INNOVATION CASE: CENTRE OF INFORMATION SOCIETY TECHNOLOGIES
(CIST) AT SOFIA UNIVERSITY “ST. KLIMENT OCHRIDSKI”
1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COMPANY.

When and how was it started and by whom?
The Centre of Information Society Technologies (CIST) is an interdisciplinary research
and training institution of Sofia University. It was established in 1999 by a Statement of
the Council of Rectors (Statement No 24/07.06.1999).
The main objective of CIST is to create and establish fruitful co-operation between the
academic community and industry, SMEs, NGOs, public administration, local
community, banking and financial institutions for co-ordinating the efforts in spreading
the IST wide implementation and use.
The research activities performed by the CIST staff have a pivotal role in integrating
awareness and understanding of ICT, as well as its implementation in Bulgarian society.
Regional development, local economic development and issues of cohesion are among
the main goals in research, analysis and development of CIST in the last years.
Strong efforts have been put into the promotion of the global society (societies without
frontiers) development using the new technologies. The research activities of the Centre
show different ways in which a large number of national institutions and organisations
can best benefit from new ICT.
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The Centre aims at assisting the processes of liberalisation and standardisation of the
social environment and its harmonization with the best European practice.
The Centre brings together the theoretical and applied interdisciplinary research in IST
and their applications in the economic, social and natural sciences. CIST provides its
capabilities at the service of the economic and social needs of the region and the country,
in its efforts to meet the standards of accession to the European Union.

Main aims
CIST wants to become a national and regional Centre of Excellence in Information
Society Technologies (IST) for South-East Europe. The Centre devotes its capacity to
strengthen the process of IST implementation. In addition, it tries to find ways to shorten
the process of research and development and industry applications.
CIST is motivated by the challenge of supporting the development, introduction and wide
use of Information Society Technologies. This challenge is addressed by performing
high-quality research on IST-based systems (give an example?), on their user-friendly
environments and on design techniques and enabling technologies.

Major markets; customer groups:
Major market areas are Education/Training, eCommerce, e Business, eWork,
Technology Transfer. Customer groups are Universities, SME's, Public Administration,
NGO's, and individuals. CIST provides consultancy, support and Internet-based
solutions, development related to applying modern IT in the process of “Going Internetbased” for customers mainly Business and Administration. Special attention is given to
E-Learning solutions as important part (and market niche) of all those “applying modern
IT” activities and “Going Internet-based” process. CIST also provides a set of courses. A
large part of these is delivered at a distance, designated to all potential "life-long
learning" audience interested.

Organisation
The Centre has one Executive Director. He manages the Centre at the operational level,
he organises the performance of research & development, training and social activities;
signs contracts with teaching staff and other experts such as specialists involved in the
implementation of certain tasks. The Advisory Council supports his work when there are
problems at university, regional, national or international level. The Financier supports
the Director in the financial management of the Centre. Coordinators manage each of the
main areas of work. Some of them have Assistants. Depending on the specific tasks, the
Centre involves a temporary staff consisting of university lecturers, experts and
specialists from the University and other institutions.
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
Name of the Executive Director: Assoc. Prof. Roumen Nikolov

Number of people working there: Except the Executive Director, there is a
permanent staff, consisting of 15 persons.

Location: 1113 Sofia; 125 Tzarigradsko Shossee, Block 2; Floor 3. The Centre has at
a disposal 10 offices and 3 study rooms.

