A new electronic system linking all educational institutions in the Kurdistan Region through the Internet will help teachers, students and parents to communicate quickly and access files, the government announced in a fresh step towards modernization. “Through this new system parents as well will be able to follow up on their children’s education,” said education minister, Ismat Khalid. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has established and is funding a special IT department tasked with systemizing all government departments, but so far the education ministry is the first among 18 to announce it is going online. Bashdar Abdulkhaliq, head of planning and IT at the ministry, told Rudaw that the education project is funded by the Ministry of Natural Resources and 600 million Iraqi Dinars have been allocated for it. “Through this system people will be able to follow up on their files and applications at the ministry of education,” said Abdulkhaliq. He added that all schools, colleges, universities and the ministry will now be tied together through the Internet. The system will first be tested in 15 schools and later applied to all educational institutions across the autonomous Kurdistan Region. The minister said that students and teachers will now be able to send their complaints to the ministry and other departments in a timely and professional manner. “This system will solve a major problem that the ministry has suffered from for so long, which is dealing with data and information,” said IT manager Abdulkhaliq, “From now on, the ministry will be able to process information in a better way.” The KRG’s education ministry is separate from one in Baghdad, and in the past two decades the Kurds have introduced many education reforms, weeding out texts from Saddam Hussein’s era. Source: Education News