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Swiss Report IFIP (GA’2005)

vendredi 26 août 2005, par BOBILLIER P-A, Morel Raymond






IFIP FULL MEMBER SOCIETY REPORT 2005
to the General Assembly, Gaborone (after WITFOR’05) :

SVI/FSI becomes ICTswitzerland

1. Change of Name and By-Laws

As reported last year the name of the Swiss Member of IFIP is now ICTswitzerland. The main change was the important enlargement of scope from IT to ICT. Todate it encompasses 20 organizations with roughly 9’000 personal and 2’000 corporate members. It performed 2 in-depth economical studies in Software and Telecom in Switzerland.

ICTswitzerland is also member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering sciences (SATW) - see below- and as full member of IFIP is the voice of our country at this level.

2. The Swiss Representation within IFIP managed by SARIT and supported by SATW and SARIT

One of the member societies of ICTswitzerland is SARIT (Swiss Association for Research in Information Technology) of which all Swiss university professors in Computer Science are members. SARIT is the natural body to take care of the scientific international contacts of ICTswitzerland, including those to IFIP and to ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics). Its Board has now the delegated responsibility for the operational duties of the Swiss representation to IFIP. SARIT and SATW pay a part of the costs of the Swiss representation in IFIP. Within SARIT the "Swiss IFIP Committee" (SIC) - see below -encompasses the Swiss Delegates to IFIP’s General Assembly and TCs.

3. Swiss IFIP Committee (SIC)

SIC is the name of ICTswitzerland’s committee for IFIP. In its January 2005 annual meeting we welcomed a two new members appointed in 2004 : Prof. B.Meier (TC 2) succeeding Prof A.Strohmeier and Prof. Y Pigneur (TC 8) succeeding Dr. M.Junet. We will have to appoint a successor to Prof U.Nestmann (TC 1) as he will join Berlin University in October, leaving EPFL and Switzerland.

ICT Switzerland is represented in TC 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 13. Today 59 specialists from Swiss Academia and industry are participating in these 11 TC’s and 30 WG’s.

In order to size the importance of resources spent by IFIP delegates to TC’s and WG’s a survey is made yearly among these delegates on their spendings :

  • man days (meeting attendance, home work, reports, meeting preparation, etc..) and
  • travel expenses (airline/train tickets, hotel and meals, registration fees or receptions for invitees, etc..)

The numbers vary significantly depending in particular of special IFIP positions held ; for example, the time spent varies from 5 to 50 days/year. The maximum happens when the TC rep has several IFIP functions (for example Council Member, TC Officer, etc..) or when in charge of organising an IFIP event in Switzerland.

For 2004 the average numbers : 16.3 kCHF/person/year meant a total Swiss effort of approximately 950’000 CHF/year.

These activities would of course be impossible without the IFIP delegates’ employers. They tend however to restrict allowing "free time" to their employees. Fortunately at least the airline tickets for the TC delegates (although a small part of the total) are in principle supported by SATW (via ICTswitzerland and SARIT). Both organisations have therefore to be thanked for their valuable support (CHF 25000.- for all travel expenses and annual fee to IFIP, amount to compare with the global effort above).

It must be noted however that no support is provided to the Working Group members who rely only on their employers’ support. This support for the international activities is a very important contribution for the whole Switzerland which makes it possible the efficient Swiss participation in IFIP.

4. Commission Education (CE) of ICTswitzerland

Improving ICT Education & Competency in Switzerland The Commission Education (CE) is the permanent body of ICTswitzerland, the umbrella organization of the leading Swiss ICT associations, for ICT education aspects & matters :

  • the improvement of the ICT education in public schools at all levels. A bottleneck is the lack of ICT experience and knowledge of many teachers and therefore the Education of Teachers. In Switzerland the 26 Cantons are the responsible bodies for public education which makes the coordination of Teaching of Teachers even more difficult. The "Public-Private-Partnership" project however is contributing to progress in this field. (see also ch. 11 below).

5. ECDL

In Switzerland the ECDL certification system was initiated in 1998 when the Swiss Informatics Society accepted the licence for our country from the ECDL Foundation. The spread of ECDL in Switzerland and Liechtenstein is continuing to show significant progress. The total number of new candidates recruited in 2004 was over 15’000 ; at the end of the year this adds up to a total of 49’000 candidates since inception in 1998. In 2005 we expect to add a further 16’000 candidates to this total. In all, there are 255 Test Centers in Switzerland and Liechtenstein and candidates may choose one of four languages for their tests : German, French, Italian and English.

Based on our outstanding success and experience in Switzerland the ECDL Foundation has recently requested the Swiss Informatics Society to introduce ECDL in Kosovo and the two African nations of Cameroon and Burkina Faso. We are pleased to report that our initial results in these areas are very promising as well.

6. Ethics - Swiss ICT Code of Conducts

The SI (Swiss Informatics Society), member of ICTswitzerland has designed an "ICT Code of conduct" (result of the work of an ad-hoc group chaired by Prof L.Hilty, Swiss delegate to the TC 9) which is being circulated and will be proposed to its next general assembly. After approval it will be recommended to all SI members.

7. « Year of Technology » 2005 in Switzerland : Making progress visible

SATW and other partners under the patronage of the Swiss Government have declared 2005 "Year of Technology" and organised several events such as an "Innovations-Symposium", "Corporate & ICT Performance Management (CPM)", ... and established a "Swiss Technology Award 2006".

