E-Government and public service delivery in Nigeria

The innovation in ICTs and the resulting emergence of the internet were strong drivers for shifting to an information era from the industrial age. In this movement, nations found succour in using information technologies for service delivery and this becomes the most significant epoch in the history of governance transformation. Despite the huge commitment of the government towards the e-government project in Nigeria, significant growth is not yet recorded on the use of ICT in governance as evidenced in the 2018 recent ranking by the United Nations on e-Government global ranking and assessment, Nigeria was positioned on 143rd of the 193 United Nation Member States. This paper therefore sought to investigate the reasons for the poor performance in the sector. This was done through secondary data collected with a structured interview from ICT directors of eight (8) purposively selected Federal Agencies in Nigeria. With due use of thematic analysis of the interview data, the study found that the challenges confronting e-government implementation in Nigeria were national challenges such as infrastructural deficiency, ICT illiteracy in addition to peculiar challenges like data privacy, security concerns. The paper thus concluded that unless these problems are tacked, the likelihood of having a successful e-government implementation outing in Nigeria would remain a mirage

Use of social media in citizen-centric electronic government services: A literature analysis

yesThis article undertakes a literature review on such articles on social media and citizen-centric e-government services. This research uses 139 articles to perform the intended literature review. The keywords analysis of these articles indicates that Web 2.0, participation and open government/ open data were some of the frequently used keywords in addition to the two major themes of e-government and social media on which all the articles were searched for. The analysis of research methods indicated that majority of the studies were analytical, conceptual, descriptive, or theoretical in nature. The theoretical analysis however indicated that there is a lack of theory-based research in this area. The review of literature indicated that research themes such as electronic participation, engagement, transparency, communication/interaction, trust, security and collaboration are some of the most frequently used categories under this area of research. A research framework has also been proposed from the key themes emerging from the review

Perspectives on Digital Sustainability

This habilitation thesis presents perspectives on digital sustainability, a novel concept connecting digitalization with sustainability. It explains why digital artifacts such as software or data have to meet technical characteristics of quality, transparency, semantics and multiple locations in order to serve society in the long term. However, these requirements are just necessary but not sufficient preconditions to consider digital artifacts sustainable. Their associated ecosystem of businesses, governments, and individuals must also meet the legal and organizational characteristics of open license, shared tacit knowledge, participation, good governance, and diversified funding. And, finally, sustainable digital artifacts must lead to ecological, societal and economical benefits. This thesis statement is discussed in the introductory chapter of the habilitation. It connects and summarizes 13 refereed publications clustered in five perspectives on digital sustainability: In the first perspective, the path of defining the concept of digital sustainability is summarized. This part starts with a publication that introduced an initial set of characteristics for digital sustainability (Stuermer, 2014). The following article connects digital sustainability with digital preservation (Stuermer and Abu-Tayeh, 2016). These studies have eventually led to an extended publication in a sustainability journal elaborating the basic conditions of digital sustainability in detail (Stuermer et al., 2017a). The second perspective includes recent publications on open source software (OSS) research scrutinizing how patterns of digital sustainability are applied within the software development industry. One publication analyzes feature requests within the Eclipse OSS community (Heppler et al., 2016). The following article develops a maturity model of Inner Source, a special form of OSS development practices in an organization (Eckert et al., 2017). And one study in a computer science journal addresses different types of OSS governance by comparing independent and joint communities (Eckert et al., 2019). The next perspective focuses on the procurement of information technology (IT) which involves critical topics of knowledge management and governance related to digital sustainability. Analyzing data crawled from the Swiss public procurement platform Simap.ch exposes lock-in effects, outsourcing decisions as well as multisourcing within the software industry. One article in this perspective introduces the methodology and the dataset pointing out the high level of direct awards within the IT sector (Stuermer et al., 2017b). Another publication tests hypotheses on contract choice in regard to knowledge specificity and task scope (Krancher and Stuermer, 2018a). And one study explains multisourcing decisions using a large dataset on public procurement of IT in Switzerland (Krancher and Stuermer, 2018b). The subsequent perspective highlights open data and linked data as another form of sustainable digital artifacts. One publication proposes a framework permitting the measurement of the impact of open data (Stuermer and Dapp, 2016). Another article introduces linked open government data (LOGD), a kind of graph-structured open data stored in different kinds of platforms (Hitz-Gamper et al., 2019). The final perspective extends the phenomenon of open data into the area of governmental services. By linking the concepts of public governance and open government one article shows how transparency and participation are achieved with digital tools (Stuermer and Ritz, 2014). Another publication includes an empirical analysis of the FixMyStreet open government platform in Zurich called “Züri wie neu” using open data and a user survey to identify the motivation of citizens using this digital tool (Abu-Tayeh et al., 2018)

