Please note that the address of the "IFIP Newsletter" Editor will be changed effective 1 June 98.
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Ossining, NY 10562-4403, U.S.A
Tel. +1 9149415222
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Wolters Kluwer Takes over Chapman & Hall
Artificial Intelligence -- Trends towards Integration
Youth Summit Will be Featured at IFIP Congress '98
Plans Are Under Way for IFIP Congress 2000
Head of British Computer Society Addresses IFIP Council
IFIP Council Meets in Manchester
Who's Who in IFIP: Professor Reino Kurki-Suonio
New Working Group Charter
IFIP Member Societies Report on Their Activities
1997 International Olympiad in Informatics Held in South Africa
TC5 Report
Obituary: Professor Harold Highland
Obituary: Professor Arie Duijvestijn
Many Questions Are Raised about the Future of IFIP Publications
Just when the IFIP publications process seemed to be working smoothly, a bombshell was dropped at the March IFIP Council meeting in Manchester, U.K.: namely, the purchase of the IFIP publisher, Thomson Science, by the Wolters Kluwer publishing company. Following is a 9 December 1997 press release from Wolters Kluwer that describes the situation:
Wolters Kluwer has signed an agreement to acquire Thomson Science, comprising a number of scholarly and medical books and journals under the imprints of Chapman & Hall [C&H] and Rapid Science, among others, from International Thomson Publishing. It is expected that the deal will be closed approximately at the end of the year subject to customary regulatory review.
Operations are located in London (UK), New York and Philadelphia (USA). The German medical and science activities of Thomson Science are not included in the transaction.
An important part of the relevant Thomson Science titles fit well with the medical publications of Lippincott-Raven Publishers in the US, and the academic titles with Wolters Kluwer Academic Publishers, both fully owned operating companies of Wolters Kluwer. Wolters Kluwer is a multidomestic publishing company active in 25 countries. Wolters Kluwer has a sales level of approximately Dfl. 5 billion and has some 14,000 employees.
While the Council was meeting in Manchester, Mr. Mark Hammond, the representative of Thomson, learned that most of the C&H staff had been "made redundant." The Publications Committee chair, Dr. Roger Johnson (GB), said, "We are all very grateful to Mark Hammond and his assistants for all their work since 1994, and we wish them well for the future."
This situation reflects the upheaval that is taking place in the world of scientific publishing, with purchases of companies and mergers occurring all the time. For example, in October 1997, a merger was planned between Reed Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer (which was subsequently abandoned), and in February 1998, Wolters Kluwer announced plans to acquire Waverly Inc., a medicine and science publisher. At the time this issue of the IFIP Newsletter goes to press (the end of April), it is not known who will be responsible for fulfilling the terms of the publishing contract IFIP signed with Thomson, although Kluwer has indicated that the contract will be honored. It is hoped that there will be little disruption in the publication of IFIP books planned; however, it is difficult to imagine at this time how the production can continue smoothly with virtually all of the staff that handled IFIP books gone.
The current publication contract expires at the end of 1999, with the contract terms calling for automatic renewal for another five years unless either of the parties gives notice by the end of June 1998. In preparation for a possible renegotiation of the contract, and in response to an inquiry from the U.S. Member society, Mr. Plamen Nedkov, Executive Director of IFIP, made a preliminary study to compare the prices of IFIP books with similar books published by the IEEE Press. A thorough investigation of pricing will be carried out by the Publications Committee before negotiations with the new publisher take place.
Dr. Johnson suggested that the cost of proceedings provided to attendees of IFIP conferences should be free of royalties to IFIP. Although this would represent a loss of revenue to IFIP and the sponsoring Technical Committees, it would help the organizers to reduce the cost of the conferences. He also suggested that the discount on the cost of books to individual purchasers belonging to IFIP Member societies be increased significantly beyond the present 35%. These proposals will be raised again at the General Assembly in September.
1997 Results
The 1997 results from publications were as good as anticipated. Thirty-five books were published, and 10 800 copies of these were sold. Total revenue and royalties were up from 1996. Revenues from older books were disappointing, indicating that the bulk of the sales of conference proceedings take place within 18 months of publication. The outlook for 1998, during which 32 books are scheduled for publication, is not as good as the 1997 results.
The TC3 journal, "Education and Information Technologies," now in its third year, has more subscribers and has a more steady flow of submitted papers, but it is still not solidly established. The IFIP Executive Board decided to allocate funds to make up for the anticipated loss during the next few years.
Other Publication Matters
One IFIP book was placed on the World Wide Web in August, but no further activity is taking place with regard to electronic publication. Unfortunately, IFIP has left all initiative in this area to its publisher.