Memberships
-

Member of Microsoft MSDN Academic Alliance - annual membership program
for technical departments in the area of Computer Science, Engineering and
Information Systems;
Member of the Oracle Academic Initiative;
Member of the Computer Associates Training Initiative;
Member of Cisco Network Academy, Regional Academy established
(http://www.cisco.com/edu/emea/academy/profiles/regional_bulgaria.html);
The Centre was the main initiator of establishing the Bulgarian Telework
Association (http://www.bg-telework.org).
Innovative products/services:
The training activities of the Centre are focused on the transfer of internationally
recognised educational and qualification programs, for example:
- International M.Sc. Programme on Educational and Training Systems Design (in
co-operation with University of Twente, the Netherlands) (http://www-it.fmi.unisofia.bg/etsd);
-
Training specialists in public administration, banking and employment services in
ISLI, FEL, BE, ELIP, ECL, FPA, ERB, SES, IT, EEIP, PACSF, HRD, OA and
ETSD1 under the PHARE TEMPUS Institutional Building Project: “Centre of
Excellence in Information Society Technologies” (http://www-it.fmi.unisofia.bg/ce/) (1999-2001).
The courses developed are targeted towards wide spectrum of audience: students,
graduating basic objectives at the university, public administration, specialists from the
business and practically all individuals interested.
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Fundamentals of Educational and Training System Design (FETSD)
Human Resources Development (HRD)
Bulgaria and Europe (BE)
Fundamentals of European Law (FEL)
European Law: Institutions and Procedures (ELIP)
Information Society: Legal Issues (ISLI)
Fundamentals of Public Administration (FPA)
Economics and Role of the Banks (ERB)
Specifics of Employment Services (SES)
Internet Technologies (IT)
Office Automation (OA)
English For European Integration Purposes (EEIP)
Public Administration Communication Skills in French (PACSF)
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CIST has built a strong competence in distance learning via Internet. It has been involved
in several international and national projects in this area (see the List of Projects with a
short explanation enclosed).
Platform for authoring and delivery of web-based courses has been developed by the
ARCADE project. An open, platform independent set of tools, automating the whole
process of courseware authoring has been designed and implemented. The web-based
courses delivered by this platform have common delivery framework incorporating user
and system management, course and curriculum management, communication facilities,
and student assessment tools.
Telematics based Distance education was designed and implemented by the DEMAND
Project. Except to the Bulgarian audience, the training course on Telematics Based
Distance Education was delivered to the Technical University of Tirana, Albania.
The unique capabilities of different media have been combined with the power of
computer networks in World Wide Web platform by MATEN project. Multimedia
Applications for Educational Telematics Networks have been developed in order to
design a rich educational environment for everyone.
A processes for transforming text/paper-based course material (at a masters level) into
an interactive distance-learning environment based on the Internet has been developed
by INTELLECT Project.
Internet connections and working practices between 2 EC (The Netherlands and UK)
and 3 CEE and NIS (Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Lituania) countries for collaborative research
and teaching have been established in the frame of Copernicus 1445 project. The Model
for lifelong, Flexible, and Distance Learning (FDL) in communication and information
technologies teacher training is appropriate for the CEE and NIS countries, and valuable
for EC countries. A range of software to enhance teaching and learning, especially CIT
and computer-aided language learning have been developed and distributed. A case study
on the application of telematics networks and services for flexible and distance learning
was carried out with teachers who teach English as a foreign language in CEE (Bulgaria,
Lithuania) and NIS (Ukraine) countries.
Multimedia authoring environment for children was designed developed and tested by
MATCH project. This is a powerful, user-friendly, transparent and open-ended
environment capable of providing authoring, multimedia, networking and collaboration
facility to the student, the teacher and the developer.
By ILPnet2 Project a Network of Excellence consisting of over 20 universities and
research institutes was established. The network actively pursues industrial relations
through its End-user-club, consisting of companies and other non-academic institutions
interested in practical applications of ILP;
Business-to-Business E-Commerce System was designed, developed and implemented
by Mall2000 Project. This e-commerce environment provides a set of services for small
and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in Bulgaria, Czech Republic and other Central and
Eastern European Countries. The system supports establishment of business contacts with
partners in the EU and elsewhere and puts a lot of attention on ensuring data security.
The Mall2000 services are based on the existing international trade standards.
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In the frame of the IWOP Project an evaluation on the impact of installing teleworking
solutions at traditional industrial SMEs, which need to integrate remote working places
with the headquarters, or allow more mobility to their workers was made. The proper
environment for the successful implantation of Teleworking tools at traditional industrial
SMEs was analysed.
The practice pilot of the PROTELEUSES Project made Promotion and Implementation
of Teleworking Tools at European SMEs of the Service Sector. The aim here was to
increase the competitiveness of European Small and Medium size Enterprises belonging
to the services sector, as well as to improve the working conditions of its staff members,
by fostering the introduction of TELEWORKING TOOLS in its working activity.
TOSCA Project made comparative social observation of call centres in 8 European
countries. The proposed study is oriented towards highlighting the work situation
characteristics of the call centres and identifies the functional typology of such centres.
Training curricula for non-academic people have been developed by EUINFOBROKER project.
CIST supports certain projects developed by VIRTECH Ltd., Sofia:
E-LIVING is a research project for a number of pan-European surveys for describing,
explaining, modelling and forecasting the changing patterns of uptake and usage of
Information Society Technologies across Europe.
FLEXWORK is a project aimed to facilitate the practical take-up of new ways of
flexible working using technologies from within and outside IST, in outlying or
technologically disadvantaged regions with special emphasis on SMEs.
The Centre cooperates with a number of local partners, such as the Ministry of Transport
and Communication, the Ministry of Economics, the Ministry of Finance, the Agency of
SMEs, Bulgarian Association of Regional Development Agencies and business centres,
Bulgarian Telework Organisation, ARC Fund, Bulgarian Industrial Association, Rila
Solutions, Virtech Ltd, Angeloo-Bulgaria and many others.
This cooperation resulted in the following international projects:
By WG-ECUA+ Project the European COmmercial SofTware ComponentS (COTS)
User Working Group was established. Its purpose is to address common problems faced
by COTS users, achieve consensus on their solutions and produce a favourable impact in
the overall COTS market.

