Kuwaiti information minister inaugurates news monitoring hall at ministry

Minister of Information and Minister of State for Youth Affairs Sheikh Salman Sabah Salem Al-Humoud Al-Sabah inaugurated a state-of-the-art news monitoring hall at the News and Political Programs Department at the Ministry of Information Sunday evening, and said this is another step within the plan to upgrade and overhaul ministry performance and services. In his press remarks at the opening, the minister said this project reflects the ministry's keenness on training national cadres to utilize the latest advances in technology and in media. He expressed appreciation for the effort of all ministry staff and officials who enabled the completion of this development project. The opening ceremony was attended by Information Undersecretary Salah Al-Mubaraki and assistant undersecretaries. For his part, Assistant Undersecretary for News and Political Programs Faisal Al-Mtalgam said the minister's interest in improving staff capabilities is appreciated, as is his interest in supplying the staff with the latest equipment. News Monitoring Department Director Adel Al-Azmi for his part reviewed the new systems' features and pointed out they are unparalleled in the Middle East and have advanced classification and storage capabilities and advanced features for video or audio recording. The systems allow for retrieval of material with great ease and record time, he added, and smooth transfer and sharing of material and data as well. There are also programs to render recorded material into written text as well as programs to simultaneously translated material from sources in foreign languages. The first phase of this new project enables monitoring of 20 satellite stations, 10 radio stations, and 30 new websites with a storage capacity that allows for high resolution viewing of clips and texts at later points in time. The second phase is expected to take the number of satellite channels monitored to 80, and there would be no limit as to other news sources.