The issue of publishing conference proceedings on CD-ROM aroused concern among some of the Council participants. The proceedings of IFIP Congress '98 will consist of individual conference proceedings printed by the Austrian Computer Society, as well as all the Congress papers on CD-ROM. (Hard copy of the proceedings of one of the conferences, SEC'98, WILL be published by Wolters Kluwer.) The Organizing Committee for Congress 2000 also plans to print the individual conference proceedings locally and provide delegates with a CD-ROM containing all the papers. Some individuals are concerned that the use of CD-ROMs as the repository for conference proceedings, with no version printed by an established publisher, will result in there being no archival value to the proceedings. Unless a publisher sells copies of the CD-ROM proceedings to libraries, the papers will not be widely available. When people wish to locate a paper in a proceedings ten years from now, how will they do it? Will the U.S. Library of Congress or the British Library have copies of the CD-ROM? When technology changes, will people still be able to read CD-ROMs from the 1990s? It is too late to remedy this situation with regard to the proceedings of Congress '98, but serious thought must be given to the matter for the proceedings of other IFIP events.
by Prof. Bernd Neumann* (D)
[At the March meeting of the IFIP Technical Assembly in Manchester, Prof. Bernd Neumann (D), chair of the Technical Committee on Artificial Intelligence, presented a brief talk on the future directions of AI research. He kindly agreed to put his remarks into writing, for the benefit of the readers of the IFIP Newsletter.]
Artificial Intelligence is an active research field, which has been growing for more than four decades and involves more than 10 000 scientists worldwide. Strong international and national professional organisations have shaped the development of the field, and there is a strong tradition of regular international and national conferences - some for the field as a whole, but most of them already specialized, corresponding to the numerous subfields of AI. AI topics are covered by more than 30 international journals.
The basic goal of AI is applying information processing methods to the solution of complex problems, in order to achieve "intelligent" behaviour. To this end, AI research has developed methods at a level of abstraction higher than in conventional information processing, with knowledge representation and reasoning at the core. Problem formulations at the knowledge level permit computational solutions with formal - often logic-based - methods while preserving transparency and understandability owing to declarative representations of high-level concepts close to human thinking. Hence from a software-engineering perspective, AI methods tend to support complexity management. Furthermore, formal foundations may provide important quality assurances, e.g., correctness, completeness, and tractability.
While many traditional subfields of AI are alive and provide a healthy methodological and organisational framework for AI research (reflected, for example, in the organisation of subfields in the proceedings of IJCAI, the biennial International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence**), new, interesting topics arise, and new subfields emerge at an increasing rate. Among the many examples are data-mining, corporate knowledge systems, intelligent databases, multiagent systems, spatial reasoning, intelligent Internet information access, automatic design, and intelligent diagnosis. Clearly, not all of these topics are strictly AI topics, and not all will shape the scientific community in a sustained way; nevertheless, they signify the dynamics of AI and point to developments that deserve attention.
Driving Forces for New Directions
There seem to be at least three driving forces for new AI directions. First, there is the pull of applications. As theoretical foundations and general AI methodology have matured, AI can contribute to an increasing number of applications and may become a key technology for application developments in the information age. New applicationoriented subfields of AI focus on remaining gaps between theory and practice and lay the groundwork for commercial applications. Data-mining and corporate knowledge management are recent examples. While learning and knowledge representation provide well-established base technologies for these applications, massive research efforts over a typical span of 10 years or more are required to develop practicable solutions for the application area.
The second driving force is the integration of AI and "conventional" Computer Science. It is well known and has been often regretted that over long periods AI has evolved somewhat in isolation, accompanied by fundamental skepticism on the one hand and overly optimistic expectations on the other. This has led many AI scientists to conceive of their discipline as an unwanted child of Computer Science; hence family relations have been disturbed, in some countries more than in others. In the meantime, research inside and outside of AI has progressed in directions where more and more common ground becomes visible and possibilities for integrated methodologies arise. This goes along with the need for developing complex applications in which AI is integrated with other information processing technologies. In several areas, this integration has already taken place or is happening - for example, in logic programming, objectoriented data modelling, prototyping, type systems, correctness proving, simulation, constraint technology, and user modelling.
AI also has strong interdisciplinary ties to many neighbouring disciplines outside of Computer Science: to empirical disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, and neurophysiology, and to engineering disciplines such as process control, production automation, monitoring, diagnosis, and design.
Merging methodologies with neighbouring disciplines is the third driving force for new AI activities. New developments become possible by combining technologies hitherto developed in separate disciplines. A good example is technical diagnosis, where qualitative, model-based AI methods complement traditional engineering approaches.