New developments
Web brokering environment for ICT individual training will be designed and
implemented by DIOGENE Project. Then it will be evaluated with real users. The
innovative training will be based upon a domain-independent platform. It will be able to
support learners during the whole cycle of the training, from the definition of objectives
to the assessment of results through the construction of custom self-adaptive courses.
eXPERT project aims to define a light approach for e-business and e-commerce
software development, to try it out to 7 pilot projects, to collect lessons learnt and to
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disseminate the results via a network of Centres of Expertise and User companies
associated to them.
BIGEAR NET Project aims to understand and disseminate best practice in the effective
exploitation of academic research to stimulate business growth in Europe. More
innovation-friendly environment is going to be established in which the results of
academic research, be they new technology or novel processes, can de diffused more
rapidly into small or large businesses and regional communities
The EIM – CEE project aims at establishment of a CEE national training centres
system able to deliver the basic level of training on the technology transfer to
professionals, to introduce and to supervise first national courses of Euro Innovation
Managers (EIM);
PRO PLUS project will create homogenous methodology of establishing regional
programmes to stimulate the creation of profitable start-ups in 5 NAC regions. To
achieve this, individual methods from 4 MS will be integrated (of creating overall
framework conditions as well as of setting specific mechanisms such as financing
solutions, promoting university start-ups, corporate spin-offs and regional clusters).
Partners from NAC and MS will be collaborating in analysing 'state of the art' in the
NAC regions, assessing the transferability of the proposed methodology, customization,
developing regional workplans for scheme's implementation.
MECITV Project bridges a gap between Media Content Creators and Media Technology
Providers. Its main objective is to create a future authoring platform and tools to support
the media artist to develop non-linear TV-stories having better access to inspirational
contents of digital archives.
The objective of AFORO is twofold: It is first oriented to integrate, refine and validate
the knowledge of agro-food partners to identify key research demands for the next five
to ten years in the agro-food sector, and their feasibility with regard to the development
and implementation of novel e-commerce, e-business and e-work technologies, concepts
and models, into companies belonging to the agro-food industry and services. Secondly,
AFORO will produce a sensitive course of action to implement such RTD activities
within the next five years taking into consideration the potential EC competitive position,
identifying all relevant actors and generating implementation models.
GEM-NAS project will in cooperation with the industry define the needs for education
and training of engineers to meet the challenges like ways of operation, e-work, digital
business, e-commerce, extended products etc. A new curriculum for manufacturing
strategy based on ICT tools, modern pedagogic and delivery mechanisms will be
developed. The curriculum will contain 7 main modules. GEM-NAS will in co-operation
with GEM-EUROPE (IST-2001-32059) develop 3 modules - Development of extended
products, Digital business along the supply chain and End of life planning and operation.
The other 4 modules will be developed by GEM projects in Japan, USA and Australia.
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The Centre has close relationships with the Department of Information Technologies,
being initiated by some of its leading members. Thus, the Centre contributes for starting a
number of MSc programmes, e.g.:
-
M.Sc. Programme on Information and Communication Technologies
(http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/MScProgramme.html);
-
M.Sc. Programme on Artificial Intelligent
(http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/AIProgramme.html);
-
M.Sc. Programme on Management Information Systems
(http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/MBA.htm) (at the Faculty of Economics and
Business Administration, University of Sofia);
-
International MSc Programme on Educational and Training Systems Design
(together with University of Twente, the Netherlands) (http://www-it.fmi.unisofia.bg/etsd/);
-
A joint University of Binghampton, SUNY, USA and Department of IT, Sofia
University eLearning Course on eBusiness - "Management for Professionals"
(http://cllweb.cllnet.binghamton.edu/bulgaria/).
2. MORE DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INNOVATIVE PART OF THE COMPANY

