Newsletter 3. Qu. 98

It is a particular pleasure to welcome the delegates to the 15th IFIP World Computer Congress on "The Global Information Society-on the Way to the Next Millennium."This flagship event is a product of the active involvement of the Congress Program and Organizing Committees and of hundreds of IT specialists and many national computer societies around the globe. The Congress program and agendas are targeted at topical areas of information processing and are intended to disclose the current state of the art, in order to stimulate debate and to project trends for new developments, which transcend the threshold to the 21st century and lead society to the magical future of technology.

Vienna and Budapest are renowned for their beauty as historical, cultural, and technological crossroads of achievement and civilization. In the heart of Europe, we can experience the intertwining effects of technology and culture by visiting Musikverein and Vigsznhaz while listening to inspiring keynote addresses. This great feeling will go beyond the opening ceremonies and pass on to the universities of technology in Vienna and Budapest, making the IFIP Congress the world forum and platform for IT professionals to meet and discuss issues of common interest and concern.

I thank everyone who made this possible, and I look forward to personally meeting with you during the Congress days.

Prof. Zemanek to Receive Auerbach Award at Congress ’98

The third IFIP Isaac L. Auerbach Award, commemorating our founding president, will be presented to Prof. Dr. Heinz Zemanek (A) at the opening ceremony of IFIP Congress '98 in Vienna, Austria, on 31 August. The Award is presented every other year "to the individuals whose service in support of IFIP in its mission is deemed by their peers to be extraordinary." The recipients are nominated by Member societies of IFIP, and the selection is made by the IFIP Executive Board. A medallion and cash award are conferred.

Prof. Zemanek, one of the European pioneers in computer technology, was born in Vienna in 1920. His formal education, from elementary school to university, all took place in Vienna. After his military service, he started an electrical engineering company, but he soon returned to the University of Technology in Vienna in 1947 as an assistant professor, working on digital communication technology, cybernetic models, information theory, and switching algebra, slowly preparing for computer development.

From 1954 to 1959, he gathered a group of students to develop one of the earliest fully transistorized computers in Europe, the Mailuefterl. (This enterprise, having no official university backing, was supported primarily by industry, banks, and the U.S. Army.) In parallel, a project aimed at a digitized vocoder, and several projects for post office automation were carried out. When the IBM Corporation offered to establish a laboratory in Vienna centered around the Mailuefterl group and vocoder development, Prof. Zemanek moved his group there in 1961. The main achievement from 1961 to 1976 was the formal definition of the PL/I programming language. The formal definition was written in the "Vienna Definition Language," which was later extended to the "Vienna Definition Method." An IFIP Working Conference on Formal Language Description Languages in 1964 helped initiate this definition-method activity. (The Conference was the first of its type and served as a model for subsequent IFIP conferences. The first IFIP working conference proceedings volume was also the model for many hundreds to follow.) In 1976, Prof. Zemanek was appointed an IBM Fellow.

Prof. Zemanek has 500 publications to his credit, including 12 books, and he has given innumerable talks at conferences and seminars. He has also received many awards, from which he takes special pleasure in an award from the Austrian government for having organized the IFIP Conference on Human Choice and Computers and the related cooperation with the Austrian trade unions, election to the Russian Academy of Sciences, and election to the Berlin Academy of Arts, which enables him to associate with composers and other artists in that "different world."

Prof. Zemanek was present in Paris in 1959 for the first IFIP Congress. In 1962, after the formation of IFIP, he was appointed chairman of the Technical Committee on Programming Languages (TC2), serving as such until 1969. During this time, three IFIP-ALGOL documents were produced. Later, Prof. Zemanek was instrumental in creating TC4 on Medical Informatics (1967).

He was the first president of the Austrian Computer Society, and after Austria joined IFIP, in 1964, he served as its IFIP General Assembly representative until 1976. In 1967, he was elected IFIP trustee; after one year, he was elected vice-president; and he became president in 1971. In 1977, he was named the second IFIP Honorary Member. Immediately, he took over the chair of the Publications Committee (1977-1984). He has also been a member of several other committees.

TC9 on the Relationship Between Computers and Society also considers him as its father. He organized the first Conference on Human Choice and Computers (1974), where, for the first time, entrepreneurs, employees, workers, trade-union leaders, social scientists, and computer scientists came together in order to achieve cooperation, mutual understanding, and a common language. TC9 was eventually created in 1976.

On behalf of President Dorodnicyn, he supervised the 1971 Congress in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, which he opened with a speech in Slovenian. During Prof. Zemanek's presidency, he was responsible for the 1974 Congress, in Stockholm, which included the IMIA (medical informatics) Congress. Prof. Zemanek also created the Silver Core Award.

He was the editor of the 10-year, 25-year and 36-year IFIP anniversary volumes. Although he failed more than once to get an IFIP History Committee started, he has been the IFIP Historian since 1992.

Those who have had the pleasure of talking with Prof. Zemanek know him to be a man of many talents. Among his numerous interests are the 9th century Persian mathematician al-Khorezmi, the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesos, and music-especially music played or composed by computer.

IFIP is delighted to confer the third Isaac L. Auerbach award to Prof. Heinz Zemanek, a notable scientist who has served and continues to serve IFIP so devotedly.