While most observers will agree that these are basically positive developments, with benefits both for scientific insights and application developments, some people wonder about the future of AI. Will all this merging lead to a loss of identity of the field of AI? Clearly, new boundaries will be drawn, both between AI and application areas and between AI and Computer Science subfields. As an application area matures and grows, it is generally desirable to cluster technologies around this application area. Hence, it is natural that AI application technology should be merged with other relevant application technologies. Surely, AI will not be impoverished: there will be new applications with interesting new research challenges for AI until, once again, these applications have matured and leave AI.
With regard to the ongoing integration with Computer Science, the situation is comparable to the European integration: there will be more competition and less protection for local markets. But AI people are confident that they have a good product, and cultural ties will contribute their part to keep the AI community thriving. Scientifically, an open market and competition should be welcomed, since this will let the best ideas win, help to establish coherent theories, and put an end to the coexistence of heterogeneous nomenclature.
The Future of TC12
The IFIP Technical Committee on AI (TC12) has decided to pay special attention and provide support to applicationoriented and integrative AI activities. As a first step, a new Working Group on Intelligent Information Management has been proposed. Various areas of AI research and technology will be brought together to meet the challenge of organizing and accessing heterogeneous multimedia data, which is becoming available in abundance through modern communication technology. Application-oriented research and development will cover topics such as information brokers, data-mining tools, content-based query languages, multimedia data indexing schemes, and Web-based information services.
By means of this new activity and others yet to be established in fields not already covered by the established AI organisations, as well as by continuing our existing Working Group activities in well-chosen, strategic areas (as exemplified by the conference IT&KNOWS [Information Technology & Knowledge Systems] at the 1998 IFIP World Computer Congress, we hope to reinvigorate TC12.
* chair of TC12
** IJCAI, Inc. is an Affiliate Member of IFIP
News from Congress Organizers
One of the unique features of the 15th World Computer Congress (to be held 31 August 4 September 1998 in Vienna and Budapest) is the Youth Summit. This convocation will provide young people (from ages 20 to 25, approximately) an opportunity to express their opinions on the movement toward an information society. The European Future Forum of the Youth, in cooperation with the European Youth Parliament, will invite 50 students from around the globe to this Youth Summit in conjunction with IFIP Congress '98. Thirty-five delegates from Europe and 15 from America, Asia, Africa, and Australia will come to Vienna and Budapest, arriving the Friday before the Congress (28 August) and departing the Sunday following it (6 September).
The participants will work in five committees, with the following topics:
In addition to attending their committee meetings, the delegates will participate in team-building activities and seminars, make presentations at Congress poster sessions, and attend regular Congress technical sessions and social events. Austrian, Hungarian, and other European politicians will be invited to the committee meetings, to inform the delegates about current political developments and to discuss the views of the youth, in order to ensure an effective exchange of views among youth, politicians, and scientists. Finally, the youth delegates will deliver a summary of their deliberations and observations at the closing Congress session, from the viewpoints of recipients of information and users of information technology rather than experts in its development. It is hoped that the combination of the fresh ideas of the young people with the knowledge of the scientists will result in new projects concerning schools and universities being initiated, in cooperation with the scientists of various countries. The results of the Youth Summit will be published in an appropriate form.
The organizers encourage each IFIP Member society to support at least one student from its country to participate in the Youth Summit.
For more information about the Summit, please contact
European Future Forum of the Youth
Peter Pfannes
Josef-Ritz-Weg 14
81673 Munich, Germany
tel: 0049 / 172 / 88 42 786
e-mail: peter.pfannes@stud.uni-muenchen.de
or contact the Congress organizers
Congress Highlights
Following are key points from recent reports from the Congress Organizing Committee and International Program Committee:
For the latest and continually updated information about the Congress and its associated events, please refer to the Web page at http://www.ocg.or.at/ifip98.html or http://www.njszt.iif.hu/ifip98.html
On-line registration is provided on a secure server under https://www.ocg.or.at/regform.html
One may contact the organizers at the following locations:
Oesterreichische Computer Gesellschaft (Austrian Computer Society)
Wollzeile 1-3
A-1010 Wien, Austria
tel: +43 1 512 02 35,
fax: +43 1 512 02 35 9
e-mail: ifip98@ocg.or.at
WWW: http://www.ocg.or.at
or
John v. Neumann Computer Society
Bathori u. 16
H-1054 Budapest, Hungary
tel: +36 1 33 293 49,
fax: +36 1 33 181 40
e-mail: ifip98@neumann.hu
WWW: http://www.njszt.iif.hu
One can also find information in prior issues of the IFIP Newsletter (March '98, page 4; December '97, page 8; September '97, page 1; June '97, page 3; and prior issues).
Representatives of the Organizing Committee (OC) for IFIP Congress 2000, the 16th World Computer Congress, presented plans for the Congress to the IFIP Council at its March meeting in Manchester, U.K. The Congress will take place 21-25 August in Beijing, Peoples Republic of China.
