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Accueil du site > Swiss IFIP Committee (SIC) > 08. Reports > The Swiss IFIP Committee (SIC) Report 2005

The Swiss IFIP Committee (SIC) Report 2005

jeudi 27 avril 2006, par BOBILLIER P-A, Morel Raymond


Ce rapport a été rédigé pour être présenté lors de l’assemblée des délégués d’ICTswitzerland le 11 mai 2006.

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The full SIC report 2005 to download

The Swiss IFIP Committee - SIC

The Swiss IFIP Committee is one of the Commissions of ICTswitzerland
http://ict.satw.ch/SPIP/rubrique.php3 ?id_rubrique=21

Its members are the Swiss delegates to the IFIP General Assembly and to the IFIP Technical Committees. It meets once a year to discuss the annual reports of the TC rep’s, past and future activities, participation in Swiss associations and events, issues with IFIP and its TC’s, etc..
This paper describes briefly the IFIP Federation and its various bodies, various aspects of the Swiss participation and contributions to IFIP, the associated amount of efforts and tries to emphasise the value for Switzerland of this participation.

What is IFIP ?

The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)
http://www.ifip.org/

IFIP is a non-governmental, non-profit umbrella organisation for national societies working in the field of information processing. It was established in 1960 under the auspices of UNESCO as an aftermath of the first World Computer Congress held in Paris in 1959. Today IFIP has 51 national organisations as Full Members, 3 Corresponding Members and 9 Affiliate Members, representing countries from all regions of the world and international organisations. IFIP maintains friendly connections to specialised agencies of the UN system and non-governmental organisations (UNESCO, ICSU, IFAC, IMACS, IFORS, IMEKO).
Technical work, which is the heart of IFIP’s activity, is managed by a series of Technical Committees. Each of these committees has two major types of activities : Events and Publications.
IFIP’s mission is to be the leading, truly international, apolitical organisation which encourages and assists in the development, exploitation and application of Information Technology for the benefit of all people.

Its mission is, among others :

  • plan courses of action on issues of international significance,
  • to promote international co-operation in a free environment between individuals, national and international governmental bodies,
  • to pay special attention to the needs of developing countries,
  • to promote professionalism, incorporating high standards of ethics and conduct, among all IT practitioners,
  • to provide a forum for assessing the social consequences of IT applications and to campaign for the safe and beneficial development and use of IT and the protection of people from abuse through its improper application,
  • to contribute to the formulation of the education and training needed by IT practitioners, users and the public at large.

Technical Activities :
the essential part of IFIP, are performed in its Technical Committees (TC) based on the active participation of some two thousand people world-wide. A TC is in fact a management team responsible for a given field of activity and for the work of its Working Groups (WG). These Groups work in a variety of ways to share experience and to develop their specialised knowledge. These include open conferences, smaller working conferences, seminars and tutorials, circulated papers and, increasingly, as befits our subject, electronic conferencing and e-mail. http://www.ifip-tc3.net/article.php3 ?id_article=77


ICTswitzerland and IFIP
Very active in IFIP since its creation in 1960 and although not part of the European Community, Switzerland has not only been a founder of IFIP but has continued to contribute towards its objectives and activities without interruption through the personal involvement of its representatives :- active presence in the Executive Board and the Council and 3 Presidents covering a period of 12 years.

  • R.Morel, Swiss representative to the IFIP GA since 1999, is Council Member since August 2004.
  • Strong and active Swiss presence in the Technical Committees and Working Groups dealing with matters of interest to Switzerland.

    Today, 61 specialists from Swiss Academia and industry are participating in 11 TC’s and 31 WG’s. 1 Swiss rep is TC vice-chairman and 2 reps are Secretary.

