ESIS Extension / Bosnia / IS Promotional Activities / Update Memo 3

The Public Enterprise PTT BiH announced the automation of counter services in their operations with citizens. (PTT Offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina perform a lot of banking/savings services for citizens.) The counters will be interconnected (by computer means), and all equipment should rely upon modern computer networking technologies, including special printers, barcode readers, and some classical post-office "devices" like weighing machines etc.

The oldest and one of the greatest banks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Central Profit Bank in Sarajevo, issued the first Bosnian banking payment card. The card is "the smart card" with a chip and secret PIN. The network of automatic teller machines ("bankomat") will be established throughout whole country.

International Centre for Education and Meetings In Sarajevo (originally supported by Internationales bildungs und Begegnungswerk in Dortmund, Germany) organises courses for work on personal computers. The program includes topics on Windows, Word, Excel and Power Point.

The daily newspaper Oslobodjenje in Sarajevo has a weekly supplement called Cyber. Among short news pieces from the computer and informatics areas they recently began to publish "teach-yourself" topics. Besides paid advertisements from computer related companies one can find some interesting links to various web sites.

University of Sarajevo together with the London School of Economics (UK), University in Sussex (UK) and University in Bologna (Italy) announced a postgraduate study course in the framework of the TEMPUS programme. The study is called "European studies" and deals with up-to-date European movements. Among the main topics are also themes that are interesting to the IS environment, like European policy and society, Transition and development, transformation of enterprises for European integration, European Institutions etc.

The Norwegian trade union of education "Norsk laerarlag" organised a two-day conference "Special pedagogy - a challenge in educational system of Bosnia and Herzegovina" in Fojnica. Aimed primarily at handicapped children, the new information technologies (computer aided teaching and learning, Internet, etc.) can give new values and improve the orthodox educational system.

The daily newspaper Oslobodjenje in Sarajevo published a small survey of commercial ISPs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and some other countries. It stressed the fact that, although some tariffs are lower than those in surroundings countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina is among a few countries where a monthly subscription for an Internet connection must be paid together with spent telephone impulses and hourly charged access. Nonetheless, taking all expenditures into account, the monthly costs can be regarded as cheaper than those in surroundings countries.

Both domestic mobile phone operators announced a significant drop in prices for GSM subscriptions and initial fees. They claim that they are doing this for the benefit of citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina so that they can benefit from modern telecommunication possibilities.

The private enterprise PROMM - Complete Internet Solutions offers services for electronic commerce. It already manages the "Online bookstore" (probably the first in the country) and is working on "Virtual Shops". Its offer includes a complete solution - from domain name registration, email services, web space, to web page management including commercial activities.

Three companies, the computer magazine Read.me from Sarajevo, web-hosting and web-design company Multicom from Tuzla, and Progressive Information Technologies Ltd. from Konjic together have built an extensive "Internet Survey Through Bosnia and Herzegovina" (bosnia.ba).

It combines a search machine like AltaVista and catalogued information like Yahoo.

A team of four individuals of Bosnian citizens who live in Switzerland, Greece and Sweden established the "Bosnia Online Web Server". It is a web-page index, catalogued like Yahoo and similar servers. It covers a lot of interesting information, search facilities and a chat server.

The Chamber of Commerce of Bosnia and Herzegovina manages an online directory of Bosnian companies and enterprises. It offers brief information on reconstruction and development projects, Bulletin Board System of electronic advertising, shows current issues in Bosnian economy and policy, commodity and services exchange etc. The directory of Bosnian companies is also searchable online.

13.1 Management and Information Technologies Center - MIT Center has been established on the initiative of the Open Society Fund Bosnia and Herzegovina and with acceptable participation from the Faculty of Economics in Sarajevo. Its goal is to help, in one unique way (with high education and research work) the reconstruction and development of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The MIT Center considers its primary aim to connect Bosnia and Herzegovina (in every way - including by means of information technologies) to the modern and developed world. That is why MIT educational program started first.

