Within Linnaeus-Palme program 2014-2015, in the beginning of December 2014, there was a planning visit by the dean Dimitar Trajanov and the vice-dean at the Anastas Misev, from the Faculty for Informatics and Computer Engineering (FINKI) from the Saints Cyril Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia. This the largest, oldest and the most prominent higher education institution in Macedonia (with approximately the same number of students as Stockholm University has).
The intentions behind this first visit were for the two institutions to discuss the possibilities for establishing an exchange of scholars, both teachers and students, as well as opportunities for collaboration in various areas of education and research, including bilateral and EU programmes. The focus, this time, was on open e-government where there is an interest in creating a master program that will eventually lead towards a dual degree master programmes at the respective institutions. The reasons are that DSV already has significant research in the area within the eGov lab and has created a new international master programme in Open eGov to commence in the fall of 2015, while FINKI is the main centre for developing e-government applications in Macedonia.
The series of meetings included Uno Fors, the current vice-prefect and prefect of DSV from January 2015, Harko Verhagen, who is in charge of the international education, Eric Perjons, the director of eGov a MSc program and Gustaf Juell-Skielse, the head of research at the eGov centre. The guests visited the eGov center where they met with Gunnar Wettergren, who provided an insight into the conception of the facility, its current activities and future plans. Ingvar Sjoberg showed the Digital Arts Center (DAC) where they could see the latest exhibition and visualisation projects. In addition, Fredrik Björck discussed the development of a new international master programme in Information security, an area that is also of a keen interest by FINKI. The organizers and the hosts of the visit were Oliver Popov and Iskra Popova, who wrote the initial project application.
The return visit to Macedonia is planned for the spring 2015, while in the meantime the working groups at both institutions will work on developing the details of the cooperation and the proposal for the next grant application for making the double degree reality.