Dr. William Olle Is Honored for Attending All IFIP Congresses

Dr. William Olle (GB) will be honored during the opening ceremony of IFIP Congress '98 for having attended all World Computer Congresses - beginning with the founding Congress, sponsored by UNESCO, in 1959. He is the only person to have been a delegate to all 15 Congresses.

In the nearly 40 years since that first Congress, Dr. Olle has been an active participant in IFIP, as the U.K. representative to the Technical Committee on Information Systems (TC8) since its inception (never having missed a meeting), as secretary of TC8 ('76-'92), and as a member of Working Group 8.1, having been involved in the organization of four working conferences. In addition, he was an invited speaker at the 1974 and 1992 Congresses. He has also served on the International Program Committees for three Congresses.

In commenting on the upcoming ceremony honoring his participation in all Congresses, Dr. Olle said, "I hope any such presentation will not preclude my attending future Congresses! Although I am already retired (in a loose sense), I am anxious to 'stay professionally involved' as long as I have the required resources to do so. I would like to think in terms of another five Congresses at least." We second that wish.

Host Societies for IFIP Congress ’98

The Austrian Computer Society (Oesterreichische Computer Gesellschaft, abbreviated OCG) was founded in 1975 by a group of Austrian scientists and IT experts, with the support of the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research. Its first president was Prof. Heinz Zemanek, this year's recipient of the Isaac L. Auerbach Award. In the same year, the Austrian Computer Society became the Austrian member of IFIP, taking over from the Austrian Productivity Center, which had represented Austria in IFIP since 1963.

The mission of OCG, which is as valid today as when it was established in 1975, is the comprehensive and interdisciplinary promotion of information processing, with due regard to its effects on man and society. In fulfilling this objective, the OCG performs several primary functions:

At this time, the OCG has approximately 760 individual members, more than 30 supporting members (companies), and 28 institutional members (societies, ministries, public organizations, etc.). The more than 40 000 members and/or employees of the latter are basically treated as OCG members.
In fulfilling its mission, the society has tried not only to have close contacts to international and regional organizations but also to sister societies throughout Europe. Today, OCG has cooperation agreements with the Czech Society for Cybernetics and Informatics, the German GI (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik), the Greek Computer Society, the Hungarian John v. Neumann Computer Society, the Swiss SI (Schweizer Informatiker Gesellschaft), and the Slovak Society for Computer Sciences.

The agreement between the Austrian Computer Society and the John v. Neumann Society was one of the first we signed. The very close and intensive cooperation between OCG and the v. Neumann Society and the favorable experience in co-organizing national and international conferences and events over the last ten years encouraged the two societies to make a joint proposal for hosting and organizing the 15th IFIP World Computer Congress in Vienna and Budapest.

The only one of the national Member societies of IFIP to bear the name of an individual is the John v. Neumann Computer Society (abbreviated NJSZT). Generally recognized as one of the greatest scientists of this century and an outstanding pioneer of computing, von Neumann grew up and spent the first half of his lamentably short life in Hungary. We therefore proudly consider him our compatriot. So did the men who, thirty years ago, decided that the country and her computer community needed a computer society. Thus, they founded one-the first in this region-and named it after him.

Recognizing the ever more important role of IT on the way to the next millennium and adapting the objectives set in 1968 to the political and economic changes brought about in recent years, NJSZT seeks to

Serving its primary goal of exchanging technical information, NJSZT regularly stages conferences and company and product presentations and runs workshops. Of outstanding professional and corporate importance is the Society's triennial congress.

We put our support behind new ideas and initiatives, helping them to materialize. One such initiative taken resulted in the first Copyright Act passed in Central and Eastern Europe. Our efforts largely contributed to setting up a law on database security. Testing the quality of software products and thereby providing guidance for our members is yet another important task. To expedite young people's education, we have set up a special standing committee. We have staged many nationwide contests in programming and have managed the Hungarian participation in similar international events. Prominent members of our Society expended their efforts writing early versions of a proposed National Informatics Strategy, which was further developed by the government. The most significant of its current projects is the introduction and establishment of the European Computer Driving License, which is coordinated by NJSZT all over Hungary.

Currently, NJSZT has 3500 individual and 200 corporate members. It is run by a Governing Board and Council. Professional work is done in forty technical divisions and groups, over ten user groups, and clubs. Regional operations of the Society are organized around branches in the 19 counties and five major townships of the country.

NJSZT represents Hungary in IFIP as well as a number of other major international organizations. It also maintains bilateral ties with other national computer societies. The long-standing, exemplary cooperation with the Austrian Computer Society culminated in our joint effort to host WCC '98.

For the overwhelming part of its existence, NJSZT has been associated with IFIP, having become a Member shortly after its foundation. What is more, it has done its best to satisfy its responsibilities therein, as difficult as conditions may have been at times. Besides organizing a number of IFIP technical events over the years, it felt privileged to host the 1987 General Assembly. Eleven years later, with many circumstances changed, it is with unchanged pleasure and hospitality that NJSZT looks forward to welcoming IFIP's top representatives to Budapest for the 1998 General Assembly.

