ESIS Extension / Slovenia / IS Promotional Activities / Update Memo 5

Spring is the ideal time for conferences and this year was no exception. Indeed, during the last three months there were a plethora of communication activities aimed at promoting the Information Society in Slovenia.

The "season" was opened by the Days of Slovenian Informatics (Portoroz, 19-22 April), organised by the Slovene Society INFORMATIKA. Two weeks later, Portoroz hosted another IT conference, organised by Microsoft Slovenija d.o.o. – The 5th NT Conference (Portoroz, 8-10 May). This year the NT conference attracted over 1000 participants and has been the best visited IT event in Slovenia so far. The speaker of honour of the conference was Mr Marko Voljc, chairman and executive officer of the largest Slovene bank – Nova Ljubljanska Banka d.d..

The series of IT related events was continued by the conference DOK_SYS 2000 – Systems for Document and Knowledge Management in Mobile Communications (Portoroz, 24-26 May), organised by the society media.doc. The "season of Portoroz IT events" was concluded by the NATO Advanced Networking Workshop on Advanced Security Technologies in Networking, organised by SETTCCE (Security Technology Competence Centre for Central and Eastern European Countries) under the auspices of the European Commission, the ICE-CAR project and the NATO Science Programme (Portoroz, 29 May – 2 June).

The 10th telecommunications workshop – Mobility in Telecommunications (Brdo pri Kranju, 15-16 May), organised by VITEL, focused on the mobile communications development. Although several presentations were dedicated to new technologies like the WAP, GPRS or UMTS, economic, social and regulatory issues of mobile communications were also discussed.

A few days later, the beautiful alpine village of Bled hosted the 13th traditional electronic commerce conference with a meaningful title 13th Electronic Commerce: The End of the Beginning (Bled, 19-21 June). Over 300 hundred participants from all over the world attended the conference. They came from business, government, information and communications technology industry and universities. The perfect organisation of the conference was provided by the Faculty of Organisational Sciences of University of Maribor, the chairman of the conference was a doyen of electronic commerce in Slovenia Professor Joze Gricar.

Within the conference, under the auspices of Mr Cene Bavec, state secretary for technology, a regional executive vendors and customers meeting was organised aiming at promoting the co-operation in electronic commerce development in the region. Another business event was led by the Slovene Information Technology Association: eEurope – A Slovene way to the Information Society. The event was organised as an electronic conference on a computer cluster with support of group work tools. The participants were discussing the initiative eEurope from the Slovene point of view and proposed key actions for a national action plan. After consolidating the report, the Association shall invite the Government to take a proactive approach and prepare the national action plan.

Promotion of High-Tech industry. Slovenia has not done enough for the promotion of its high-tech industry so far, so the Ministry of Science and Technology published a call for the selection without limitations for a complete organisation and implementation of the presentation of Slovene scientific and technological achievements, and Slovene manufacturers of high technologies at international events and fairs in 2000 (O.G. RS, No. 42/00, 19 May 2000):

The public call was not successful, so the Ministry published another call with the same content (O.G. RS, No. 57/00, 23 June 2000).

Mobile commerce outbreak. Another important field of activity with an important impact on the shaping of the Information Society is mobile communications. Slovenia had the highest growth of mobile subscribtions in 1999, but this year we may witness the outbreak of WAP servers and further on of mobile commerce. Several WAP servers have already been operational providing information ranging from leisure and culture to finance and banking.

Business information products update. In previous reports on promotional activities, we presented two CD-ROMs with information on Slovene companies, i.e. an import / export directory of Slovene Companies – SLO-EXPORT, published by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIS), and directory of Slovene companies Kompass, published by Gospodarski vestnik d.d.. Both products are updated annually and are also available on-line. Another product providing business information is iBON with information on credit ratings of active Slovene companies. Recently, iBON 2000 has been published with credit ratings for the period from 1994 until 1999 with over 400.000 statements included. The product has been developed by the company Noviforum d.o.o..

2. Publications

On 27 March, the Science and Technology Committee of the National Assembly organised a public presentation of views on Information society as a challenge for Slovenia. It was chaired by Mr Samo Bevk, Chairman of the Committee. The National Assembly published the presentations (55 altogether) in a book: The Information Society as a Challenge for Slovenia (May 2000). A CD-ROM with a multimedia presentation of event was also published by TevePika and TSE Trade d.o.o..

II. Announcement of Main Events Over the Next Three Months (July – September 2000)

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.

1 Communication activities

2. Publications