Contributos para a Colaboração Interagências entre as Forças Armadas e Forças e Serviços de Segurança no Combate ao Narcotráfico e Imigração Ilegal

Dissertação para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em EstratégiaAs novas ameaças ofereceram uma mudança de paradigma a nível mundial. As ameaças aos Estados são agora mais dificilmente identificadas e combatidas e ocorre uma progressiva desconstrução daquilo que é a segurança interna e segurança externa, visto não ser possível a caracterização destas ameaças como nacionais ou internacionais. A complexidade das ameaças transnacionais enfrentadas resulta na conclusão de que a resposta dos Estados deve também ela ser complexa, o que resulta numa resposta às ameaças transnacionais que passa pela cooperação internacional, mas também pela colaboração interagências. A perceção de que um agressão ou ameaça não pode ser combatida efetivamente por apenas uma instituição resulta na criação de procedimento para a colaboração interagências, neste caso a colaboração entre as FFAA e FSS. O trabalho tem como objetivo geral a compreensão da colaboração interagências entre as FFAA e FSS e como objetivos específicos a determinação dos desafios gerais e específicos à colaboração interagências e no combate ao narcotráfico e imigração ilegal e a realização de contributos à colaboração interagências na articulação operacional das FFAA e FSS. O trabalho inicia-se com o enquadramento jurídico das FFAA, FSS e da sua colaboração interagências. De seguida é realizada a caracterização do panorama da segurança interna portuguesa, dando destaque às ações de combate ao narcotráfico e imigração ilegal. De seguida é indicada a constituição do sistema de colaboração interagências e os seus desafios gerais, os desafios específicos da colaboração interagências nas questões do combate ao narcotráfico e imigração ilegal e a apresentação de recomendações. Conclui-se que a colaboração interagências entre as FFAA e FSS poderia beneficiar de melhorias no processo de tomada de decisão, no que diz respeito à agilização; reestruturação das instituições envolvidas, com destaque do SSI e o cargo de SGSSI; e maior integração das FFAA no processo de colaboração interagências.The new threats offered a paradigm shift worldwide. The threats to States are now more difficult to identify and combat and there is a progressive deconstruction of what is internal and external security, since it is not possible to characterize these threats as being national or international. The complexity of the transnational threats faced result in the conclusion that the response from the States must also be complex, resulting in the response to transnational threats being international cooperation, but also interagency collaboration. The perception that a risk or threat cannot be effectively countered by just one institution results in the creation of a procedure for interagency collaboration, in this case the collaboration between the FFAA and the FSS. The dissertation has the general objective of understanding of the FFAA and FSS interagency collaboration and has the specific objective of determining the general andspecific challenges to interagency, especially in the fight against drug trafficking and illegal immigration and making contributions to interagency collaboration between the FFAA and FSS. The dissertation begins with the legal framework of the FFAA, FSS and their interagency collaboration. Followed by the overview of the main threats to internal security, highlighting the actions to combat drug trafficking and illegal immigration. Next is the constitution of the interagency collaboration system and its general challenges as well as the specific challenges faced combating drug trafficking and illegal immigration, and the presentation of the recommendations. It is concluded that the interagency collaboration between the FFAA and FSS could benefit from improvements in the decision-making process, regarding the streamlining needs; the restructuring of the institutions involved, with emphasis on the SSI and the position of SGSSI; and greater integration of the FFAA in the interagency collaboration process.N/

Information Quality in Secondary Use of EHR Data : A Case Study of Quality Management in a Norwegian Hospital

The motivation for undertaking this study relates to my experiences from practice in a public hospital, where I have observed variations in reaching organizational goals of quality management informed by electronic health records (EHR) data. For example, while some departments and units have long-time traditions in meeting the quality goals that are set locally, regionally, or nationally, other departments and units struggle to meet the same quality goals. Thus, generating actionable information by reusing routinely collected EHR data does not necessary lead to action in response to the information. This process of generating information from existing EHR data, and communicating and using such information for organizational purposes, may be challenging in a highly complex environment such as health care organizations. Within this process, information quality (IQ) may influence actors’ perceptions of action possibilities the information offers, thus influencing the actual use of the information required to reach organizational goals. EHR data can be used for clinical purposes at the point-of-care (i.e., primary use) and reused for purposes that do not involve patient treatment directly (i.e., secondary use). Examples of such secondary use includes quality management, research, and policy development. Though it is widely accepted that IQ influences the use of EHR systems and the information generated by EHR systems, research on the implications of IQ on health care processes is limited: the focus of the current literature is concerned with defining and assessing IQ in primary use of EHR data, whereas the role of IQ in secondary use of EHR data remains unclear. Thus, this dissertation investigates the role of IQ in secondary use of EHR data in an organizational context. This dissertation addresses this practical and theoretical challenge by focusing on the overall research objective of understanding the role of IQ in secondary use of EHR data. To address this research objective, this dissertation explores the following research questions: RQ1. How do human actors influence in transformation of IQ while generating, communicating, and using information in secondary use of EHR data? RQ2. What are the underlying generative mechanisms through which IQ transforms in the process of secondary use of EHR data?publishedVersio

