<<January 21, 2000>>

EMILIO VENTO <evento@unido.org>

Dr. Ihor Bogdan Katerniak <ik@litech.net>

VICTOR KOTELNIKOV <vkotelnikov@unov.un.or.at>

Dear Mr. Vento:
================

(1) It was certainly my great pleasure to have had an opportunity of
visiting and discussing an exciting joint project with you and other
people of your office and of the UN/Office of the Outer Space Affairs on
January 17th and 18th.

(2) I received your DRAFT/Note for the file" as in ATTACHMENT I.

One line at the end is missing, and I found typo errors of than"
instead of then" in the 4th para from the top and the 2nd para
from the bottom.

(3) I forgot to tell you that our Ukrainian colleague is now organizing a
workshop in September to which they wish to have me and other colleagues.

Subsequently, I would like to have, at least, one month apart each other
between yours and theirs.

As soon as I hear of their exact dates, I will inform it to you.

(4) In the fourth para, you may include some phrases on the globalization
and the digital divide for which the Distance Learning (DL) is the key
factor.

Pls feel free to utilize any part of our write-up in PART
I/Sections II (1. Summary) and (2. Conduct of event) in the final
report of our Tampere event at <http://www.uta.fi//EGEDL/>.

(5) Pls inform me how many days of the event will be in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

(6) I would strongly suggest that you may include some videoconferencing
demonstrations with participants from around the world. The
demonstrations can be via;

(a) low cost narrow band Internet,

(b) ISDN at 384 Kbps.

Should you accept this idea, pls investigate speed of Internet at the
conference site. Pls also let me know the candidate sites from where
the participants will come in during the videoconferencing via ISDN.

(7) As mentioned to Mr. Pinto Rodrigues, the number of attendees at this
workshop should be less than 50 and invitation only.

(8) Although Mr. Victor Kotelnikov might have already retrieved, pls feel
free to visit the web site of our Tampere event at
<www.uta.fi/EGEDL/Outline> to see how I organized it.

(9) Pls feel free to contact me any time if you have any questions.

This is very exciting project and I would be very happy to put my best
effort to work with you. Since time is very short, we need to work on
this promptly.

Pls convey my best personal regards to Mr. Murano, Dr. Pinto Rodrigues, Mr.
Kozharnovich and other people.

Best, Tak
========================================
P.S.:
(a) I was rather surprised to see very slow speed to access those web sites
mentioned above during my talk at your office. As mentioned to your
people at that time, that was worse than my 56Kbps dial-up modem to
Columbia University in Manhattan. Such slow accessing might have been
caused by;

(a) narrow band leased line from your UN to an Internet Service
Provider (ISP) in Vienna, -- if this is not the case, then,

(b) narrow band connection from Austria to outside world.

Our Global Service Trust Fund (GSTF) project is to especially help the
latter which is common phenomena around the world nowadays.

Dear Victor:
============

(b) For my curiosity, would you mind to investigate the speed of the above
two? -- the latter may be listed in the web site of the Austrian telecom authority.
****************************************
ATTACHMENT I

DRAFT - Note for the file
EV & VK/Friday January 21, 2000

On 17 and 18 January 2000 discussions and a meeting were held with Prof.
Utsumi, Mr. A. Pinto Rodrigues, Mr. V. Kojarnovitch, Mr. J. De Caldas Lima,
Mr. E. Vento, for investigating possible areas of cooperation about his
proposal on Broad Band Connection for Information Networking. Prof. Utsumi
distributed various concepts and papers on the subject, copy of which are
herewith enclosed. Since Prof. Utsumi in his visit to Vienna has been in
contact also with the Office for Outer Space Affairs (OOSA/SAS),
representatives of this Organization were invited to attend the meeting that
IPC/ITP has organised on 17 January. The meeting aimed to allow Prof. Utsumi
to brief the participants on his concepts and jointly explore the ways and
means for proposing a viable and pragmatic approach to a regional project or programme.

Taking into consideration the UNIDO programmatic and geographical priorities,
the preliminary agreement reached was to jointly prepare a project proposal to
be submitted to international donors for funding.

Against the background aim and proposal of Prof. Utsumi its was agreed that
for the initial phase of the programme it would have been convenient that the
objective of the proposal should be to promote, set-up and launch Distance
Learning (DL) methodologies in the selected target countries.

DL is an urgent need in all developing countries, therefore this could be a
valid reason for attracting international funding. Being able to activate
this preparatory phase of the programme, utilizing, whenever possible, the
already existing connections: telephone lines, terrestrial network or where
available satellite links, will provide an entry point to more complex
application for other multimedia services that at a later stage could also be
promoted (education, medicine, etc.). With the increase of needs it would
then be also possible to promote Broad Band Connections which are definitively
more costly and resource intensive.

