Note: You can Download Arabic version of final recommendations.

Under the patronage of His Excellency Dr. Ahmad Nadeef / Minister of Communications and Information and the attendance of Dr. Jamal-eddin Mokhtar / the Academy President and Conference General Chair, the opening session for the International Arab Conference on Information Technology (ACIT’2003) was inaugurated at 10:30 AM on December 21^st, 2003. The attendance included Dr. Yusri Al-Jamal / the Academy Vice President for Scientific Research and Conference General Vice Chair, Dr. Mohammed Al-Haj Hassan / ACIT Secretary General, and over 250 participants including guests, specialists, and researchers.

Dr. Yusri Al-Jamal / the Conference General Vice Chair gave the first opening speech in which he welcomed conference participants and guests. He also stressed the importance of information technology and how it deals with all elements of the human society by producing new eras of engineering. He also pointed out that the good use of this technology will lead toward an information development movement and will shrink the digital gap. He concluded his speech thanking the Ministry of Communications and Information and the Arab Academy of Science and Technology for their role in providing all the means for the success of this conference and wishing participants a pleasant stay in Alexandria.

After that, Dr. Mohammad Al-Haj Hassan / ACIT Secretary General thanked the Arab Academy of Science and Technology (the host of ACIT’2003), its President / Dr. Jamal-eddin Mokhtar, its Vice President for Scientific Research / Dr. Yusri Al-Jamal, Dr. Emad Abuelrub / ACIT Vice Secretary General, ACIT General Secretariat Council, and all the team who worked hard to make ACIT’2003 a reality. He also clarified the idea of this conference since it started four years ago until this meeting and pointed out that ACIT is an international, scientific, refereed, and specialized conference in information technology that is held annually in one of the Arab universities. Then he added that ACIT is the official conference of the Colleges of Computers and Information Society, stemming from the Association of Arab Universities. It is supervised by an international steering committee and has a General Secretariat that is hosted by Zarqa Private University, Jordan.

Dr. Jamal-eddin Mokhtar / the Academy President and the Conference General Chair delivered his speech, where he welcomed all participants, wishing them a pleasant and a happy stay in Alexandria. Then he talked about the role of the Academy and the services that it offers for the Arab region specially in establishing the Informatics Olympiad.

The sessions lasted for three days, December 21^st-23^rd, 2003 as follows:

• The opening session.
• A keynote lecture

• Three parallel sessions
  Session A1: Arabic Language Processing
  Session A2: Database Systems I
  Session A3: Distance Learning & Computer in Education

• An evening tour to the main campus of the Arab Academy of Science and Technology, located in Abu-Qir.

• Three morning parallel sessions
  Session B1: Computer Networks
  Session B2: Database Systems II
  Session B3: Neural Networks

• Three noon parallel sessions
  Session C1: Computer Networks & Digital Communications
  Session C2: Multimedia & Visual Programming
  Session C3: Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems (merged with C1)

• Three after noon parallel sessions
  Session D1: Artificial Intelligence & Exert Systems
  Session D2: Information Systems & Internet Programming
  Session D3: Software Engineering (merged with D1)

• An evening visit to Alexandria Library followed by dinner at the Egyptian Hunting Club.

         The Third Day: Tuesday, December 23^rd, 2003

• Three morning parallel sessions
  Session E1: Software Engineering
  Session E2: Computer Security
  Session E3: Pattern Recognition (merged with E1)

• Three noon parallel sessions
  Session F1: Computer Vision & Pattern Recognition
  Session F2: Virtual Reality, Simulation, and Algorithms
  Session F3: E-Commerce & Machine Learning (merged with F1)

• The closing session

The following meetings were held during the conference:

• ACIT Steering Committee held its annual meeting that was chaired by the Secretary General and was attended by 18 members out of 24. The committee discussed the activities on its agenda and agreed for the University of Mintouri-Constantine to be the host university for ACIT’2004.
• The General Assembly for the Colleges of Computers and Information Society, stemming from the Association of Arab Universities, held its annual meeting. The society discussed many topics related to information technology activities in the Arab region. Also, it discussed many issues related to its new official journal, the International Arab Journal of Information Technology (IAJIT), which is a refereed, indexed, and specialized journal in information technology that is published biannually in English ,in January and July, by Zarqa Private University, Jordan. IAJIT zero issue (vol. 1, no. 0, July 2003) appeared on July 2003 as scheduled. Also, the first issue of the journal (vol. 1, no. 1, January 2004) was published ahead of time and distributed during the conference.

Participants

Number of papers accepted was 109 papers from 25 different countries as shown in the table below. The number of submissions was 150 papers.

Conclusions and Recommendations

• The conference continues in achieving its goal in attracting researchers from 25 different countries.

• The papers presented in the conference reflected Arab researchers creativity and ability to conduct competitive research in information technology.

• It was agreed to open all proper channels to encourage the private sector to sponsor applied scientific research.

• Encouraging all local and international companies to participate in information technology exhibitions that will be held on the sideline of ACIT meetings in the future.

• Encouraging public and private sectors to increase financial support offered for conferences and scientific seminars, which are considered as the best field for exchanging scientific experience.

• Encouraging all Arab scientists to join the Association of Computer Society (ACS) and to establish all kind of links with this society for future cooperation.

At the end of the conference, the University of Mintouri-Constantine in Algeria was declared as the host for the fifth meeting of the conference (ACIT’2004) that will be held on the second week of December 2004. Other universities who submitted applications to host ACIT’2004 are Al-Najah University in Palestine, April 7 University in Libya, and Assiut University in Egypt.

The conference participants concluded the closing session by sending a thank you cable to His Excellency Dr. Ahmad Nadeef / Minister of Communications and Information. Another thank you cable was also send to Dr. Jamal-eddin Mokhtar / President of the Arab Academy of Science and Technology expressing all their thanks and appreciation for all the support that made this conference a successful one.

The participantsare also pleased to express their thanks to Dr. Yusri El-Jamal, Dr. Osama Badawi, Dr. Osama Ismail, and all members organizing committees who worked hard to make this conference a reality. The participants also thank the General Secretariat at Zarqa Private University in Jordan and hope that it will continue to hold this scientific conference annually, wishing the Arab Academy for Science and Technology continues progress and prosperity.