Technical Foundations to Cut Down Administrative Red Tape: The Case of the Canton of Vaud

International audienceIn this paper, we describe an analysis framework we developed in order to analyze the implementation of a simplification strategy in a Swiss Canton. This strategy is based on a participatory analysis of services and on the development of eGovernment foundations through the use of open standards and open source software. This framework takes into account both the supply side of administrative services and the user uptake. We will furthermore present preliminary results of our survey

Web–based Participatory GIS with data collection on the field – A prototype architecture

The rise of Web 2.0 and the current, unprecedented diffusion of mobile devices have laid new foundations for the development of PGIS (Participatory GIS). This study evaluates the possibility of exploiting FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) tools to build up a PGIS prototype providing Web publication of user field-collected data. Besides increasing public awareness and collaboration, user-generated content should also enlarge the knowledge of specific phenomena up to the local level. A prototype architecture was designed and tested in relation to a simple, planning-related case study, i.e., the report of road pavement damages. Open Data Kit suite was used to gather georeferenced multimedia data using mobile device sensors (e.g., the GPS) and to store them into a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS spatial extension. Data was then Web-published using GeoServer. Web access was finally enabled from both traditional desktop-computers and mobile platforms through ad hoc OpenLayers and Leaflet clientside solutions. The architecture provided support for FOSS applicability within the typical PGIS-related tasks, from field survey to data storage, management and dissemination on the Internet. This bottom-up communication paradigm, which exploits real-time, freely available user contributions, can become a potentially precious tool for making decision-processes more democratic, faster and ultimately better

A Survey of the Selenium Ecosystem

Selenium is often considered the de-facto standard framework for end-to-end web testing nowadays. It allows practitioners to drive web browsers (such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Opera) in an automated fashion using different language bindings (such as Java, Python, or JavaScript, among others). The term ecosystem, referring to the open-source software domain, includes various components, tools, and other interrelated elements sharing the same technological background. This article presents a descriptive survey aimed to understand how the community uses Selenium and its ecosystem. This survey is structured in seven categories: Selenium foundations, test development, system under test, test infrastructure, other frameworks, community, and personal experience. In light of the current state of Selenium, we analyze future challenges and opportunities around it.This work has been supported by the European Commission under the H2020 project "MICADO" (GA-822717), by the Government of Spain through the project "BugBirth" (RTI2018-101963-B-100), by the Regional Government of Madrid (CM) through the project "EDGEDATA-CM" (P2018/TCS-4499) cofunded by FSE & FEDER, and by the project "Analytics using sensor data for FlatCity" (MINECO/ERDF, EU) funded in part by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) under Grant TIN2016-77158-C4-1-R and in part by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)

2012 Grantmakers Information Technology Survey Report

Together the Technology Affinity Group (TAG) and Grants Managers Network (GMN) conducted an information technology survey of grantmaking organizations in July 2012. This survey serves as a follow?up to similar surveys TAG has conducted in collaboration with the Council on Foundation (The Council) in April 2003, July 2005, and June 2007, and then independently in 2010

SSNdesign -- an R package for pseudo-Bayesian optimal and adaptive sampling designs on stream networks

Streams and rivers are biodiverse and provide valuable ecosystem services. Maintaining these ecosystems is an important task, so organisations often monitor the status and trends in stream condition and biodiversity using field sampling and, more recently, autonomous in-situ sensors. However, data collection is often costly and so effective and efficient survey designs are crucial to maximise information while minimising costs. Geostatistics and optimal and adaptive design theory can be used to optimise the placement of sampling sites in freshwater studies and aquatic monitoring programs. Geostatistical modelling and experimental design on stream networks pose statistical challenges due to the branching structure of the network, flow connectivity and directionality, and differences in flow volume. Thus, unique challenges of geostatistics and experimental design on stream networks necessitates the development of new open-source software for implementing the theory. We present SSNdesign, an R package for solving optimal and adaptive design problems on stream networks that integrates with existing open-source software. We demonstrate the mathematical foundations of our approach, and illustrate the functionality of SSNdesign using two case studies involving real data from Queensland, Australia. In both case studies we demonstrate that the optimal or adaptive designs outperform random and spatially balanced survey designs. The SSNdesign package has the potential to boost the efficiency of freshwater monitoring efforts and provide much-needed information for freshwater conservation and management.Comment: Main document: 18 pages, 7 figures Supp Info A: 11 pages, 0 figures Supp Info B: 24 pages, 6 figures Supp Info C: 3 pages, 0 figure

Why Modern Open Source Projects Fail

Open source is experiencing a renaissance period, due to the appearance of modern platforms and workflows for developing and maintaining public code. As a result, developers are creating open source software at speeds never seen before. Consequently, these projects are also facing unprecedented mortality rates. To better understand the reasons for the failure of modern open source projects, this paper describes the results of a survey with the maintainers of 104 popular GitHub systems that have been deprecated. We provide a set of nine reasons for the failure of these open source projects. We also show that some maintenance practices -- specifically the adoption of contributing guidelines and continuous integration -- have an important association with a project failure or success. Finally, we discuss and reveal the principal strategies developers have tried to overcome the failure of the studied projects.Comment: Paper accepted at 25th International Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), pages 1-11, 201

Identifying Unmaintained Projects in GitHub

Background: Open source software has an increasing importance in modern software development. However, there is also a growing concern on the sustainability of such projects, which are usually managed by a small number of developers, frequently working as volunteers. Aims: In this paper, we propose an approach to identify GitHub projects that are not actively maintained. Our goal is to alert users about the risks of using these projects and possibly motivate other developers to assume the maintenance of the projects. Method: We train machine learning models to identify unmaintained or sparsely maintained projects, based on a set of features about project activity (commits, forks, issues, etc). We empirically validate the model with the best performance with the principal developers of 129 GitHub projects. Results: The proposed machine learning approach has a precision of 80%, based on the feedback of real open source developers; and a recall of 96%. We also show that our approach can be used to assess the risks of projects becoming unmaintained. Conclusions: The model proposed in this paper can be used by open source users and developers to identify GitHub projects that are not actively maintained anymore.Comment: Accepted at 12th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), 10 pages, 201