The TC representatives are appointed by ICTswitzerland, the Swiss Member of IFIP. The WG members are individual specialists accepted by the WG’s for their expertise (there is no country limitation on their number).
The personal involvement and the efforts of these specialists contribute, through their international contacts with leading experts, to acquiring and bringing to Switzerland knowledge on new technology developments and strategies discussed within IFIP Working Groups. They are the ambassadors of Switzerland to the TC’s and WG’s and contribute to the maintenance and improvement of the Swiss international image.
This is especially true in areas such as Education, Communications (infrastructure, financial access, etc..), Security, Software, Human aspects, etc.. which present important potential for Switzerland.
Support for these international activities is therefore very important to allow the continuation of an active Swiss participation in the international IFIP activities in all areas of ICT.

The Swiss Committee for IFIP is thankful to the SATW (http://www.satw.ch/),
SARIT (http://www.sarit.ch/) and, of course, to the employers of the IFIP delegates ; without such support they could not pursue their mission. We have tried hereunder to evaluate the overall effort represented by the activities of the delegates to IFIP functions.
IFIP publishesan IFIP Newsletter (http://www.ifip.org/newsletters/newsl.html) and some 30 to 40 IFIP books each year resulting from its events.

The Swiss delegates are appointed for a period of 4 years renewable by periods of 2 years. The names of the Swiss TC and Working Groups representatives are published on the ICTswitzerland


Website(http://www.ictswitzerland.ch/de/organisation/ifip/kommission-ifip.asp)

The main functions of a Swiss IFIP TC representative are - to assure the both ways communications between Switzerland and his TC (information to the Technical Committee about latest developments and concerns in Switzerland and information to the interested parties in Switzerland about the TC activities), - organise TC meetings and events in Switzerland when feasible, etc.
For more information : http://www.ictswitzerland.ch/de/organisation/ifip/kommission-ifip-4.asp and http://www.ictswitzerland.ch/de/organisation/ifip/kommission-ifip-5.asp

Current Delegates to IFIP
(GA and TC’s) General Assembly : Raymond Morel, direction SEM(Service Ecoles-Médias), DIP Genève and Council (Raymond.Morel@tecfa.unige.ch)

TC1 Foundations of Computer Science Prof. Jose D. P. Rolim, University of Geneva _ (Jose.Rolim@cui.unige.ch)

TC 2 Software : Theory and Practice : Prof. Bertrand Meyer, ETH Zurich (bertrand.meyer@inf.ethz.ch)

TC 3 Education :Raymond Morel, SEM(Service Ecoles-Médias), DIP Genève (Raymond.Morel@tecfa.unige.ch)

TC 5 Computer Applications in Technology : Dr. Esther Myriam Gelle, ABB Corporate Research (Esther.Gelle@ch.abb.com)

TC 6 Communication Systems : Dr. Harry Rudin, Computer Networks, Oberrieden (hrudin@smile.ch)

TC 7 System Modelling and Optimization : Prof. Hans-Jakob Luethi, ETH Zurich (luethi@ifor.math.ethz.ch)

TC 8 Information Systems : Prof. Yves Pigneur, Univ. Lausanne (yves.pigneur@unil.ch)

TC 9 Computers and Society : Prof. Lorenz Hilty, EMPA, St.Gallen (lorenz.hilty@empa.ch)

TC 10 Computer Systems Technology : Dr. B. Eschermann, ABB Corporate Research, Baden (bernhard.eschermann@ch.abb.com)

TC 11 Security and Protection in Information Processing systems : Prof. Stephanie Teufel, iimt (International Institute of Management in Telecommunications), University of Fribourg. (stephanie.teufel@unifr.ch)

TC 13 Human-Computer Interaction : Dr. Markus Stolze, IBM Zurich Research Laboratory (mrs@zurich.ibm.com)

Honorary Members :

Each IFIP TC (Technical Committee) has from three to nine Working Groups, the members of which are persons experienced in the WG subject. They are not elected by ICTswitzerland or SARIT but chosen by the WG’s for their competence. Today 61 specialists from Swiss Academia and industry are participating in 11 TC’s and 31 WG’s.