How Will We Live, Learn, and Work in the Information Society?

In January, the IFIP Working Group on Computers and Society (WG9.2) presented the fourth Namur Award to Prof. Gunilla Bradley (S) for her research on the impact of information technology (IT) and the interrelations between techniques, organizations, and humans. (See the article in the December 1997 IFIP Newsletter.) At the Award ceremony, Prof. Bradley delivered an address, How Will We Live, Learn, and Work?, from which we present the following selections. The full text of the lecture can be found on the Web at http://www.info.fundp.ac.be/~jbl/IFIP/NALectures.html .

We are living in a time of accelerated technological development, which affects us all-in our professional lives, in our private lives, and in our roles as citizens. This is true with regard to the nature of our work, the design of our organizations, and communication between people. The term ICT [informatics and communications technology] surrounds us more and more. For me, ICT is the combination of computer technology, telecommunication technology, and media. The convergence of these three definitely creates a very powerful force....

Within social psychology, we talk about human physiological and psychosocial needs, e.g., influence, social belonging, learning and development, meaningful life content, and security. When these human needs are satisfied, the individual is involved in society, but when this is not the case-when these needs are not fulfilled - we become almost "strangers." The end result is that we feel powerlessness, a lack of norms, and meaninglessness....

I will primarily be covering six areas in my presentation: the allocation issue, transfer and growth of knowledge/power and influence, work content and work organization, human communication, stress, and ICT and higher education....

Twenty-five years ago, ... I used to close my speeches by arguing that computerization is really an issue of allocation. It has very much to do with allocating the so-called "good life."

Allocation of
work and leisure time
citizens' services (paid/unpaid)
production and reproduction

Human physical power and "thought power" are both being replaced. However, the size of the part of human life that is work-what we today call work-doesn't seem to have diminished. We have achieved a subdivision that has created one group that is overworked and one group that is shut out from the workforce. This is not necessary. More and more people could have access to a good life. The allocation question and ICT are per se an important research problem. Furthermore, ICT can support the so-called "weak" in the society: those people who have various kinds of handicaps, linguistic, physical, or intellectual. There is a need for all humans....

... What is now happening with work content and work organization? We have achieved more flexible work processes regarding both the professional role itself and leadership. Further the professional role, the learning role, and the role of citizen are becoming more and more integrated. Repetitive jobs and physically strenuous jobs, including routine work, vanish, and a total upgrading of qualifications has occurred. In parallel, the organization is flattened out. The type of organizational structure that has become more and more common is networks. Together with two doctoral students, I am carrying out a research project about the psychosocial and organizational aspects of networking. In an international perspective, more work tasks are becoming similar because software is sold worldwide, and the work tasks are carried out in a more similar way. ...

What characteristics does the network organization have, and how are people affected by this new structure? Some examples:

Direct communication between the various levels of the organization Barriers between idea and execution are disappearing Reallocation of power in the organization Continuous changing of structure and roles Openness to the surrounding world.
Social Contact and Communication between People

There is a change taking place in the structure and quantity of the contacts and collaboration between people in work life, in private life, e.g., in the residence area, and in the community as a whole. Electronic networks, electronic subcultures, and electronic communities are emerging in work and private life.

If technology is used in a proper way, it can give us more time for human contacts, but in many cases, it has produced the opposite effect. Many people are working at a computer screen the whole day and only interacting with the computer; they do not meet living human beings. The dialogue between people is running the risk of getting thinner. However, a new world is opening itself when we think in terms of the virtual company, the virtual classroom and the virtual living room. It seems as if these new opportunities provide us with an insight into the value of meeting in person-its importance for listening, trust, and emotional support and safety. It is important that the emotional development can find its place. Sometimes people can hide behind the computer screen, avoid conflicts, or avoid difficult meetings with other persons. There are experiences that in the long run could contribute to personal growth and development. Children and young persons may lose an important time in their identity development if they are exposed too early and too intensely to electronic communication.

However, the feeling of belonging established when meeting in person can be facilitated-become ennobled with the support of electronic communication. Electronic meetings can also be deepened by following up contacts in the form of meetings in person. This ought to be an important goal.
The "electronic solitude" that exists today, that is, the structural loneliness forced upon a person, has to be prevented in the ICT society, or at least be combatted and counteracted.

Our perception of time and space is changing. New opportunities for flexible work (telework), to work and learn independently of location, have changed our perception of space. Our requirements of ourselves regarding pace and tempo are becoming higher all the time. There is a change in the level of expectations (aspiration). An adaptation to the machine occurs. One gets affected by the pace of the machine in an unconscious way. The words "slow" and "fast" have quite new meanings. The same is valid for the words "close" and "far away."

There is a basic level of stress in our technological environments in large cities. It used to be called "technostress," a phenomenon at the societal level. Technostress is a totally accelerated tempo that, to a large extent, is a result of effectiveness and efficiency.

Certain ICT stress is related to the fact that we have an increased dependency on computers and networks and that the equipment must function well.

... In each new period of ICT history, there have been both risks and opportunities regarding the fulfillment of human needs. The use of information technology could empower and strengthen us, influencing our life conditions-for social belongingness, for a meaningful life content and for learning and developing ourselves.

