FACT FINDING MISSION TO BELARUS

The mission was performed on October 9 - 11, 1996 by the team of UNESCO representative J. Rose, EDNES representative A. Gvishiani and EDNES manager of STACCIS project A. Eliutin.

Geo-historical background:

Republic of Belarus (population approx. 10 mln.) is situated in the Eastern part of central Europe, bordering the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland. Belarus became independent for the first time in its history in 1991. Being among the initiators of the CIS, the Republic of Belarus has close economic and political links with neighboring CIS countries. Minsk - the capital of Belarus - is also the capital city of the CIS and hosts most of inter-CIS events. Belarus is the only CIS country which has fully abandoned trade barriers with Russia and agreed on duty-free trade.

In the USSR Belarus was one of the most important industrial regions, producing most of heavy trucks and agricultural machinery for the union. The trans-republican highway is a part of European highway system (E8) and serves as a main gateway to Western Europe for automobile traffic.

Official languages in Belarus are Belorussian and Russian, which are very closely related.

Existing computer and network resources suitable for STACCIS purposes:

As in the other republics in the former USSR, a packet switched network Belpack was launched in the eighties. Based on X.25 protocol and using mostly terrestrial physical channels, it can only be accessed now at 64 kbps.

Other operational network connections in Belarus include:

The two most important networks for the purposes of STACCIS are UNIBEL and BASNet - both national academic and research networks. The reasons for developing two separate (but interconnected) networks in a country with a relatively small user base, necessarily involving some duplication of effort, apparently results primarily from institutional policies of their respective sponsors.

UNIBEL was started in Belarus in 1992 with support from the Ministry of Education and Science, and was upgraded to full international connectivity in 1994 by a 19.2 kb/s dedicated line to the Polish national research network in Warsaw. UNIBEL provides connectivity to more than fifty academic and research institutions hosting about twenty-five dedicated Internet links, 100 dial-up Internet links and 300 e-mail only clients. A fiber optics backbone ring in central Minsk, built with support from the Soros Foundation, is scheduled to open in 1996 to serve more than 100 public sector institutions. UNIBEL been operating thus far as a private company (Open Contact), but discussions are underway to transform it into a non-profit association of public sector users.

The Ministry of Education and Science is strongly concerned with promoting the use telematics in education and educational management in Belarus. As one element in this effort, the Ministry sponsored an initiative of the Soros and Eurasia Foundations to finance the launching of an "Internet Center" in Belarus State Polytechnic Academy (a technical university). This center provides training and facilities for Internet access for all interested students in Minsk (primarily secondary school students).

The computer network of the Belarus Academy of Sciences, BAS-NET, gained its own international connectivity in 1993, and now has two dedicated channels for Internet access (14.4 kb/s to the Polish national research network in Warsaw and 64 kb/s to the DESY research institute in Hamburg). BAS-NET interconnects (with communication techniques including FDDI, Ethernet, dedicated lines and dial-up) 26 nodes which are mainly institutes of the Academy.

A recent Presidential decree allocating about US$1,000,000 for the national science and education network. Being seriously concerned by the limitations imposed by the outgoing communication channels, the Ministry of Education and Science applied within this program the national Ministry of Communications to authorize installation of a dedicated academic satellite link. Also within the program, a new 27 km North-South fiber optics backbone in Minsk, connected to the ring structure of BAS-NET is under development. This national program will be coordinated by the Informatization Fund of Belarus.

The Institute of heat and Mass Transfer, Academy of Sciences of Belarus, uses an exclusive 28.8 kb/s connection to FreeNet - a major academic service provider in Russia and other FSU countries.

Another Academy of Sciences body - the Institute of High Energy Particles - has installed a separate satellite channel via Russian "Raduga-35" satellite to RadioMSU node. The channel is financed by INTAS for another 15 months (until the end of 1997). The main connectivity provider in Belarus - BelTeleCom, is capable of providing a 2 Mb/s link to Hamburg in Germany. However, the strategy of the usage of this link is not clear yet. If allocated only for academic users, it is going to be too expensive for many of them (estimated $20,000 per month per institution); on the other hand, if all the commercial traffic is routed to the same channel, its 2 Mb/s capacity will be saturated very soon.

National focal point:

Belarus Fund of Informatization is proposed as the national STACCIS Coordinator in Belarus. This Fund is a government organization, within the office of the President, responsible for administering all public sector funding for computerization. The Fund plays the leading role in the ongoing activities aimed at upgrading of Belorussian academic networks and has good working contacts with both the national Academy of Sciences and educational bodies.

Other national contacts:

The two most important computer centers from the point of view of STACCIS implementation are the Computer Analytical Information Processing Systems Center of the Academy, which is the coordinating center of BAS-NET, has participated in a number of international projects and has received grants from the European Union (COPERNICUS and INTAS), NATO, the Soros Foundation, UNESCO/IIP and German bilateral support. Of special note is the Web-based Regional Information Center (RICE) for research support in Belarus established within the COPERNICUS program. The Center is also involved in some commercial Internet services through joint venture companies.

The Center cooperates with the United States Industry Coalition (USIC), sponsored by the US Department of Energy, by organizing project management training courses in Minsk for CIS partners in its program for Eastern European co-operation. These courses include computerized techniques for project development and management and make use of both distance education and face-to-face methods. The Center would be interested in developing similar activities to help the CIS STACCIS partners to prepare and manage new grant proposals, particularly to the various concerned CEC programs.

Presently, the Center is developing several important programs in education, including advanced studies for school teachers of informatics and testing educational software for teaching physics, mathematics and foreign languages (the latter under supervision of the Belarus Linguistic University).

The Center has its own well equipped training facilities, based on a Pentium-based computer laboratory with a Spark station and optical fiber terminal equipment for high speed outgoing connection. This facility was financed by the Soros foundation. The Center acts also as the contact point between the Soros Foundation and national user groups. For instance, funds have already been allocated for the Internet connection of the National Medical Library and the Belorussian Center for Medical Technologies, both projects being coordinated by the Center.

The development of the environmental research and management component of STACCIS was reinforced during the mission by the agreement of the Chairman of the Belarus National Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Committee, Prof. V. Soldatov, to serve as the national domain coordinator in this field. It was agreed that the EURO MAB 6 conference scheduled in September 1997 would provide a good opportunity to organize STACCIS telematics demonstrations and training in the environmental area. The mission also provided an opportunity to present STACCIS to the International Academic Conference "Ten Years after the Chernobyl Catastrophe", organized with UNESCO support, and to make contacts with concerned scientists in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. During the Conference Prof. M. Pikulik, director of the Institute of Zoology, Academy of Sciences of Belarus, volunteered to assist STACCIS related information exchange in the environmentalist community in Belarus.