The format of the Congress will be similar to its two predecessors, in 1996 and 1998: It will comprise a number of relatively independent conferences sharing plenary sessions (opening, closing, and keynote) and social events. The conferences suggested by the OC can be found in the March IFIP Newsletter on page 5. Members of Council told the OC representatives that more focussed conferences would be preferable. The OC solicits the suggestions of all IFIP volunteers. Council agreed that it is desirable that the host country exert a significant influence on the program.
The organizers said that the Congress is "highly endorsed and supported by the Chinese Government." A "conservative" estimate of attendance was given as 800 delegates from abroad and 1200 from China. A different presenter gave an estimate between 1000 and 1500. Two aspects of the OC report elicited concerns from the meeting participants: the plan to review submitted papers on the basis of extended abstracts only (which goes against the IFIP policy of reviewing full papers) and the plan to "publish" proceedings on CD-ROM only (see the discussion in the article about IFIP publications).
The chair of the OC is Prof. Zong Sha (PRC), but the chair of the International Program Committee (IPC) had not been appointed when this issue of the Newsletter went to press at the end of April.
Complementary Role of Management and IT Professionals Discussed
One evening during the March IFIP Council meeting in Manchester, the participants were welcomed, entertained, charmed, informed, and stimulated by Sir Brian Jenkins, president of the British Computer Society (BCS). He noted that IFIP had not met in the U.K. for 20 years and that it was propitious to have this meeting during the 50th anniversary celebration for the first stored-program electronic digital computer and the 40th anniversary of the BCS. He talked of his own professional involvement with computers and of the impact of computers on the City of London, where he had served as the 664th Lord Mayor and taken pride in calling himself an "information technologist," even while dressed in the Lord Mayor's medieval garb.
Sir
Brian Jenkins
We quote here most of Sir Brian's address.
I thought it might be useful to share with you some of our thinking at the BCS about the role of IT in business as we look forward to the next millennium - although we all of course have to survive the Millennium Bug!
In part, it is the need to address the IT problems associated with the next millennium that has brought sharply into focus for management the degree to which our businesses are dependent on IT. During my year in office, I am hoping to explore with senior management ways of ensuring that business can realise the potential for IT to be a powerful agent for change, and at the same time manage the risks that change will bring.
To make sure we identify and grasp the opportunities, we need informed consideration and decision at senior management and board level. They must be supported by a regime whereby those responsible for developing the business understand the potential of IT and those responsible for IT understand the strategic objectives of the business. There must be open cross-fertilisation of ideas and responsibilities.
There are two important organisational and resourcing requirements:
There are many mind sets to influence:
Exploiting technology as an agent for change also means the risks must be managed. As IT systems become more strategic and complex, so the impact on business of failure, delay, cost overrun or simply poor product becomes much greater. Companies are rightly focussing more on risk, and better approaches and techniques are being developed, But at the heart of managing risk is having properly qualified professional staff working to professional standards.
The IT professional community world-wide has a considerable responsibility to play its part by:
This is an exciting challenge. It highlights the critical role our discipline will have over the next 20 years. The issues we see here are to some extent mirrored on a global basis, and I am sure the deliberations of IFIP will have much to contribute. I wish you well with your meetings for the rest of this week.
After his talk, we asked Sir Brian why, after serving as Lord Mayor and while still working as chairman of a major British financial institution, he was willing to assume the presidency of the BCS. His reply can serve as a guideline for all of us: "I owe my career to IT, and I felt that I had the responsibility to serve the BCS if I were needed."
Few New Initiatives Taken
The IFIP Council met 4-5 March in Manchester, U.K., preceded by meetings of the Executive Board, Technical Assembly (TA), and related committees. The Council followed the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," preferring to defer major actions. The biggest issue involved the purchase of Thomson Science, the IFIP publisher, by the publisher Wolters Kluwer. Naturally, many matters related to IFIP publications must now be resolved. See the article with various aspects of IFIP publications. Much attention was also devoted to plans for IFIP Congress '98, the 15th World Computer Congress, to be held in August and September in Vienna and Budapest, and for Congresses 2000 and 2002. The bulk of the deliberations at the meetings concerned the work of the IFIP Technical Committees (TCs) and Working Groups (WGs). The very positive financial report was gratifying.