8. The Swiss Academy of Engineering sciences (SATW) and the ICT Committee with its 3 working groups

ICTswitzerland is one of the some 60 member organisations of the SATW. The ICT Comittee of the SATW was created in 2002 to promote ICT in Switzerland. Raymond Morel, its chairman and member of the SATW Scientific Board, created three working groups :e-Education, e-Health and e-Society which collaborates with many partners

Different kind of events were already organised in Switzerland to bring a scientific and professional contribution towards the revised Government Strategy for the Information Society. Several delegate to IFIP TC’s take part in these activities. Some examples :

  • Contributions of the ICT Commission of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) towards the revision of the Swiss Government Strategy for an Information Society
    ict.satw.ch/SPIP/IMG/mun200411.pdf

9. The EKS Forum (« Engineering the Knowledge Society ») during the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS)

The EKS Forum which took place as a two-days parallel event of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland, December 11 - 12, 2003. has been a good example of synergy and collaboration between the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO) and IFIP.

As output of this event, besides the increasing visibility for IFIP, the proceedings were published as an IFIP book by Kluwer in November 2004, all royalties allocated to IFIP (although no contributions were received from IFIP to the Forum expenses). The book contains project proposals for taking actions and includes :

  • the "UNESCO - IFIP World Computer Congress 2002 Montreal Youth Declaration",
  • the "UNESCO - IFIP Vilnius Declaration",
  • the "WFEO) Carthage Declaration on the Digital Divide"
  • the "European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA) Vienna Declaration on security of Wireless Lans".

(for more details on this event, see the report to the GA 2004 )

other important links :

10. Main Events in Switzerland

  • The „18th symposium EnviroInfo 2004" took place at CERN in Geneva in October 2004. This international conference was organized by the technical committee Informatics in Environmental Protection of the German Informatics Society and sponsored by the IFIP TC 5, TC 8 and TC 9 (Prof L.Hilty was the organiser)
    www.enviroinfo2004.org/
  • The First International Conference on Interoperability of Enterprise Software and Applications (INTEROP-ESA‚2005) was held in Geneva in February 2005, hosted by the University of Geneva and organized by the INTEROP NoE, and Supported by IFIP, ACM SIGAPP (Special Interest Group on Applied Computing) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research and attracted a total of 146 participants. It was co-located and organised with the eGOV INTEROP’05 Annual Conference organized by the Observatory on „Interoperable e-Government Service".
    interop-esa05.unige.ch/
    The next INTEROP-ESA’06 conference will take place in Bordeaux, France.

11. Public Private Partnership - A Swiss National Project
Launched in December 2000 by the OPET (Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology), the initiative "Public Private Partnership - Scool on the Net" (PPP-SiN). Its aims at promoting the use of IT resources, multimedia and the Internet for educational purposes. Primary and secondary schools throughout Switzerland are being given rapid and simple access to new information and communication technologies. The partners involved : the central Government, the cantons, and the private sector, provide services corresponding to their areas of competence. In spite of the reduction of the initial planned financial government support the progress is satisfactory.

Information on the further evolution of PPP, on running offers from the industry partners, on software, past experiences by teachers, or special events is available on the Swiss education server.

12. Information Society in Switzerland - Revised Government Strategy on the Information Society

Since February 1998, the Swiss government has been conducting a massive campaign to promote the information and communications technologies (ICT). In the text which forms the basis for the Confederation’s actions in this area, various official bodies were mandated to lead the federal administration’s ICT activities and to make the Swiss population aware of the challenges of the information era. The site www.infosociety.ch/site/default.asp ?dossiers=&id_fiche=2789 was established which describes the federal actions in promoting ICT.

As mentioned in paragraph 8 above, the ICT Committee, including several IFIP TC representatives, contribute actively to these activities.

Extracts of the introduction in the report Contributions of the ICT Commission of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) towards the revision of the Swiss Government Strategy for an Information Society

"this brochure explicits the context, the priorities, the urgent items and the main actions to undertake. It will be easy to note that the urgent items are :
- Needs to quickly revise the 1998 Swiss Strategy for the Information Society
- The key role of Education
- The prerequisites for a true Information Society
- The needs to organise a concertation between the main actors

Independently of the recommendations derived from experts recent observations and of the priorities defined by the plurality of the assembled groups, the suggested urgent actions to be conducted with the various partners are necessary and unavoidable measures (they were sent to the federal Authorities in December (2004).

The obviousness of the urgencies and the priorities which surfaced after the reflections of the various working groups partly explain the success of the process. The interest and the value of such recommendations emerged also from the enlarged concertation and the synergy between the different groups which, normally, do not meet and collaborate ; they were in fact issued from the plurality and diversity of the components of an Information Society at large

Considering the generalisation of the current technological evolutions these recommendations present an obvious urgent character. This report wants to be a direct contribution towards the current preparatory work of the Federal Government in view of the updating of the Swiss Strategy for an Information Society.

It is in this spirit that the ICT commission of the SATW remains at the disposal of the federal Authorities to contribute to the completion of their activities and is available to continue to work in order to facilitate the measures which will be decided this year by the Federal Government." References :

13. Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) - UNITAR and Stellenboesch Declaration (WCCE 2005)

Under the impulse of the Swiss delegate to GA and Prof. B Cornu (INRP, Lyon) many efforts were provided after WSIS during the last 12 months to involve IFIP at the UN level for actions in favour of developing countries. In cooperation with UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research), IFIP expertise is now expected for participation to the validation of projects within the DSF.

After the creation of the Fund in March 2005, collaboration with UNITAR continued with their active participation for the Stellenboesch Declaration at WCCE (July 2005)

14. NEW STRATEGY for IFIP

As trustee, Raymond Morel is chairing the Task Force (established by the IFIP Council in March 2005) to propose a revised overall Strategy for IFIP. The task force report was distributed to GA Members and will be discussed at the GA meeting in Gaborone (September 2005).

Raymond Morel
Swiss GA Representative and Trustee
Geneva, August 2005
In collaboration with P.-A. Bobillier

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Swiss Report IFIP (GA’2005)

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