roots in the 1980s. He split the development of e-government or e-administration in four stages: the information phase was followed by the interaction phase in 2003, leading to the transaction phase in 2006 that allowed service like online payment of bills, online business registration and more. The final phase started in 2009 when the administration started integrating existing services into a unified portal.

Coordinated are these efforts, as Mr. Boudiche continued, by the Digital Tunisia 2018 strategy plan. Its key points are to make ICT a major force for social and economic development, evolve towards e-administration and democratization of Internet access. It's vision is furthermore to support entrepreneurship, improve competitiveness, ensure social inclusion and achieve these goals through the implementation of a regulatory framework. Concrete projects are for example a national plan for broadband access in underdeveloped regions, a government intranet and cloud services, establishment of new e-services, an electronic identity card and many more.

Asma Neffati continued by presenting an e-education project at the private “Esprit“ university. The cloud infrastructure implemented there had to support the administration, education and research of the university. She continued by describing theconverged infrastructure that provided these services and explaining how the project wasrealized on a technical and organizational level.

Mr Foudhaili presented the next chapter that introduced the Manar University's wireless LAN project. He explained how the infrastructure of 225 access points was planned and secured on a heterogeneous network.

After the presentation, a discussion took place. Several questions asked how the experiences of other countries in modernizing their administration can be applied to Tunisia and how concepts from other countries should be adopted to the situation in Tunisia. One listener remarked that Tunisia is lacking a culture of entrepreneurship and itis therefore central to the administration's measures that they focus on fostering such a culture and to motivate young people to found their own businesses. Dr. Peroz answeredthat profound changes can only be achieved by strengthening the Tunesian IT structures, and cooperation projects with Germany would offer this chance. He continued that a IT administrator training of Tunesian students at the ZiiK of TU Berlin would be a good start.Participants familiar with the situation at their home universities could develop demand-oriented solutions during a several-month long training. Dr. Peroz emphasized that such

a training could be started almost immediately once funding was secured. Longer running academic cooperation projects for Master's and PhD students could be preparedand planned for in the meantime. HE the Tunesian ambassador welcomed Dr.Peroz' suggestions and agreed with the notion that such a project would greatly help the IT situation at the universities. He expressed that he was enthusiastic about German-Tunesian cooperation in this area and assured that he and the Tunesian embassy would support these efforts.

Walid Boudiche Asma Neffati Wadid Foudhaili

Thursday, November 12th

Annette Kalbow: About Free SoftwareMrs. Kalbow introduced the core ideas of free software in her presentation. She started by pointing out that a common misconception is that free software is just free to use. Instead it is defined by being free to run, study, redistribute and distribute and having its source code completely available.

She continued by introducing the different free licences and explained their practical relevance for both private and commercial users.

As an example for free software, she introduced the Debian project. Far more than simply an open source operating system, she explained how the Debian community as an example of an open source community worked together. She mentioned the yearly DebConf conference and explained how the volunteers in the Debian project are guided by the “Debian Social Contract“.

The next part of her presentation focused on an open source project related to Debian right at TU Berlin: The tubIT-Live. This is a Linux-image developed at TU Berlin for the students. It allows easy installation from a USB thumb-drive and uses a tailor-made graphical user interface to allow freshmen quick access to the services of the central campus IT provider tubIT. Mrs. Kalbow continued with a live demo of tubit-Live and illustrated how such a customized Linux distributions can be a powerful tool to familiarize students with open source technology.

After concluding her presentation, she posed two questions to the Tunisian guests to start discussion about the situation of free software in the country:

Her first question was how it would be possible to move students towards a contribution philosophy that is so important to let free software thrive. The consensus of the listeners was that in Tunisia the public administration is skeptical about Open Source Software because there is a perceived lack of support and a lack of experience with it.

The second question was if the listeners believed if the use of Open Source Software really is cheaper in the end. There were mixed opinions on this matter. It was pointed out that there are considerable savings in licensing costs. These could however be countered by an increase in training costs. Generally, the dominant opinion was that Tunisian universities and public administration could profit a lot not only from the concrete software, but also from a strengthening of free software communities. The Tunisian guests were especially impressed by tubIT-Live and asked a host of questions about the project. They voiced their interest in creating a similar custom-made distribution for Tunisian universities and asked about collaboration possibilities with tubIT in this regards.

Tilman Schieber: Summary of the WorkshopIn his presentation, Tilman Schieber from the ZiiK of TU Berlin summarized the results of the workshop up to this point and made suggestions for further discussion. According to the structure of the workshop, this was split into three parts: teaching and research, infrastructure and administration.

