Annual Report 2000

Contents

1 Introduction

The year of 2000 is a year of challenge to UNU/IIST. In 2000, UNU/IIST received enormous demands from developing countries to expand its capacity building activities. In order to meet the demands, UNU/IIST trained 53 fellows from 13 countries at UNU/IIST or at universities in developed countries, and delivered 20 training courses in 15 countries. Among them, 12 fellows were from Africa and Latin America, and 13 courses were given in Africa and Latin America. During this period, UNU/IIST training activity reached 11 new countries: Algeria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Mozambique, Nepal, Senegal, Tajikistan, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.

Facing the challenge, UNU/IIST has felt great shortage of its resources, specially of its human resources. UNU/IIST has to mobilise external resources to meet the increasing needs of developing countries in the area of software technology. Otherwise, UNU/IIST may fail to meet needs and to keep and develop its research identity at the same time.

UNU/IIST invited 5 visitors from Denmark, Germany, India and United Kingdom to help UNU/IIST train fellows at UNU/IIST. UNU/IIST is preparing a training course on software quality and project management under a Special Service Arrangement (SSA) with the University of Swinburne in Australia. UNU/IIST sent 7 fellows to be trained at its partner universities in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and United Kingdom, and tried to identify more partners. UNU/IIST is discussing with universities in Brazil, India, Mongolia and South Africa to jointly organise training schools at those universities for the fellows from the countries in their regions.

UNU/IIST further developed its own research capacity. It researched into an integrated approach for design and analysis of mixed hardware and software systems, and established cooperative projects with developed countries for object-oriented software development. The development of a prototype of a multi-directional, multilingual document processing system made good progress. 43 technical reports were produced and 28 papers written by UNU/IIST staff and fellows were accepted by international conferences and journals for publication. UNU/IIST staff served on 19 programme and steering committees of scientific conferences. 3 technical books are being prepared - Algebraic Approach to the Design of Digital Devices, Specification Case Studies in RAISE and Duration Calculus: A Formal Approach to Real-time Systems.

We would also like to highlight two activities of UNU/IIST in 2000.
 

1. UNU/IIST-UNESCO/BEJ joint project - Improving university administration.

During 1999-2000, UNU/IIST carried out a joint project with UNESCO's Beijing office, also supported by the UNESCO Center of Macau. The aims were twofold:

(a) designing software for university administration
(b) training university lecturers in advanced software development techniques

Two young lecturers from each of Mongolia, China, and DPR Korea spent 3-4 months at UNU/IIST. Between them they produced specifications for management systems for

- university teaching
- personnel
- student accommodation
- library
- research laboratory network

A prototype of the library administration system was also produced. In July 2000 a workshop was organised by UNESCO in Beijing involving project members plus people from other universities and education administrators from the three countries. The results from the project were presented as well as ideas on how to implement them. There are good prospects for further work on implementation. We have received a proposal for an implementation project from Mongolia.

 2. International Symposium on Software Industry in Developing Countries, 22-23 August, 2000, Beijing

This Symposium was organised by UNU/IIST as a satellite event of the International Federation for Information Processing, World Computer Congress of 2000.

The computer software industry is of large and growing importance. Many governments in developing countries see software as a promising industry, because of its world-wide growth and the fact that it requires little capital investment. But there is a need for good policies, qualified professionals, product quality control and marketing. In order to meet high expectations of developing countries in promoting software industry, UNU/IIST organised this Symposium to provide an international forum for policy makers, software industry managers and developers from developing countries and developed countries to exchange their views and experiences.

This is the first international Symposium of its kind. It invited 11 speakers from Brazil, China, India, Vietnam and also from Ericsson and the Rational Software Cooperation. They represented software business providers, national bodies, government bodies and software companies. Their speeches covered the recent development of the software industry in developing countries, national policies, domestic and international markets, infrastructure for the software industry and software techniques, quality and certification.
 

UNU/IIST has been consulted by the Macau Legislative Assembly about the establishment of Macau Science and Technology Law. UNU/IIST has continued its Macau activities to promote software technology in the local community. UNU/IIST gave two courses for Macau University in this period, and 3 training courses for the Macau Meteorological Service. The Macau1999 web site marks the handover of Macau to China on 20 December 1999. This was completed by the end of March 2000. UNU/IIST has been invited to participate in the continuation of this project

Report No. 226, 1 February 2001 UNU/IIST, P.O. Box 3058, Macau

Introduction 3 to develop it into a portal web site for Macau. UNU/IIST has assisted the UNESCO Center of Macau to design and develop an Internet Library of Macau publications. UNU/IIST staff accepted invitations from the Macau SAR government and the Liaison Office of the Chinese Central Government in Macau to attend their delegations as invited international experts to visit three provinces in the western part of China. Nine agreements for the cooperation between UNU/IIST and Chinese institutions were signed in 2000. Among them, six are with institutions in the the western part of China.

In the biennium of 1998-99, by carrying out its cost-sharing policy UNU/IIST had a surplus of USD 200,000. In 2000, following this policy, UNU/IIST received USD 78,000 as project contributions from its partners, and also received contributions in kind, equivalent to approximate USD 53,000, from the institutions which help UNU/IIST train Fellows or host UNU/IIST training courses.

Dr. Xu Qiwen left UNU/IIST on 1 September 2000. Dr. Xu served UNU/IIST for 5 years and 8 months. With his knowledge and research experience in the area of software technology, he contributed greatly to the UNU/IIST training and research activities. We sincerely wish him a very bright future. UNU/IIST is advertising to recruit a replacement for Dr. Xu.

According to the UNU guidelines for projects and the UNU/IIST mission to assist developing countries to build up their education, development and research capacities in the area of software technology, in 2000 UNU/IIST regrouped its activities into 6 projects. They are

1. Formal Techniques for Software Development
2. Theory and Design Methods for Real-time Systems
3. Curriculum for Formal Software Development
4. Development of Computer Science Departments in Developing Countries
5. IT Training Courses in Developing Countries
6. IT Development in Macau

The first project is to train fellows to apply formal techniques for designing software systems. The second one is to do research with fellows on formal techniques for real-time systems. The third one is to help lecturers from developing countries teach courses on formal techniques at their home universities. The fourth one makes it possible for lecturers from developing countries to visit universities in developed countries, attend the courses they would like to teach, and learn how to present them. The fifth one represents UNU/IIST efforts to deliver training courses in developing countries according to their needs and our resources. The last one represents UNU/IIST contribution to the host society.
 

Annual Report 2000

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