The current list of WG members residing in Switzerland is on : http://www.ictswitzerland.ch/de/organisation/ifip/kommission-ifip-3.asp

Remark : The above does not include the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) which was formed out of the former IFIP TC 4 in 1979 and which has activities of its own.

Yearly spendings of Swiss IFIP delegates In order to get an evaluation of the importance of resources spent by IFIP delegates to TC’s and WG’s a survey is repeated on a regular basis. The delegates are asked how much they spend annually in :
- 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 ; 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. The evaluation was done last for the year 2004.

For 2004 the resulting average numbers are the following per delegate :_

  • Mandays : 22 were 30 for 1993, 23 for 96, 28 for 97, 20 for 2002)_
  • Associated cost (hypothesis : 120 kfr/year) : 11.0 kfr.
  • Tavel expenses : airline : 1.8 kfr.
  • Hotel and meals : 2.5 kfr.
  • Registration fees, receptions for invitees, etc.. : 1.0 kfr.

Total expenses per TC representative : 16.3 kfr/person/year

We have today (as of January 2006) 61 specialists from Swiss Academia and industry participating in 11 TC’s and 31 WG’s. This represents a total Swiss effort of approximately 995’000 fr/year of which 110 kfr for airline tickets.

These activities would of course be impossible without the IFIP delegates employers. They however tend to restrict allowing "free time" to their employees for obvious reasons. They are of course encouraged when 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 to be thanked for their valuable support.

It must be noted however that no support is provided to the members of Working Groups. Their expenses have therefore to be totally covered by their employer.
The current status (tickets paid for the TC delegates) allows some freedom in the nomination of TC rep’s. The reduction of such support would mean to restrict the selection of new TC rep’s to persons fully supported by their employers (a questionable solution !) or to drop the Swiss representation to some Technical Committees.
The support by employers to their employees international activities is a very important contribution for the whole Switzerland : they contribute to the Swiss reputation and image, to fruitful international experience exchange and to allow valuable information to be brought back to Switzerland, etc..

They therefore deserve our most sincere thanks for their valuable contributions.

Swiss Committee for IFIP Activities in 2005
Besides their current activities (reported in their annual reports) such as participation to their TC meetings, the TC representatives were particularly active in 2005 either by holding a TC executive position or in organising important events. This section gives an overview of the most important activities and events :
Annual meeting took place in Bern on January 21, 2005 attended by eight members. Mrs Beth Krasna, ETH Council and Banque cantonale vaudoise Council was invited and made a very stimulating presentation on : Information access - Evolution and Trends.
She showed how the earlier information was passed over generations : oral tradition, libraries, filing systems, digital documents and ... the Web : - CERN browser in 1993 (CERN declares its technology freely available), - Alta Vista in 1995, - Google in 1997, - Microsoft in 2004.
Real life issues today are : data in/outside the firewall, people in/outside, security, identity management, DB management, information retrieval.
The users want access to relevant information, do not care where the info is or comes from, want easy access, self-learning schemes, anywhere, any time ; want voice interfac, translation, does not want spam or viruses.
In Switzerland access is to costly ; there is a growing need for remote work place.

Extracts from 2005 TC Swiss Rep reports (full report 2005) http://ict.satw.ch/SPIP/article.php...) :

- TC 1 : The report was submitted by U.Nestmann.Although having left Switzerland in September 2005, he continued his activities within TC1 until the end of 2005. Starting January 2006, he has been elected TC1 Category-B member, supported by the German IFIP member society. Prof. Jose Olim is now the new Swiss TC 1 representative.

- TC 2 : The main TC2 activity in Switzerland was the VSTTE conference (Verified Software : Theories, Tools, Experiments), organized at ETH Zurich 10-13 October 2005. It brought to Zurich many of the world’s top experts in program proving, programming methodology, program testing, model checking and other areas of software quality research. It was described as a great success and may be continued by the creation of working groups and several journal publications. See http://vstte.ethz.ch. IFIP TC2 sponsorship has been requested for a conference at ETH Zurich on "Software Engineering for Outsourced and Offshored Development" on 14-16 October 2006, whose call for papers is currently open ; see http://seafood.ethz.ch. One on "Proofs And Tests" (PAT) should follow 12-14 February 2007 (the Web page, not ready yet, will be  ://pat.ethz.ch within the next few weeks). Another 2006 event worth mentioning since it takes place near Swiss borders is the foundational conference of the new Working Group on Open-Source software, in Como in June, see http://oss2006.dti.unimi.it/.

