FACT FINDING MISSION TO ARMENIA

Geo-historical background:

Republic of Armenia (population approx. 2.7 mln) is situated to the south of the Great Caucasus, About half of its 1,200 km border is with Azerbaijan, with which the republic has unsettled territorial claims, the rest of the border is with Georgia, Turkey and Iran. Armenia has no access to the Black Sea to the west nor to the Caspian Sea to the East. Armenia became independent in October 1991, two months before the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Economically, Armenia suffered gravely during the process of disintegration of Soviet time links and economic reforms, which was accompanied by a severe energy shortage and political and military complications in the region.

Lately, the signs or recovery became apparent, the energy crisis being abated by re- launch of a major Octomberian nuclear power plant and establishing new routes for delivery of fossil fuels to Armenia (mostly through Iran). Blackouts of electricity and central heating supply which had been persistent for the last few years, practically stopped this year.

Existing computer and network resources suitable for STACCIS purposes:

National focal point:

Building up the national coordinating mechanism in Armenia is in a way facilitated by the fact that the unarbitrary focal point in the national network structure is Arminco Ltd.

Profile of the group:

Arminco Ltd. was founded in 1992 as a private company. A small group of engineers and professionals who have founded the company were actually the pioneers of computer networking in Armenia, having had started their activity with the X.25 network promoted in the Soviet Union by VNIIPAS and ACADEMNET in the end of the eighties. In March 1994 a TCP/IP satellite connection with SOVAM-Teleport Moscow was established. Two months later Arminco became the first official commercial Internet services provider in Armenia. Arminco provides its users with 3 major services: ARMINCO ONLINE, ARMINCO UUCP (or off-line) and Arminco IP (both dial-up and dedicated). A new integrated Armenia Online service was launched at the end of May 1996.

Demonstrating exceptional dedication and stamina, the nucleus of Arminco managed to keep network connections operational during the worst years of economic depression and energy crisis, providing connection even when the electricity was supplied for only 4 hours a day. Given this experience, the engineering staff of Arminco is now capable of maintaining the network operation in nearly any perceivable conditions, which should be taken into account as a very valuable source of expertise for service providers and network operators from the other countries of the region.

With the introduction of TCP/IP connection, X.25 network access and X.400 messaging / fax / telex / teletype services were not discarded and are in use for specific applications, like banking interconnection.

Being technically a service provider, in fact Arminco is at the present time a multi- profile group, offering corporate networking and telecommunication solutions, Internet training, professional World Wide Web homepage design and hosting, computer graphics and multimedia services, audio-video commercial ad design.

The reputation of the company is very high in the republic, which makes possible its operation without being much affected by natural monopoly trends of the national Ministry of Communication. Among more than 500 users in Armenia are international organizations (UN, Peace Corps. etc.), Embassies, governmental organizations, including the President of Armenia, Mairator Saint Echmiadzin Armenian Church as well as the main Armenian National data/voice carrier, ARMENTEL Corporation.

Arminco operates a very active World Wide Web server in Armenia http://www.arminco.com and assists in design, hosting and maintenance of WWW sites and homepages for other groups, companies and individuals.

Arminco operates the Network Information Center (NIC) of the Armenian top level Internet domain (.am).

Other national contacts:

Many important professional groups in Armenia are the customers of Arminco or else have well established working contacts, taking advantage of the company’s expertise, advice or assistance. Some of these groups are preparing to become new network nodes or users groups, in the course of rapid building up of network resources in the country.

At the meeting with the Deputy Minister of Education and Science Prof. A. Shahinian we were informed about several ongoing activities in the national education system relevant to the STACCIS project:

Armenian State University has recently equipped the university library with a local computer network and is interested now in assistance aimed at upgrading this resource and bringing it up to date with modern technologies. The following stages of this activity was proposed by our group, and agreed:

- Training of the librarians in the use of specialized network applications;
- Building a model CD library and integrating it with the conventionally published holdings and the library’s information support system;
- Connection to external networks (Arminco is fully prepared to provide service).

This sub-project could be materialized in the framework of STACCIS as a separate "low-cost training" package, for which the funds should be sought from external sources as a "model activity" in vitalizing resources. With the present state of technical preparedness in Yerevan and the assistance of Arminco, this training could be provided by visiting trainers from major network operators in Moscow, based on local computer/network resources. In this mode the estimation of required budget is about $10K.

A working contact for this or similar activities was agreed as the Head of the Chair of Software Development of the ASU, R.Topchian.

It was agreed that the expert of the Ministry, M. Melik-Bakhshian will receive STACCIS information through the project mailing list. It is worth noting that at that moment the Ministry was first interested in getting their own Email address, which was issued by the technical director of Arminco right after the meeting was over.

Another major university in Yerevan is the American University of Armenia - an externally operated educational body, not belonging to the national education system. Being thus outside of the scope of STACCIS, the AUA still has to be involved indirectly in the project activities, as the Director of Computer Services of AUA, I. Mkrtoumian, is also the President of Armenian Internet User’s Group.

USAID - an American charity organization is presently developing a project of training of disabled persons in utilization of global network information resources as a potentially very efficient form of social and professional rehabilitation of handicapped social groups. The project is developed in close cooperation with Arminco.

The meeting in the Ministry of the Environment and Underground Resources was attended by the First Deputy Minister S. Papian and the Head of Department R. Petrosian. At the present time there is no major activities sponsored by the ministry involving international information exchange. In cooperation with Austrian ecologists data banks for exchange of experience in applied ecological studies have been started but are now in a latent form. This work could be reactivated in course of STACCIS activities.

Another, very promising contact point in the national environmental circles is through the UNDP specialist in Armenia Dr. V. Nikogossian. The main experts working in the field could not be reached during the visit, being on trips abroad, however, Dr. Nikogossian promised to provide the connection as soon as it is possible. Dr. Nikogossian is in working contact with Arminco and can be easily communicated via this channel.

Additional contacts with international bodies active in Armenia were proposed by the Foreign Aid Coordination Center, in order to seek additional funding for the projects with educational and social impact correlated with the aims of this agency.

Through the initiative of Arminco, a meeting with Armenpress - the leading official Armenian information agency was arranged. The agency is extensively exploiting the network resources provided by Arminco, all major events in Armenia being covered through the WWW as well as by press. The director of the agency, T. Hagobian, has agreed to consider using the office space and resources of Armenpress for the future training/workshop activities in cooperation with Arminco and to provide necessary publicity for the project in Armenia.

In the discussions concerning possible forms of implementation of STACCIS in Armenia the national coordinator Dr. G. Saghian proposed, considering well established position of Arminco in the country, to consider extension of target groups in Armenia beyond the priority groups proposed in the project. As a national initiative coordinated with STACCIS, the expert group of Arminco has started preparation for a specialized training course for the National Parliament of Armenia. The first trainees of the course will be the Vice-speaker and the heads of the parliament fractions. It was agreed that the concept, the guidelines and practical recommendations developed at these courses in Armenia will be used as an implementable model for the other CIS countries, thus contributing to the development of horizontal telematics-related information links within CIS.

*) Note: personal contact with key persons in the national environment research body could not be acheved at the time of the mission. Advisor in environment Mrs. Victoria Ter- Nikigossian has volunteered to facilitate this contact when it becomes possible.