ThysdrusRoman Coliseum of El-Jem

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Location: Tunis, Tunisia, Tunisia

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The Tunisian MOFA Has Its Own Website

The Tunisian MOFA has now its own website . This surely must please our friend Tarek Cheniti although the english version is still under construction but as we say in Tunisia khir min blech (better than nothing!).

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well…

The "diplomatic" reaction to this would be: "oh great, we finally have an online presence, many thanks to all the people who took part in this"

...
...

Now the "honest" answer would be:

- Why do simple initiatives take ages to be deployed in our country?;
- Why do we have a chronic problem with "English", the most obvious language that comes to mind when talking about international affairs?;
- Why is the MOFA website not designed as a portal that links up to individual embassies’ websites?;

And most importantly;

- Why is the website totally unattractive, consisting of text, text, and more TEXT which ordinary people and potential visitors would never bother to read?

I’m not happy Hannibal, absolutely not happy. But thanks for sharing the info!

10:37 AM  
Blogger Hannibal said...

Tarek:

I agree with you to some extent. and as you were honest I will be honest with you too;)

Yes indeed it is past due and it took so much time to get this website but at least it is finally there. This is in itself an achievement.I'll discuss this point in further detail in a private email.

-We don't have a chronic problem with english but we do have a lack of qualified ad trustworthy english professionals and mainly translators who are ready to do such a job. Many tunisian government or private websites have three versions ( arabic, french and english). Nevertheless I was myself disappointed that english is not yet a version of the website.My understanding is let's start with arabic and french because they are the two basic languages used in our administrations and I guess that the material used in the website is the same stuff used in the administration so you find a presentation note on a certain country for example or on a certain subject or event both in arabic and french but not in english, german or chinese...
-You are right our embassies should figure on the website, you have the contact information which is good but still we need websites for the embassies too. I think we have two working websites that of our Embassy in France and our Embassy in Japan.I am sure others will follow up :)
-Coming to attrcativeness; would you like the website with pink color and jasmine flowers? ;) (kidding). Well I think some work needs to be done on web designing we have really good web designers and the website should be enhanced with some pics, some archival material ( documents, videos...). In fact even though it has no relation to our subject, I feel disgusted for example to look at our national TV website it's just dull!! and I don't know the reason why ? how much it is going to cost to do a better design?? is it hard to do it?

-Finally as I said in my post it is better than nothing we tunisians usually look for perfections and there's no harm in this but we should also be a bit objective and see things from their positive side and not only their negative side.

-Again thank you, Tarek, for your honesty and straightforwardness.

Hannibal

11:37 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Permettez-moi de réagir en Français car je ne maitrise pas suffisament l'anglais. Le cas du MOFA n'est pas unique,
la quasi totalilté des ministères n'ont pas de site et ça existe ca reflète la bureucratie qui reigne dans leurs services !
regardez www.defense.tn !
Regardez la charte graphique débile avec trois drapeaux de trois langues et toujours l'anglais under construction !
Je me demande pourquoi réserver la page d'accueil pour les drapeaux où chaque seconde coute pour le chercher de l'information
remarquez la lenteur de réponse de site (il est hébergé en tunisie !) c'est toute la face de tiers monde qui se présente même sur un simple site web !
attendre 2007 pour avoir un site web d'un misitère aussi crucial que le MOFA ! C'est vraiment révoltant !
Vous savez l'opacité et l'anarchie avec la quelle les consultats sont géré et le comportement des agent consulaire avec le simple cityoen.

10:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Alright Hannibal, let's assume I'm just being difficult...

Can you challenge what Nader is saying? :)

4:36 AM  
Blogger Hannibal said...

Tarek;) well I don't see a huge difference from what Nader said and what you said except that he said it in french ;P

PS: Nader I respect your point of view and I understand your anger and revolt but please if you personally had an unpleasant experience with our consulate, I assume in France or Canada,and for the sake of justice let's not generalize it to all our consulates...

BTW, Thanks for your visit!:)

9:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Merci Hanibal pour la réponse, mais je vous invite à visiter le consulat de Tunisie à Paris, c'est révoltant, ce n'est plus digne d'un pays où il ya 400 000 résident en France !
Ce que j'ai constaté, c'est que les tunisiens de base se sont accomodés avec "el dhil" devant les agents consulaires et les fonctionnaires du ministères de l'intérieur.

5:20 AM  

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