Minutes of the general assembly
28th June 2006, Tartu, Estonia

Ligia Ribeiro (President) took the chair. There were 43 member representatives and guests present.

The President (Ligia Ribeiro) welcomed new colleagues to their first meeting of the EUNIS General Assembly.

2. Registration

Representatives of member institutions and organisations registered their presence at the meeting in anticipation of elections to Council taking place later in the agenda.

3. Appointment of Scrutineers

Kristel Sarlin (Finland) and Yves Epelboin (France), past Presidents of EUNIS, were appointed scrutineers for the Council elections.

4. Report on EUNIS activities 2005-6

The Executive Secretary (Martin Price) gave a slide presentation to summarise EUNIS activities during the past year.

There were now 98 paid up members of EUNIS – a 24% increase in the past year.

Continuing the theme of last year EUNIS was working to develop closer links to bodies with similar interests, both within Europe and beyond. National organisations in 8 countries in Europe were now members of EUNIS. And a memorandum of understanding with the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) had recently been signed. At the present time the Board was aiming to liaise more closely with the European University Association (EUA), the European Knowledge Management Association (EKMA) and the Heads of University Management & Administration Network in Europe (HUMANE).

Under the ongoing agreement with the Trans European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA) the Executive Secretary had agreed to co-chair a study group looking at Campus Issues for the EARNEST Foresight Study. Ligia Ribeiro will also be involved in this study. Representatives of EUNIS and TERENA had given presentations at each other’s annual conference.

The EUNIS Agreement with Gartner continues. Gartner estimates almost 100 European institutions have taken advantage of the special terms offered for their services.

EUNIS has submitted a bid to the EC Socrates Programme for funding a project to investigate the implications of the Bologna Process for IT services in higher education. Partners in the submission are CSIESR (France), UCISA (UK), ZKI (Germany), and EUA. The outcome of the bid is not yet known.

EUNIS is also a partner with JISCinfoNet in a bid to the English funding council’s Learning, Governance and Management Fund on a similar ‘Bologna’-related theme.

Yves Epelboin spoke about the very successful EUNIS Rectors’ Seminar on the IT implications of ‘Bologna’ he had organised in Paris in March 2006. The event was attended by 80 persons from 24 countries, of whom 43 were rectors or their deputies. EUNIS is very grateful to SAP, SUN Microsystems, SunGard SCT and WebCT for their generous sponsorship of the seminar.

Andrew Rothery spoke about the work of the EUNIS Task Force on E-Learning, which he led with Bas Cordewener and the late Jens Dørup. They had been working on a Snapshots Survey up until Jens’ death. Inevitably progress has been slow recently but the survey will continue, hopefully with the help of fresh input from EUNIS2006. The Task Force plans to hold an annual meeting in future years, separate from the EUNIS annual conference.

Yves Epelboin showed a sample page of the new EUNIS website under construction. It is hoped the new site will be introduced later in the summer of 2006.

The 7th competition for the EUNIS Elite Award for Excellence had recently been held. This year the scope of the competition had been widened slightly to include any projects related to information systems in higher education. As usual the winner of the Award will be announced at the end of this year’s Conference. SAP has kindly donated the €2000 prize.

Martin Price announced that the Board proposed to introduce in 2007 a new Jens Dørup Elite Award for E-Learning to commemorate the huge contribution our late colleague made to EUNIS. The theme of the award will reflect Jens’ distinctive approach to e-learning.

EUNIS2006 is the 12th conference of the association and our annual get together remains as popular and successful as ever. We have visited 10 countries so far and have several offers to host the conference in future years – from France, Denmark, Poland and the Netherlands. Next year the EUNIS conference will return to Grenoble, France from 26-29 June 2007.

Finally, it was noted that the President, Treasurer and Executive Secretary had given presentations about EUNIS to a number of organisations including TERENA, CRUE-TIC (Spain), KION ESSE3 User Group (Italy) and Internet2 (USA via the Internet)

5. Financial Report

The Treasurer (Jean-Francois Desnos) presented the EUNIS statement of accounts for 2005-6. This showed overall an overall balance of €74,148 on 29 May 2006. The GA formally approved the accounts for 2005-6.

Jean-Francois Desnos also presented the proposed Budget for the forthcoming year. A surplus of €111,748 was forecast by June 2007. The GA approved the budget for 2006-7.

The GA approved an increase in the annual membership fee from €150 to €200 for the year beginning 1 September 2006. The reasons for the increase were 1) the Corporate Member fee will be fixed in future a level lower than most Corporate Members were paying currently, because Corporate Members preferred to sponsor specific events and activities; 2) EUNIS income must balance its known expenditure. A target level of 110 institutional members was set for June 2007, an increase of 23 on the current level of 87.

6. EUNIS2007

It was noted that EUNIS2007 would be held in Grenoble, France from 26-20 June 2007.

7. Ideas for future activities

The President reminded the meeting that the Board would always welcome ideas for EUNIS activities. She invited members of the General Assembly to suggest possible future activities for EUNIS to the Executive Secretary. The Council would discuss plans for 2006-7 at its meeting later in the week.

8. Elections to Council

The following were elected to the EUNIS Council to represent their respective constituencies.

National Organisations ‘Chambers’: Norway Alf Hansen, Spain Javier Franco

Institutions ‘Chambers: ’Netherlands Hans Ogg

 

Martin Price , EUNIS Executive Secretary 8.7..2006