The Award Committee is now soliciting nominations for the next Namur Award. Nominations are due before 30 November 1998. Further information can be found by referring to the item "WG9.2 Namur Award" at the following Web site: http://www.info.fundp.ac.be/~jbl/IFIP/cadresIFIPbis.html .

Proposed Working Group Charters

In March 1998, the IFIP Technical Assembly received the following reports of plans for the formation of additional Working Groups (WGs).

Equational reasoning has been at the center of many research areas in mathematics and computer science. One common approach to handling equations is to use them as rewrite rules, with which equational replacements are applied in one direction until no more replacements can be performed. Although this notion of simplification has been known for a very long time, a formal study-in particular with respect to its mechanization-did not start in earnest until the sixties. In the past three decades, term rewriting has blossomed into the most successful approach to equational theorem proving. It has also played a central role in bridging the fields of automated deduction, equational programming languages, program specification and verification, and symbolic computation. Indeed, term rewriting now plays a significant role in the most prominent conferences in theoretical computer science, programming languages, and automated reasoning.

In spite of its immense popularity, many research problems in term rewriting remain to be studied and new applications to be investigated. There is, however, no organization to coordinate research activities on a global basis. The goal of the proposed Working Group on Term Rewriting is to provide such a forum. We plan to invite the best researchers in the field to brainstorm and exchange the most recent research results. Through e-mail and informal technical meetings, we hope to better coordinate research activities around the world, to explore new applications, to form new research collaborations, and to launch new research initiatives.

The main aim of the WG is to bring together people working in this area with various backgrounds and points of view. The main topics to be addressed are:

One of the major challenges of the information society is organizing and accessing the heterogeneous multimedia data that is becoming available in abundance through modern communication technology. Various areas of AI research and technology must be brought together to contribute to meeting this challenge, e.g., knowledge representation, natural language understanding, speech and image understanding, reasoning methods, learning, and agent technologies. Recently, there has been a considerable increase in research activities and application-oriented developments related to this area, resulting, e.g., in subject-specific brokers, data-mining tools, content-based query languages, multimedia data indexing schemes, and Web-based information services.

WG9.4 Holds Conference on Implementation and Evaluation of Information Systems in Developing Countries

by Roger Harris (GB)*
and Shirin Madon (GB)**

[The following article is the combination of two separate articles, each by one of the two authors, that were printed in the April issue of Information Technology in Developing Countries, the newsletter of the IFIP Working Group on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries (WG9.4). The full text is available on the Web at http://is.lse.ac.uk/ifipwg94/ifipnews.htm .]

The fourth IFIP WG9.4 conference, held 18-20 February in Bangkok, Thailand, comprised more than 30 presentations from more than 20 countries and attracted approximately 50 delegates. (Sadly, the participation of Southeast Asian delegates was hampered because of the current economic crisis.) The aim of the conference was to study issues facing professionals when they implement technology-based Information Systems (ISs) and when they try to assess the difference such systems make for organisations and their people. The 3-day event included presentations of full research papers, case studies and practitioner papers, panel discussions, tutorials, and work-in-progress papers.

Whilst many of the presentations described problems of common concern among the IT communities of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, they simultaneously outlined issues that underlined the differences among the countries of each region. Just as anthropologists learn about their own cultures as a result of studying others, so too can IS professionals in the developed world gain an insight into the wider consequences of the use of IT on society by exploring its impacts in conditions of highly varying social, cultural, and political contexts. Although it may seem that, for many developing countries, IT remains, in the words of one presenter, an "inevitable luxury," the conference revealed a number of conditions under which IT can not only contribute positively towards development, but also where it is likely to be essential for development to occur.

There were several recurrent themes in the presentations, which we summarize in the following paragraphs.

First, there remains a lot of ambiguity concerning appropriate criteria for evaluating IS projects. In general, these criteria are input-oriented, focusing on assessing the return on investment rather than on the extent to which the desired developmental outcome has been achieved. For example, although a computerised IS might generate more information than that produced by a manual one, it remains unclear, for many applications, exactly what purpose the information will be put to. In the absence of rigorous monitoring mechanisms, the computer-based IS becomes useless. Also, the issue of what constitutes success or failure of an IS was discussed. While many projects are deemed successes or failures in terms of the technology component and the short-term objective of return on investment, many of the case studies suggested that the adoption and usage of an IS and its institutionalisation within an organisation are not short-term objectives but involve a subtle, incremental process of learning that takes place within an organisation.

Second, many of the case studies and application areas called for the creation of mechanisms to integrate informal information into the IS-both in business applications and particularly in development administration. It was argued that just because a very large and rapidly increasing stock of knowledge can be tapped quickly, thanks to advanced information technologies, developing countries should not focus primarily on the acquisition, dissemination, and use of globally available knowledge. Of key importance in many applications was not merely the provision of connectivity or access to knowledge, but whether relevant knowledge was being disseminated. The message from many of the presentations was clear: indigenous knowledge, rarely documented, is increasingly recognised as a useful but untapped resource.