What are the innovative products?
The CIST at Sofia University is a Catalyser of a wide range of technological and
methodological solutions:
- WEB-based system supporting B2B International Trade (Mall2000);
- Platform for authoring and delivery of web-based courses (ARCADE);
- Two new distance courses “Basics of multimedia for training and learning” and
“Human-computer interactions in training and learning” based on improved
FDLS model (MATEN),
- DEMAND course (DEMAND);
- 12 Web based courses, technology platforms for teleworking from SMEs
(VIRTECH, ISIS)
- Teleworking tools in the European SMEs of the service sector (PROTELEUSES);
- 13 web-based courses FETSD; HRD; BE; FEL; ELIP; ISLI; FPA; ERB; SES; IT;
OA; EEIP; PACSF (TEMPUS JEP 14047)
- … etc. (see the projects, described in the List of Projects Developed by CIST
enclosed).

Which part did the company themselves, which part was done by others?
Usually CIST develops the products in the frame of international projects with teammembers from different foreign institutions. By CIST, the Sofia University is an only
owner of those products developed under projects in which CIST is a single participant.
As it was already mentioned CIST works in collaboration with many Bulgarian partners
like SMEs, state institutions, branch organisations, etc.
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
How long did it take to develop the innovative product?
Usually the product cycle is determined by the duration of the project in the frame of
which it is developed. For some of the products proved to be very valuable we usually
apply for continuation and further development.

How many people were involved, what kind of people?
In dependence of the product’ specific, different type of specialists are involved –
scientists, experts, technicians, trainers, journalists, etc. Usually they are contracted for
the period of the task in which they are involved.

Which people (inside and outside) were essential to the success of the innovation?
The work of everybody member involved in the team is of utmost importance for the
success of the undertaking. Most essential is to have proper coordination among the team,
positive atmosphere and well-based management.

What was the most difficult part: to develop the product, to get it to the market, to
finance the project, to manage it, etc?
The first problem, which we face, is to finance an innovation project. The main point lies
in finding a company interested in financing the know-how development. We rely on
collaboration with some companies in different areas. Usually, they take part in the
process of product development. At a later phase, we are dependent by the product
marketing. During this marketing phase, the difficulty is to find solvent clients interested
by the products. It’s a common fact, that most Bulgarian SME’s use technologies and
methodologies, which are not state of the art. However, they have financial problems to
acquire new technologies and patents, due to their low turnovers, which extends the
period of return of investment.
3. BARRIERS TO INNOVATE ENCOUNTERED?

Laws, regulation, red tape, financial barriers, human resources, interest rates,
industry standards, others
Lack of:
- Enough investments in science, education and innovation;
- Legislation stimulating, encouraging the technology transfer;
- Risk Funds;
- New general rules and detailed regulations concerning the use of teleworking and
collaboration tools.
The problems, related to human resources are mostly connected with many appointments
of the personnel. The competitive environment of the labour market makes the
universities to look less attractive for the best specialists, compared with the private
companies, because of the low budget salaries. The R&D activities attract some people,
because they are a source of additional qualification and income, but the variable
intensity of these activities.
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4. EVALUATION.

