Internet Access and Training Program (IATP)

Defense Area workers receive basic
computer and Internet training.

Officials from the Ministry of Defense of Georgia, political parties in Azerbaijan, and libraries and cultural departments in Ukraine are among the most recent beneficiaries of partnerships with IATP. As these institutions attempt to provide better services to their constituents and to bring thier capacities to modern standards, IATP has been filling an important role in the process throughout the region.

• Seventeen defense officials of Georgia, mainly Defense Commissariat employees in Kutaisi, Khashuri and Batumi, Georgia, advanced professionally by mastering modern information and communication technologies (ICT) at IATP-sponsored trainings in July.

The Commissariat, a body recruiting soldiers for the Georgian army, is under the jurisdiction of the Georgian Ministry of Defense, which is in the process of reforming the military and defense system of the country, increasing the combat capabilities of the armed forces and supporting the NATO integration process. IATP partnered with the Ministry to assist its officials in mastering ICT use. IATP trainers taught participants to use basic office software, send e-mail and browse the Internet. The newly acquired skills, including knowledge of electronic spreadsheets, will help the officials maintain the database of former and current soldiers and make their work more efficient. “The new skills and information resources presented during the training can be applied successfully for advancing both professionally and personally,” commented Michael Kaulashvili, a commissariat official from Khashuri.

Defense Area workers receive basic
computer and Internet training.

• Georgian residents exercised a rare opportunity to communicate with an official from the Ministry of Defense and receive first-hand answers to their questions in an online forum sponsored by IATP on July 9. Nodar Kharshiladze, head of the Politics and Planning Department of the Ministry of Defense of Georgia, logged in online to answer questions about recent reforms in the Georgian military and posted by interested researchers, teachers, and retired soldiers accessing the forum from IATP centers in Tbilisi, Khashuri, Telavi, Rustavi, Batumi, and Kutaisi. During an interactive question-and-answer session, Kharshiladze guided participants through all the reforms currently being undertaken by the Ministry of Defense of Georgia. He reported, “the main reforms and priorities of the Ministry are increase combat capabilities of the Armed Forces, support the NATO integration process, participate in international peacekeeping and stabilization operations, establish close cooperation with partner countries’ military agencies, improve the control system, and also improve the social and living conditions of personnel of the Armed Forces.” One of the former Ministry’s employees participating in the forum informed Kharshiladze t that he received only two months of salary over the last year; Kharshiladzde promised to follow up on the issue personally. Through the forum, Georgian citizens had the opportunity to learn about an important institutional reform process and provide input to the government.

Official from the Georgian Ministry of
Defense Nodar Kharshiladze shares
information about recent reforms in
defense area with local residents in the
online forum.

• Throughout July, representatives of six political parties of Azerbaijan completed trainings in database development and created simple databases of their members and voters. IATP System Administrator Ali Niyaferz and Baku Center Administrator Azer Kerimov gave participants a general working knowledge of databases and taught the trainees how to create tables, forms, reports, queries, and index fields. The trainings are part of IATP’s project with the National Democratic Institute aimed at improving the work of political parties through knowledge of and access to information technologies.

• Librarians discovered information technology (IT) use in Lutsk, Ukraine. On July 2 and 3, the IATP center in Lutsk was the venue for a seminar on IT use in libraries for 10 directors of central district libraries for children of the region. Nadia Ilkovych, head of the Information and Bibliographical Department of the Volyn Regional Library for Youth – IATP’s partner in Lutsk, stressed the importance of library collections in electronic media, demonstrated software for creating electronic catalogues, and discussed IT use in the work of librarians. The participants learned to form queries for library databases, learned about copyright protection on the Internet, and explored the websites of Ukrainian libraries and online library catalogues. By sponsoring this seminar, IATP encouraged the local librarians to use IT for professional and personal development and contributed to computerization of local libraries.

IATP Trainer Mykhaylo Tsymbalenko
explains Internet basics

• From July 11 to 20, the IATP center in Luhansk, Ukraine, sponsored a training on Internet basics for six employees of the Department of Culture of the town of Stanychno-Luhanske (Luhansk region). The attendees learned to work with online resources, search the Web for information of interest to them, and use e-mail and other tools for online communication. On July 20, the participants also attended a seminar on human trafficking issues. They discovered methods of preventing human trafficking and studied Ukrainian experience in this area. Olena Norotnikh remarked, “Thank you! I had wanted for a long time to learn to work on the Internet. I am especially grateful for training in e-mail use; it is very important for my job.”