The Swiss IFIP Committee (SIC) Report 2004
http://ict.satw.ch/SPIP/article.php3?id_article=292

The Swiss IFIP Committee – SIC http://ict.satw.ch/SPIP/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=21
SIC is a Working Group ("Arbeitsgruppe")  of the 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.or.at/

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 49 national organisations as Full Members, 3 Corresponding Members and 10 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.

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, was appointed as Council Member in August 2004.- Strong and active Swiss presence in the Technical Committees and Working Groups dealing with matters of interest to Switzerland. 
Today 59 specialists from Swiss Academia and industry are participating in 11 TC's and 30 WG's. 
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://ict.satw.ch/SPIP/article.php3?id_article=292)
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 publishes an 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 SVI/FSI Web site (http://www.svifsi.ch/ifip-2)
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.svifsi.ch/ifip-4.html)

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)

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: 
				Dr. Marc Junet, Services Industriels de Genève
				(marc.junet@sig-ge.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) 

IFIP Honorary Members:   Prof. K.Bauknecht, Uni Zurich      (bauknecht@ifi.unizh.ch)
				      Prof. P.A..Bobillier, Lully-Bernex   (bobilliep@tele2.ch)

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 SVI/FSI but chosen by the WG's for their competence. Today 59 specialists from Swiss Academia and industry are participating in 11 TC's and 30 WG's.

The current list of  WG members residing in Switzerland is on: (http://www.svifsi.ch/ifip-3.html)

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.

Call for nomination:

One position is currently open: TC 1 Foundations of Computer Science as there is no Swiss representative so far. 
The Procedure for nomination of Swiss delegates to IFIP is available at: (http://www.svifsi.ch/ifip-7)

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 yearly. 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. 

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 59 specialists from Swiss Academia and industry participating in 11 TC's and 30 WG's. This represents a total Swiss effort of approximately 950'000 fr/year of which 105 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 2004
Besides their current activities (reported in their annual reports) such as participation to their TC meetings, the TC representatives were particularly active in 2004 either by holding a TC executive position or in organising important events.
This section gives an overview of the most important activities and events :

•	The annual meeting took place in Bern on January 15, 2004 attended by eleven members. P. Furrer (Swiss Information Society Technologies and SARIT delegate to the ERCIM Executive Ctee) participated in our meeting and conducted an interesting open discussion with the group on the  European 6th Framework Program and related projects. New members were welcomed: Prof. U.Nestmann, EPFL (TC 1) and Prof. H-J.Lüthi, ETHZ (TC 7). Added to the recent nominations in 2002 and 2003 they will no doubt bring a new breath to the committee for the years to come.
•	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 (http://www.enviroinfo2004.org/7)

Several members hold active staff positions in the IFIP TC's :
•	R.Morel, also Swiss delegate to the IFIP General Assembly, was elected as IFIP Trustee in August 2004 and joins therefore the IFIP Council. He continues as member and Special Consultant of TC 3. 
•	H.Rudin, vice-chairman of TC 6 
•	B.Eschermann is Secretary of TC 10. 
•	E.Gelle, TC 5 representative, was appointed as TC 5 Secretary.
•	P-A Bobillier, IFIP Honorary Member, submitted to the IFIP General Assembly, August 2004, his resignation as Statutes and Bylaws chairman after serving in this position for more than 15 years.
All these people deserve our sincere thanks for their invaluable personal involvement.

After his election as Rector of Neuchâtel University Prof. A Strohmeier resigned as TC 2 delegate and was replaced by Prof B.Meyer, Chair of Software Engineering at ETHZ.

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

•	R.Morel, member of the SATW WBR (Wissenschaftlicher Beirat) http://www.satw.ch/D/satw/organe.html#WBR is actively chairing the ICT Committe http://www.satw.ch/D/satw/organe/ICT.html  http://ict.satw.ch/SPIP/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=1
and conducted several seminars in 2004 http://ict.satw.ch/ 

•	H.Rudin is ERCIM editor for Switzerland (http://www.sarit.ch/ercim/index.html)

•	L.Hilty worked successfully on the revival of the Swiss SI Ctee on Informatics and Society and produced with some colleagues the SI Ethics Guidelines (Directives éthiques de la Société Suisse d'Informatique / Ethikrichtlinien der Schweizer Informatik Gesellschaft)
 
(http://www.s-i.ch/si_aktivitaeten_ethik_richtlinien.php)
.
•	With the objectives of making recommendations to the Swiss Government in view of the revision of the Government strategy for the Information Society. Other members of the SIC Committee are actively involved in these efforts. http://ict.satw.ch/SPIP/IMG/mun200411.pdf

PAB, 9.5.2005