What in your opinion should have speed-up the innovation project?
-

What can other companies learn from this case?
-

Better and sustainable partnerships among the research institutions and business;
Clearly defined mechanisms of technology transfer.
Good strategy and forecast planning;
Well developed management system;
Highly motivated staff;
Team oriented work with a positive atmosphere;
Openness to initiative;
Well developed system of information provision;
Good relationships with a wide range of partners.
List of projects, developed by CIST
DISTANCE LEARNING
-
Project
ARCADE:
“Architecture
for
Reusable
Courseware
Authoring
and
Delivery”(http://arcade.fmi.uni-sofia.bg:8080/arcade/index.jsp). (2000- ).
ARCADE is one of the latest developments in the Centre. It is an internal eLearning project. The
project aims to develop a platform for authoring and delivery of web-based courses; to design and
implement an open, platform independent set of tools, automating the whole process of
courseware authoring; to provide web-based courses with a common delivery framework
incorporating user and system management, course and curriculum management, communication
facilities, and student assessment tools..
-
5 FP IST-2001-33358 Project “DIOGENE: A Training Web Broker for ICT Professionals”;
(http://www.diogene.org/) (April 2002-2004).
This project is aimed to design, implement and evaluate with real users an innovative training Web
brokering environment for ICT individual training (but based upon a domain-independent
platform) able to support learners during the whole cycle of the training, from the definition of
objectives to the assessment of results through the construction of custom self-adaptive courses.
The system will use state of the art technology (metadata and ontology for knowledge
manipulation, fuzzy learner modelling, intelligent course tailoring, cooperative and online training
support) and will include a set of innovative features (dynamic learning strategies, Semantic Web
openness, Web services for Learning Object handling and property right management, Curriculum
Vitae generation and searching facilities, free-lance teachers support, assisted Learning Objectives
definition);
-
5 FP IST-2001 3220 Project “WEBLABS: new representational infrastructures for learning”;
(September 2002 – 2005);
-
PHARE TEMPUS IB_JEP 14047/99 Institutional Building Project: “Centre of Excellence in
Information Society Technologies” (http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/ce/) (1999-2001);
-
PHARE Multi-Country Programme in Distance Education DEMAND Project: “DEsign,
implementation and MANagement of telematics based Distance education (http://www-it.fmi.unisofia.bg/DEMAND/)(Feb.1998-Oct.1999);
-
5 FP INCO-Copernicus Project PL961125 under EC Directorate General XIII Multimedia
Applications for Educational Telematics Networks, MATEN. (Continuation of COP1445)
(http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/MATEN/). (Jan. 1998-Nov. 1999).
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The project attempts to combine the unique capabilities of different media with the power of
computer networks in World Wide Web platform in order to design a rich educational
environment for everyone. That environment removes the limitations and at the same time
enhances the strong points of the traditional educational system. Multimedia application of
computer networks provides people with the equal chances for life-long education, for flexible
learning not only at the school, but as well as at home at work place. The Web is delivery distance
medium, content provider, subject matter and “instructional designer” all in one. Exploring more
deeply the experience in this domain the project enables for effective and friendly flexible distance
learning systems to be created. During the project different courses based on multimedia
application of Web will be experimented, the Web multimedia tools for courseware will be
designed and implemented and centres for distance education at all participating sites will be
created;
-
INCO-Copernicus Project No PL961125 under EC Directorate General XXIII, INTELLECT
Project: “Intelligent Learning Environment for Course Telematics” (http://www-it.fmi.unisofia.bg/intellect/). (Feb. 1998-Jan. 2001).
This project aims at developing processes for transforming text/paper-based masters level course
material into an interactive distance-learning environment based on the Internet. The process of
developing hypertext features, multimedia content and intelligent agents into a student-cantered
information system have been studied. The course materials produced will be used on a number of
existing MSC courses. The practical experiences of students on those courses will be developed as
case studies. Included in the project will be the identification of changes required to implement
educational information systems of this type in different countries/ cultural settings;
-
Copernicus 1445 project "Flexible and Distance Learning through Telematics Networks: A Case
Study of Teaching English and Communication and Information Technologies" (http://wwwit.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/Cop1445/) (finished);
This project has five main strands:
1. Establish Internet connections and working practices between 2 EC (The Netherlands and
UK) and 3 CEE and NIS (Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Lituania) countries for collaborative
research and teaching;
2. Develop model for lifelong, Flexible, and Distance Learning (FDL) in communication and
information technologies teacher training, that is appropriate for the CEE and NIS countries,
and valuable for EC countries.
3. Develop and distribute a range of software to enhance teaching and learning, especially CIT