Third, the desirability of embarking on computer-based IS projects in developing countries in highly politicised contexts was questioned in many presentations and panel discussions. It was pointed out that in some cases, the wider system has so many fundamental complexities of power structures, coordination, inefficient and ineffective processes, and lack of accountability that an IT project should not even be considered. But this raised an important issue concerning the role of the IS professional. In some cases, it was pointed out that the domain of IS professionals includes issues of data management and organisational change, but that politics and culture were quite beyond their control. In other sessions, the role of the IS professional was taken to be more proactive in terms of acting as a catalyst towards influencing a change in the politics within which the IS is embedded.

Fourth, a major issue is the need to relate the implementation and evaluation of ISs, which are by their nature embedded within an organisational context, within a global context. The events that occur in distant localities across the globe are increasingly influencing one another. Although many sessions exposed the problems of implementing an IS within its immediate context, such as lack of data and poor coordination amongst decision-makers and users, it was argued that the problems of local implementation are inextricably bound to a wider global context that ultimately influences the long-term sustenance of the project.

Finally, a recurrent theme in practically all the sessions was related to the need to define the "reference" disciplines that are relevant to the field of IT and development. Disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, and development studies were mentioned, and the general feeling was that in order to strengthen the body of knowledge in the field, more interdisciplinary research is needed. At the same time, the point was made that more serious attention to management-of-change literature is needed in order to sensitise researchers and practitioners to understand context and to think of process as a continuum that needs to be carefully monitored in the light of changes in the environment.

The following paragraphs summarize a few of the presentations at the conference.

The opening events included a very upbeat presentation on Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor project by Muhammad Ghazie Ismail (MAL). This ambitious project, which is the cornerstone of Malaysia's intention to become a fully developed nation by the year 2020, consists of seven key IT projects: Electronic Government, Smart Schools, Smart Cards, Electronic Data Interchange, Research and Development, Telemedicine, and Electronic Publishing/Telemarketing. The corridor already has more than 70 participating companies.

In his presentation on "Information Technology, Information Systems and Public Sector Accountability," Richard Heeks (GB) described the mixed impact that IT has had on accountability in the public sector, in some cases supporting accountability, in other cases undermining it. Apparently, IT seems to skew or undermine accountability more easily than increase it. Implementers of ISs have to understand the nature of the relationships between the various stakeholders and users of their systems in order to recognise any resistance to computerisation that might affect these relationships with regard to the accountability of public servants.

Despite the demise of the Soviet Union, the ethos of its centralized planning style continues to haunt the implementation of ISs, even in remote parts of Mongolia. According to J. Braa (N), efforts to develop a health IS in Mongolia have been restricted to the technical aspects of the system, to the neglect of the wider view of health-sector reform. Consequently, the system has not achieved its full potential. In describing the hierarchical organization of the health IS, whereby statistics gathered at the local level are summarized at district and regional levels for transmission to the central Ministry, Braa noted an intrinsic tendency of disempowerment in this upward-bound reporting system. For example, only 2% of local health-care workers were aware of the rate of infant mortality.

Mathias Nicola (D) summarized the options for developing countries wishing to introduce wireless telecommunications and suggested that wireless communication is easier and cheaper to introduce and to maintain, especially in remote and less-developed areas. The advantages and disadvantages of packet radio and satellite systems were analysed, and it was suggested that in the medium- to long-term time frame, global satellite systems would offer the most favourable telecommunication and data communication infrastructure for developing countries. Among the reasons given is that using the latest technology to obtain a competitive and durable state-of-the-art communication infrastructure enables developing countries to leapfrog many developed countries and to participate in future innovations.

Geoff Walsham (GB) provided a thought-provoking analysis of the interlocking relationships between globalisation, IT, and culture. He suggested that the Western notion of self-identity, which is rather individualistic, has poor explanatory power in the more group-oriented cultures of Asia. As an illustration, Geoff described the application of a geographic-information system in India that was intended to assist with forestry management. The intended use of the system exposed several cultural differences between the originator of the technology (USA) and its recipient (India); the latter placed less emphasis on rational analysis, did not have a map-based culture, and did not coordinate the activities of highly compartmentalized departments. In advocating support for cultural diversity, Geoff counsels IS practitioners to show sensitivity to local norms and values and argues that the appropriation of global trends will have highly variable results in particular countries, with cultural diversity mediating their effects.

Reflecting recent interest in the business value of IT, Subhash Bhatnagar (IND) described the experiences of two organisations in India that seem to have got it right. A large consumer-product company used IT to manage its supply chain, which it identified as a critical success factor. The company targeted the service it provided to its reseller customers. Subhash described how a novel measure of service was introduced specifically for the purpose of ensuring that the system implementation achieved desirable and identifiable results. In return for an expenditure of 400 million rupees, the company achieved a reduction in the value of its inventory pipeline of one billion rupees. In the other example, a courier company installed a tracking system and improved its rate of on-time delivery as well as tripled its volume with little growth in personnel. Important lessons for the use of IT were derived from the cases: target critical success factors, specify and measure benefits, change business processes, and change managerial thinking about the value of information.

During the closing panel discussion, several conference themes and the issues that emanated were reflected upon:

Some copies of the conference proceedings are available from the Asian Institute of Technology. A selection of papers will be published in a book in the near future.

