45th Annual Meeting of the CIS National, Collaborating and Regional Centres
CIS at the Crossroads: Report on CIS Activities 2007
Düsseldorf, Germany, 20 September 2007
Last year's theme, you may recall, was the Global Strategy on Occupational Safety and Health.
This year we can go one step further, since the International Labour Conference adopted in 2006 Convention 187 concerning the promotional framework for occupational safety and health. The drafting of this Convention was a direct outcome of one part of the Action Plan for the Global Strategy, adopted in 2003.
This convention, the latest in a long series of instruments specifically devoted to OSH, includes a requirement that member states of the ILO formulate a national policy on occupational safety and health, one of whose basic principles is the development of a national preventative safety and health culture that includes information, consultation and training. In order to implement this policy, it foresees for each member state a national system for occupational safety and health, which would include, among its many provisions, information and advisory services on OSH. As you can see, the most important safety and health convention of the ILO in recent years expresses a commitment to information activities as part of the organization's overall strategy in the field.
We in CIS consider this a welcome development. All too often, those who formulate policy in the occupational safety and health area hardly even mention information as an important component. Yet how can anyone, from labour inspector to OSH instructor, do anything in the absence of reliable and easily accessible information?
And reliable and easily accessible information is what we in CIS furnish. And it is what you, as CIS centres, collect, manage and distribute. We are here today to discuss what new things we have accomplished this past year in our field, and - especially - to let each other know how we can do our job more effectively.
I shall start with our core product, CISDOC.
In number of records we are approaching 67,000, an impressive number for such a small operation. We are now adding records at the planned rate, an improvement over the chronic lagging behind schedule of former times. But we should do more - an annual target of 1500 new records is simply not enough to cover a diverse field such as ours. For the budget covering the biennium 2008/2009, I have recommended that we increase our production level to at least 1800, i.e. 300 instead of 250 additions every two months. This is a modest enough increase, but I rather aim at a realistic figure than at a more spectacular albeit unrealistic number.
Tied to the CISDOC is our innovative Virtual Bulletin, following in the footsteps of our regretted printed Bulletin. Aside from allowing users to browse through citations of recent OSH literature, rather than just use a frustrating search mechanism, another advantage of the Virtual Bulletin is that it is indexed by search engines like Google. And it really works. A very recent addition to CISDOC, such as the following, is recoverable through Google, as I have checked:
CIS 07-557
Activities and achievements 1996-2000. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health
Another innovation in the production of CISDOC is an agreement I have been able to come to with the publishers of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, who have kindly agreed to send me a pdf copy of the latest issue of the journal before it is even printed and placed on the Internet - as well as sending me the author abstracts! This enables us to place abstracts of articles from the IJOEH much faster than is usual with other journals. I wish I had the time to pursue similar agreements with other publishers - ideally, we should have similar agreements with all major publishers of OSH literature, from anywhere in the world.
Finally, also in connection with CISDOC, I consider it vital that we transfer as much of our archival information into the digital Internet age as is financially possible. We are attacking this problem on two fronts: we are producing Virtual Bulletins identical to our printed Bulletins, going backwards - as of now, you can find Virtual Bulletins going all the way back to 1993. This means that should you be running out of space on your library bookshelves, you can safely dispose of CIS Bulletins from 1993 on, since we have all that information on our web site, free of charge!
In parallel, we have started to convert the microfiche collection that served as the archives of CIS before 1998 into pdf files. As a test, we have converted years 1996 and 1997. In addition, I asked in my budget preparation for the next biennium for funds to convert 4 more years worth of microfiche, i.e. those covering 1992-1995. This is a somewhat expensive proposition, but once done, we shall have the information available for the foreseeable future. Not only do microfiche collections take up a lot of space, but also accessing them is becoming a very difficult matter - microfiche storage devices and reader-printers are increasingly hard to service and maintain, due to the lack of spare parts.
Of course, should people think that old material has no importance, my answer is: OK, let's then discard the old microfiche collection. Is this what we want - the inability to find information printed 20-30 years ago? I would like to remind everyone that CIS collects quite a bit of material that is kept in few if any libraries in the world.
The pdf files of the converted CIS microfiche collection can of course be transferred to CD-ROMs, and sold to CIS centres on the same basis as current copies of the CISDOC-TEXT CD-ROMs. I think that the price for this should be lower than for the current copies, although they should not be free, given that producing them is an expensive proposition. I will be very interested to hear your comments on this matter.
