A high-level semiotic trust agent scoring model for collaborative virtual organisations

In this paper, we describe how a semiotic ladder, together with a supportive trust agent, can be used to address “soft” trust issues in the context of collaborative Virtual Organisations (VO). The intention is to offer all parties better support for trust (as reputation) management including the reduction of risk and improved reliability of VO e-services. The semiotic ladder is intended to support the VO e-service lifecycle through the articulation of e-trust at various levels of system abstraction, including trust as measurable confidence. At the social level, reputation and reliability measures of e-trust are the relevant dimensions as regards choice of VO partner and are also relevant to the negotiation of service level agreements between the VO partners. By contrast, at the lower levels of the trust ladder, e-trust measures typically address the degree to which secure sign on and message level security conforms to various tangible technological security protocols. The novel trust agent provides the e-service consumer with an objective measure of the trustworthiness of the e-service at run-time, just prior to its actual consumption. Specifically, VO e-service consumer confidence level is informed, by leveraging third party objective evidence. This evidence comprises a set of Corporate Governance (CG) scores. These scores are used as a trust proxy for the "real" owner of the VO. There are also inherent limitations associated with the use of CG scores. These are duly acknowledged

Finding the right answer: an information retrieval approach supporting knowledge sharing

Knowledge Management can be defined as the effective strategies to get the right piece of knowledge to the right person in the right time. Having the main purpose of providing users with information items of their interest, recommender systems seem to be quite valuable for organizational knowledge management environments. Here we present KARe (Knowledgeable Agent for Recommendations), a multiagent recommender system that supports users sharing knowledge in a peer-to-peer environment. Central to this work is the assumption that social interaction is essential for the creation and dissemination of new knowledge. Supporting social interaction, KARe allows users to share knowledge through questions and answers. This paper describes KARe�s agent-oriented architecture and presents its recommendation algorithm

Infrastructure transitions toward sustainability: a complex adaptive systems perspective

To ensure infrastructure assets are procured and maintained by government on behalf of citizens, appropriate policy and institutional architecture is needed, particularly if a fundamental shift to more sustainable infrastructure is the goal. The shift in recent years from competitive and resource-intensive procurement to more collaborative and sustainable approaches to infrastructure governance is considered a major transition in infrastructure procurement systems. In order to better understand this transition in infrastructure procurement arrangements, the concept of emergence from Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory is offered as a key construct. Emergence holds that micro interactions can result in emergent macro order. Applying the concept of emergence to infrastructure procurement, this research examines how interaction of agents in individual projects can result in different industry structural characteristics. The paper concludes that CAS theory, and particularly the concept of ‘emergence’, provides a useful construct to understand infrastructure procurement dynamics and progress towards sustainability