Indonesia wanted to participate in the CEOI'98 because (due to political problems) they are not able to attend International Olympiad in Informatics in Portugal. Despite the fact that they are not a part of Central European region, the Organizing Committee (OC) has given them an opportunity to participate through the Internet by e-mail. Once the idea was born, the OC wanted to spread electron ic participation globally. A few weeks before the start of the CEOI'98 OC sent invitations to many countries and their national committees.

Competition problems were sent by e-mail in the same time when the formal competition started. Solutions were also received by e-mail. Because of the time delay in e-mail delivery, solutions were collected half an hour after the end of the formal competit ion. Evaluation was done in the same way as the formal.

This is the first time that a competition of such kind is done in this way. OC hopes that positive experience will make good basis for future electronic events.

The following teams participated in Informal CEOI'98:
(code for the participants consist of 3 letters written in ( ) , then a letter 's', then a number 01 - 04 )

1. Armenia (arm)
2. Azerbejan (aze)
3. Estonia (est)
4. Estonia 2 (es2)
5. Georgia (geo)
6. Indonesia (ina)
7. Indonesia 2 (in2)
8. Latvia (lat)
9. Latvia 2 (la2)
10. Lithuania (ltu)
11. Macedonia (mac)
12. Netherlands (net)
13. Thailand (tha)
14. Ukraine (ukr)
15. USA (usa)
16. USA 2 (us2)