- TC 3 : : R.Morel reminded that ICTswitzerland has replaced AIA by KB : Kommission Bildung (chairman Markus Fischer) covering all areas of education. Its first objective is to make an expertise of what must be done in the future. R.Morel mentioned the Knight of Communication competition whose first prize was given to a young student who developed a system for helping the disabled http://ict.satw.ch/SPIP/rubrique.php3 ?id_rubrique=67 R.Morel replaced C-A.Zehnder in the SKIB (Schweizerischen Koordinationskonferenz ICT und Bildung) http://www.edk.ch/PDF_Downloads/Erlasse/8_Anhang/85_SKIB/SKIB_d.pdf A new web site is being developed on Lifelong Learning. Through the ICT Ctee of the SATW ICT R.Morel (Chairman) has organised two workshops on Ethics and Accompanying Projects in Education. http://ict.satw.ch/ Two declarations : Stellenboesch during WCCE’2005 and Gaborone during WITFOR’2005 http://www.ifip-tc3.net/ Developpment of strong links with UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) http://www.unitar.org/about_en.htm

- TC5 : Esther Gelle presented her report. TC 5 has a new title Information Technology Applications with new Aims and Scopes, emphasising a systemic view on product realisation in a digital world. TC 5 is financially sound and has a surplus part of which will be spent on organising a merger of WG’s and supporting new special interest groups. It has been decided to introduce TC 5 awards. The new WG 5.1 Information Technology in the Product Realisation Process has been established replacing WG 5.2 (CAD) and WG 5.3 (CAM) which are closed. WG 5.1 was described in Spektrum Band 6, December 2005. TC 5 has two Special Interest Groups on Computer Aided Inventing (CAI) and Bioinformatics. The first CAI conference, Ulm, December 2006, was very successful and the SIG may evolve in a WG. The Bioinformatics SIG may be discontinued. TC 5 will discontinue the TC 5 journal. Instead it is proposed to publish a selection of accepted PROLAMAT papers in an established journal. E.Gelle considers that Switzerland is not active enough in TC 5 and its Working Groups. There is a decline in number of participants : no Swiss researcher seem to be attracted to participate in the working groups of TC 5 in spite of her personal efforts since she joined TC 5 : active marketing through various channels such as mailing lists, publications in Spektrum and direct contacts. This is surprising since Switzerland has significant manufacturing industries. She wants to convince more Swiss Researchers to join TC 5 WGs especially after TC 5 revision of its Aims and scope, the newer WGs such as WG 5.12, 5.5, 5.7, 5.1 or the special interest group CAI (Computer-Aided Inventing) which are of direct interest to Switzerland.

- TC 6 : H.Rudin presented his report. TC 6 is a very active technical committee which orchestrates some two dozen international conferences and workshops a year. One of the goals of TC 6 is to offer its technical know-how to developing countries through meetings and tutorials in developing countries and a working group (WG 6.9).
In TC6 there is grave concern regarding IFIP’s future. TC6 feels that IFIP has lost much of its earlier prestige. The cost of publishing paper conference proceedings continues to be a heavy burden for conference organizers. TC6 also feels that IFIP needs a new financing model and that our proceedings should be openly available, i.e., available to all at no cost.
One intensively discussed item is the idea of a digital library. Informal contact with Google indicates that they would be willing to 1) host TC 6 conference proceedings, 2) provide IFIP "branding" with the IFIP logo, 3) not only at no cost to IFIP but with even the possibility 4) of a small financial return to IFIP. Discussions are continuing. It is the feeling in TC6 that IFIP’s income from the sale of proceedings is diminishing at this point and that this trend will become even stronger in the future. To replace this loss of funds, one idea is to focus on a very few of the most successful TC 6 conferences and so insure that these produce a replacement income.
Another idea under intensive discussion is the creation of an IFIP TC 6 digital publication based on the best papers from IFIP TC 6 conferences. This publication would be available to all potential readers via the Web and at no cost. The possibility exists of expanding this publication to include papers from other TC’s as well at some time in the future.
As ERCIM editor for Switzerland H.Rudin welcomes Swiss contributions as ERCIM News is a good medium for publicising research work and announcing conferences to be held in Switzerland. Contributions should be sent to hrudin@smile.ch

