EUNIS97, Grenoble (France) 9-11 September 1997

Ref: 052201

Annual EUNIS Report on University Information Systems in Europe

Peter Mederly

1. Introduction

At EUNIS'96 Conference in Manchester we made an attempt to characterize the state of university information systems in Central and Eastern Europe. Because there were no statistics available in this area, we made a questionnaire containing questions asking for basic information about the state of computing equipment for education, research and management as well as about the state of information system. We sent this questionnaire to deans of 40 faculties of science, mathematics&physics, and electrical engineering of 40 universities in 14 countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We received answers from 15 faculties of 15 universities in 7 countries. We processed the answers and presented them in Manchester. The complete results can be found in [1].

After the presentation we were asked to try to extend this overview by adding data from more universities. To accomplish this, we chose again the form of inquiry. This time we did not limit ourselves to universities in Central and Eastern Europe but we sent the questionnaires to some Western European universities too. We used three channels: the listserver EUNIS, the list of academic officials that took part at the annual conference of deans of science in Paris in 1996, and we turned also to contact persons at Central European universities taking part in the world-wide ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. The reason why we took just these channels was simple: we wanted to address people that we had already some contacts with before and in this way to increase the probability that we would get the questionnaires back.

Using experiences from the previous inquiry, to make answering of the questionnaire easier we left out some questions more demanding for collecting of data (e.g. questions about number of computers and operating systems used for education and research as well as the questions about technicalities of the network infrastructure). In spite of their importance, we did not included, similarly as before, the sensitive questions about financial issues and we also promised that we would not present the names of single universities in connection with the presented data. On the other hand, this time we left the liberty to answer for the whole university or for a single faculty (last time we concentrated on faculties).

So the questionnaire was a subset of the questionnaire used in the inquiry for Manchester conference. Our main goal now was to concentrate on applications used in the university information systems.

The questionnaires were sent by e-mail and we got back 18 ones from 11 countries. 17 questionnaires contained data at the university level and 1 contained data at the faculty level. 8 of these questionnaires came from 5 Western European countries and the remaining 10 came from 6 countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We did not send again the questionnaires to the universities we successfully addressed with questionnaires for Manchester because we considered the time interval 6 months as being not so essential from the point of view followed in this contribution (except Slovak universities where we completed data from faculty to university level).

After summarizing answers to both inquiries and after omitting some very poorly filled up questionnaires we can state that we have data from 29 universities in 15 countries. The majority of data about information system concerns the university level (24), the rest concerns the faculty level (5).

2. Results of the Inquiry

We will now successively present an overview of the collected results with some comments. According to what we have promised in the inquiry, we will not present the names of single universities.

The questionnaire contained 3 parts:

  1. Basic information about the university.
  2. A short characterization of the university network.
  3. Basic information about the applications used within the information system of the university.
In the first part we asked about the name of the university, number of its students, the name of the organization unit(s) responsible at the university for academic and/or administrative computing services, and the number of full-time staff positions in this organization unit(s).

In the second part we were interested in the accessibility of the university network (options: A - the university network is accessible (installed) in almost each room, B - the network does not cover the whole university but almost each organizational unit has at least one computer connected to the network, C - the network does not exist), the number of computers connected to the university network, and whether there is an Internet connection at the university.

The main results of the first two parts of the questionnaire are summarized in Table 1. Individual columns of the table contain: a symbolic name of the university (we have promised not to disclose the full names), country, number of students. In the fourth column, there is the number of full-time positions in the organization unit(s) responsible at the university for academic and/or administrative computing services. If the university declared just one such unit, one number is presented. If it declared separate units for academic computing and administrative computing, two numbers marked by (Ac/Ad) are presented. In two cases universities declared just the unit for administrative computing - in these cases the number of positions of these units is followed by an (Ad) remark. The fifth column contains the characterization of the university computer network in terms of above options. The number of computers connected to the network is in the last column. If a position in the table is blank, it means we have not got corresponding data. The data marked with * concerns faculty level.

All universities that responded to the questionnaire have Internet access.

