FACT FINDING MISSION TO MOLDOVA

July 7 - 10, 1996

Mission report, attempted situation analysis and suggestions for further actions

The mission was performed on July 7 - 10, 1996 by the team of UNESCO representative Prof. Gerald Lizeé, University of Quebec, Montreal, Canada, and EDNES manager of STACCIS project A. Eliutin.

Geo-historical background:

Republic of Moldova is situated to the west of Black Sea, (which it does not have access to) and borders Ukraine to the East and Romania to the West. The closest sea port is Odessa, Ukraine, separated from the Moldavian border by about 50 km of Ukrainian territory. In the USSR time it was the third smallest republic, with about 3 million population, followed by Turkmenistan and Estonia. Historically, Moldova was a part of the Russian Empire, later of Romania, untill in 1940 the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic became a part of the Soviet Union. After 1991 Moldova is an independent presidential republic. Of 3 million population about 700,000 live in Chisinâu. Second large city, Tiraspol, is located in the part of Moldova which proclaimed itself an autonomous Dniestr-Moldavian Republic. This part of the republic is partually isolated from current processes in Moldova.

Official languages in the country are Moldavian (identical to Romanian) and Russian. In 1940 Cyrillic alphabet was established as the only one in use. Shortly after acquiring independence in 1992 the alphabet was changed back to Latin, using Romanian character set. Presently, Russian is widely accepted and liberally used in peaceful co-existence with Moldavian.

Economically, Moldova is largely an agricultural country, the main products being fruits, grape and wine. Major industrial enterprises, built during Soviet period, are heavily dependent of raw materials imported from Russia and other former Soviet republics, and currently only operate at part-capacity.

Science and education structures:

During the visit the main attention was paid to fundamental science and higher education, as presumed to have the leading role at this stage of STACCIS project activities. It is assumed that at the later stages applied science and technology as well as secondary education will be brought into the game.

The basis of the national science is formed by the Moldavian Academy of Sciences (MAS). The MAS has the structure of thematic departments and attached institutes traditional for most of FSU countries.

The institutes and specialized units of MAS are presently in widely different states, naturally associated with the problems of transitional period. Upon request I was given a chance to visit several institutes and to talk both to the directors of the institutes, heads of divisions and laboratories and researchers.

To summarize the picture, the state and the progress in the activities of the Academy institutes are very human-dependent and are largely a function of how well the directors were able to adapt their modus operandi to the new realities. In some cases, the current state can be characterized as sheer disaster, in other - through initiatives and unorthodox approaches - it became possible to overcome problems with centralized funding, acquisition of equipment etc. These observations are quoted here as it will be necessary to make corresponding adjustments in scheduling and workplanning the project activities in this sphere.

During the meeting with the President of Moldavian Academy of Sciences acad. A.Andriesh it became clear that the leadership of the national fundamental science in Moldova is preoccupied with financial difficulties the MAS suffers now but looks mostly in the direction of the most straightforward approaches, aimed at relatively fast remedies, with much less regard to durability and remote consequences of the decisions made. The President now develops the plan of converting the MAS into a "free economic zone" and plans to seek support toward this scheme from the national government. One could conclude that one of the major components of this approach would inevitably be commercialization of fundamental science at the cost of its "defundamentalization". Simultaneously, the President expressed his views on the specific problems which most of MAS institutes and research groups are facing, among the former the most emphasized by the President having been the lack of scientific information (both data and publications) and data processing software.

Special status is given to the Computer Center of MAS, with equally well established working contacts with other MAS bodies and groups. In the past the CC was mainly equipped with mainframe computers of ES family (based on IBM 360/370 clone) and provided centralized service to the users from the institutes through its own terminal rooms and off-line dispatching. Nowadays the last mainframes are being dismantled and the rooms are re-equipped with micro-computers and workstations. The CC has also assumed the role of main networking center for the Academy.

Main higher education bodies in Moldova are: Moldova State University, Technical University (former Politechnical Institute) and Academy of Economic Sciences (former Economical Institute). Among those, the Moldova State University is by far the leading institution, not even argued by other members of national education community.