Upcoming IFIP Conferences

As the multimedia marketplace becomes more crowded, ease of use is becoming a key competitive advantage. Usability and effective communication are vital to ensure the success of multimedia designs and to avoid problem of information overloading. This conference will bring together researchers and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds to exchange current knowledge in the area, discuss design problems and solutions for improving product usability, and shape future research agendas.

For further information, please contact Professor Alistair Sutcliffe Centre for HCI Design
School of Informatics
City University
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB, U.K.
tel: +44-171-477-8411, fax: +44-171-477-8859 e-mail: a.g.sutcliffe@city.ac.uk

The PROLAMAT conference is an international event for demonstrating and evaluating activities and progress in the field of discrete manufacturing. Sponsored by the IFIP Technical Committee on Computer Applications in Technology (TC5), PROLAMAT is traditionally held every three years and includes the whole area of advanced software technology for Design and Manufacturing in Discrete Manufacturing. Some 140 papers will be presented in 3 parallel sessions. The conference will be organized by the University of Trento, under the auspices of the IFIP Working Group on Computer-Aided Design (WG5.2).

For further information, please contact e-mail: prolamat@lii.unitn.it
tel: +39.0464.443140, fax: +39.0464.443141 http://prolamat.cs.unitn.it/
mail: Laboratorio di Ingegneria Informatica
via F. Zeni, 8
38068 - Rovereto (TN), Italy

The first IFIP Working Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA1) will provide a focused and dedicated forum for the international software-architecture community to unify and coordinate its effort to advance the state of practice and research. An important goal of this working conference is to facilitate information exchange between practicing software architects and software architecture researchers. This conference will serve as a "kickoff" event for a new IFIP TC2 (Software: Theory and Practice) Working Group on Software Architecture and will focus the tasks of the Working Group for its initial months.

In ComNEd ’99, the broad range of issues associated with the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) into school education systems--pre-school through 18 years--will be explored through the following themes:

Conference on Information Networks and Data Communications Held in Portugal

INDC'98, the seventh Conference on Information Networks and Data Communications, sponsored jointly by the IFIP Technical Committee on Communication Systems (TC6) and the International Council for Computer Communication (ICCC), was held 15-17 June at the University of Aveiro, in Portugal. The Conference was attended by more than 140 delegates from 17 countries.

The Conference included eight sessions, with the following themes: Mobile Networks, Social Applications, Network Protocols, Network Management and Service Engineering, Architectures for Global Networking, Performance Evaluation and Resource Management, Audiovisual Technologies and Applications, and Open and Distance Learning. In addition to the 25 submitted papers (a 50% acceptance rate) presented during the 2� days of the Conference, there were three invited papers, a keynote address by Prof. Harmen van As (A), with the title Evolution Towards Photonic Networks, and tutorials: Network Security by Ray Hunt (NZ) and Unifying Messaging System by Philipe Kelly (F).

The Organizing Committee was chaired by Professors Jorge Alves and Fernando Ramos, and the International Program Committee was chaired by Prof. Jos‚ Ruela, all from Portugal. The proceedings were distributed to delegates at registration and are currently available from the Organizing Committee (anabela@inesca.pt ) and from the ICCC Press.

Technical Committee 11:
Security and Protection in Information Systems

Deals with the reliability of information processing and the general confidence in such systems. Acts as a forum for security managers and others active in the field of information processing security.

	Working Group 11.1: Information Security Management—Promotes all aspects of the management of Information Security, from the purely managerial to more technical aspects, such as risk analysis and disaster recovery.		Working Group 11.2: Small System Security—Investigates methods and issues related to security of small systems (personal computers, local area networks, and similar installations where nobody is responsible for system administration).
	WG11.1 Chairman: Prof. Rossouw von Solms Position: Professor of Computer Science Employer: Port Elizabeth Technikon Location: Port Elizabeth, South Africa Interests: Information Security, multimedia		WG11.2 Chairman: Professor Jan Eloff Employer: Rand Afrikaans University Location: Auckland Park, South Africa
	Working Group 11.3: Database Security—Promotes wider understanding of the risks to society of database systems that lack adequate measures for security or privacy.		Working Group 11.4: Network Security—Promotes all aspects of network security.
	WG11.3 Chairman: Professor David Spooner Position: Professor of Computer Science Employer: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Location: Troy, NY, U.S.A. Interests: database security, object-oriented systems, engineering systems		WG11.4 Chairman: Prof. Sokratis Katsikas Position: Vice-Rector for Finance and Develop- ment, Professor of Computer Science Employer: University of the Aegean Location: Samos, Greece Interests: information and communication systems security, applications of adaptive estimation and control, AI_genetic algorithms
	Working Group 11.5: Integrity and Internal Control—Explores the integrity objective within IT security and the relationship between integrity in information systems and the internal control systems that are established in organizations to support corporate governance codes.		Working Group 11.8: Information Security Education—Promotes education in Information Security at the university level and in government and industry.
	WG11.5 Chairman: Mr. Leon Strous Position: EDP Auditor Employer: De Nederlandsche Bank NV Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands Interests: internal control systems, security evaluation criteria, security and audit standards		WG11.8 Chairman: Prof. Louise Yngstrom Employer: University of Stockholm Location: Kista, Sweden

In May 1983, the first International Conference on Information Security, IFIP/Sec '83, took place in Stockholm, Sweden. This conference was organized by members of the Swedish Special Interest Group on Information Security and included some people from existing IFIP committees. The organization was under the chairmanship of Mr. Kristian Beckman (S). Subsequently, a proposal to form a new IFIP Technical Committee (TC11) on Information Security was submitted to the 1983 IFIP General Assembly. The proposal was accepted, the TC was formally established, and Mr. Beckman was appointed as its first chairman.