and computer-aided language learning.
4. Develop and disseminate a modular teacher training course in communication and
information technologies to support teachers who teach natural sciences and humanities in
Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Ukraine.
5. Establish and support teachers who teach English as a foreign language in CEE (Bulgaria,
Lithuania) and NIS (Ukraine) countries as a case study in the application of telematics
networks and services to flexible and distance learning. This will establish the nucleus of a
Trans-European Network for EFL teacher educators.
-
CAPE project, in co-operation with GMD – Germany, Introduction to Free Market Business
Practice (http://www.acape.org/market/) (finished);
-
Management For Non Managers Distance Training Course, joint project with University of
Binghampton, SUNY, USA
(http://cllweb.cllnet.binghamton.edu/bulgaria/) (finished);
-
INCO-Copernicus Project 977074 LARFLAST under EC Directorate General III – Learning
Foreign Language Terminology (http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/larflast/) (Nov. 1998-Oct. 2001);
-
INCO-Copernicus Project No 960106 under EC DG III, MATCH: Multimedia Authoring
Environment for Children (http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/MATCh/) (Jan 1997-Dec. 1998)
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The aim of the MATCh project is to design, develop and test a multimedia authoring environment
for children: a powerful, user-friendly, transparent and open-ended environment capable of
providing authoring, multimedia, networking and collaboration facility to the student, the teacher
and the developer;
-
National Science Fund Project: "Advanced Information and Communication Technologies in
Education: Application of Artificial Intelligence Methods; Multimedia and Distance Learning"
(finished);
-
VALUE Project – “Virtual Almanac for Logo Users and Educators” (http://www-it.fmi.unisofia.bg/%7Eiliana/value/) (finished);
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
-
INCO 977102 ILPnet2 Project: “Network of Excellence in Inductive Logic Programming”.
(http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/ILPnet2/index.htm). (Sept. 1998- Aug. 2001).
ILPnet2 is a Network of Excellence consisting of over 20 universities and research institutes. In
addition the network actively pursues industrial relations through its End-user-club, consisting of
companies and other non-academic institutions interested in practical applications of ILP;
-
TEMPUS JEN 01497 project: "Transferring Knowledge Based System Skills to Bulgaria” (19941996);
-
TEMPUS JEP 01497 (1991-1994) project: "Transferring Knowledge Based System Skills to
Bulgaria".
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
-
5 FP INCO COPERNICUS Project No. 977041 Mall2000: “Business-to-Business E-Commerce
System” (http://www.we-trade.org/Mall2000/) (Oct. 1998- Sept. 2001).
The main aim of the Mall2000 project is to design, develop and implement a business-to-business
(B2B) e-commerce environment that provides a set of services for small and medium size
enterprises (SMEs) in Bulgaria, Czech Republic and other Central and Eastern European
Countries. The system supports establishment of business contacts with partners in the EU and
elsewhere and puts a lot of attention on ensuring data security. The most appropriate metaphor
that represents the system functionality is virtual business centre. The basic services to be
implemented in the Mall2000 are: brokering, e-newsletter publishing, marketing surveying, ecommerce training and consulting, management of suppliers and products, and document-centred
services. The Mall2000 services are based on the existing international trade standards, namely:
UN/CEFACT Harmonised Commodity Description and Coding System for the coding of goods
and commodities; National Classification of Economic Activities (NCEA); ISO standards for trade
document preparation: ISO6422: UN Layout Key (UNLK); ISO7372: UN/ECE, Trade facilitation
- [United Nations] Trade Data Elements Directory –UNTDED; They provide a multilingual
support and automatic matching mechanisms.
TELEWORKING
-
5 FP IST-1999-21148 (Oct. 2000-March 2002) IWOP Project: "Best Practice Pilot for the
implementation of Integrated Internet Based Remote Working Places for Virtual Teams
developing their work at SMEs" (http://www.ideko.es/eng/proyec/iwop/).
The main objectives of the IWOP Best Practice Pilot are: 1. Evaluating the impact of installing
teleworking solutions at traditional industrial SMEs, which need to integrate remote working
places with the headquarters, or allow more mobility to their workers; 2. Analysing the proper
environment for the successful implantation of Teleworking tools at traditional industrial SMEs.
For managing these general objectives, the following operational objectives will be managed: a)
Tele-working Requirements Compilation at 8 European SMEs; b) Selection of a winning Teleworking solution for each SME. 3. 8 guided implantations at 8 SMEs.
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-
5 FP IST-1999-20852 (Nov. 2000-Apr. 2002) PROTELEUSES Project: "Best Practice Pilot for
the Promotion and Implementation of Teleworking Tools at European SMEs of the Service
Sector" (http://www.cbt.es/proteleuses/).
The major goal is to increase the competitiveness of European Small and Medium size Enterprises
belonging to the services sector, as well as to improve the working conditions of its staff members,
by fostering the introduction of TELEWORKING TOOLS in its working activity. This will be
approached aiming at promoting and fostering the introduction and use of the newest information
technologies, by introducing such technology in 10 final users' activities. The information
