Working group of heads of scientific data centers

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The working group of the heads of scientific data centers (ALWR) was from 1972 to 1995 a self-governing body for the cooperation of the data centers at universities and technical colleges in the Federal Republic of Germany. The ALWR was the forerunner and initiator of the Association for Centers for Communication and Information Processing in Teaching and Research (ZKI Association).

The working group

Computer centers in universities and technical colleges have gradually emerged since the mid-1950s, generally referred to as university computer centers. Founded initially to operate just one mainframe computer for research and teaching, its tasks developed from the 1980s to the provision of university networks and diverse and far-reaching services for communication and information processing.

The ALWR was brought into being on March 16, 1972 at a meeting of computer center managers in Frankfurt / Main. He then i. d. Usually met twice a year in different locations. On September 27, 1995, it was dissolved at its 50th meeting in Aachen. The ZKI Association had previously been founded on June 9, 1993 in Berlin , to which most of the members of the ALWR changed.

For the purpose of the working group , the statutes of 1975 say: “The ALWR deals with issues that are of interest to scientific data centers and issues opinions on them. It promotes the exchange of information and the solution of common tasks and supports the cooperation between data centers ”. This included B. Topics such as tasks, structure and organization of data centers, the necessary personnel requirements, selection criteria for computer systems, public funding and procurement procedures, data security measures and data protection regulations, network of computers, workstation computers for students and scientists as well as strategies for the DFN-Verein .

The ALWR was a manageable body with up to 65 members, which enabled effective work, detailed questions were dealt with in commissions. After reunification, the number of members increased sharply because the GDR did not differentiate between universities and technical colleges; In addition, the computer centers of the universities of applied sciences were striving for an independent cooperation as in the ALWR. In order to prevent the coexistence of two largely similar associations, a new form of cooperation was developed in the ALWR, which led to the founding of the ZKI Association, which then included all data centers at universities, technical colleges and public research institutions in Germany.

The documents from the ALWR and the ZKI-Verein were used as sources for processing the history of the computer centers in research and teaching as well as their cooperation.

User groups

The ALWR knew of no substructure within which employees of the data centers could have cooperated. For the employees, however, there was the opportunity to exchange experiences in user groups with colleagues from other data centers, especially from business, industry and authorities. In these groups, which initially focused exclusively on mainframe types, the aim was to find out information about planned developments of hardware and software, including their costs, from the manufacturers at an early stage and, if necessary, to influence them.

Further collaborations

After the ALWR was founded, working groups were also set up in the individual federal states from the mid-1970s, which generally still exist today. After all, universities are a matter for the federal states, and it makes sense to use synergy effects through cooperation. Typical topics included a. the establishment of nationwide computer networks, the creation of nationwide IT plans, the procurement of nationwide software licenses, the establishment and financing of nationwide networks and the joint operation of high-performance computers ( supercomputers ).

Examples include the ALWR in Baden-Württemberg (ALWR-BW) and the working group for data centers in Bavaria (BRZL); In Lower Saxony, the Lower Saxony ALWR has developed into the Lower Saxony State Working Group for Information Technology (LANIT), in Hesse the informal working group for the ZKIhessen. In NRW with its many universities, several committees for the further development, promotion and control of information technology (IT) have emerged from the state working group of computer center managers (ARNW) under the keyword "Innovation North Rhine-Westphalia" , between which there are intensive interactions and personal entanglements.

There was no nationwide cooperation between universities of applied sciences in the field of data processing before 1993. Data centers were often not available there because of the recommended decentralization. In some federal states, however, there was limited, regionally organized cooperation.

The intensification of cooperation between libraries and computer centers in the provision of information to universities was on the agenda of the ALWR from the beginning of the 1990s, and later on that of the ZKI Association. These activities contributed to the establishment of the German Initiative for Network Information ( DINI ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph Hammerschick: Ten years in the service of science: ALWR - Working Group of Heads of Scientific Computer Centers . (PDF; 553 kB) In: Computer Magazin , 3/82.
  2. ↑ Wilhelm Held (Ed.): History of the cooperation between the computer centers in research and teaching. Monsenstein and Vannerdat publishing house , Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-8405-0000-8 . (Scientific publications of the University of Münster, Series XIX Volume 1)
  3. ↑ Peter Grosse, Wilhelm Held, Jürgen Radloff, Günter Tomaselli: History of the cooperation between the computer centers in research and teaching. In: PIK , Volume 33, 2010, Issue 1.