During the second International Conference on Information Security, IFIP/Sec '84 in Toronto, the first official meeting of TC11 was held. Because of ill health, Mr. Beckman could not attend that meeting, but he asked Mr. Per Hoving (S) to act as Chairman. Unfortunately, Mr. Beckman died later that year. At the next TC11 meeting, Mr. Hoving was elected as chairman for a three-year term. The other chairs have been Prof. William Caelli (AUS) and Prof. Basie von Solms (ZA), the current chair.

TC11's annual IFIP/Sec conferences are now securely established as an integral part of the international Information Security conference scene. In addition, the annual workshop on Database Security organized by Working Group 11.3 (WG11.3) of TC11, has also established itself as a leading conference in this area. Traditionally, most WGs have held workshops and tutorials in conjunction with the annual TC 11 IFIP/Sec Conference. In line with the strategic planning of TC11, this is now changing, and more of the WGs are now starting to organize their workshops independently of the IFIP/Sec Conference. A joint conference, Communications and Multimedia Security, organized in cooperation with the IFIP Technical Committee on Communication Systems (TC6), has also established itself on the international agenda as a highly relevant conference in the area of communications and security.

In 1992, TC11 created the Kristian Beckman Award, in honor of its founder. The first Award was made in 1993 to Prof. Harold Highland (USA); the second, in 1995, went to Mr. Hoving; the 1996 Award was made to Prof. Sushil Jajodia (USA); the 1997 Award went to Prof. Donald Davies (GB); and this year's recipient is Mr. Richard Sizer (GB).

The ever-increasing trend towards distributed systems and the associated use of communication networks, as well as the tendency to use such systems and networks for increasingly sensitive applications like electronic commerce and medical-records processing, has catapulted the importance of securing and protecting electronic information during storage, processing, and transmission into the forefront of information technology research and implementation. Many systems will not be acceptable if proper solutions are not found for their security and protection. The following areas are especially important:

All in all, Information Security has never before been so important and as essential a part of IT systems and networks.

Because of the factors mentioned above, the role of TC11 has become especially significant over the last few years. TC11 has taken up this challenge and is active on several fronts through its WGs and a number of special task forces-to provide information about research and development in the areas mentioned above, and many others, to Member societies of IFIP and to the international community in general.

Beckman Award to Be Presented to Mr. Richard Sizer

The Kristian Beckman Award Committee of the IFIP Technical Committee on Security and Protection in Information Processing Systems (TC11) has announced that the 1998 Kristian Beckman Award will be presented to Mr. Richard Sizer (GB), who was proposed by the British Computer Society. The Award, named for the founder of TC11, will be presented at the end of August, during the IFIP/Sec 98 Conference, part of the 15th World Computer Congress.

Mr. Sizer is an independent consultant in risk analysis and IT security. He has had a long career involving IT security, starting in the early sixties. He has also had a long involvement with IFIP, having been the British representative to the TC on Relationship between Computers and Society (TC9) since its formation in 1976. He is also the founding chairman of the Working Group on Information Technology Misuse and the Law (WG 9.6).

Professor Benjamin Wah Has Been Named Program Committee Chair for IFIP Congress 2000

In June, the IFIP president, Prof. Kurt Bauknecht (CH), appointed Prof. Benjamin Wah (USA) as chair of the International Program Committee for the 16th World Computer Congress, to be held 21-25 August 2000 in Beijing.

Prof. Wah was born in Hong Kong. He did his undergraduate studies at Columbia University in the U.S. and received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of California in Berkeley in 1979. He is currently the Robert T. Chien Distinguished Professor of Engineering, a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and the Beckman Institute of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Previously, he has served on the faculty of Purdue University ('79-'85) and as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation ('88-'89).

His current research interests are in parallel and distributed processing, nonlinear optimization, computer networks, computer architecture, artificial neural networks, evolutionary computation, and multimedia signal processing. He has received a number of awards-most recently, the IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award.

Prof. Wah has served as the editor of a number of journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (Editor-in-Chief '93-'96), Knowledge and Information Systems (currently Honorary Editor-in-Chief), and the Chinese Journal on Electronics. He has served as conference chair or co-chair for seven conferences and as program chair or co-chair for eleven conferences. In addition, he has served the IEEE Computer Society in a number of positions, as Second Vice-President on Publications at present. Thus, he brings a great deal of experience to his new IFIP role.

Prof. Wah and his wife Christine have two daughters. In his spare time, he enjoys bicycling, tennis, and building PCs.

