Zurab A. Yakobashvili
Vice-Minister
Ministry for Science and Technology Policy
E-mail: yakobashvili@intern.minntp.msk.su
Let me greet you at this workshop. The workshop is one of the milestones in our interaction with NATO Scientific Committee. It is a year and a half as we maintained contacts and, by our opinion, quite productive contacts. Close enough collaboration in several priority directions are established. Mechanism of small workshops with concentrated analysis of problem, discussion on suggestions, exchange views and appearing joint projects -- just this mechanism works very effectively. We hope this workshop will be effective too like some others we already had in Russia.
Theme of today discussion is very important. You know that objective of real, quick, civilized integration of Russia into world scientific community is very actual now. And telecommunication is absolutely needed for this purpose. And you, as professionals and scientists, do not need any explanations.
One part of the problem is connections of our scientific centers to their counterparts abroad. There is some progress in this direction with some support from our foreign partners. But, from our point of view, intrinsic networking infrastructure in Russia is absolutely unsatisfactory. And you know a lot of examples when it is easy to make connection to foreign counterpart than to organize contacts here in Russia, and even worse to other countries of FSU.
I don't want to say that there is no activity in this field today. A lot of work is being done on the line of mutual linkage between concrete centers, here and abroad. Soros foundation, in particular, is taking part in support of this activity. (I shall not name all others. Hope nobody will be hurt not to be mentioned). But still, there is not enough concrete, objective work, coordinated in national and international scale, that would have the goal to provide network connectivity to all our scientists, scientists in FSU and in the rest of the world.
By our opinion, there is no clear picture here. (I do not want to use more definite words, say, confusion or chaos). Professionals may disagree with me, but my personal view follows from meetings and discussions with different groups.
We realize that situation is becoming crucial because due to the lack of resources they should not be spread into different directions and needed concentration. That is why, in discussions with Mr.Cadiou on directions where these kind of meetings followed by working collaborative contacts should be encouraged, this direction - networking and information communication - was underlined as one of the most prior. We hope results of your meeting and discussions will help us in this task.
Next month we will discuss this question at special Ministry Board meeting. We hope that due to results of your discussions suggestions for concentration of joint efforts and resources will appear.
I wish you fruitful work and repeat that this workshop is very actual for us. I know that there may be unlimited approaches and viewpoints but I hope that atmosphere of mutual understanding and partnership will rule here and that everything that will be elaborated here will serve as a base for practical activity in future, as it was at the previous meetings. Best wishes to you and thank you.