Update October 1999: Slovenia

I. Types of Actions during the past three months

1. Calls for Projects or Proposals

Slovenia does not have an umbrella policy for the promotion of Information Society. However, there are various initiatives (some are quite ambitious while others are not) within ministries and governmental agencies aimed directly at supporting the Information Society development inside their specific areas.

One such initiative was a joint open call for tenders for research projects aimed at supporting the goals of the Strategy for the Economic Development of Slovenia (SEDS) (O.G. RS, No. 53/99, 2 July 1999). The call focused on three target research programmes for the support of the SEDS, i.e. competitiveness of economy, regional and structural development, and social development and human resource development. Within the first target research programme, strong emphasis was put on the Information Society aspects of the competitiveness of economy.

Another important open call for tenders focused on co-financing projects of Business Process Informatisation in Processing Industry. The call was published by the Ministry of Economic Affairs that continues with the implementation of the Strategy for Increasing the Competitiveness Capabilities of the Slovene Industry (adopted by the Government in 1996) on individual horizontal programmes.

Also, the Development Corporation of Slovenia jointly with the Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs published five calls for tenders for financing

development projects aimed at supporting the development of new products and technologies in industry as well as at linking industry with research and educational organisations.

More joint initiatives in this direction might be expected especially after the adoption of the Law on Supporting Businesses in the Development of New Technologies and Establishment and Operation of Their R&D Units During the Years 2000 – 2003 that is in the proceedings of the National Assembly. The Government has already ordered the Ministry of Science and Technology to take over the co-ordination of development programmes between ministries.

2. Communication Actions

During the last three months, amongst activities for the promotion of Information Society in Slovenia the communication activities have prevailed again with the educational sector being the key player.

The Ministry of Education and Sport, together with the Faculty of Computer and Information Science and Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana organised a Summer School Ro-CoLoS for primary and secondary school teachers that worked with selected pupils. The Summer School was devoted to learning and working with information and especially multimedia technology in education.

Slovene Libraries have also played an important role in the promotion of Information Society since early nineties. During last Summer, some new information centres have been established as well as "cyber cafés" like the Cyber Café Tolmin. The Cyber Café Tolmin is a project of the Ciril Kosmac Library in Tolmin, a fairly small town in a very remote area, beneath the mountains and along beautiful alpine rivers.

The first on-line Slovene TV programme was also launched. The television programme, TevePika, was the first Slovene TV programme to be launched on the Internet. The programme, which is emitted 24 hours a day, is based entirely on Slovene production with informative, educational and entertaining content. The main goals of the project are: providing fast information, distance learning, programmes on demand, multimedia and interactivity.

An intensive effort is also being made to establish new information servers. One of the most important new servers has been established by the Maribor Development Agency with the support of the Phare programme. It is called the Regional Economic Information System and is aimed at providing information on community and business organisations in the Drava Region, development of small business, tourism, foreign investments, agriculture and European Union.

Slovenia hosted some international conferences that have attracted public attention:

• Fifteenth International congress of the European Federation for Medical Informatics: Medical Informatics Europe – MIE’99, (Ljubljana, 22-26 August 1999)

• The 1999 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics – ISIE’99 (Bled, 12-16 July 1999)

• Eighth Electrotechnical and Computer Science Conference, (Portoroz, 23-25 September 1999)

3. Surveys and Studies

The Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana is performing regular measurements of Internet usage indicators in Slovenia. It is launching a new survey for the autumn of 1999.

The Motorway Company in the Republic of Slovenia together with the Directorate of the Republic Slovenia for Roads have launched a study aimed at providing the basis for establishing a new system of monitoring and providing traffic information. The study will analyse type and form of traffic information and ways of its collection and distribution. It will also identify reliable sources and the centre where information will be gathered and than distributed for the whole Slovene motorway and road system.

4. Publication of National Plans

The President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia Mr Jozko Cuk had an opening speech at the Slovene IBM Forum ’99 in Ljubljana (21-22 September). He presented a firm view of the Slovene industry, especially on the state of the development of Information Society in Slovenia and emphasised the main issues that the Chamber would focus on during the next few months in order to give a push toward faster development of Information Society and Electronic Commerce in Slovenia.

There have not been many new publications. The one that should be mentioned is probably only a translated version of the booklet Electronic Commerce for Dummies, published by Zalozba Pasadena in agreement with the publisher of the original – IDG Books World-wide. The booklet was sponsored by the first Slovene Internet commerce company, Eon and was handed out as part of its marketing activities reaching large number of potential users. It is also available on Eon’s Internet portal (http://www.eon.si/prispevki/teleban/).

5. Expertise

In terms of establishing expert groups it seems that Slovenia is not very active. Yet, there are some initiatives that might be implemented and would therefore be described in the next report.

The Slovene Chamber of Commerce and Industry hosted a meeting of the presidents of chambers of commerce from SouthEeastern (SE) Europe on 31 August 1999. The focus of the meeting was on the integration of chambers of commerce and companies in the economic reconstruction of SE Europe. One of the main proposals for the region was the setting up of an information network to enhance co-operation between companies in SE Europe, enhancement of technical and technological co-operation between companies, stimulation of promotional campaigns and small business, and identification of the present political and administrative obstacles to trade in the region. Representatives of chambers of commerce agreed to set up a working group that will prepare a proposal on a common information service.

II. Announcement of Main Event Over the Next Three Months (October – December 1999)

• Modern Electronic ’99 – International exhibition of professional electronics, telecommunications, radio and television broadcasting, production equipment, components, functional units and materials, high-technology and know-how (Ljubljana, 4-8 October 1999)
• Information Society ’99 – Second Multiconference (Ljubljana, 12-14 October 1999)
• INFOS’99 – The doorway to the 21 century (Ljubljana, 25-29 October 1999)
• Meeting for CIOs – Usage of Information technology for Electronic Commerce (Kranj, 10 November 1999)
• Ninth Telecommunications Worksop – Managing Networks and Services (Brdo pri Kranju, 22-23 November 1999)
• Statistical Days ’99 – Electronic Commerce and Statistics (Radenci, 22-24 November 1999)
• Analysis of Environment data with Machine Learning Methods – an internationally renowned seminar organised by the Centre for Knowledge Transfer in Information Technologies of the Jozef Stefan Institute together with the School of Environmental Sciences (Nova Gorcia, 8-11 November 1999).