NORDUnet Networking Conference 2003

Opening Address by Guðbjörg Sigurðardóttir
The 21st NORDUnet Networking Conference
in Reykjavík, 24 August 2003/GS

Conference delegates, ladies and gentlemen:

Both institutions and private enterprises are becoming ever-more dependent upon secure and problem-free telecommunications. Secure communications are a concern of all business and industry, and must be given due consideration. Telecommunications and regional development is now a prominent subject in political discussion. And people generally agree that access to good telecommunications connections is a pre-requisite for the survival of rural communities.

Iceland is in a difficult position with regard to telecommunications connections with other countries. Where most other countries lay their cables merely to the borders with neighbouring countries, Icelanders have to lay submarine cables across the Atlantic to get in touch with the surrounding world. We are thus exceedingly pleased at the installation of a new optical cable between Iceland, the Faroes and Scotland currently underway. The advent of this new cable will substantially increase Iceland's telecommunications security.

In the closing decade of the 20th century Iceland, like many other countries, formulated a vision-statement on the Information Society in Iceland. It was followed by a five-year development project, implementing this policy. Each year since then, funding has been allocated to the projects, necessary to implement the policy.

During the period of the developmental-project a number of noteworthy milestones were achieved. I would like to mention 3 of them especially although they are not all funded by the developmental- project.

The establishment of the RH network must be considered a remarkable step. This network, is a university and research network which was formally established in January 2001. It links up Icelandic university and research institutes and has vastly increased the bandwidth of these institutions. Most of the institutions are located in the capital area and all are linked to the network with a gigabit connection. Other institutions have a 100 megabit or slower connection. The RH-network is the local organiser for this conference as you may have noticed.

The establishment of the FS network is another major step, which has transformed access by upper secondary schools and continuing education centres throughout Iceland to high-speed connections. Following a tender, a high-speed network was installed, linking some 60 institutions spread all around Iceland. Upper secondary schools and the headquarters of continuing education centres are connected to the network with transfer speeds of 100 megabits per second (mbs), while the continuing education centres themselves have 2 mbs connections. The network is connected with the RH network and opens up new opportunities for communicating education to rural areas. The network is utilised as a channel for formal instruction at upper secondary and tertiary level and for continuing education programmes. Its appearance revolutionises all educational telecommunications and ensures the residents of smaller communities equal access to distance learning. In order to give you some idea of the importance and scope of distance learning in Iceland, I might mention that at present over half of all students at the Iceland University of Education are enrolled in distance learning programmes. A total of 187 new students commenced distance learning study at the University of Education this August.

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I hardly need to describe at length to those of you attending this conference ? who are here precisely because of your interest in networking ? just how significant the advent of these two networks is. Prior to this, connections with these parties varied greatly and many of them were completely unsatisfactory.

The third project of a similar type is the so-called health care network, which is very important for the development of health care services in Iceland. The network will link together all healt-institutions in Icenland: the State Social Security Institute, hospitals, pharmacies, doctors etc. Extensive work has been devoted to its preparation, but this network is not yet fully operative.

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Well - This big five-year development-project - leaded by the Prime Minister's Office - is now completed and its success has been evaluated by external consultants.
Their conclusions were that the project had succeeded well in achieving the objectives which had been set, and that the funding allocated to IT projects had been used to good advantage and made a substantial difference to their achievements. Iceland also ranks with the leaders in recent international surveys on electronic facilities and Internet usage. The introduction of information and communications technology (ICT) into the various branches of society thus appears to have proceeded fairly successfully in recent years.

The first chapter in the history of the Icelandic Information Society is now complete and a new one is beginning. This summer the government decided to launch a new policy formulation project concerning the Information Society. In formulating policy, consideration will be given to a wide range of areas including, for instance:

• the policy platform of the newly elected government.
• the former policy from 1996, with addition from 2000
• current leading issues in international debate in this field, and
• technological possibilities.

Icelanders' ambitions in information and communications technology are high ? to put it plainly, they intend to be at the leading edge in utilising new technology. So we can expect a new and ambitious policy, which will probably be announced at the beginning of next year.

Conference guests, ladies and gentlemen,
The main theme of this conference is Network for research ? research on networks. I would therefore also like to mention briefly some highlights of research activity in Iceland.

During the past two years, discussion on science and research in Iceland has been unusually extensive and lively. This could not, however, be said to have resulted from our poor situation in this respect, since Icelanders have achieved the objective set by the OECD, and which is one of the goals of the EU, of having the total research budget amount to at least 3% of GDP.

Major decisions have now been taken, as the 2003 spring session of the Icelandic parliament adopted three new Acts, which reinforce substantially the position of science and research in Iceland. These are:

• the Act on a Science and Technology Council,
  an Act on Public Support for Scientific Research, and
  an Act on Public Support for Technological Development and Innovation in Industry.

This new legislation enhances the status of science and research. Policy formulation and decision making is transferred to the highest political level.

The Science and Technology Council will be ultimately responsible for this field, under the stewardship of the Prime Minister.

In addition to the Prime Minister, the Council will be comprised of 4 to 6 other ministers and 14 individuals nominated by the social partners, the Higher Educa-tion Co-operation Forum and various ministers.

It is self-evident that the importance of science and research for all industrial and social development is very great. The new legislation creates the pre-conditions for increasing their contribution to the nation's economic growth and welfare still more.

In closing, may I welcome you all once again to this twenty-first NORDUnet Networking Conference. The local organiser is RH net, which is a member of the NORDUnet network, with which most of you are familiar.

Today the Nordic research programme has evolved into NORDUnet A/S, a world class production network for research and higher education, owned by the Nordic governments.

In my estimation, NORDUnet is in fact one of the very best Nordic co-operative projects under the auspices of the Nordic Council of Ministers and a prime example of what the Nordic countries can accomplish through successful joint action.

I should also like to take this opportunity to thank the organising committee, the programme committee and the conference secretariat for their work on preparing and presenting us with this highly ambitious and interesting programme.

I hope all of you will enjoy the conference and spend three very pleasant days here in Reykjavík.