For each of these parts, Mr. Schieber gave an overview of the current situation and its challenges as depicted by the Tunisian guests in their presentations. He then made suggestions how individual problems can be alleviated by different cooperation projects between TU Berlin and Tunisian universities. An emphasis has to be placed on coordinating these efforts seamlessly to make sure they integrate well in the existing landscape of cooperation projects and government initiatives in Tunisia.

Teaching and Research

While the stakeholders from Tunisia agreed that academic education in Tunisia is in goodshape, especially relative to other North African countries, they voiced some common grievances: First they regretted that the traditional focus on francophone collaboration hampers academic progress in computer science. As English is the lingua franca of IT professionals and Computer scientists worldwide, Tunisian academics struggle to profit from anglophone research, resources and cooperation opportunities.

Secondly, there is a lack of campus IT services where teachers and students can collaborate on and share educational material. Where campus services are available, they are implemented and used inconsistently. Well-administrated centralized services like a learning management system would improve the quality of teaching and reduce dependence on third-party services like facebook.

An additional complaint was that computer science education in Tunisia is biased strongly towards theoretical concepts and subjects. While a solid theoretical foundation is undoubtedly needed by CS students, they are often ill-prepared for the demands of thelabor market and lack hands-on-experience. Even in practically-oriented courses the students often have to content with tackling the topics merely theoretically as not enough computer labs are available to allow exams and practice sessions there.

Where concrete software or hardware is the subject of teaching there is a strong focus onclosed-source and proprietary products while the Tunisian experts feel that they would profit from graduates proficient in common open source technologies.

Mr. Schieber continued by pointing out that many of this challenges could be addressed by an academic cooperation between Germany and Tunisia. The ZiiK of TU Berlin in cooperation with the Tunisian University Network and the DAAD could facilitate contacts between faculty members. This would allow an exchange of knowledge regarding curricula, syllabi and ideas how to bridge the gap between a theoretical and practical education in computer science. As Mr. Schieber pointed out however, a theoretical background is essential for computer scientist as it produces open-minded well-rounded

students who are able to continue learning and adopting to new technologies thus boosting entrepreneurship and innovation.

Infrastructure

During the workshop, the Tunisian guests portrayed an internet infrastructure that is reliable and well-maintained but lacks services. The internet backbones are state of the art and their management and maintenance is functioning well. Furthermore the limited amount of services provided to universities are only partially adopted by faculty and students.

Mr. Schieber suggested that this area could provide fruitful possibilities for cooperation. The campus infrastructure in Germany (e.g. the DFN or TUBIT at TU Berlin) is relatively successful in providing services to university members and this could allow to collaborateon solutions. By focusing on open source which is widely used in an academic context in Germany, such solution could be developed independent of private sector interests.

Furthermore the ZiiK of TU Berlin has a lot of experience in training admins that can deploy and maintain campus services. A team of IT administrators from Tunisian universities could be trained in Germany in a custom-made training where they can experience how similar challenges are solved here. Once they return they could bridge the gap between Tunisian infrastructure providers and universities.

Administration

Mr. Schieber recapped what had been presented about the efforts of the administration in the field of ICT: There are ongoing efforts to assess and monitor the IT security situation and e-government initiatives are under way. These are part of the strategic planDigital Tunisia 2018. Mr. Schieber suggested that it would be promising to have stakeholders from universities, infrastructure providers, public administration and partners from Germany meet to better coordinate efforts. Amendments to the national IT strategy with suggestion that come out of these discussions helps in implementing demand-oriented measures.

Keeping a strong focus on the IT security challenges and helping the universities to profit from this expertise is important.

Mr. Schieber closed with the remark that it is important to have a common goal and coordination for the cooperation ideas in the different fields. It's vital to integrate all these efforts into the national strategy plan to prevent insular solutions without sufficientoversight and planning.

Final DiscussionModerated by: Daniel Tippmann

Participants: Prof. Hamid Amiri, Malek Ben Ghorbel, Dr. Youssef Ben Halima, Walid Boudich, Abdelhkim Chattaoui, Mohamed Farrah, Wadid Foudhaily, Noamene Hassèn, Stefan Heil, Dr. Adel Hidri, Annette Kalbow, Dr. Amine Kechiche, Dr. Akram El Kefi, Asma Naffeti, Dr. Nazir Peroz, Tilman Schieber

The final discussion was started by Daniel Tippman with the question which route of cooperation the Tunisian stakeholders suggested. Prof. Amir answered by remarking thatthe collaboration between Administration, Infrastructure, Teaching and Research under asingle coordingating plan is certainly important. However he suggested to focus on singleissues first, pinpointing the most pressing problems with separate cooperation projects. Parallel to this more general cooperation agreements can be decided on. A long-term academic cooperation and an exchange of expertise is certainly needed.