technology tools to be promoted are those related to the communication and information
exchange, used to enable the incorporation of teleworking activities, in the daily activities of the
firms;
-
5 FP IST-1999-12646, TOSCA Project: “A Picture of Social Observation of Call Centre”. (Jun.
2000- May 2002).
The objective of the TOSCA Project is to produce a comparative social observation of call centres
in 8 European countries. The proposed study will seek to highlight the work situation
characteristics of the call centres and identify the functional typology of such centres.
The Project is therefore studying part of a more general ‘problem area’, which includes call
centres, as "exemplary" cases of on-going changes in the field of work and, consequently,
industrial and social relations. Therefore, it is also anticipated that TOSCA will question the
relevance of the analytical tools used and, through this original study, contribute to their renewal.
-
Leonardo da Vinci Project D/99/2/09194 EU–INFOBROKER (1999-2001). The aim of this
project is to develop training curricula for non-academic people.
Projects developed by VIRTECH Ltd., Sofia and supported by CIST:
-
5FP IST-2000-25409 E-LIVING Project: “E-Living: Life in a Digital Europe”
(http://www.eurescom.de/e-living/).
This is a research project for a number of pan-European surveys for describing, explaining,
modelling and forecasting the changing patterns of uptake and usage of Information Society
Technologies across Europe. The duration of the project is 36 months - from January 1, 2001 till
December 31, 2003.
5FP IST-2001-33526 FLEXWORK Project: “Demonstrating and Promoting the Adoption of
New Ways of FLEXible WORKing Among Outlying Regions and SMEs”
(http://www.flexwork.eu.com/).
FLEXWORK aims to facilitate the practical take-up of new ways of flexible working using
technologies from within and outside IST, in outlying or technologically disadvantaged regions
with special emphasis on SMEs. Coordinator is the Waterford Institute of Technology (Ireland).
The duration of the project is 18 months - from April 1, 2002 till September 30, 2003.
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LINKS WITH INDUSTRY
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5 FP IST-2001-32790 (2001-2002) WG-ECUA+ Project: “European COTS Working Group
Extension”. (http://www.esi.es/ecua/) (Jan. 2001- Sept. 2002);
The objective of ECUA is the creation of the European COmmercial SofTware ComponentS
(COTS) User Working Group to address common problems faced by COTS users, achieve
consensus on their solutions and produce a favourable impact in the overall COTS market.
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5 FP IPS-1999-950097 INNOCONS project: “Increasing The Awareness On Innovation In The
European Construction Sector” (http://www.innocons.org) (2001-2002)
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5 FP IST-2001-34488 EXPERT Project: “Best Practice on E-project Development Methods”.
(http://www.esi.es/Expert/) (Aril 2002- 2004).
eXPERT aims to define a light approach for e-business and e-commerce software development, to
try it out to 7 pilot projects, to collect lessons learnt and to disseminate the results via a network of
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Centres of Expertise and User companies associated to them. The project teaches developers in
different SMEs, how to work effectively in an atmosphere of often changing requirements;
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5FP Innovation and SMEs Thematic Networks, BIGEAR NET Project: “Thematic Network on
Stimulation of Business Innovation and Growth from Exploitation of Academic Research”
(starting date January, 2002).
BIGEAR aims to understand and disseminate best practice in the effective exploitation of
academic research to stimulate business growth in Europe. The objectives are: to establish Best
European Practice in exploiting academic research; to create a more innovation-friendly
environment in which the results of academic research, be they new technology or novel
processes, can de diffused more rapidly into small or large businesses and regional communities;
to disseminate widely the European Best Practice on effective exploitation of academic research
and hence increase the value extracted from academic research; to pilot existing software capable
of providing greater business access to inventive steps in processes or technology and hence help
stimulate new economic activity adding to competitiveness of local regions.
5FP IPS-2000-056 EIM – CEE Project: “Euro Innovation Manager – Central and Eastern
Europe”,
starting
date
1
January,
2002
(http://www.innovationshowcase.net/01_microsoft/projects/eim_cee/eim_cee.htm) (2001-2003);
The project aims at: Establishment of a CEE national training centres system able to deliver the
basic level of training on the technology transfer to professionals, to introduce and to supervise
first national courses of Euro Innovation Managers (EIM); establishment of a system for
experience exchange, follow up training and collaboration; organisation of a common agreed
strategy on public relations leading to the recognition of EIM expert professional competency and
high ethical standards; establishment of links to other EU technology transfer agencies and settingup a system of collaboration with them; to open the roads for collaboration with EC technology
transfer institutions and to join this particular network to other professional EU networks on this
field.
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5FP Innovation and SMEs IPS-2001-41103 PROMOTOR+ Project: “Collaborative Validation
and Transfer of Regional Support Measures for Start-ups and Growth in Five NACs Regions” (to
be started in the end of 2002).
