Investigating Communicability Issues in the Open Data Manipulation Flow

The open data movement advocates that public data should be available in electronic format and accessible via the Internet. As a consequence, large volumes of data have been made available in open data portals. To tackle the complexity and possible social impacts resulting from the overwhelming production, collection, processing of data, the Human-Data Interaction providing mechanisms for citizens to interact with data. In this paper, we explore the flow of open data manipulation, aiming to find problems in the application of the whole flow, in practice, by the citizens. We used the Semiotic Inspection Method to find communication breakdowns in the data collection and data visualization interfaces. The results pointed to some communicability problems such as non-intuitive interfaces, lack of tutorials, excessive difficulties in accessing platforms, inconsistent data, and limited resources. These problems make it difficult for citizens across the flow of open data manipulation

The learning process of accessibility instrument developers: Testing the tools in planning practice

Many planning support tools have recently been developed aimed at measuring and mod- elling accessibility (Accessibility Instrument or AI). The main difficulty for tool developers is designing an AI that is at the same time technically rigorous and usable in practice. Measuring accessibility is indeed a complex task, and AI outputs are difficult to communi- cate to target end-users, in particular, because these users are professionals from several disciplines with different languages and areas of expertise, such as urban geographers, spa- tial planners, transport planners, and budgeting professionals. In addition to this, AI devel- opers seem to have little awareness of the needs of AI end-users, which in turn tend to have limited ability for using these tools. Against this complex background, our research focuses on the viewpoint of AI developers, with two aims: (1) to provide insights into how AI devel- opers perceive their tools and (2) to understand how their perceptions might change after testing their AI with end-users. With this in mind, an analysis of 15 case studies was per- formed: groups of end-users tested different AI in structured workshops. Before and after the workshops, two questionnaires explored the AI developers’ perceptions on the tools and their usability. The paper demonstrates that the workshops with end-users were crit- ical for developers to appreciate the importance of specific characteristics the tool should have, namely practical relevance, flexibility, and ease of use. The study provides evidence that AI developers were prone to change their perceptions about AI after interacting directly with end-users

A TALE OF TWO VIRTUAL ADVISORS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY INVESTIGATING THE EMPOWERMENT EFFECT OF MOBILE MENTAL-HEALTH ADVISORY SYSTEMS ON EMERGENCY RESCUERS

Virtual advisory services are very important tools for the psychological self-help domain. It is particularly valuable for emergency rescuers in relieving their psychological distress given the high-stress nature of their occupation. To investigate optimal design strategies for an effective virtual advisory service to empower emergency rescuers, this article explores how virtual advisor identity influences the empowerment effect of virtual mental-health advisory systems for emergency rescuers. Guided by empowerment theory and similarity theory, we developed and empirically tested our system artefact and design theory for our virtual advisory system MHAS. The results of our experiment, involving 120 emergency rescuers who have just finished their emergency tasks in Inner Mongolia, show that virtual advisor identity significantly impacts on a user’s cognitive and emotional aspects, which are significant empowering enablers leading to positive empowerment outcomes as measured by a sense of control and perceived power. Implications for research and practice are then discussed

Traditional and Information Technology Anti-Corruption Strategies for Curbing the Public Sector Corruption in Developing Economies of Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Literature Review

The pervasiveness of public sector corruption has been a major concern by successive governments and their citizenry. In order to curb such corruption, previous studies have focused on the anti-corruption strategies adopted by governments in isolation, but little or no study has focused on the interactions of the anti-corruption strategies. Using the concept-centric approach, we reviewed 91 studies systematically to understand the trends of government anti-corruption strategies. From the synthesized studies, we identified three dominant themes of anti-corruption strategies and their associated concepts. In addition, we also identified one dimension that captures information technology (IT) as a vehicle that enhances corrupt practices in the public sector. The identified themes include traditional, technological, transparency, and accountability anti-corruption strategies. We leveraged the identified themes and their associated concepts to develop a conceptual model that could explain the trends of anti-corruption strategies for curbing the public sector corruption. Our findings suggest that there are things we still need to know, particularly in the case of IT anti-corruption strategies that have been misused for corrupt purposes, especially in the context of e-government systems’ adoption in the public sectors as a new stream of IS research

Performance assessment of urban precinct design: a scoping study

Executive Summary: Significant advances have been made over the past decade in the development of scientifically and industry accepted tools for the performance assessment of buildings in terms of energy, carbon, water, indoor environment quality etc. For resilient, sustainable low carbon urban development to be realised in the 21st century, however, will require several radical transitions in design performance beyond the scale of individual buildings. One of these involves the creation and application of leading edge tools (not widely available to built environment professions and practitioners) capable of being applied to an assessment of performance across all stages of development at a precinct scale (neighbourhood, community and district) in either greenfield, brownfield or greyfield settings. A core aspect here is the development of a new way of modelling precincts, referred to as Precinct Information Modelling (PIM) that provides for transparent sharing and linking of precinct object information across the development life cycle together with consistent, accurate and reliable access to reference data, including that associated with the urban context of the precinct. Neighbourhoods are the ‘building blocks’ of our cities and represent the scale at which urban design needs to make its contribution to city performance: as productive, liveable, environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive places (COAG 2009). Neighbourhood design constitutes a major area for innovation as part of an urban design protocol established by the federal government (Department of Infrastructure and Transport 2011, see Figure 1). The ability to efficiently and effectively assess urban design performance at a neighbourhood level is in its infancy. This study was undertaken by Swinburne University of Technology, University of New South Wales, CSIRO and buildingSMART Australasia on behalf of the CRC for Low Carbon Living

