OREANDA-NEWS. Students of international relations will be able to monitor key events online, do situation modeling and make efficient use of e-learning resources, reported the press-centre of IBS.

IBS announces commencement of cooperation with MGIMO, Russia’s top liberal arts university and one of Russia’s oldest and most prestigious university centers training professionals in international relations. MGIMO has five thousand students from 60 Russian regions and 64 foreign countries. Under the MGIMO Innovative Education Program (in Russian) IBS will implement two projects: the project of building a hosting center (including roll-out of innovative learning tools and information systems) and the MGIMO technological infrastructure development project.

IBS was awarded the innovative education program projects for MGIMO based on the results of open bidding processes No. 8 (Lot 1) (in Russian) and No. 9 (Lot 1)(in Russian). Those projects will have an aggregate budget of 86.6 million rubles.

Under the first of the projects IBS will design server rooms, supply hardware and software, roll out infrastructure subsystems and services.

The hosting center will host various internet resources and university systems including:
a situation modeling system for analyzing and forecasting various political and economic situations as part of the learning process;
a geographic information system for visual instruction and comparative analysis of countries of the world from various perspectives;
a mass media monitoring and analysis system for studying and analyzing the economic and political situation;
a virtual voting system for teaching students various kinds of voting (e.g. presidential, parliamentary etc. election voting in various countries).

IBS professionals will roll out working models of an interactive world map and a voting system to demonstrate their functional capabilities and develop skills to use them; a prototype of the mass media monitoring and analysis system based on Medialogia technologies will also be rolled out. A data warehouse will also be built in the hosting center for storing political, diplomatic, financial and economic information required for university systems and MGIMO situation-based training centers. This project will have a budget of 55,19 million rubles including the value of software and licenses required.

The MGIMO innovative program presents complex technology challenges to optimize the university’s current IT infrastructure, enhance access to various information facilities and improve the overall level of information security. To this end, MGIMO initiated the project to develop the technological infrastructure used for running the university. This project will also be performed by IBS.

This project will include:
an audit of MGIMO IT infrastructure, including an information security audit;
LAN upgrade;
building a single unstructured data warehouse;
user help desk automation;
supply of software and licenses required.

Building the single warehouse involves cataloging and providing access to a large amount of unstructured data used by the university. This includes a variety of multimedia materials, graphics and texts, interactive learning resources used in training, and official MGIMO documents. The solution from IBS will provide a comprehensive range of tools to manage those resources, from preparation for placement in the single warehouse to online search and access. The technological infrastructure development project will have a budget of 31,42 million rubles.

All the work will be completed before the end of 2007.

Cooperation with MGIMO stems from IBS initiatives to provide services and solutions necessary to create ‘the innovative higher education institution of the future’, a new generation of educational institutions aligned with the needs of the public and the national economy and able to successfully compete nationally and internationally. In line with this strategy, a unit specializing in services for educational institutions has been set up at IBS.

Current IBS customers include top higher education institutions such as G.V. Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics, the Higher School of Economics (State University), Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics (TUSUR), Tomsk Polytechnic University, I.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy, etc.