ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY

The Association for the Development of the Information Society (ADIS) was established in April 1997 and is an independent, non-government, non-profit organisation. The main goal of the Association is to assist in the development of the information society in Bulgaria. The Association has as members, besides individual persons, a number of organisations—collective members from various regions of Bulgaria: Technical University—Gabrovo, the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, the Institute of Information Technologies, the Central Laboratory of Computer Security of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia), and other organisations. Societies in the cities of Plovdiv (the second-biggest in Bulgaria) and Bourgas have been formed as autonomous subsidiaries of the Association. The Association unites people and organisations with several decades of experience in the field of computer science and information technologies.

The Association was established with the non-commercial objective to support the development of the information society. This objective is extensively defined in the Association’s statute and includes:

• Interaction with individuals and organisations working for the development of the information society in Bulgaria and in the world.
• Support of the comprehensive utilisation of the capacity of the information infrastructure and information technologies by all layers of society and all ages and professions, as well as by unemployed, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, etc.
• Development and implementation of national and international projects whose goal is establishing, developing, and governing the information society.
• Participation in the elaboration and implementation of educational, promotional, and demonstration programmes dedicated to information society issues.
• Participation in international activities on issues of the development of the information society, and maintenance of ties to and interaction with foreign and international organisations.
• Organisation of conferences, fora, workshops dedicated to the information society.
• Publishing of a newsletter distributed among the individual and collective members of the Association.

The Association for the Development of the Information Society was the main organiser of the international conference Information and Communication Technologies and Programming from 1997 to 2005.

Since 1999 the Association has organised monthly national seminars in the framework of the Forum Global Information Society. The seminars are devoted to the development of the information society in all fields of the human activities and aspects.

Other activities include implementing a project for training disabled (deaf) people to use computers and the Internet, a project for training secondary school teachers in a broad range of computer technologies, participation in the drafting of the Bulgarian national strategy for the Information Society, drafting of models and principals for creating, management and development of public centers for access to Internet, information and communication services and public e-information and e-services for the Bulgarian citisents as well as delivering of talks on Information Society issues at various national and regional events by members of the Association.

Two national expert groups have been created at the Association:

• Higher education and Information Society;
• The Citizens and Information Society.

The Association has been publishing a monthly bulletin (for its members), conference proceedings as well as a series of issues “Informatics and Information Society”. The series includes:

• The Information Society and the Association for the Development of the Information Society, Sofia, 2007
• The High School Education in the Information Society, Sofia, 2006
• The works and merits of the Bulgarian Informatics Scientists: Aleksandar K. Ludskanov, Dimitar M. Dobrev, Valentin T. Tomov, Petar M. Todorov, Dimitar P. Shishkov, Sofia, 2005
• Prof. Ivan Nedjalkov: the first Bulgarian Scientist to Use Calculating Devices and to Encourage Their Utilization – a Pioneer of Bulgarian Informatics, Sofia 2004