There have been a lot of
activities promoting Information Society in Central and Eastern
European countries during the last quarter. Governmental bodies
have played a key role in all the countries. They have centred
around the drafting of national programs and on the development
of IS technologies in schools. The private sector and
Universities have also initiated important actions.
Examples of the main events that
have occurred during the last quarter are detailed below.
- Launch of governmental
councils, programs and publications :
- The Bulgarian
Government has set up the Co-ordination Council
on Information Society at the Council of
Ministers, to develop and facilitate the
implementation of National Strategy National
Programme for Development of Information Society,
which was approved on October 7 by the
Government.
- In Poland, the third
version of the government document "Aims and
Directions of Information Society Development in
Poland", prepared by the State Committee for
Scientific Research is currently being discussed
by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications.
Furthermore, the report issued from the
conference "Information Technology
Development in Poland" has been published
and is also available on the web.
- Private initiatives :
in Romania, the fourth national cable communication
convention took place in September. This convention was
organised by private CATV operators and public
institutions. This years theme was the harmonisation of
Romanian and European telecommunications , and
CATV’s CEEC best practice analysis.
- A lot of conferences were
organised: for example in Poland, the Second
Scientific Conference "INFOBAZY’99 –
Databases for Science" was held in Gdansk. This
conference was organised by the Gdansk University of
Technology, the Polish Academy of Science, the Oceanology
Institute. It was financed by the State Committee for
Scientific Research in Poland. In Lithuania, 1999’s
main event will be the international conference dedicated
to Information Society that will take place on October
25-26 in Vilnius. The conference will focus on IS
promotion over several sectors : Science & Education,
Business, Government, e-commerce. This conference is
supported by the Lithuanian government. Among the
participants there will be public representatives from
different countries (France, Canada, …) as well as
representatives from the European Union – DG XIII.
- Numerous actions dedicated
to Education took place, for example, in Poland the
Ministry of Education pursued its program of targeting
the development of Internet throughout secondary schools
in the country.