Three Essays on Law Enforcement and Emergency Response Information Sharing and Collaboration: An Insider Perspective

This dissertation identifies what may be done to overcome barriers to information sharing among federal, tribal, state, and local law enforcement agencies and emergency responders. Social, technical, and policy factors related to information sharing and collaboration in the law enforcement and emergency response communities are examined. This research improves information sharing and cooperation in this area. Policing in most societies exists in a state of dynamic tension between forces that tend to isolate it and those that tend to integrate its functioning with other social structures (Clark, 1965). Critical incidents and crimes today cross jurisdictions and involve multiple stakeholders and levels. Law enforcement and emergency response agencies at federal, tribal, state, and local levels, including private sector entities, gather information and resources but do not effectively share this with each other. Despite mandates to improve information sharing and cooperation, gaps remain perhaps because there is no clear understanding of what the barriers to information sharing are. Information sharing is examined using a multi-method, primarily qualitative, approach. A model for information sharing is presented that identifies social, technical, and policy factors as influencers. Facets of General Systems Theory, Socio-technical Theory, and Stakeholder Theory (among others) are considered in this context. Information sharing is the subject of the first work of the dissertation: a theoretical piece arguing for use of a conceptual framework consisting of social, technical, and policy factors. Social, technology, and policy factors are investigated in the second essay. That essay introduces a new transformative technology, edgeware, that allows for unprecedented connectivity among devices. Social and policy implications for crisis response are examined in light of having technological barriers to sharing resources reduced. Human and other factors relevant to information sharing and collaboration are further examined through a case study of the Central New York Interoperable Communications Consortium (CNYICC) Network, a five-county collaboration involving law enforcement, public safety, government, and non-government participants. The three included essays have a common focus vis-à-vis information sharing and collaboration in law enforcement and emergency response. The propositions here include: (P1) Information sharing is affected by social, technical, and policy factors, and this conceptualization frames the problem of information sharing in a way that it can be commonly understood by government and non-government stakeholders. The next proposition involves the role of technology, policy, and social systems in information sharing: (P2) Social and policy factors influence information sharing more than technical factors (assuming it is physically possible to connect and/or share). A third proposition investigated is: (P3) Social factors play the greatest role in the creation and sustaining of information sharing relationships. The findings provide a greater understanding of the forces that impact public safety agencies as they consider information sharing and will, it is hoped, lead to identifiable solutions to the problem from a new perspective

Developing a strategic framework to enhance readiness of UAE law enforcement agencies to effectively respond to road traffic emergencies