Older and younger adults are influenced differently by dark pattern designs

Considering that prior research has found older users undergo a different privacy decision-making process compared to younger adults, more research is needed to inform the behavioral privacy disclosure effects of these strategies for different age groups. To address this gap, we used an existing dataset of an experiment with a photo-tagging Facebook application. This experiment had a 2x2x5 between-subjects design where the manipulations were common dark pattern design strategies: framing (positive vs. negative), privacy defaults (opt-in vs. opt-out), and justification messages (positive normative, negative normative, positive rationale, negative rationale, none). We compared older (above 65 years old, N=44) and young adults (18 to 25 years old, N=162) privacy concerns and disclosure behaviors (i.e., accepting or refusing automated photo tagging) in the scope of dark pattern design. Overall, we find support for the effectiveness of dark pattern designs in the sense that positive framing and opt-out privacy defaults significantly increased disclosure behavior, while negative justification messages significantly decreased privacy concerns. Regarding older adults, our results show that certain dark patterns do lead to more disclosure than for younger adults, but also to increased privacy concerns for older adults than for younger

The Importance of Internal and External Communication in Increasing Knowledge and Loyalty of Employees in Qi Malaysia

Many organizations in Malaysia today face difficulties in retaining employees since they are unable to identify the factors that contribute to both the increase of employee knowledge on the company and loyalty towards the company. This study goes on to identify how with internal and external communications, and organisation can increase its employee’s knowledge on the company in a positive way and these better-informed employees are then more inclined to be loyal to the company. In QI Malaysia, there is at least one resignation a month and employees hardly know much about the organisation. The aim is to identify if the internal and external communications carried out did in fact help increase employee knowledge about the company and boost their loyalty in a quantitative method. The employees selected for this research received a survey form to fill independently. They were encouraged to complete the questionnaire during their break time or after work. From the response of the survey, we can understand and conclude that employees of QI Malaysia favour timely, frequent and more personal communication through internal communications and external communications methods. They are happy to know that through the internal communications that they are remembered by the company top level management and that their company is portrayed as an employer of choice, leading to individuals they know wanting to work in QI Malaysia. As recommendation, it is suggested that more content about the company is sent out through both internal and external communication of choice, in this case, mass mails being internal communication channel and Facebook as the external communication channel as most employees are engaged here. With more related contents through these two platforms, it will encourage engagement that will increase employee knowledge and loyalty towards the company. (Abstract by author

Electronic government and corruption: Systematic literature review, framework, and agenda for future research

The notion of corruption has emerged as a prominent topic against the backdrop of e-government. However, there are diverse but disorganized viewpoints about the relationship between e-government and corruption, thus creating difficulties in obtaining a structured overview of the existing literature and identifying the avenues to take this research area forward. Despite this, prior studies have made limited attempts to gather these fragmented observations to guide future research holistically. To address this concern, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) of 63 articles discussing e-government and corruption and provide a comprehensive synthesis of the current knowledge in this domain. In particular, we offer a thematic classification of prior studies, uncover the key gaps in the literature, identify the potential research areas, and provide recommendations to broaden the avenues for future studies. Furthermore, we propose an integrated conceptual framework to caution policymakers about the incomplete understanding offered by the existing studies and to inspire further research in several ways.publishedVersio

Effective online privacy mechanisms with persuasive communication

This thesis contributes to research by taking a social psychological perspective to managing privacy online. The thesis proposes to support the effort to form a mental model that is required to evaluate a context with regards to privacy attitudes or to ease the effort by biasing activation of privacy attitudes. Privacy being a behavioural concept, the human-computer interaction design plays a major role in supporting and contributing to end users’ ability to manage their privacy online. However, unless privacy attitudes are activated or made accessible, end users’ behaviour would not necessarily match their attitudes. This perspective contributes to explaining why online privacy mechanisms have long been found to be in-effective. Privacy academics and practitioners are queried for their opinions on aspects of usable privacy designs. Evaluation of existing privacy mechanisms (social network service, internet browsers privacy tabs and E-Commerce websites) for privacy experts’ requirements reveals that the privacy mechanisms do not provide for the social psychological processes of privacy management. This is determined through communication breakdowns within the interaction design and the lack of privacy disclosure dialectical tension, lack of disclosure context and visibility of privacy means. The thesis taps into established research in social psychology related to the attitude behaviour relationship. It proposes persuasive communication to support the privacy management process that is to enable end user control of their privacy while ensuring typical usability criteria such as minimum effort and ease of use. An experimental user study within an E-Commerce context provides evidence that in the presence of persuasive triggers that support the disclosure and privacy dialectic within a context of disclosure; end users can engage in privacy behaviour that match their privacy concerns. Reminders for privacy actions with a message that is personally relevant or has a privacy argument result in significantly more privacy behaviour than a simple reminder. However, reminders with an attractive source that is not linked with privacy can distract end users from privacy behaviour such that the observed response is similar to the simple reminder. This finding is significant for the research space since it supports the use of persuasive communication within human-computer interaction of privacy designs as a powerful tool in enabling attitude activation and accessibility such that cognitive evaluation of an attitude object can be unleashed and end users can have a higher likelihood of responding with privacy behaviour. It also supports the view that privacy designs that do not consider their interaction with privacy attitudes or their influence on behaviour can turn out to be in-effective although found to support the typical usability criteria. More research into the social-psychological aspects of online privacy management would be beneficial to the research space. Further research could determine the strength of activated or accessed privacy attitude caused by particular persuasive triggers and the extent of privacy behaviour. Longitudinal studies could also be useful to better understand online privacy behaviour and help designs of more effective and usable online privacy

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history