Traditionally, the university systems and the national academies were relatively separated, the fundamental research being the responsibility of the latter, and the education - of the former, with some marginal overlap at the level of post-graduate students and their scientific advisors.

Presently in Moldova this overlap is considerably larger, the post-university education being a split responsibility of both university and MAS. Specifically, for a year already the center of post-university education is run by the MAS, providing additional education for about 120 university graduates per year. Part of the program is composed of the most important items of computer knowledge: data base management, word processing, network applications (quoted from the original program). The audience of the center consists of:

- lecturers in informatics from national universities;
- graduate and undergraduate students, majoring in:

The center uses combined computer and network resources of two computer centers: CC MAS and CC MStU. The trainers are university professors and computer experts from CC MAS.

Existing computer and network resources suitable for STACCIS purposes:

Because of combined leading role of MAS and MStU in the training of telematic users in Moldova (at the present stage), both institutions have in their possession reasonably well equipped computer training classes. The classes themselves (three of four operational were inspected, their operability tested and certified herein) are equipped with 486-based PCs connected in LANs. One more class of pure Pentium machines is under preparation now. Funding for these facilities was provided by combining resources obtained from EURASIA foundation and NATO projects in Moldova.

For lecturing with live reference the classes in MStU use an LCD projection panel (inspected).

Both MAS and MStU compounds are rather dense, so it was possible to interconnect the separate buildings within both institutions using only LAN technology (twisted pair and thin Ethernet, inspected).

Both LANs (MAS and MStU) are in turn connected to a common node through radio-modems running at 128 Kbps. The common node, servicing MAS, MStU, Ac. of Economic Sciences, Technical University and the office of ISF in Chisinau uses 64Kbps satellite link to Oslo, Norway, hence, is directly linked to the EBONE mainstream. The satellite link is financed by ISF (till the end of 1997, as based on existing agreement) and the service comes free of charge for the users.

There is a backup dedicated low-speed link to EARN network node in Bucharest and further on via Vienna to Paris. The link can service a limited number of users with simple applications but is handy for backup purposes. I had it tested and found that the main bottleneck limiting the DTR is located outside Moldova (between Bucharest and Vienna). This channel is financed by a grant from EURASIA foundation (the grant exhausts in January 1997, no information about further arrangement is available at the moment). By the end of July the link is going to be upgraded by replacing the dedicated line by an optic fiber. The specialist from the CC MAS responsible for the upgrade claim the work will be finished earlier, the week of July 21.

Servers in CC MAS and CC MStU are based on HP machines and high-power Pentiums running under LINUX operating system (inspected). Several SUN workstations are scheduled for delivery in September, funded by NATO (claimed).

Both key computer centers have qualified manpower including network administrators, the latter having received training in Budapest, Hungary and Vilnius, Lithuania, financed by ISF.

Other field of activity related to STACCIS objectives: Other fields include:

1. training other than in network usage, i.e. using telematics in basic and professional training in all components of the national education system;
2. telematics application in environmental studies.

In the first of those it is too early to propose concrete solutions as the fundamentals of existing resources could not be properly inspected at this stage, however it would be natural to suggest they are rudimentary of non-existent. My suggestion is to use the connections of the local project coordinators to make this study during the rest of 1996.

In the second domain the situation is complicated as an unnaturally large number of national bodies claim their leading role in environmental studies in Moldova. There is a freshly established Institute of Ecological Studies, affiliated to MAS and the Department of Ecology, Government of Moldova. Some studies are conducted in the Institute of Geography (study of productive environmental resources nationwide, leader - Prof. T. Konstantinov), in MStU (faculty of chemistry), etc. On top of this there are about 20 non- governmental organizations who are active in the field to varying extent. Fortunately though, the person with right connections was located during the meetings in Chisinau who volunteered to assist in putting the picture together and to locate the focal points in this domain.

