February 2001

Slovenia Summary Report (1999 - 2000)

The Ministry of Education and Sport launched the six-year Computer Literacy Development Programme (Ro) in 1994 aiming at fostering the computer literacy development and usage of information technology as well as increasing the efficiency in schools, particularly in primary and secondary ones. The Ministry has financed various events that also promote the Information Society, amongst them, e.g. an annual conference the Open Days of Slovene Education.

Other powerful ministries in terms of the Information Society activities are, e.g. the Ministry of Culture that fosters and (co-)finances the development of on-line libraries and on-line presentations of galleries, museums and other cultural institutions, and the Ministry of Health by promoting the informatisation of the healthcare sector.

The National Education Institute continued with the Computer Literacy Development Programme (Ro). Open days and seminars took place at primary and secondary as well as nursery schools. Within six years, the Government spent over 25 million euros on Ro. More than 10 thousand computers were introduced into schools (amounting to almost 17.000 computers altogether) and halls of residence, and almost all schools were connected to the Internet. In addition, teachers attended 2000 three-day seminars and 21 didactic handbooks were prepared.

3. Interesting and/or innovative public and private initiatives

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

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.

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.

The Centre for Distance Education Development participated in the Megaconference event on 11 October 1999, organised within the scope of the Internet2 Conference in Seattle. Over 70 educational and research organisations from all over the World participated. The Centre was commended for the successful participation and its presentation in the first global videoconference.

4. Main Publications and Conferences having played a major role in the process of IS development

4.1 In 1994

The Ministry of Science and Technology organised a number of international events with the aim of promoting the Information Society. In 1994, the Ministry in co-operation with the Commission of the European Union, DG III, organised the International Ministerial Conference on Information Infrastructure and Technology Diffusion in Central European Countries (6-7 September 1994, Bled, Slovenia). The main orientation for the Conference was given by the members of the High-Level Group on the Information Society headed by the Commissioner Dr. Martin Bangemann who also participated the event. Participants of the Conference adopted Conclusions and a separate Declaration on the Information Society.

4.2 In 1996

The Ministry of Science and Technology has organised or been involved in the organisation of various other international or national events, e.g. CEEC/EU Panel on Co-operation in R&D (7-8 March 1996, Bled, Slovenia), European Information Society Awareness Week - Information Society as a Challenge - How Business is Preparing to Respond (17 September 1996, Ljubljana, Slovenia). It has also played an important role within the CEEC/EU Forum on Information Society. The Ministry has been actively involved in promoting and shaping the Information Society in Slovenia by financing the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia and Institute of Information Science as well as various research and development programmes, conferences, workshops, seminars and publications related to the Information Society. It has also co-financed the development of on-line libraries.

4.3 In 1999

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)

Among those international conferences the most important events relating to the Information Society in were:

• Modern Electronics ’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 (Ljubljana, 10 November 1999)

• Ninth Telecommunications Workshop – Managing Networks and Services (Brdo pri Kranju, 22-23 November 1999)

• Statistical Days ’99 – Electronic Commerce and Statistics (Radenci, 22-24 November 1999)

• INDO’99 – Governmental Informatics for the Third Millennium (Portoroz, 6-8 December 1999)

4.4 In 2000

Very well attended event was the Teleinfos 2000 (8-10 March 2000) seminar, organised by Infos d.o.o.. It was opened by Mr Anton Bergauer, Minister for Transport and Communications. The ESIS II project was presented as the opening lecture of the telecommunications services section at the seminar.

A week later (16 March 2000), the third conference for Competitive Advantage Improvement Through Electronic Commerce took place. It was jointly organised by the Faculty of Organisational Sciences of University of Maribor, Ministry of Science and Technology and Chamber of Commerce and industry.

Another in a series of events was organised by the Science and Technology Committee in the National Assembly on 27 March: 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 event was opened by the reading of a letter from Mr Milan Kucan, President of the Republic of Slovenia, and a speech by Mr Janez Podobnik, President of the National Assembly. There were more than 50 speakers presenting their views on Slovenia’s transition into an Information Society.

The "spring 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 month after the VITEL workshop, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of University of Maribor organised the 5th Conference on Object technologies in Slovenia OTS’2000 (Maribor, 15-16 June).

A few days later, 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.

First event (July – September was IBM Forum 2000 in Portorož organized by IBM Slovenia. 250 users and vendors attended the forum. The main theme of this forum was new e-economy. "Digital economy is most important in business," said Iztok Klančnik, general manager IBM Slovenia. Also present at the forum was Carlos Da Silva, operating manager, IBM CEMA. The speaker of honor of the conference was Mrs.Nancy Ely Raphael, ambassador of the United States of America. With his presence at the conference made a good impression at the attendees also the futurist Patrick Dixon.

Portorož also hosted the ORACLE Users Conference- SIOUG (Portorož, 17. – 20. September), organized by Slovene Society of ORACLE users. They came from business, government, information and communications technology and universities. Although several presentations were dedicated to new technologies, they were also exchanging their knowledge and experience of the software and developed business solutions.

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.

6. Other key elements specific to your country

• The Executive Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia established the Informatics Committee that initiated different studies on information and communication technologies. It also prepared Chamber’s Position Paper on the Informatisation of Slovenia in 1997. The Position Paper was later presented at the Information Society ’98 Multi-Conference and published in a book with the same title (see below);

• A group of six Slovene companies known as G6 initiated the Technological Initiative ’98. It was presented at the 11th Electronic Commerce Conference at Bled, Slovenia, in June 1998, and at the Information Society ’98 Multi-Conference and published in a book with the same title (see below);

• In addition to public finances, the Open Society Institute – Slovenia aims at supporting and funding institutions of open society, and in particular various educational and cultural projects in the field of Information Society.