13.2 MIT Center is moving toward an information technologies architecture based on the principles of an open, marketplace provided, standard systems and technologies. The architecture is expected to sustain and support MIT Center information technology needs for two to five years. MIT Center’s IT architecture is based on the principle that information technology management should establish new state-of-the-art technological standards for Bosnian educational institutions. The MITC's policies, processes, and supporting information technology should be designed to enable efficient and effective workflow in both educational and administrative aspects as a tool and not as an aim. Evaluation and approval of information technology investments should be based on full cost analyses, including the costs of managing and maintaining technology investments throughout their expected useful lives. Investments in new information technologies are made to improve or sustain the support of the MITC's mission. Administrative data should be sufficiently accessible, comprehensive, timely, accurate, and flexible to accommodate the information and reporting needs of MITC students and staff. IT support should be made to make academic data available to all with a legitimate need, consistent with the MITC’s responsibility to preserve and protect data. The technical infrastructure should provide students and staff with convenient access to institutional and global computing and information resources and facilitates interaction and collaboration among individuals and groups. Technical systems should collect information electronically and directly from the information source, and deliver it electronically and directly to those who need it. Intermediaries are added to the process only if they increase the value to the information being transmitted. Administrative data should be collected and validated once, and re-validated only when transformed. The MITC's technical infrastructure should be optimized to support both data capture and data access. It should provide a common set of core services that support efficient implementation, operation and management of applications in a distributed and collaborative computing environment. The MITC’s technical infrastructure should conform to an agreed-upon set of open system standards and support a limited number of hardware, software, and networking choices. MITC should continually evaluate new technologies, standards, and products that have the potential to further enable the MITC's mission, lower costs, or improve overall productivity.

The International Symposium on Internet and Information Systems took place in Sarajevo on 4-6 October 1999. It has been organised by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering Sarajevo. The Chairman was Mr. M. Harbi, the Special Advisor to the ITU Secretary General, and the keynote speaker was Mr. R. Shaw from ITU Internet Strategic Planning Unit, who is one of the ITU's key experts on the Internet. Forty-two papers were presented; among them included the presentation of the ESIS II project (presented by Slovenian national contractor D. Caf and his assistant M. Bonac). The discussion after the presentation was vivid. About 80 questionnaires were delivered and a lot of interest was expressed.

The "City of Sarajevo" together with the Ministry of traffic and telecommunication of FBiH announced the introduction and implementation of electronic services into the civil administration of the City of Sarajevo. The main goal is to provide a better quality of services to Sarajevo citizens and to improve the work of the civil administration by the use of modern information and telecommunication technologies. The services that are considered in this context cover online access to libraries, management in transport and traffic infrastructure, access to legal and juridical information to authorised subjects, the global interconnectivity of hospitals, clinics, and other medical, health care and social care institutions. As for the public administration subsystem it is to be expected that simple, efficient, secure and fast electronic exchange of information will be available for public institutions and citizens, in relation with population data, infrastructure, urbanism and municipal environment.

The University of Sarajevo established the new "center" (with no special name) with responsibilities for maintaining the university telecommunication network, including its connectivity to the national and European academic and research networks. Before that the University of Sarajevo used satellite connection to Amsterdam (the Netherlands), donated by some foreign organisations (Government of the Netherlands, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Open Society Fund). Of course, this connection still exists. The new Center is to give the opportunity for students, teachers, researchers and other university staff to use the broader highway to the resources of the modern world information society. The University of Sarajevo is doing this in collaboration with the Interlink Centre, which was founded together by University of Sarajevo and the WUS Austria (World University Service - Austria). This action is supervised directly by the head of rector's department for informatics.

The World Organisation Services - Austria has been engaged in internetworking in Bosnia and Herzegovina for a long time. They follow the strategy of "filling-out the gaps" of other, bigger projects, by locating small spots of engagement with a high return-on-investment. The main sponsors are the European Union within the Inter-Community Relations Programme and the Federal Chancellory of Austria. Some of their activities are:

The Biharnet Centre continues to connect more organisations from various areas to the Bosnian academic and research network BIHARNET, like State Hospital Sarajevo, Ministry for Civil Matters and Communications in Serb Sarajevo and Ministry of Science and Culture in Banja Luka. Projects for local area networks for these organizations were also made or at least supervised by the Biharnet centre.

Please note that this report has been prepared under the sole responsibility of the ESIS II contractors.
It does not necessarily reflect the views of the Commission, nor does the Commission accept responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of information contained herein.
The ESIS Team of contractors welcomes any additional information or corrections.