Some remarks about the data presented in Table 1:

Table 1
Basic information about universities and their networks

University
Country
Number of students
Number of positions
in CS unit(s)
Network accessibility
Number of computers
U1
Austria
23 000
56/10 (Ac/Ad)
A
2 500
U2
Finland
6 000
15/7 (Ac/Ad)
A
2 500
U3
France
60 000
40
A
10 000
U4
GB
12 700
75
A
3 900
U5
GB
17 000
12 (Ad)
A
U6
GB
18 000
20 (Ad)
A
U7
Ireland
11 000
53
A
2 500
U8
Ireland
8 500
25
A
1 350
U9
Czech
6 000
5
A
1 500
U10
Czech
15 000
45/5 (Ac/Ad)
A
2 000
U11
Croatia
50 000; 1 000 *
60
A *
70 *
U12
Estonia
8 100
25
B
1 000
U13
Hungary
6 000; 2 500 *
30
A *
220 *
U14
Lithuania
10 000
125/13 (Ac/Ad)
A
500
U15
Lithuania
10 000
100
B
300
U16
Lithuania
4 500
3
B
200
U17
Poland
45 000
79
A
U18
Poland
20 000;1 300 *
5 *
A *
480 *
U19
Slovakia
8 300
68
A
1 000
U20
Slovakia
20 000
20
B
2 000
U21
Slovakia
5 500
11
B
200
U22
Slovakia
2 500
18
B
170
U23
Slovakia
3 500
26
A
600
U24
Slovakia
11 500
43
B
750
U25
Slovakia
4 000
11
B
500
U26
Slovakia
15 000
63
A
2 500
U27
Slovenia
14 000
17
A
2 000
U28
Slovenia
2 450 *
3 *
A *
700 *
U29
Slovenia
30 000; 700 *
3 *
A *
120 *
* data concerns faculty level

The third part of the questionnaire dealt with university information systems. With regard to EUNIS mission, we can consider this part the most important.

The first question of this part was whether the university has centrally maintained WWW system. All but one responses were YES.

Further we listed most common applications usually used at universities. The applications were divided into several areas:

There was also place for presentation of other applications used at the university. For each application we asked for the following information: We were aware that the structure of applications at different universities need not be exactly as presented in the questionnaire but we expected that people would look at the list more from the functional point of view. It turned out that in general this assumption was satisfied.

An overview of responses to this part of the questionnaire is in Table 2. The first three columns of the table contain the name of the area, the name of the application, and the total number of applications that appeared in the questionnaires. Next five columns contain data about operating systems used for the application. The headers of columns are self-explaining, O stands for "other". Next two columns say how many implementations of the application are running is network environment (N) and how many as standalone (S/A). Unfortunately, incompleteness of the answers has not enabled us to make a more detailed classification of the network operating systems used. Columns headed I, S, D, O (which stand for single options described above) contain figures about the source of the application. The last section of the table is devoted to implementation environment. Individual column headers have the meaning as follows: DBF - implemented in Clipper, FoxPro, or DBase. Or - implemented in Oracle. 3GL - implemented in a 3GL language such as COBOL, C, FORTRAN, Pascal. IIP - implemented in Informix, Ingres or Progress. Off - implemented in MS Office. O - implemented in other environments. U - implementation environment unreported.

Table 2
Overview of information about applications

Area
Application
# of
Operation environment
Network
Source
Implementation environment
Appl.
DOS
UNIX
VMS
Win
O
N
S/A
I
S
D
O
DBF
Or
3GL
IIP
Off
O
U
Financial Accounting
29
16
5
4
3
1
20
9
10
13
5
1
14
4
5
2
1
1
2
and Operative Financial Records
24
14
4
2
3
1
16
8
12
6
5
1
14
2
3
2
2
0
1
Personal Inventory
22
15
4
2
1
0
11
11
14
4
4
0
15
3
2
1
1
0
0
Information Personal Records
27
17
4
5
1
0
21
6
14
8
5
0
14
5
2
2
0
3
1
Salaries
27
16
4
3
1
3
21
6
9
10
7
1
15
4
2
3
0
1
2
Total for the area
129
78
21
16
9
5
89
40
59
41
26
3
72
18
14
10
4
5
6
Student Personal Records of Students
28
14
8
3
2
1
22
6
22
1
5
0
15
6
2
2
0
2
1
Information Admission Process
24
14
5
2
2
1
19
5
21
0
3
0
16
4
1
1
0
2
0
Study Records
22
11
6
1
3
1
18
4
19
0
3
0
12
5
1
1
1
2
0
Dormitories
15
8
3
3
1
0
11
4
12
1
2
0
7
4
1
1
1
1
0
Financial Aid
13
8
2
1
1
1
8
5
10
1
2
0
9
2
0
0
0
1
1
Schedules
16
11
1
2
2
0
5
11
13
2
1
0
8
2
4
0
0
0
2
Total for the area
118
66
25
12
11
4
83
35
97
5
16
0
67
23
9
5
2
8
4

