Proceedings of the 2002 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on Enablement through technology

With the SAICSIT 2002 Conference, the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists (SAICSIT) is celebrating its 20 th birthday. The Institute was formed in 1982 by a small group of enthusiasts whose main aim was to promote research and development in computing and information technology in South Africa Through its flagship series of annual research conferences it provides a showcase of not only the best research from the Southern-African region, but also attracts international contributions from far afield. SAICSIT does, however, not exist or operate in isolation. More than 50 years have passed since the first electronic computer appeared in our society. In the intervening years technological development has been exponential. Over the last 20 years there have been a vast growth and pervasiveness of computing and information technology throughout the world. This has led into the expansion and consolidation of research into a diversity of new technologies and applications in diverse cultural environments. During this period huge strides have also been made in the development of hardware for computing devices. The Southern African region did not escape these developments. It is hardly possible for such quantitative expansion not to bring a change in quality. Initially computers had been developed mainly for purposes such as automation for the improvement of processing, labour-reduction in production and automation control of machinery, with artificial intelligence, which made great strides in the 1980s, seen as the ultimate field to which computers could be applied. As we moved into the 1990s it was recognized that such an automation route was not the only direction in the improvement of computers. The expansion of processing power has enabled image data to be incorporated into computer systems, mainly for the purpose of improving human utility. For most computer technologies of the 1990s, including the Internet and virtual reality, automation was not the ultimate purpose. More and more humans were actively incorporated in the information-processing loop. This movement has gradually increased as we moved into the 21st century. Development of computer technology based not on automation, but on interaction and enablement, is now about fully established. The methods of enablement have significantly changed as well. The expansion of computer ability means that the same function can be performed by far cheaper and smaller computers. The advent of portable and mobile computers and pervasive computing devices, is evidence of this. The need for users to access computers installed at specific locations in order to reap the benefits of information technology, is fast becoming obsolete. Today, one of the most written and talked about impacts of computing and information technology is communication and the easy accessibility of information. This brings a changing basis for research and development. Issues such as cultural, political, and economic differences must, for example, be accommodated in ways that have not existed before. The goal should be to realize benefit from technological advances, matching the skills, needs, and expectations of users of those technologies. The conference theme for the SAICSIT 2002 Conference, Enablement Through Technology, aims to reflect technological developments in all aspects related to computerised systems or computing devices, and how these influence each other. Not only has SAICSIT come of age in the 21st century, but so has the research and development community in Southern Africa. The outstanding quality of papers submitted to SAICSIT 2002, of which only a small selection is published in this collection, illustrates both the exiting and developing nature of the field in our region. In this regard I also wish to welcome all our international contributors and visitors. We also have to welcome our postgraduate students. For the second year running a Postgraduate Student Symposium will be held as part of the SAICSIT Conference. The goal of the Symposium is to bring together students currently busy with their postgraduate studies, or those who have recently completed their studies, and allow them to exchange ideas, and receive constructive comment from fellow students and referees. I hope that you will all enjoy SAICSIT 2002 and that it will provide opportunities to cultivate and grow the seeds of discussion on innovative and new developments in computing and information technology. Academia has very few material rewards for its exponents. However, being involved in the organization of a conference such as SAICSIT certainly helps compensate for this. The value of being so closely associated with the depth and breadth of knowledge and skills illustrated by the participants cannot be measured. For the 2002 conference, a total of 56 papers were submitted. These papers came from 9 different countries, which shows that SAICSIT is now a truly international conference. Besides South Africa, two other African countries (Botswana and Tunisia) were represented. We hope that in future, even more academics from Africa will participate in this conference. After a rigorous refereeing process, 26 research papers were accepted, and a further 13 papers will be read in the short paper category. A number of papers describing industry-related work were received, and hence the programme committee decided to introduce an Industry Track to the conference. We envisage that this initiative will become a regular feature of SAICSIT, to stimulate the important, but often neglected, interaction between academia and industry. A number of quality papers were deemed to fall outside the ambit of SAICSIT, and unfortunately had te be rejected. As mentioned before, all papers submitted for SAICSIT are subjected to a strict peer review process by an international review committee. Each paper is reviewed by at least three referees; the programme committee is then invited to a final screening at which the recommendations of the referees are discussed. If any queries arise, the paper is submitted to a further review. This process invariably leads to an improvement in the quality of the papers accepted; indeed, the quality is such that the 2002 proceedings is published in the ACM International Conference Proceedings series. On the other hand, it can be argued that SAICSIT should provide a forum for local researchers to discuss their (not necessarily completed) research projects with other researchers in an informal atmosphere, and that the refereeing process might be detrimental to this discussion. We would like to hear from SAICSIT members if this is indeed a problem.