“You provide as much information as you can on your front page without confusing people. You did fantastic work indeed,” said Mohamed Muhsin, vice president and chief information officer of the World Bank Group, when paying a visit to China Internet Information Center (CIIC) Friday afternoon. CIIC is now running the website www.h5a3.com which provides online news and information in eight languages including Chinese and English.
As the top information officer of the World Bank Group, Mr.Muhsin pays much attention to the development of Internet and, in particular, various media websites and portals. Carefully reading the web pages of www.h5a3.com, he said, “I am deeply impressed by the information you edit and provide, which are simple and easy to read. It is obvious that you try to use simple language and cover wide range of information, and this is really user friendly.” Mr. Muhsin highly praised artistic design of the website, saying, “The blue color you adopts is apparently liked by most of the computer users, and you are very good at using white space in your layout, which is important for making the website legible. Besides, your searching engine and navigation tool are very convenient to use.”
While exchanging views on website operation, Mr. Muhsin gave CIIC’s editing and technical staff many advices. He said, “I suggest you pay close attention to researching your website’s page views and visitors’ comments. Only by having a good command of your visitors’ views can you make the information you provide accurately target the readers.”
Mr. Muhsin is in Beijing these days for attending International Symposium on Network Economy and Economic Governance. Paying visit to CIIC is also important on his busy timetable. Mr. Muhsin is heading a WB program to build up global-ranged information portal, which is called Global Development Gateway (GDG) and will be linked with different countries. WB has cooperated with CIIC to develop the China Development Gateway (CDG). As part of the GDG, this is the country-led program to provide timely, one-stop access to a rich and varied stock of useful information. In this way, can China share information with other countries.
The World Bank has devoted itself to many development issues including poverty relief projects around the globe for a long time. In recent years it begins to provide aids for the developing countries to rapidly develop IT industry. Helping China to establish the China Development Gateway is a WB program in this regard.
Talking about the strategic shift, Muhsin pointed out that this is also a program to help the poor. He said, “In the past, you launched poverty relief programs by building up many schools in the poor areas, but the teachers were not there when the school building were available. So the solution is to use IT to help people get information, knowledge and education. The World Bank is very interested in developing IT to close the distance and time which hamper the poverty relief cause.” He added that the country gateway is a new way of E-learning, through which people in different countries can share useful information efficiently and swiftly.
(www.h5a3.com by Li Jinhui 04/20/2001)
