There have been many Information
Society promotion actions in the Central and Eastern European
countries during the last quarter. Governmental bodies continued
to develop nation-wide projects showing that information
technologies are a priority. The governments have made special
efforts aimed at harmonising legislation with the European
Community model. Private initiatives are still dynamic, and
conferences and workshops are numerous.
Examples of the main events that
occurred during the last quarter are detailed below.
- National programmes
were launched or implemented, such as in Latvia,
where the national program for Informatics is a priority,
and aims to ensure general electronic access to public
sector information. It determines several types of
information services which should be provided by every
public institution, and schedules the provision of
terminals placed in libraries, schools and
municipalities. Some networks are being developed at
country level as well (Estonia). In Lithuania,
the establishment of an infrastructure for Information
Society and the computerisation of Lithuanian schools
were declared as state priorities. In Slovenia, we
can note calls for projects concerning information
infrastructure technologies, and information society.
Some other calls are aimed at subsidising activities or
organisations, like technology centres, technology parks
or the employment of researchers with completed doctoral
or master degrees in industry.
- Private initiatives: we
can note an increasing awareness of e-commerce in the Czech
Republic for instance. We can also note the launch,
at beginning of October, of the e-commerce project
"e-City" by a major bank.
- Many conferences
,concerned with new technologies, have been organised. They
have been focused upon ICT applications for a number of
different industries and sectors. For example, pharmacy,
libraries, border control (Estonia) and customer
relationship management (Poland). In Bulgaria,
two important events were held: the yearly National
Conference Telecom’99 in October, with
infrastructure developments as the main focus of
discussion, and the BAIT EXPO’99, organised by the
Bulgarian Association for Information Technologies. The
fifth edition of the Romanian Computer Show, among
other subjects, dealt with "Networking Trends in the
3rd Millennium" and "ERP – bet
with efficiency".
- Collaboration with the
European Union is significant: for instance the third
conference of the European Union’s geological
meta-database program (ESPRIT program) was held in
Budapest on December 2-3, 1999. Hungary’s
geological data was the first among non-EU countries to
be added to the meta-database. In the Republic of Macedonia,
a Seminar on Intellectual Property Legislation and the
Fight Against Infringement was co-organised with the
European Commission within the PHARE programme.
- Some Web-oriented projects
were launched during this quarter. They are very
diverse. We can mention the arrival of some search
engines and portals, new electronic magazines and
newsletters. We can note the preparation of the
"Internet month" next March in the Czech
Republic. In Estonia, a conference " Net
profit: How to survive in E-Estonia" took
place on December 16th, 1999. Leading experts from
various areas shared their experiences and motivation in
investing in Internet companies and gave their opinion on
the current state of the Internet market and its
prospective development over the next 1-2 years.