Dr. Peroz cautioned that the coordination of these efforts should not be a second thought. He said there was already a lot of manpower working on a host of academic andnon-academic projects but a lack of coordination made many of them inefficient.

Prof. Amiri said that from his perspective, the plan should be to apply for an exchange of master students in late 2016. Already before this date however, a training program for IT administrators could be started.

Mr. Schieber agreed that it would be a good move to start training administrators now, focusing on the currently neglected open source technologies. The ZiiK of TU Berlin, he reminded the panel, was experienced in providing these kind of trainings.

Dr. Peroz concurred that an open-minded admin training that does not focus on a certainkind of hardware would be a good way forward.

Stefan Heil, who is a trainer in the ZiiK's current administrator program for Afghanistan, gave a short overview of this program: He clarified that it was a vocational training and not an academic programme. Its goal was to equip people with knowledge that they can apply in their home universities. Another key philosophy however was that the trainees would be trained to become multiplicators, passing on their knowledge to other students down the road.

Prof. Amiri pointed out that there was a huge demand for exactly this kind of program for Tunesia. However interested students were already waiting for such a program since 7 months when representatives from the Ziik of TU Berlin introduced these trainings to them. Therefore he suggested to explore different avenues of funding such an exchange, mentioning especially the Erasmus+ program. He mentioned that he had already been reaching out to Tunisian university presidents and the like to get the program under way.

Impressions from the final discussion.

Dr. Kechiche asked what the training of the ZiiK's admin training was and if there were also non-technical skills imparted on the participant. Mr. Heil answered that to the ZiiK Team, soft skills were as important as technical skills. Ethics, planning and financial management were an essential part of the training. Mr. Schieber chimed in that the training prided itself in not only training individuals but building strong communities of IT administrators. After they went back to their home country they were supported by the ZiiK team through online platforms and personal advice.

Mr. Foudhaily said that IT administrators that were also able to establish and supervise labs would be very helpful indeed. Mr. Heil responded that the relevant knowlede is taught in the ZiiK trainings and the trainees work practically, connecting routers, installing software etc.

Mr. Chattaoui brought up the earlier point that one of the most pressing issues in Tunisiawas the lack of project management and that for this reason change needed a long time.

Dr. Kechiche brought up the point of open source and remarked that it was not used widely in Tunisia for a lack of information and practical experience, that the universities had no network lab and did not allow students to experiment with new technologies.

Mr. Schieber gave an example how this is tought in Germany, giving the example of a course called „router lab“ at TU Berlin. Mrs. Kalbow explained that such a course could be tought in Tunisia without problems as the hardware for such a lab could be bought very cheaply.

Dr. El Kefi expressed his interest in teaching in a more practical way, doing trainings and exams in labs. However there were no teacher assistants with practical knowledge in network labs available to him. He pointed out that a training of teaching assistants with a strong technical focus would be very helpful as well.

Prof. Amiri suggested that the next step could a visit of two persons from the ZiiK to Tunis. One could set up a conference where the topics currently discussed could me more thoroughly examined. In parallel, funding possibilities like Erasmus+ should be explored. Early on, Tunisian students should get help with handling the bureaucracy when they apply for the programmes.

Mr. Schieber concurred that a conference in Tunisia would allow for a clearer estimation what is already existing in Tunisia and what is really needed. That would prevent all involved parties from creating parallel structures and insular solutions.

Mr. Chattaoui said that it would be helpful to document the technical knowledge available in different fields.

When Dr. Kechiche asked about the ZiiKs prior experience with different countries, Dr. Peroz emphasized that each country has its own special situation. He continued that Tunisia was special in that it had a functioning administration that worked well in many regards. He then ask if there was an umbrella organization of computer scientists in Tunisia, like the German „Gesellschaft für Informatik“. Mrs. Ben Ghorbel replied that

there were several small organizations but they were not well connected and rather unimportant.

The discussion then shifted towards the perceived gap between the Tunisian infrastructure providers and the reality at the universities. Mr. Chattaoui said that from his perspective there is little demand from educational institutions for services. The existing services like email are not always used. He would be happy to provide more services and more input from the universities. Mr. Hassen said that the problem was a lack of training for university staff. They did not know what technologies were in place and which ones they could request from the infrastructure providers.

Dr. Peroz once again emphasized that this problem boiled down again to a lack of a common IT strategy. He then continued by pointing out how important it was to keep thedifferent people connected and proposed a mailing list that could later be expanded to a network of IT professionals that joined efforts.

Mr. Tippmann closed the discussion and thanked all participants.

The group on TU Berlin's Campus