Although it rained every day of the meetings (at times, speakers had to raise their voices in order to be heard over the din of the rain on the roof over the Council meeting room), the welcome in Manchester was warm and sunny. The official greeting to the meeting participants was delivered at the famous Manchester United Football Club, where the soccer fans among the attendees were especially pleased to be. Sir Brian Jenkins, president of the British Computer Society (BCS), welcomed the guests with an entertaining and thought-provoking address. Also in attendance was Prof. Tom Kilburn (GB), one of the coinventors of the first stored-program electronic digital computer, "The Baby," at the University of Manchester. His partner, the late Prof. F.C. Williams, had written the following about the first successful trial:
A program was laboriously inserted and the start switch pressed. Immediately the spots on the display tube entered a mad dance. In early trials it was a dance of death leading to no useful result, and what was even worse, without yielding any clue as to what was wrong. But one day it stopped, and there, shining brightly in the expected place, was the expected answer. It was a moment to remember. This was in June 1948, and nothing was ever the same again.
In addition to being the 50th anniversary of that momentous occasion, 1998 marks the 40th anniversary of the British Computer Society. It was the concurrence of these two events that inspired the Society to invite the IFIP Council to Manchester. After meetings were adjourned one evening, the attendees were treated to a fascinating talk by Mr. Chris Burton of the BCS Computer Conservation Society about the creation of an authentic, operational replica of "The Baby" for this anniversary.
Prof. Kurt Bauknecht (CH), president of IFIP, opened the Council with a very upbeat report on the increase in the number of events sponsored by IFIP, the excellent sales figures for IFIP books, the increased interaction with UNESCO, the satisfactory state of planning for IFIP Congresses, and the fine management by the Secretariat.
IFIP officers voting in Manchester: (from left
to right) Graffendorfer, Brauer, Morris, Bauknecht, Bollerslev, Goldsworthy and Guy.
Membership Problems
A sobering note was interjected, however, by Mr. Graham Morris (GB), the IFIP secretary, in his report on IFIP membership. Several Members are having a difficult time maintaining their Membership in IFIP. Because of weak economies, some Member societies are unable to pay their dues, support the travel of representatives to the IFIP General Assembly (GA), and support representatives to IFIP TCs and members of IFIP WGs. In addition to the Member societies previously announced as being in arrears with respect to their dues, Mr. Morris indicated that the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has now lost its voting rights and the Computer Society of Nigeria has been officially expelled (despite many messages being sent, without any response). At present, IFIP has 44 Full Members, but only 36 are up to date with their dues and have a vote. Four Members may be expelled at the end of this year because their dues have been outstanding for more than three years. On the other hand, IFIP has evolved from a Federation with 15 national Members but no TCs to the present organization, which comprises 13 TCs and over 70 WGs.
A related concern was the low attendance at the committee meetings that preceded the Council: only one member of the Marketing Committee, two members of the Finance Committee, two members of the Developing Countries Support Committee, and three members of the Publications Committee were present in Manchester. One recognizes that few Member societies can afford to send a representative to a meeting in which her or his only role is that of committee member. More committee work will have to be carried out by e-mail and telephone conference calls, or other means will have to be devised for performing committee work. On the other hand, there was good attendance of Council members (all officers and all but two trustees) and TC chairs (all but one) in Manchester.
Mr. Morris also presented some interesting statistics in his report: The majority of TCs have official memberships of around 30, while TC6 has 42, and TC1 has 46; there are 11 WGs with memberships fewer than 10, the great majority (53) have memberships from 10 to 49, ten have memberships between 50 and 80, one has 120, and one has 195. Finally, Mr. Morris informed the Council that two vice-presidents, three trustees, a secretary-elect, and a treasurer-elect must be chosen by the GA in September (in Budapest).
Technical Activities
Approval was granted by the TA for new WGs to be formed and inactive WGs to be disbanded. The new WGs are WG6.10 on Photonic Communication Networks and WG13.5 on Human Error, Safety, and System Development. (Approval of WG13.5 was provisional, with final approval deferred to the TA meeting in September.) Discontinuation of the following WGs was approved by the TA: WG5.8 on Product Specification and Product Documentation, WG12.1 on Knowledge Representation, WG12.3 on Reasoning Techniques, and WG12.4 on Natural Language Processing. The name of WG5.7 was changed to Integrated Production Management from Computer-Aided Production Management. Also, a discussion was held about changing the name of TC12 to Intelligent Systems (from Artificial Intelligence), in order to reflect the increasing attention of TC12 to integrating AI and mainstream computer science and bringing AI into practice. Both TC5 (on Computer Applications in Technology) and TC12 are undergoing serious restructuring. Last September, the GA indicated that it would make a final decision this coming September concerning whether TC12 was strong enough to be continued as an independent TC. In addition to these official actions, plans were announced to form new WGs in TC1 (Foundations of Computer Science) on Term Rewriting and on Two-Dimensional Combinatorial Structures and Languages, and a new WG in TC12 on Intelligent Information Management. Information about the new and proposed WGs will appear in a future IFIP Newsletter.
