Background

"New Methods of Working for Information Society Technologies Promotion to Commonwealth of Independent States" (WISTCIS) project ensures continuity with the EC DG XIII Telematics Applications Programme (TAP) support actions project "Support for Telematics Application Cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States" (STACCIS, SU 1116) that was implemented by UNESCO and Reseau pour les echanges en matiere d'education et de recherche dans le domain des sciences de la Terre (Earth Data Network for Education and Scientific Exchange, EDNES) in 1996-1999. WISTCIS uses many elements of the structure of Information Demonstration Centres (IDCs) deployed in STACCIS focal organizations in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine and encourages EU-CIS team teleworking for benefits of Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme. In this way WISTCIS ensures its continuity with TAP (in 1996-1999) as far as IST collaboration between EU and the European CIS countries is concerned.

The important objective of WISTCIS is to accelerate emergence and further development of telematics activities in the seven European CIS countries creating in this way a huge new potential market for IST products. Pursuing this objective WISTCIS will facilitate new working contacts between the producers of IST telematics products in the countries of European Union and participating organizations in the CIS countries. Such contacts will be deployed by the project into efficient East-West target-oriented working teams. New methods of work will be implemented for these teams to embed them into real environment of the Information Society. Thus WISTCIS is directly related with IST Programme as a whole, as well as with its key action (ii) "New methods of work and electronic commerce". The project also contributes to three other key actions. WISTCIS significantly contributes to expansion of IST Programme on huge community of the seven European CIS countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.

At the same time, WISTCIS project is closely related with several concrete IST projects such as CoBrow collaborative browsing toolkit developed by University of Ulm, Germany, and the certification service for electronic proposal submission developed by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), The Netherlands.

Following its 1996-1999 experience of work with the EC DG XIII on STACCIS project, EDNES will coordinate WISTCIS project in the way most appropriate to ensure its effictive relations with IST Programme.