PRO PLUS will create homogenous methodology of establishing regional programmes to
stimulate the creation of profitable start-ups in 5 NAC regions. To achieve this, individual
methods from 4 MS will be integrated (of creating overall framework conditions as well as of
setting specific mechanisms such as financing solutions, promoting university start-ups, corporate
spin-offs and regional clusters). Partners from NAC and MS will be collaborating in analysing
'state of the art' in the NAC regions, assessing the transferability of the proposed methodology,
customization, developing regional workplans for scheme's implementation. Regional authorities
will be involved in organising call for proposals, biz plan competition, launching start-ups,
monitoring early stages of their business life, assessing the functionality of support mechanisms.
Dissemination will be organized to spread best practice to other regions;
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5FP IST-2002-5.1.15 MECITV Project: “Media Collaboration for Interactive TV”. (September
2002-2005).
This project bridges a gap between Media Content Creators and Media Technology Providers. The
main objective of the Project is to create a future authoring platform and tools to support the media
artist to develop non-linear TV-stories having better access to inspirational contents of digital
archives. A practical application of the new platform and tools will be production of a non-linear
interactive story for i-TV (interactive TV) based on the MHP standard via a formation of an
interdisciplinary team of artists, journalists, scientists and technicians. Ideally, this project will
unite artists, researchers and technicians, who are keen to work together in a virtual European
laboratory to produce on a long-term basis new content, formats and tools for interactive TV.
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5FP IST-02-8-1B (2002-2003) AFORO Project: “Agro-Food Roadmaps. A vision and work plan
to implement future RTD trends for the transformation of agri-food industries into digital
companies”
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(http://www.aforo.net/entradaingles.htm).
The objective of AFORO is twofold. It is first oriented to integrate, refine and validate partners´
knowledge to identify key research demands for the next five to ten years, and their feasibility
with regard to the development and implementation of novel e-commerce, e-business and e-work
technologies, concepts and models, into companies belonging to the agro-food industry and
services. Reinforcing and building consensus among a group of experiences actors in the RTD
domain for Agro-Food applications will achieve this first objective. Secondly, AFORO will
produce a sensitive course of action to implement such RTD activities within the next five years
taking into consideration the potential EC competitive position, identifying all relevant actors and
generating implementation models.
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5 FP 2001/C 321/17 (August 2002-2005) GEM-NAS Project: “Global Education in
Manufacturing - Newly Associated States”.
The manufacturing industry is a key industry. To be competitive on the global market the industry
is forced to meet new challenges in - ways of operation, e-work, digital business, e-commerce,
extended products etc. GEM-NAS will in cooperation with the industry define the needs for
education and training of engineers to meet these challenges. A new curriculum for manufacturing
strategy based on ICT tools, modern pedagogic and delivery mechanisms will be developed. The
curriculum will contain 7 main modules. GEM-NAS will in co-operation with GEM-EUROPE
(IST-2001-32059) develop 3 modules - Development of extended products, Digital business along
the supply chain and End of life planning and operation. The other 4 modules will be developed
by GEM projects in Japan, USA and Australia.
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5 FP IST-2001-37460 COCONET Project “Strategy and roadmap for research and technology
development of high industrial impact in the domain of context-aware collaborative
environments”
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5FP IST-2001-33315 EASYTRADE Project: “Global Foreign Trade Platform for SME”. CIST is
very interested and supports this project, developed by VIRTECH Ltd., Sofia. EASYTRADE is a
large-scale project whose main objective is to use and combine most advanced technologies to
promote foreign trade. Coordinator is Ibermatica S.A. (Spain). The duration of the project is 24
months - from May 1, 2002 till April 30, 2004.
TEACHING ACTIVITIES
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M.Sc. Programme on Information and Communication Technologies
(http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/MScProgramme.html);
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M.Sc. Programme on Artificial Intelligent
(http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/AIProgramme.html);
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M.Sc. Programme on Management Information Systems
(http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/MBA.htm) (at the Faculty of Economics and Business
Administration, University of Sofia);
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International MSc Programme on Educational and Training Systems Design (together with
University of Twente, the Netherlands) (http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/etsd/);
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A joint University of Binghampton, SUNY, USA and Department of IT, Sofia University
eLearning Course on eBusiness - "Management for Professionals"
(http://cllweb.cllnet.binghamton.edu/bulgaria/).