Table 2 (cont'd)
Overview of information about applications

Area
Application
# of
Operation environment
Network
Source
Implementation environment
Appl.
DOS
UNIX
VMS
Win
O
N
S/A
I
S
D
O
DBF
Or
3GL
IIP
Off
O
U
Library On-line Catalogue
20
1
9
4
1
5
20
0
4
8
5
3
0
1
2
2
0
8
7
Information Acquisition
16
4
7
2
1
2
15
1
5
6
3
2
3
0
0
2
0
5
6
Catalogue
25
6
10
3
1
5
23
2
8
9
5
3
3
1
1
3
0
10
7
Loan Services
16
2
8
3
1
2
16
0
2
8
4
2
2
0
1
2
0
6
5
Total for the area
77
13
34
12
4
14
74
3
19
31
17
10
8
2
4
9
0
29
25
Science, Publications
13
6
4
3
0
0
10
3
8
3
2
0
4
2
1
0
0
4
2
Research, Research Projects
8
4
2
2
0
0
5
3
5
0
3
0
4
2
1
0
0
0
1
International Visits Abroad
7
6
1
0
0
0
3
4
6
0
1
0
5
1
1
0
0
0
0
Relations Foreign Guests
4
3
1
0
0
0
2
2
3
0
1
0
3
1
0
0
0
0
0
Total for the area
32
19
8
5
0
0
20
12
22
3
7
0
16
6
3
0
0
4
3
Total for all applications
356
176
88
45
24
23
266
90
197
80
66
13
163
49
30
24
6
46
38

Some remarks on the data in Table 2

In the third part of the questionnaire we also asked which applications do share common data and whether the sharing is on-line or off-line. Next question was about the methodology used for in-house application development and the last question was: what is the expected development in the area of university information system at the university in the next three years. Options: A - IS will be maintained mostly at the current level with inevitable changes of existing applications, B - IS will be enhanced by adding further applications. Existing applications will be maintained and inevitable changes of them will be made, C - A development of a new IS will be started.





The results of this part of the inquiry could be summarized as follows:

3. Closing remarks

In the end of this contribution we want to accent our awareness of the fact that the inquiry we have obtained data from cannot be considered large and representative enough, and therefore we cannot make very deep and indisputable conclusions from it. Nevertheless, it has confirmed some facts and problems known to people working in university information systems area, the facts and problems that led to the establishment of national and international organizations for co-operation among universities in this area. If we had to say more concretely what could be a real contribution of this inquiry, we would formulate it perhaps like this:
  1. The inquiry has brought the first, although incomplete, picture of the state of university information systems around Eastern and partly Western Europe (at least in EUNIS environment).
  2. The inquiry has shown that many universities want to start the development of new information system for themselves in near future.
  3. At the same time it turned out that in spite of the fact that many applications are developed in-house, this development is done without any standard or nonstandard methodology.
  4. The inquiry has also shown that it has already appeared examples of good integrated university information systems.
  5. Two rounds of the inquiry brought first experiences with such kind of activities. It would be worth to think over whether EUNIS should not make such an inquiry, properly modified, a regular part of its activity. This activity could lead to a permanent database of information about university information systems in Europe.

4. References

[1] Peter Mederly, Pavol Mederly: University Information Systems in Central and Eastern Europe, Contribution at the EUNIS'96 Conference in Manchester, see World Wide Web, http://www.lmcp.jussieu.fr/eunis/publications/survey, EUNIS, 1996

Comenius University,
Bratislava, Slovakia
E-mail: mederly@fmph.uniba.sk

Copyright EUNIS 1997 Y.E.