E L E C T R O N I C
by Nicolas Johnson
Unless you have actually tried to contact someone in, say, Tirana, Albania or Budapest, Hungary, you cannot fully appreciate the condition of the region's telecommunication infrastructure. Each successful connection is a mini-miracle.
E-mailing a message from Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest city, to the capital of Sofia, for example, can take two or three hours. When (and if) the modem finally connects and begins downloading messages, the noise and interference on the line can cause it to disconnect, and the entire process must be started all over again. In the process, users end up paying for one hour on the phone, says Stilian Tcholakov, director of communications for Bulnet, a commercial Internet provider that lists 15 NGOs among its clients. "And this is the best case scenario, when the weather is good and it's not raining."
Welcome to Central and Eastern Europe. Although the promise of cheap, fast, and easy access to mountains of information has already come true for millions of people around the world, making a simple phone call in Central and Eastern Europe is still a nerve-wracking experience. And using electronic mail - well, it's not quite that simple.
But despite an inadequate telecommunication infrastructure, some electronic networks already have years of experience on-line, and the numbers are growing quickly. Econnect, established in Czechoslovakia in 1991, was the first environmental network in the region and now has 200 users, concentrated mostly in Prague. Hungary's Green Spider was the second - it sent its first message in March 1993 and now has between 300 and 400 users, only 40 percent of whom are based in the national capital. Established as a peace network that grew to include the environment is Croatia's ZaMir, and more networks are being planned in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Poland.
Corporate foundations, aid agencies, and other organizations, like the Regional Environmental Center, are keen to provide funding for nongovernmental networks in the belief that they encourage the free flow of information between businesses, governments and NGOs. Electronic networks allow information to be passed between and among users without having to rely on traditional, and often censoring conduits of information such as corporate- or government-controlled media. The increased flow of information is, in turn, expected to promote public participation and cooperation, and in the long run strengthen democracy and improve the health of the environment.
But as NGOs in Poland and Albania have discovered, the process can be a slow one. Advocates for a new Polish environmental network crashed head-on into a seemingly impenetrable wall: even if they established their own national network, it would be unable to bypass the state monopoly that controls permitting and access to international lines. The Albanian government recently shut down several hosts, freezing unmonitored electronic communication to the world outside.
Uncooperative governments and a poor infrastructure are not the only potholes on CEE's information pathway. A look at the state of development of both equipment and users in Central and Eastern Europe is like traveling back in time for those used to one-gigabyte hard-drives and Pentium processors. In many countries of the region, old IBM XTs with 8086 processors are not uncommon, and general computer literacy is low, creating a need for more training and support.
"In America, systems are very resource intensive, with huge hardware capacities and expensive on-line costs. Here, there is an emphasis on resource-saving technologies because people are poor, telephone lines are poor, computers are poor," says Agoston Nagy, director of Hungary's Green Spider.
In contrast to the direct, high-speed, interactive Internet connection that well-funded organizations, universities, and research institutes use, most NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe use so-called "store-and-forward connectivity" because it is cheap and you don't need a powerful computer or fast modem. Although store-and-forward gets you connected, it is slow and noninteractive, and although you can access many types of electronic data, this can be a long and involved process, one that is beyond the skill of many novice users.
The support of international funding institutions, which includes equipment, software and training, is making the jump from low-tech to high-tech an affordable one for environmental NGOs. The REC, for instance, is sponsoring Romania's StrawberryNet with about USD 16,000 to establish the network system infrastructure, and has also provided funding for 16 modems to help NGOs in Romania get connected. The REC is also developing a manual for accessing electronic information using "e-mail-only" capabilities, and is providing NGOs with access to higher levels of connectivity and greater electronic exposure through the Web.
Limited funding, however, can leave networks and users in a bind. When networks grow up and become more sophisticated, users are expected to pay for the services they use. Green Spider recently introduced fees ranging from the equivalent of about USD 5 to USD 40 per month, depending on the size and budget of the organization, and on the number of monthly log-ins. The system is flexible so it encourages use and doesn't exclude poorer organizations. Other providers charge by the amount of data transmitted or the time spent on-line. This has created a pecuniary problem for environmental NGOs with limited resources.
"Econnect has begun to provide on-line Internet services, but we made a survey and not more than 10 percent of users would use on-line Internet services because of the costs," says Nagy.
Pawel Gluszynski of Poland's 3R Waste Prevention Association already uses his computer to access several excellent waste management and technology databases from around the world. He hopes to see a Polish environmental network developed soon, and imagines daily or weekly news bulletins from national and local governments, as well as regular updates on changes in policy and legislation. This vision is similar to that of the Green Spider Network: to bridge the information gap between nongovernmental organizations on one side and government, research and educational institutions on the other.
Although the Polish case may prove different, this type of cooperation and exchange hasn't proven as successful as some visionaries had hoped, at least so far. "The ministry logs in from time to time, and uploads its calendar of events, but that's about all," Nagy says about Hungary's Green Spider.
Governments haven't missed the electronic boat entirely. The Czech Ministry of Environment, for instance, although quiet on Econnect, has posted an English version of the Czech Republic's environmental regulations on the Internet.
Nagy is optimistic, and he encourages environmental techies in other countries to establish networks of their own, using systems theory to explain why: "A movement can only be alive when there is enough interaction among the parts of which the larger system consists. The parts are the organizations in the movement, just like cells in a tissue, tissues in an organ, or organs in an organism." A well-functioning network can create interaction and cooperation among groups, and Nagy and others still believe that the computer is one way to make these dreams into reality.