- TC 7 : H.-J Lüthi presented his report. The 22nd biannual conference on System Modelling and Optimisation took place in Turin, July 2005 ; proceedings to be published by Springer.Parts of the members are more or less active. There is a misbalance between old and established people and young people. TC 7 studies the possibility to empower some WG active young members. IFIP could experiment in this direction.

- TC 8 : Y. Pigneur presented his report. He had replaced Marc Junet only a few months ago. TC 8 is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a Workshop on "30 years of TC 8 : The past, present and future of information systems". Are invited leading scholars to give plenary presentations, panels and papers to address this theme in relation to those of the TC 8 Working Groups : - Design and evaluation of information systems, interaction of information systems and the organisation, - Decision support systems, - E-Business, - public administration, - Smart cards.The Conference on Inter operability of Enterprise Application Software, supported by WG 8.1, took place in Geneva, February 21-25, 2005.
. Pigneur investigates a possible TC 8 meeting in Switzerland for 2007 ; for example before or after the EIS Conference in St Gallen or in Lausanne in June 2007.

- TC 9 : L. Hilty presented his report : the TC 9 Committee at its Meeting in Warsaw, June 2005 appointed Lorenz Hilty as TC 9 Vice Chair. He is in addition chairing the WG 9.9 (founded 2005). Our congratulations ! L. Hilty had proposed the creation of this new Working Group (WG 9.9) with the purpose "ICT and Sustainable Development". He was asked to present a more concrete proposal, within three weeks, with planned officers, membership, and events in addition to Aims and Scope. TC9 will vote upon this by e-mail so that to bring the proposal forward to the GA in August 2006.
The book on Perspectives and Policies on ICT in Society is published. It provides a survey of TC 9 issues and results that have been elaborated during the last years. The next TC9 ’HCC : Human Choice and Computers’ conference : HCC7 will be dedicated to ’Social Informatics’. It will be held in September 2006 in Nova Gorcia, Slovenia. L. Hilty is a member of the program committee.
The conference VIS 2005 : Visions of the Information Society, final Conference of the ’Sustain ability in the Information Society’ program, was held at Empa, St. Galleon, November 3-4, 2005, with TC9 co-sponsorship including the Kick-off meeting of the new WG 9.9 ICT and Sustainable Development.
L.Hilty reported to TC 9 the following activities from the Swiss Informatics Society (SI) : - development of the national ethics code, - the event "Visions of an Information Society" in november 2005, - the contribution towards the revised government national strategy on the information society. - the election of L.Hilty to the SI board.

TC 10 : B. Eschermann could not attend the meeting due to the TC 10 meeting taking place this day. B.Eschermann is serving as TC 10 secretary for a second term : to August 2008. Our congratulations ! The TC 10 is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2006. It organises a new conference on « Biologically Inspired ollaborative Computing » at the next WCC in Chile with 4 streams representing the 4 active WGs of the TC. TC 10 has currently 4 Working Groups some of which organise regular activities ; for example : - WG 10.3 (Concurrent Systems) runs a series of eSeminars accessible to WG members (plus a limited number of guests) by phone conferencing with slides being available on the WG website (see www.ifipwg103.org). Six such seminars took place in 2005 (from supercomputing, through multithreaded computing models to the limits of parallel/distributed computing) ; - WG 10.4 (Dependable Computing and Fault-Tolerance) continued its series of twice a year WG meetings combined with scientific workshops including its main conference : the « Int. Conf. On Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) » , co-sponsored with IEEE CS ; - WG 10.5 (Design and Engineering of Electronic Systems) it runs a conference « VLSI-SoC », whose 2005 edition was held in Perth, Australia. It proposes, with the SIG-ES (Embedded Systems), to create a new WG of TC 10 (WG 10.2). The SIG today has 40 members (including Bernhard Eschermann). The new WG may be created at the next IFIP Council meeting.

