BALLERINA Initiative Home Page
This page is maintained by Sindre Langaas and was last revised 28-Jun-1996.
Mr. Ulf Ehlin, Executive Secretary, HELCOM
Ms. Eeva-Liisa Poutanen, Environment Secretary, HELCOM
Mr. Anssi Neuvonen, VTT, Consultant responsible for the BALTIC Bibliographic Database
Ms. Carol Ratza, Great Lakes Commission, Director of GLIN
Mr. Sindre Langaas, GRID-Arendal, and Chairman of BALLERINA Interim Steering Committee (Drafter of Minutes)
Scope of Meeting:
1. Inform about the BALLERINA concept and the outcomes of the BALLERINA Workshop
2. Discuss how a best possible partnership with HELCOM could be developed,
including the issue of endorsement.
Outcome:
Ms. Ratza explained the GLIN experience after 3 years of existence. She told that initially GLIN was intended for the 'professional' environmental community of the Great Lakes region. However, with the coming of the WWW component of Internet and the rapidly increasing spread of Internet, the 'general public' had become a much stronger user group than initially anticipated, responsible for the majority of the 130,000+ monthly visits to the central GLIN WWW server. At the same time, the use of GLIN as a tool for 'professionals' had not decreased - rather the contrary.
Mr. Langaas continued by stating that the BALLERINA initiative was strongly influenced by the GLIN 'model'. He went on reviewing the justification, aim and objectives. Emphasis was given to a some key characteristics of BALLERINA:
- A Special Interest Network (SIN) for institutions publishing environmental information
about the Baltic Sea region on Internet
- A co-operative voluntary effort based upon institutional partnership
- Agenda 21 as the ideological framework
Mr. Langaas further expressed that the BALLERINA Workshop as well as Interim Steering Committee considered the partnership with HELCOM of utmost importance.
The issue was raised on how the HELCOM Secretariat looked upon the BALLERINA initiative.
Mr. Ulf Ehlin expressed that he did not see BALLERINA as competing to any planned or existing HELCOM activities dealing with Internet based data or information dissemination and exchange. Rather, he saw it as beneficial to HELCOM as more Internet users would discover the HELCOM WWW site, currently with over 500 pages of information. He also noted that they just recently had installed an automatic Internet counting system to assess how many WWW users visited their Home Page. He was surprised to see that 150 -200 visits were made per day. A concern from the Secretariat, however, was related to the serious budgetary cut-backs in HELCOM, and at the same time the increasing demands from the contracting parties and others on HELCOM to carry out various tasks. This situation made it difficult for the Secretariat to be directly involved as a lead party in the BALLERINA. On the other hand, it was discussed whether the BALLERINA framework could assist HELCOM in identifying funding sources for specific projects dealing with Internet publishing of particularly relevant pieces of information and data. It was mentioned that during the autumn of 1996, the VTT as HELCOM Consultant will publish the BALTIC Bibliographic Database on Internet. Still, there are a number of HELCOM environmental information products that hopefully also will be published on Internet, such as a popular version of the Third Periodic Assessment, Internet access to the HELCOM databases, and more information about the JCP.
When it concerned a more formal acceptance from HELCOM, two alternative approaches were suggested:
1. To separately present the BALLERINA concept to all HELCOM Committees for their endorsement.
2. To try to have the Baltic Ministers of Environment at their upcoming 20-21. October meeting
encouraging HELCOM (and other major IGO's) to support the BALLERINA initiative.
BALLERINA Initiative Home Page
This page is maintained by Sindre Langaas and was last revised 28-Jun-1996.