Shriver Book Is Published

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Computer Society has just published a book by Dr. Bruce Shriver (USA), vice-chair of the International Program Committee and chair of the Tutorial Committee for IFIP Congress '98, and Mr. Bennett Smith (USA). The book, entitled The Anatomy of a High-Performance Microprocessor-A Systems Perspective, describes in detail the microarchitecture of a high-performance microprocessor, giving an integrated treatment of platform and systems issues relating to the design and implementation of microprocessor-based systems.

A unique feature of the book is the accompanying CD-ROM, which provides a wide variety of materials, such as the complete text of the book, including figures and tables, complete "data books," articles from journals and conference proceedings, manuscripts of historical interest, standards, system specifications, and numerous video and audio clips.

News from Affiliate Members

The International Council for Computer Communication (ICCC) has published a book to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Entitled The Computer Communication Revolution-Multi-Disciplinary Retrospective and Prospective, the book was edited by Dr. S. Ramani (IND) and Dr. Pramode Verma (USA) and published by the ICCC Press in 1997. The book reflects on the past 25 years of the revolution in computer communication and its technological and societal impacts, the process in which the ICCC has had its share of contributions.

The authors of several of the contributions to this book have affiliations with IFIP: Prof. John Bennett was the first Australian representative to the IFIP General Assembly (GA); Prof. Philip Enslow (USA) was ICCC representative to the GA; Dr. Prem Gupta (IND) was co-chair of the International Program Committee (IPC) for IFIP Congress '96; Prof. Dipak Khakhar (S) is IFIP Treasurer; Dr. Ronald Uhlig (USA) has held many positions in IFIP, including chair of the IPC for Congress '94 and chair of the Technical Committee on Communication Systems (TC6); and Dr. Verma is the present ICCC representative to the GA.

The Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission, Reed E. Hundt, has observed that a major factor behind the productivity of the US is the use of computer networks. They have been called the most important tools of business developed in this decade. The phenomenal growth of the Internet and the rise of electronic commerce are now recognized by everyone. It appears obvious that such a useful technology must see very wide applications. However, this was not at all obvious a mere twenty-five years ago. Most communication experts doubted if packet switching would ever compete and survive in a world of circuit switching. Those who were technically knowledgeable could only dream of the social and economic impact that the technology would have. They could only guess what it could do for different sectors such as education and environment.

The International Council for Computer Communication was born twenty-five years ago. Its birth was very timely, as its first conference saw a major demonstration of the precursors of the Internet. The event not only attracted a thousand attendees, but also brought together a team of experts working in a wide range of disciplines. They could foresee the impact the then quiet revolution was going to have.

ICCC has grown manifoldly since then, has visited every continent and has covered every significant development in this area. ICCC has over a hundred Governors distributed around the world now. Their interests are truly multi-disciplinary. On the occasion of the Silver jubilee of the ICCC, some the Governors have written on their favourite themes under the broad scope of the title.

Among the contributions to the book are descriptions of how communication has developed:

The Economist, in a wonderful recent survey evocatively titled, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Cybernomics," has reminded us that during but the last two decades, the global network of computers, telephones and televisions has increased its information-carrying capacity a million times over. In 1960, a transatlantic telephone cable could carry only 138 conversations simultaneously. Now, a fibre-optic cable can carry 1.5 million conversations. Very soon, a fibre the diameter of a human hair will be able to transmit in less than one second the contents of every issue The Economist has ever printed in its 153-year history!

Started by a small band of enthusiastic, visionary "techies," ARPANET has evolved from a single net connecting mostly academic and research groups into an Internet with over 50,000 networks connected, and commercial activity costing billions of dollars.

Finally, it was interesting to read that Dr. Kaoru Ando (J), then Managing Director of Fujitsu, Ltd., and later president of IFIP, gave a talk at the first ICCC conference.

At its meeting in May, the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) approved the admission to membership of three societies from Central Europe-from Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and Slovenia. These societies, with two additional societies from Italy that have joined the existing Italian member, bring the number of members to 23, ranging from Iceland in the West to Cyprus in the East, including two existing members from Central Europe (Hungary and Poland).

An issue that is of concern to these new societies, as it is to the Icelandic Society for Information Processing, is the adoption of character sets by the International Standards Organization (ISO) that take no cognition of the special characters in their languages. To assist them in this work, CEPIS has formed a working group to identify the requirements and how CEPIS may contribute.

The International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) has named Prof. Jean-Claude Simon of Paris, France, as the recipient of the 1998 King-Sun Fu Prize in pattern recognition. The prize, which consists of a plaque and a cash award, is given once every two years to an individual in recognition of a technical contribution of far-reaching significance and impact on the field of pattern recognition or its closely allied fields. Prof. Simon was cited "for his contributions to the automated recognition of handwritten words and his life-long leadership in pattern recognition."

Omission

We regret that the article about the March IFIP Council meeting in Manchester, U.K. (on page 4 of the June IFIP Newsletter), omitted to state that the Council was hosted by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester (as well as by the British Computer Society). We regret this omission and are grateful to the hosts for their kind hospitality.

IFIP NEWSLETTER -- vol. 15, no. 3; September 1998

CHANGE OF ADDRESS

CONTENTS

CORRESPONDENTS

Welcome to IFIP Congress ’98 from President Bauknecht