The high number of road traffic accidents and increasing prevalence of road traffic crises around the world has brought to the fore the need for a higher level of crisis preparedness and response. In the UAE, crisis response times are significantly below target levels with performance gaps in crisis response areas. Within extant literature, there is a lack of understanding or frameworks that guides the development of effective road traffic crisis readiness programmes, identifying key dimensions and measures for optimising response times. There is a need for decision support frameworks specific to road traffic crises, that prioritise and define key performance criteria and measures across all dimensions focused on readiness and response.The scope of this study is focused on developing a crisis readiness framework for road traffic crisis response for law enforcement agencies in the UAE. The goal is to enhance the organisational effectiveness of law enforcement agencies within the UAE to effectively respond to road traffic crisis situations and disasters. A key research question is: What strategic framework is appropriate to enable the development of strategies and performance indicators to enhance response times of police to road traffic crises? To answer this question, a Delphi Method was utilised that combined questionnaire-based survey and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to collect quantitative and qualitative data, from an expert panel of 16 experienced crisis readiness professionals, on how they prioritise and weight the different strategic criteria, sub-criteria and performance indicators in the context of law enforcement agencies’ traffic response. The findings resulted in the identification, ranking and validation of ten key dimensions of crisis readiness clustered into 3 distinct sets of priority rankings: Response Planning, Resources, Training, and Coordination; Information Management and Communication and Risk and Hazard Assessment; Early Warning, Legal and Institutional Frameworks, Recovery Initiation and Property Protection. The results additionally established the relative priority of sub-criteria for each criterion and validated a broad set of KPIs for the top six ranked criteria. A secondary focus was to investigate the barriers that obstruct the development and implementation of UAE's performance indicators. The findings from primary qualitative and secondary data suggested a number of antecedents associated with inter-organisational, structural and national cultural factors which impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the existing approach to crisis readiness. This research makes a contribution to knowledge in identifying the key criteria and performance indicators of crisis readiness for road traffic situations. The findings contribute a comprehensive strategic readiness framework that supports planning and decision-making for the development of organisational capacities that can enhance response times of police to road traffic crises. A management tool is advanced to structure the planning and evaluation of crisis readiness programmes and the development of future strategies around critical dimensions and factors. This framework ranks dimensions of crisis readiness and key sub-criteria in order of priority and relative importance. This model validates the key components of crisis readiness that can support practitioners to structure, standardise and benchmark key processes and elements of crisis response and can direct efforts to optimise different dimensions of crisis readiness at a strategic and operational level

Collective Dynamics of Digitally Enabled Social Networks

This thesis investigates the role of technology in the collective dynamics of digitally enabled social networks. Based on a review of the historical foundation of research on crowds, collective behaviour, and collective dynamics in the social sciences and in research on complex systems, it develops a conceptualisation of collective dynamics in the context of digitally enabled social networks. This conceptualisation provides the foundation for one overarching and three subordinate research questions dedicated to different aspects of the role technology plays in understanding and managing the collective dynamics of digitally enabled social networks. The body of work comprising this dissertation is distributed across fifteen papers that contribute to these research questions

Information Refinement Technologies for Crisis Informatics: User Expectations and Design Implications for Social Media and Mobile Apps in Crises

In the past 20 years, mobile technologies and social media have not only been established in everyday life, but also in crises, disasters, and emergencies. Especially large-scale events, such as 2012 Hurricane Sandy or the 2013 European Floods, showed that citizens are not passive victims but active participants utilizing mobile and social information and communication technologies (ICT) for crisis response (Reuter, Hughes, et al., 2018). Accordingly, the research field of crisis informatics emerged as a multidisciplinary field which combines computing and social science knowledge of disasters and is rooted in disciplines such as human-computer interaction (HCI), computer science (CS), computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), and information systems (IS). While citizens use personal ICT to respond to a disaster to cope with uncertainty, emergency services such as fire and police departments started using available online data to increase situational awareness and improve decision making for a better crisis response (Palen & Anderson, 2016). When looking at even larger crises, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it becomes apparent the challenges of crisis informatics are amplified (Xie et al., 2020). Notably, information is often not available in perfect shape to assist crisis response: the dissemination of high-volume, heterogeneous and highly semantic data by citizens, often referred to as big social data (Olshannikova et al., 2017), poses challenges for emergency services in terms of access, quality and quantity of information. In order to achieve situational awareness or even actionable information, meaning the right information for the right person at the right time (Zade et al., 2018), information must be refined according to event-based factors, organizational requirements, societal boundary conditions and technical feasibility. In order to research the topic of information refinement, this dissertation combines the methodological framework of design case studies (Wulf et al., 2011) with principles of design science research (Hevner et al., 2004). These extended design case studies consist of four phases, each contributing to research with distinct results. This thesis first reviews existing research on use, role, and perception patterns in crisis informatics, emphasizing the increasing potentials of public participation in crisis response using social media. Then, empirical studies conducted with the German population reveal positive attitudes and increasing use of mobile and social technologies during crises, but also highlight barriers of use and expectations towards emergency services to monitor and interact in media. The findings led to the design of innovative ICT artefacts, including visual guidelines for citizens’ use of social media in emergencies (SMG), an emergency service web interface for aggregating mobile and social data (ESI), an efficient algorithm for detecting relevant information in social media (SMO), and a mobile app for bidirectional communication between emergency services and citizens (112.social). The evaluation of artefacts involved the participation of end-users in the application field of crisis management, pointing out potentials for future improvements and research potentials. The thesis concludes with a framework on information refinement for crisis informatics, integrating event-based, organizational, societal, and technological perspectives