News from the ISI Executive Committee & Council

The ISI Executive Committee (EC) and ISI Council Meetings were held in Reykjavík, Iceland, from 21^st-24^th July 2010. The ISI Council members participated in a brainstorming session on improving services to ISI and section members, which proved to be extremely fruitful and efforts will be focused on following up on the recommendations made.

Highlights of the ISI EC and Council Meetings are mentioned here:

• A new draft of the ISI Statutes was presented to the Council by the sub-group of the EC. A redraft as a result of the Council’s comments is in its final form and will be sent to Council for e-mail consultation. The EC sub-group met in September at the ISI Permanent Office to finalize the first draft of the new by-laws, which will also be presented to the Council via e-mail in the near future. After the consultation of the ISI Council, the ISI members will be consulted and asked to express their opinions. The final endorsement is foreseen to take place at the ISI General Assembly in Dublin in 2011.
   
• The ISI and the Bernoulli Society, along with most of the other ISI Sections, will offer developing country members 70% off of the developed membership and publications’ subscriptions’ fees from January 2011. The list of developing countries will follow the World Bank classification as that encompasses many countries that are considered recently developed on other lists but where the majority of citizens are on a tight income.
   
• The Council accepted the invitation from Brazil’s Director-General, Mr. Eduardo Pereira Nunes, to host the 2015 ISI World Statistics Congress (WSC) in Rio de Janeiro. The tentative dates are 27^th-31^st of July; please tentatively mark these dates on your calendar so that you do not miss this exciting Congress! Council members also received updates on plans for the ISI WSCs in Dublin next August and Hong Kong in August 2013.
   
• The first World Statistics Day will be celebrated on 20-10-2010. The ISI website has a page dedicated to the events on this day. In addition, the new ISI Declaration on Professional Ethics will be published on the ISI website on 20-10-2010 and will be sent to ISI and Sections’ members. The new Declaration was endorsed by the ISI Council at its meeting in July.
   
• Two new ISI Committees and one ISI Ad Hoc Committee were established.
   
  • The ISI Latin American Outreach Committee, chaired by Pedro Morretin (Brazil) who is a recent winner of the ISI Mahalanobis Award, plans to intensify the interaction between the statisticians from countries in the region with the ISI and all of its Sections.
     
  • The ISI Awards Committee, chaired by Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi (Italy), will guide the juries of the ISI awards (Jan Tinbergen Competition and ISI Mahalanobis Award) in order to ensure that the honour of these awards remains through the future. The Sections will also be included in the plans of the ISI Awards Committee. One important intention is to present all ISI and Sections’ Awards at an Awards Ceremony in Dublin that will precede the ISI General Assembly.
     
  • The aim of the ISI Young Statisticians Ad Hoc Committee is to identify ways of encouraging active participation from young statisticians within the ISI community. The Committee’s purpose is to identify where the ISI can help young statisticians from different regions of the world.

For additional news items and more news on the topics mentioned above, please visit http://www.isi-web.org/ or e-mail us at @cbs.nl.

ISI Permanent Office