Other interesting matters regarding technical activities included the following:
Financially, TC3 continues to suffer. Education, in general, has never the necessary funds to support its staff properly, and many of those that work under the TC3 umbrella have to fund their own expenses. One problem this year is the change in the Activity Management Board rules for IFIP grants for conferences. In the past, such grants have been used to offset expenses that could not be met with the low registration fees that we must offer in the education world. ... one working conference was nearly cancelled because of this change ... IFIP must continue to bear this in mind - Education needs greater funding.
Education: Distance Learning Is the Answer - But What Is the Question? was the unique title of one TC3 conference.
Congresses
IFIP Congresses '98 and 2000 are described in separate articles. In addition, Council discussed the debt of 100 000 Swiss francs (100K CHF) still owed IFIP by the Australian Organizing Committee for Congress '96, with no resolution in sight. Offers to host Congress 2002 have been received from the Canadian Information Processing Society, with Montreal as the venue, and from the Information Processing Association of Israel, with Jerusalem as the venue. The GA will choose the site in September.
Finances
There was good news from Prof. Dipak Khakhar (S), the IFIP treasurer. A surplus of 243K CHF was achieved in 1997. Of this, 50K was placed in a pension fund for Secretariat staff and 57K in a fund for special activities (which was not spent), and 37K was allocated to TC funds. The remainder, 99K, was added to the general fund, bringing the general fund to 1500K and TC funds to 393K. Income increased over 1996, and expenses declined. Royalties increased from 184K to 207K, but dues from Members decreased from 261K to 252K. While the decrease in Secretariat expenses was lauded, the decrease in spending by TCs was a matter of concern, possibly reflecting lessened activity. (This possibility, however, seems to be contradicted by the increase in the number of TC events held.)
An interesting aspect of the 1997 figures is that the portfolio management fees of 9K nearly exceeded the portfolio investment income of 10K. Recently, however, efforts have been made to improve the return on the IFIP investments. Cash-flow management has been instituted, so that more of the funds are invested and less are held in cash. Also, plans are afoot to change the investments from fixedinterest bonds to variable-rate bonds, in order to increase the return. At the end of 1998, the euro will begin to replace the currencies of several European countries. At that time, the Finance Committee will consider whether IFIP assets should remain based on the Swiss franc or be converted into another currency.
The 1997 TC leader with respect to royalties was TC5, and the leader in event proceeds was TC6. TC6 also has the largest fund balance.
Prof. Tom
Kilburn (left, GB), co-designer of "The Baby" and Prof. Kurt Bauknecht (CH),
president of IFIP, chat in Manchester.
Other Matters
Mr. Plamen Nedkov, in his role as IFIP-UNESCO Liaison Officer, reported on a request by UNESCO that IFIP carry out a project to "Elaborate a complete modular framework for training in informatics, covering the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and courses to be provided ... ." Council expressed interest in assisting UNESCO with this project. Should the activity come to fruition, it will be reported in a future issue of the Newsletter.
There was some discussion concerning whether the Newsletter should continue to be printed or be produced only in its electronic, on-line version. The Council was strongly in favor of continuing the printed version. The Editor would welcome the opinions of the readers.
A discussion revolved around reversing the decision of the 1997 GA to include the names of all WG members in the "IFIP Information Bulletin," which, in conjunction with mailing the "Bulletin" to many more people, created a significant additional expense.
A committee that was charged by the September GA to propose new activities that were previously impossible because of a lack of funds delivered its report. The three activities highly recommended by the committee were:
Further discussion took place on the proposal for a new category of membership: the International Professional Society (see the December 1997 IFIP Newsletter, page 10), which had been proposed by Dr. Bruce Shriver (USA), past president of FOCUS, the U.S. Member society of IFIP. The Computer Society of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) had announced that it planned to withdraw from FOCUS at the end of 1998, leaving ACM as its only member. The Council agreed that it was important to keep the U.S. societies within IFIP; however, it was not considered wise to change IFIP rules for only one case. Prof. Robert Aiken, the FOCUS representative, indicated that FOCUS would not be happy with any new category of membership that would not provide the same rights (including voting) and responsibilities that Full Members have. The discussion ended with the determination to solicit the opinion of the IFIP Member societies once more and to carry out further discussions with FOCUS.
Strategic planning received continued attention. Prof. Ashley Goldsworthy (AUS), who reported for the Strategic Planning Committee, said that a New Initiatives Manager and an Event Innovator should be appointed; however, no decision was reached concerning who should take responsibility.
The Council was adjourned by President Bauknecht, with many thanks to the British Computer Society for its hospitality.