- TC 11 : S. Teufel presented her report. TC 11 is discussing the creation of a working group on security of spreadsheets / end computing. All conferences held in 2005 were successful including SEC2005 in Japan. The SEC2005 conference organisers asked to promote the conference not only among academics, but also industry and government. These groups have often the problem that they cannot attend the whole conference. As already mentioned her 2004 report, it is difficult to raise the interest of practitioners for IFIP and even more difficult to win them for an active participation. She tried unsuccessfully to convince people in face-to-face conversations and presentations to various bodies. She is nevertheless investigating to have in 2007 a WG11.9 Working Conference in Switzerland. She finds difficult to attract researchers as well as practitioners to get involved into IFIP activities. She had tried to convince people in face-to-face conversations and in presenting IFIP and its TC11 at meetings in the research and industry environment, the FGSec (SI special interest group on Security) and the iimt (international institute of management in technology). It seems that people from the industry have not enough time and resources for attending international conferences. Important aspects to be considered : - attract young scientists - not only to contribute to the conferences, but also to work in the TCs and Wgs, - show benefits to all stakeholders of IFIP as a unique and powerful organisation

- TC 13 : M. Stolze report was not discussed in his absence. The INTERACT bi-annual TC 13 conference was held in Rome in September 2005. INTERACT 2007 is planned in RIO de Janeiro, Brazil, September, 2007. TC 13 WGs : the only Swiss WG member is M.Stolze in WG 13.6 : the new Working Group on "Human-Work Interaction Design". A new postgraduate course "Master of Advanced Studies in Human Computer Interaction Design" has been established. The course is offered as a complementary multidisciplinary 2-year course for working people with a base degree in Computer Science, Graphical Design, or Psychology. It is offered through a collaboration of Swiss educational organisations from different fields : Computer Science : HSR Rapperswil, Graphical Design : HGK Basel, Psychology : FH beider Basel. Registration for the course is still open. The first course is scheduled to begin April 6 2006. More information is available through ->http://www.psycho.unibas.ch/hcid.

Info on Swiss HCI activities : Markus Stolze is Treasurer of the SI Software Ergonomics Special Interest Group. The SI Software Ergonomics members participated in the development of the SI Ethics directives (officially established at the SI General Assembly November 25, 2005), in the development of the new SI Strategy andorganisedseveraltechnicaleventsin2005.

Someother significant information :

  • A Conference on Interoperability of Enterprise Application Software, supported by WG 8.1, took place in Geneva, February 21-25, 2005.
  • The VSTTE conference (Verified Software : Theories, Tools, Experiments), took place at ETH Zurich 10-13 October 2005.
  • VIS 2005 : "Visions of the Information Society", the final Conference of the ’Sustainability in the Information Society’ program, took place at Empa, St. Gallen, November 3-4, 2005, including the Kick-off meeting of the new WG 9.9 "ICT and Sustainable Development".

Several members hold active staff positions in the IFIP TC’s :

  • L.Hilty is Vice-chairman of TC 9
    B.Eschermann is Secretary of TC 10.
    E.Gelle is Secretary of TC 5
  • R.Morel is the Swiss delegate to the IFIP General Assembly, Council Member (IFIP Trustee) since August 2004 and Special Consultant to TC 3.

In addition to these specific IFIP related activities, several members are actively engaged in other scientific organisations. Some of them are mentioned here after :

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