Analysis of the local situation and suggested approaches:

1. The personalia pattern encountered in Moldova is no news inside Russian Academy of Sciences or its replicas in the former Soviet republics as they are still the parts of the same system, formed around essentially the same people. In most cases such institutions are headed by well recognized scientists of classical scientific schools used to traditional approaches. Often they are not easily capable of adopting novelties in information management. Equally often it also happens that their sensibility in this field depends on the presence of advanced and energetic younger staff members working as their associates in a corresponding institution. When planning the training activities in the frameworks of STACCIS, it seems a promising approach to plan "infiltration" of network- conscious staff members in strategic position within strategically important institutions. This might be (without much advertising) the most cost-efficient approach to sensibilisation of relatively large professional communities to new technologies and, ultimately, would force the decision makers (i.e. directors) to re-route efforts and available funds in the right (in STACCIS sense) direction.

2. Basing on the position of the President of MAS as expressed during the talks on July 8 in Chisinau, we could expect support towards the initiative, implanted into STACCIS activities in Moldova, to assist in establishment of the national center of access to on-line scientific information in Moldova and the center of electronic publications (combining library and publishing house functions). With high enough sensitivity to these items and appreciation of their relevance to the current needs of the national scientific community in Moldova one can reasonably expect a good deal of constructive support from the leadership of MAS, augmenting the anticipated cost-efficiency of this project component.

3. Many directors of the national academies are simply forced into a certain degree of shortsightedness in terms of new information and network technologies by the urgent need to overcome the immediate material difficulties facing their institutions. Overwhelmed by this they are reluctant to invest funds and manpower into what looks good, attractive and up-to-date, but could (apparently) do little to reinforce the position of the institutions they have to worry about.

Taking these realities into account, it seems that a vital component of demonstration and training activities should be to make clear that in a not very long run the implementation of new information and telematics technologies contribute to this vital goal by:

- promoting international cooperation;
- participation in multilateral projects;
- obtaining free data and information;
- low cost high circulation publishing;
- personal promotion of the leading researchers by contracts with foreign research bodies etc.

It should be however made very clear and imperative that the best approach here is not to try and get immediate profits from whatever data, results or qualified manpower an institution possesses at the moment, but to exploit the fundamental rule of free information exchange: if what you have is worth anything, make it widely known and available to everybody, this way you can expect others coming to you with what they have and/or making offers concerning your possessions, as most of the Internet works so far.

4. As the basics for this component of training already exist, and the expected sensitivity to foreign input is rather high, the most cost-efficient solution for development of these training resources could be recommended in the form of elite-training of local trainers by way of 1-2 weeks retreat to Moscow accompanied or followed, if necessary, by "training tours" of Russian or European trainers to the sites.

5. Two key figures in network administration were located and thoroughly interviewed. They are the chief network administrator of the CC MAS Vladislav Kalinovski and his colleague Eugene Caisin. Both received training abroad and are fairly adequate to their current responsibilities. However both n/a’s expressed interest (independently and without prompt from my side) in receiving upgrade in Moscow, whenever possible. This seems to deal with an important psychological component of training in network administration. Training abroad, while providing knowledge, does not remove mental barrier when a trainee fails to transfer his new knowledge and experience to his home environment, still considering it some inaccessible attribute of Western technologies. Acquaintance with new technology is most productive and action-prompting when it occurs in customary social and technological environment. Ergo: elite-training of network administrators seems to be most effective and cost-efficient at the same time if it is organized basing upon leading bodies from FSU countries, and by this it can be also optimized with respect to local specifics (common problems and experience).

6. Due to relatively recent and not yet well established system of users’ training in network applications, ad hoc users’ seminars and workshops started occurring spontaneously, which illustrates very high sensitivity of Moldavian network community to new knowledge coming from any source. In this situation, both the form of retreat training and training tours seem very promising in order to help forming nuclei of enhanced network knowledge in the key sub-communities (institutions, etc.).

*) Note: Dr. Dumbroveanu participates both in training in MSt.U and in the activities aimed at integration of environmental studies in Moldova and could be considered as a domain pre- coordinator in environmental applicaitons, until the location of forces in this domain is clarified and/or stabilized.