Professor Reino Kurki-Suonio, the IFIP representative of Finland and chair of the Technical Committee on Software: Theory and Practice (TC2), was born in Hameenlinna, Finland. He received the M.Sc. degree in mathematics from the University of Helsinki in 1959. (During his studies, no computing was taught in Finland - the first IBM 650 computer arrived in 1958.) In 1960, when he was completing his military service, his advisor asked him to join a new group that was starting computing activities, as part of a company that later became Nokia Electronics. When he agreed, he was sent to Regnecentralen in Copenhagen, to learn about computing from Dr. Peter Naur, the editor and proponent of Algol 60.
In 1964, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki, with a thesis on formal languages and syntax analysis, which may be considered to be the first computer science thesis in Finland. Immediately afterwards, he had an opportunity to do post-doctoral research (1964-65) at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) under the guidance of the legendary Prof. Alan J. Perlis, to whom he acknowledges a debt for much of how his ideas about computing and software have evolved. While there, he was surprised by an invitation to start the first computer science department in Finland, at the University of Tampere. "In my innocence," he says, "I couldn't resist this challenge." He was officially appointed Professor of Computer Science in 1967.
In 1980, Prof. Kurki-Suonio was invited to assume a chair at the Tampere University of Technology, another school in the same city, to start a software-oriented degree program in cooperation with engineering people. A lot of effort was put into developing software-engineering education and also into cooperation with industry, rather than creating a traditional computer science department. He remains a Professor in that Department of Information Technology.
He has also held visiting positions at Stanford University (1974-75) and Carnegie Mellon University (1984-85) and worked part time at Tartan Laboratories. Over the years, he has participated in various ACM and IEEE-CS activities. Currently he is an Associate Editor of the "IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering."
His current research interests are in the specification and design methods for distributed and real-time systems. As recognition of his work, he has been invited to membership in the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Finnish Academy of Technology.
Prof. Kurki-Suonio's involvement with IFIP began as a WG2.2 member (1967-80). He then became the Finnish delegate to TC2 (since 1974), TC2 vice-chair (1992-94), and now TC2 Chairman (since 1995). He has also been the Finnish representative to the General Assembly since 1997.
He and his wife, Liisa, are the parents of three daughters. He enjoys classical music, especially chamber music, and plays the piano. He offers the following advice for getting rid of jet lag: "Take a hot sauna in the evening, and make a hole in the ice for a dip in the lake in the morning. My house is on one of the more than 60 000 lakes in Finland, where I can easily do this - except in the summer." Everyone can agree that the survivors of this regimen would probably no longer be concerned with jet lag.
In March, the IFIP Technical Assembly approved the formation of one new Working Group, provisionally approved the formation of another, and received reports of plans for the formation of additional WGs. The Aims and Scope document of the new WG is printed here; the others will appear in future issues of the IFIP Newsletter.
WG6.10 on Photonic Communication Networks
(approved by TA)
Motivation: Photonic communication networks hold the promise of solving several problems in the current generation of networks, among them being restricted transmission capacity and limited performance capability.
Aims:
Scope:
Annually, each IFIP Member society is requested to prepare a report on its activities, organization, concerns, and thoughts on its relationship with IFIP. These reports can prove valuable reading for other societies as well as the IFIP community. Following the 1997 IFIP General Assembly, Mr. Graham Morris (GB), the IFIP secretary, prepared the following summary of the 25 reports submitted to IFIP, pointing out that "This summary is no substitute for a reading of the 25 reports on which it is based."
Financial Problems
A number of Members had financial difficulties, some arising from national economic problems and others from internal problems. Albania and Bulgaria are in the former category, while France and the Netherlands are in the latter. Spain and Portugal are successfully emerging from their problems. (IFIP should consider whether there is any feasible way in which Members can profit from each others' experiences.)
National IT Policy
Some Members play an active role in contributing to national policies either as advisers or consultants or active participants in Government committees. (Armenia, Finland, Norway, Zimbabwe, and South Africa)
"ECDL"
These initials occur frequently in the reports from European Members. They stand for the European Computer Driving License, a scheme for the certification of the basic skills required to be an effective user. It has been adopted very widely in Europe, and non-European Members may find it worth exploring. [See, for example, http://www.bcs.org.uk/ecdl.htm.]
Membership Numbers
There seem to be surprising variations in size between Members, not necessarily what might be expected. Norway, for example, has 12 000 individual members and over 1200 company members. On the other hand the Netherlands' membership of 10 000 in 1992 fell to 6500 in four years. Others face a similar decline. The question usually asked is "What do I gain from being a member of my national society?" There seem to be two issues worth pursuing:
Communication
There were many references to the Internet and the way in which plans are well under way to exploit it to achieve better communication with a society's members. These arrangements could provide a golden opportunity for IFIP to tackle and solve our perennial problem of ignorance by our Members' members of IFIP's activities, and the potential value to them of IFIP. Much valuable IFIP material is already available at our Web site. What steps should we take to draw the attention of the masses to its availability, and should the scope of the material be extended in a form comprehensible to people not versed in IFIP's ways or jargon?