What Students Do While You Are Teaching – Computer and Smartphone Use in Class and Its Implication on Learning

The presence of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets and computers) in the classroom gives students the possibility of doing off-task activities during lectures. The purpose of this mixed-method field study was to learn more about students' behaviors, reasons, and opinions regarding such activities and their consequences on learning. This study is one of few to take a holistic view on this topic by taking the use of all technical devices in class into account and assessing its con-sequences on learning objectively. This is important to gain a full picture concerning the conse-quences of off-task activities in class. Right after a lecture, bachelor students (N = 125) answered a survey containing questions on their usage of mobile devices during this last class. Further-more, they took a test on the content of that lecture. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of data revealed that students spent an average of more than 19% of their time using a digital device for non-class purposes. Interestingly, this was not significantly linked with learning, although many students reported being aware of this behavior's potential negative consequences. But there was a significant negative link between the number of received notifications and learning. These results suggest that external interruptions have a stronger negative effect than internal interruptions, allowing us to make better recommendations on how to use electronic devices in the classroom

Diseño de un modelo para la implementación de gobierno electrónico en instituciones estatales

Las instituciones públicas buscan su modernización por medio de la implementación de servicios de gobierno electrónico, como resultado del surgimiento de tecnologías emergentes y la transformación digital de los negocios. Múltiples regulaciones alrededor del mundo obligan a los Estados a establecer estructuras organizacionales específicas en las entidades que brindan atención a sus ciudadanos de tal manera que se fomente la creación de servicios digitales. Esta tarea no es sencilla en la medida que las instituciones públicas carecen de un modelo a seguir e implantar al interior de ellas, que —basado en buenas prácticas de gobernanza y gestión de servicios y tecnologías de información y comunicaciones (TIC)—les faculte y las prepare para poder diseñar los servicios digitales que la regulación les exige producir. Teniendo esto en cuenta como vacío en la investigación, éste documento proporciona un modelo para implementar gobierno electrónico en instituciones estatales (denominado MIGE), el cual está basado en buenas prácticas de gobierno y de gestión de servicios de TI. La metodología empleada para la construcción del modelo es la teoría de la ciencia del diseño, cuyos componentes han sido planteados en base a los resultados de la revisión sistemática de la literatura relacionada con la implementación de gobierno electrónico y el marco de referencia COBIT 5.0. El estudio concluye en base a los resultados de la validación que el modelo MIGE en conjunto con la guía de implementación constituyen un aporte tanto para el cuerpo del conocimiento sobre tecnologías de información en materia de gobierno electrónico como un aporte metodológico al incluir y encapsular distintas buenas prácticas empleadas en la definición de cada uno de sus componentes.Tesi

Experiencing the Future Car: Anticipatory UX as a Social and Digital Phenomenon

In order to be innovative and competitive, the automotive industry seeks to understand how to attract new customers, even before they have experienced the product. User Experience (UX) research often provides insights into situated uses of products, and reflections after their use, however tells us little about how products and services are experienced before use. We propose anticipation theory as a way to understand how shared experiences between people in an online discussion forum relate to UX of cars before they are actually experienced in real-life. We took an ethnographic approach to analyse the activities of members of a self-organised web-based discussion forum for Tesla car enthusiasts, to understand how product anticipation emerges in a digital-material setting. Our study identifies how anticipatory experiences create UX of car ownership which evolves through members’ engagement in a self-organised online community enabled through the digitalisation and connectivity of the car, and how such car experiences generate new forms of digital anticipation of the car. We conclude that the shift towards digitalisation of cars and subscription services creates a need for more interdisciplinary research into spatial and temporal aspects, where socially shared anticipatory experiences are increasingly important for the overall UX

India’s “Aadhaar” Biometric ID: Structure, Security, and Vulnerabilities

India\u27s Aadhaar is the largest biometric identity system in history, designed to help deliver subsidies, benefits, and services to India\u27s 1.4 billion residents. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is responsible for providing each resident (not each citizen) with a distinct identity - a 12-digit Aadhaar number - using their biometric and demographic details. We provide the first comprehensive description of the Aadhaar infrastructure, collating information across thousands of pages of public documents and releases, as well as direct discussions with Aadhaar developers. Critically, we describe the first known cryptographic issue within the system, and discuss how a workaround prevents it from being exploitable at scale. Further, we categorize and rate various security and privacy limitations and the corresponding threat actors, examine the legitimacy of alleged security breaches, and discuss improvements and mitigation strategies