Let us turn our attention to LEGOSH, the legislative part of our online service. As you know, we have included on our site a country-by-country overview of OSH legislation, secondarily sorted by broad subject area. This is a much-used resource, despite the fact that we have to warn all users: this collection is not up-to-date, neither is it necessarily complete as we go backwards in time. We cannot even be certain that all laws and regulations in it are still in force. Despite this proviso, the site is heavily used, and we receive many requests related to it.
I am pleased to report that we were able to hire an intern this last summer, a law student from England, who was able to devote her time entirely to mine the Internet for making LEGOSH much more up-to-date and complete. I hope that we shall be able to abstract the information in the coming months, and make LEGOSH into an even more useful product.
Thirdly, let me talk about the two new interactive products developed by my colleague András Szücs. We have sent you all extensive information on both CIS Centres News and the Directory of OSH Institutions, with instructions as to how you can access and use them. Some of you have done so, and I would like to thank you for your accurate work. The CIS network is, above all, a collaborative enterprise, and it would be to everyone's benefit if all participating institutions with access to the Internet contributed news about their activities, as well as details about their institutions, to the two databases in question. Please note that by contributing to these two databases you will obtain a lot of credit and publicity for both your institution and yourself.
Just to advance the project on OSH institutions, I have myself added information on 40 or so institutions, using mostly information I found on the Internet. As we know, the Internet is not always accurate, so do please check and see if the information I added on institutions in your country is actually correct.
On the Encyclopaedia, I have some news. With support from our new management, we have been able to obtain the services of a respected professional from the United States, someone who was actually an author of an article in the 4th edition, and with her help we may be able to take the first steps towards the updating of the Encyclopaedia, which, after all, is now almost 10 years old. I would like to emphasize that no decisions have been taken, but the fact that someone is actually able to devote serious attention to the Encyclopaedia is a very good sign. Meanwhile, we would appreciate comments and suggestions for the revised Encyclopaedia - we are at such an early stage in planning that all worthwhile suggestions may find a place in the process.
On the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS), we continue to participate in its card creation programme. CIS staff attend the twice-yearly card preparation meetings - this year we have already had one in Munich, Germany and the next one will be in Lyon, France this autumn.
One of the problems with IPCS is that the different language versions of the cards are mostly on different servers, following somewhat different software standards. This makes updating into a somewhat complex procedure. CIS is working on a project, in collaboration with WHO and the European Union, which may simplify the translation process by relying on software to make the automated translation of standard coded phrases that are used on the cards. Much credit for developing this project (assuming it keeps on being funded) should go to András Szücs and to my predecessor Emmert Clevenstine, who have contributed a lot of their knowledge.
I shall say nothing about the CIS centres network itself, as this is Annick's domain. I would like, however, to thank all of you who have participated in the network's activities. I cannot mention everyone by name, of course, but I will thank Sheila Pantry for her incessant activity on behalf the CIS Network, and of course for her invaluable work issuing the Newsletter.
On financial and management changes in CIS, I do not want to get into too much detail. Suffice it to say that we are doing relatively well financially, assuming our budget is approved by the ILO's Governing Body in its November Session. Doing well does not of course mean that we are awash with money, and we have to use our resources carefully.
Our most precious resource is our staff, all of whom are working very hard to keep CIS a functioning entity. As you know, there have been some health problems, and we all appreciate the concern shown by the CIS centres community. As you also know, the health problems have been resolved. In addition, Chantal Dufresne has had a baby daughter this year, and she is now back at work after maternity leave. Begoña Casanueva has returned to CIS after two years' unpaid leave, and we are very pleased to have her back.
This may be the place to mention the sad news that CIS's founder, Mr Marcel Robert, who honoured us with his presence at last year's meeting, passed away earlier this year. Mr Robert had a long and rich life, and CIS is one of his legacies. Let us hope we can honour his memory by keeping CIS going as an effective organization.
For the future, CIS is increasingly involved in the general work of the SafeWork Department. This means that we all have to balance our work on CIS tasks with other tasks relating to non-informational aspects of the SafeWork work programme.
One of the most important of this kind of work is the preparation of next year's world congress in Seoul, Republic of Korea. My colleague Annick Virot has been working very hard on this, together with other colleagues from SafeWork, ISSA, the International Social Security Association (which is the co-sponsor of the World Congress) and KOSHA (the Korean Occupational Safety and Health Agency). Annick deserves special thanks for being able to balance her work in CIS (including her work as coordinator of the centres network, and preparatory work for this Meeting) with her preparatory work on the Congress. But you will hear more about this Congress from our Korean colleagues later on in the day.
With this I shall end my report, and will be very happy to answer your questions.