Since UNIDO has different training packages and teaching instruments available
these could be made available to the needs of the proposed initiative.
IPC/ITP in particular has developed training tools that with minor adjustment
and adaptation could be readily utilized for example the COMFAR training
package, the Technology Management training course, the Technology Acquisition
methodology, etc. After the initial phase all other UNIDO contribution could
be made available on line for the DL UNIDO Programme.

Coming into more specific issue it was agreed that the geographical area to be
targeted could be Africa and more in detail some of the following identified
countries if not all:

* Kenya
* Tanzania
* Uganda
* Zambia
* Zimbabwe
* Mozambique

UNIDO has already in all the above mentioned countries well established focal
points which are willing to participate in launching the proposed programme.
UNIDO Investment Focal Points have the basic network infrastructure for
putting in place the national activities without much delay. Through them it
will be easy to identify national counterparts with sufficient credibility and
capacity for organizing and implementing the specific teaching initiatives.

In order to better structure this proposal and to gain the political and
technical support at national level, Mr. Pinto Rodrigues proposed to convene a
meeting during the month of September in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, where all the
identified African partners will be invited. The meeting will bring together
also different Asian actors that could be instrumental to foster Asia-Africa
cooperation on the specific subject that will be selected for the DL
Programme. It has been anticipated that UNIDO representatives from China,
South Korea, Japan and Malaysia itself will be attending the meeting. They
will be in a position to screen the regional possibilities for technical,
educational and financial support for the African programme. Representatives
of OOSA will be also invited to provide their contribution and expertise
especially on the infrastructure improvement of the existing communication
networks (telephone, cable or satellite).

Prof. Utsumi declared his interest to participate in this initiative,
suggesting some additional names of international experts that could be invited
to support the promotion of the African programme. UNIDO will seek financial
support for the participants attending the meeting, on his side Prof. Utsumi
proposed to investigate the possibility to secure financial support for the
African participants to the meeting through personal contacts.

The immediate action to put in place for the September meeting is then to
identify and inform, through the UNIDO national focal points, the correct
participants in the above mentioned African countries, and to prepare in
cooperation with Prof. Utsumi the Aide Memoire for the Malysia event.

A proposed tentative list of activities for the preparatory phase project that
could be discussed at the Malaysia meeting could be the following:
* Evaluation of selected national counterparts (DL subject related)
* Assessment of their technical capacity and infrastructure set-up
* Enhancement of their human and infrastructure capacity (whenever required)
* Involvement of Satellite link provider
* Regional seminar to build consensus on DL methodologies and selected
thematic subjects among the partners
* Adaptation of the UNIDO's existing teaching material to DL utilization
* Organization and implementation of DL training courses
* Assessment of the effectiveness and sustainability of the approach established
* Development of a wider programme to broaden the utilization of DL to
other sector and specialties.


****************************************
List of Distribution

EMILIO VENTO
UNIDO-ICS Liaison Officer
UNITED NATIONS
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION
Vienna International Centre
P.O. Box 300
A-1400 Vienna, Austria
Tel.: (+43-1)-26026-3726
Fax: (+43-1)-26026-6811
E-mail: evento@unido.org

Dr. Ihor Bogdan Katerniak
Director
Lviv Institute of Management-LIM
Technology Promotion Center
57 V.Chornovil Ave.
Lviv 79601
UKRAINE
Tel: +380-322-52 2681
Fax: +380 322-52 2682
Fax: +380-322-52 4463
ik@litech.net
tpc@lim.lviv.ua
http://www.lim.lviv.ua/
http://www.uar.net/conference/
http://www.lim.lviv.ua/english/de/

VICTOR KOTELNIKOV
Political Affairs Officer
Office for Outer Space Affairs
United Nations
Vienna International Centre
P. 0. BOX 500
A - 1400 Vienna, Austria
Tel.: (43-1) 211-31/4955
Fax: (43-1) 213-45/5830
E-mail: vkotelnikov@unov.un.or.at
**********************************************************************
* Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D., P.E., Chairman, GLOSAS/USA *
* (GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A.) *
* Laureate of Lord Perry Award for Excellence in Distance Education *
* Founder of CAADE *
* (Consortium for Affordable and Accessible Distance Education) *
* President Emeritus and V.P. for Technology and Coordination of *
* Global University System (GUS) *
* 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-3998, U.S.A. *
* Tel: 718-939-0928; Fax: 718-939-0656 (day time only--prefer email) *
* Email: utsumi@columbia.edu; Tax Exempt ID: 11-2999676 *
* http://www.friends-partners.org/GLOSAS/ *
**********************************************************************

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