Reorganization
Apart from those forced to reorganize to solve financial problems, there is good evidence that our Members strive to keep up with our fast-changing marketplace, the better to serve existing members and to attract new ones. (Denmark, Zimbabwe, Germany)
Activities
Some of the technical and professional events held by Members attract enviable sizes of audience. Several of our Members are involved in organizing or running national and international competitions for young people.
Suggestions or Proposals to IFIP
Activities
Technical Committees (TCs) and Working Groups (WGs)
Major Initiatives
Members
Small and Developing Countries
Promoting IFIP
Professional qualifications
In addition to the items listed by Mr. Morris, the following caught our attention:
Reports were not received from major Member societies: Canada, China, Switzerland, and the U.K., among others. In several cases, the representatives of these countries are IFIP officers. These reports are an excellent means of communication among Member societies, and all Members are encouraged to prepare substantial reports for 1998.
IFIP Awards Prize
by Mr. Christopher Guy* (ZA)
The 1997 International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI '97) attracted more participating countries than ever before: 65 countries entered, and 61 eventually participated - 57 with teams, and 4 as observers. They assembled in Cape Town, South Africa, from 30 November to 7 December.
The IOI was initiated by UNESCO in 1987. It now forms part of an ongoing series of competitions organised by the IOI International Committee. The aim of the competition, open to contestants under 20 years of age sent by the participating countries, is to foster problem-solving and programming skills and to promote international understanding and friendship among contestants from all over the world.
Not only was IOI '97 bigger and better, but it was also the first IOI to be funded entirely by commerce and industry. In fact, no public money was involved at all, except to host the opening and closing functions. IOI '97 was a partnership between the Computer Society of South Africa, which provided the Scientific Committee and some of the manpower, Old Mutual, which was the major sponsor and provided much of the manpower needed, and the University of Cape Town, which provided the venue.
The competition itself occurred on Tuesday and Thursday. On each of these days, the competitors had to solve three problems, set by the Scientific Committee, which successfully differentiated according to problem-solving ability. No students scored 100%, very few scored 0%, and the others were well spread out. Nineteen gold, 36 silver, and 57 bronze medals were awarded at a spectacular closing function. Top honours, a gold medal and the IFIP TC3 trophy went to Vladmir Martianov of the Russian Federation. The other gold medals went to students from Asia, Europe, and North America.
Wednesday of the Olympiad week was "Microsoft International Day," which included an exhibition of "cutting-edge" technology for IOI participants and local children. Also, the participants teamed up with pupils from the wider Cape Town community to design Web pages for educational use. Three other days were for tourist activities.
The 1998 IOI will be held 5-12 September in Setubal, Portugal. Everything is proceeding very smoothly, with 600 participants from 70 delegations expected.
* vice-president of Computer Society of South Africa and of IFIP
by Mr. Jakob Vlietstra* (USA)
The IFIP Technical Committee on Computer Applications in Technology (TC5) met in Detroit on November 4th, 1997. The meeting was scheduled to take place during the CAPE'97 conference. Unfortunately, this conference had to be cancelled because of a very low registration. Gus Olling, the U.S. member of TC5, stated that this was probably because of a late start in organizing this triennial event and the low profile of FOCUS (the U.S. Member society in IFIP) and of IFIP in the United States. TC5 spent most of its time discussing its future. This was based on results of a questionnaire distributed previously. The committee discussed the objectives of TC5 and the strategy that should be followed to attain the goals. The proposed goals were evaluated and resulted in this final proposal: TC5 exists to "advance IT in order to help industry to improve global competitiveness."
The situations in the various TC5 Working Groups (WGs) were also discussed. A proposal to merge WG5.2 (CAD) and WG5.3 (CAM) will be discussed with the chairmen of both WGs. A proposal to revive WG5.8 (Product Specification) but have it focus on Product Data Management (PDM) is being studied by the chairman of TC5, Prof. Guy Doumeingts (F). In addition, it was decided to disband WG5.9 (Agricultural Applications). It was also decided to launch specific projects with limited duration and a defined scope. These projects should seek the participation of a number of WGs. Proposed were projects on "synergy between entertainment and industrial production" and "evolutionary benchmarking." The first project will be initiated by Prof. Jose Encarnacao (D). A facilitator for the second project has yet to be found.
The next TC5 meeting will take place in conjunction with the PROLAMAT conference on September 12, 1998 in Trento, Italy.
* Independent Member and former chair of TC5, and TC5 correspondent to the "IFIP Newsletter"