Innovative public governance through cloud computing: Information privacy, business models and performance measurement challenges

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze challenges and to discuss proposed solutions for innovative public governance through cloud computing. Innovative technologies, such as federation of services and cloud computing, can greatly contribute to the provision of e-government services, through scaleable and flexible systems. Furthermore, they can facilitate in reducing costs and overcoming public information segmentation. Nonetheless, when public agencies use these technologies, they encounter several associated organizational and technical changes, as well as significant challenges. Design/methodology/approach: We followed a multidisciplinary perspective (social, behavioral, business and technical) and conducted a conceptual analysis for analyzing the associated challenges. We conducted focus group interviews in two countries for evaluating the performance models that resulted from the conceptual analysis. Findings: This study identifies and analyzes several challenges that may emerge while adopting innovative technologies for public governance and e-government services. Furthermore, it presents suggested solutions deriving from the experience of designing a related platform for public governance, including issues of privacy requirements, proposed business models and key performance indicators for public services on cloud computing. Research limitations/implications: The challenges and solutions discussed are based on the experience gained by designing one platform. However, we rely on issues and challenges collected from four countries. Practical implications: The identification of challenges for innovative design of e-government services through a central portal in Europe and using service federation is expected to inform practitioners in different roles about significant changes across multiple levels that are implied and may accelerate the challenges' resolution. Originality/value: This is the first study that discusses from multiple perspectives and through empirical investigation the challenges to realize public governance through innovative technologies. The results emerge from an actual portal that will function at a European level. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Il turista della società post-moderna: la cultura del new life tourism Spazio, luogo e non luogo Turismo, paesaggio, spazi pubblici e rigenerazione urbana Tematismi e tematizzazione. Itinerari culturali e strade turistiche per una ricomposizione spaziale.

I materiali sono composti dalle prime tre presentazioni, i contributi dedicati al tema dell'autenticità, della diversa interpretazione di spazio, luogo e non luogo e degli itinerari culturali. Completano questo primo deposito di materiale didattico due approfondimenti sulla Consumer Culture Theory e Service Dominat Logic

Service Implementation Framework in Manufacturing Firms: A Case Study

The culture and the operational methods of service management have become a formidable competitive weapon even for manufacturing firms. The term "service factory" has been proposed for identifying that particular integration of products and services, achieved by the excellent manufacturing firm, where "service is a multidimensional concept". The creation of a service factory necessarily implies a radical change in the operational and organizational characteristics of the firm. In order to support manufacturing firms in adopting a service strategy, it is relevant on the one hand to identify the bundle of services which have to be provided for the customers and, on the other hand, to understand the implications for firm management model. As regards the first point, the paper proposes a framework which classifies the services along with two dimensions: Timedimension and target-dimension. The proposed framework is of interest for manufacturing firms because it allows a better recognition of services that are more perceptible for the customers. In the second part of the paper, authors discuss the implications of a service strategy adoption on the management model of manufacturing firms. In order to carry out this analysis, authors propose a model that combines four service dimensions with three decision-making categories (Organization, Methodologies and Technologies). In the end, the proposed framework has been applied in a sample of Italian hot water heater manufacturers and a case study analysis has been carried out

An Analysis of Service Ontologies

Services are increasingly shaping the world’s economic activity. Service provision and consumption have been profiting from advances in ICT, but the decentralization and heterogeneity of the involved service entities still pose engineering challenges. One of these challenges is to achieve semantic interoperability among these autonomous entities. Semantic web technology aims at addressing this challenge on a large scale, and has matured over the last years. This is evident from the various efforts reported in the literature in which service knowledge is represented in terms of ontologies developed either in individual research projects or in standardization bodies. This paper aims at analyzing the most relevant service ontologies available today for their suitability to cope with the service semantic interoperability challenge. We take the vision of the Internet of Services (IoS) as our motivation to identify the requirements for service ontologies. We adopt a formal approach to ontology design and evaluation in our analysis. We start by defining informal competency questions derived from a motivating scenario, and we identify relevant concepts and properties in service ontologies that match the formal ontological representation of these questions. We analyze the service ontologies with our concepts and questions, so that each ontology is positioned and evaluated according to its utility. The gaps we identify as the result of our analysis provide an indication of open challenges and future work

How collaborative innovation and co-creation can deliver value: a stakeholder approach

This project explores how collaborative innovation and co-creation between stakeholders can deliver value for firms. In today’s increasingly competitive and fast-changing global marketplace, firms must seek to develop more frequent and higher quality innovations (Ngugi et al, 2010). In addition, customers, employees and other stakeholders are demanding opportunities to co-create and collaborate with businesses more and more. As Ramaswamy (2010) comments: “Providers of products and services are challenged by customers who are increasingly informed, connected, networked and empowered. Customers, employees and stakeholders are demanding higher quality interactions and experiences from businesses and a deeper engagement in the value-creation and service delivery processes” (Ramaswamy, 2010, pp. 22). Given this increasing need to collaborate, innovate and co-create, firms need a better understanding of how they can engage in these activities in a way that maximises the value created for all stakeholders; this project, through exploratory, qualitative research interviews and a wide-ranging literature review, seeks to make a contribution in this area

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Methodological approaches based on business rules

Business rules and business processes are essential artifacts in defining the requirements of a software system. Business processes capture business behavior, while rules connect processes and thus control processes and business behavior. Traditionally, rules are scattered inside application code. This approach makes it very difficult to change rules and shorten the life cycle of the software system. Because rules change more quickly than the application itself, it is desirable to externalize the rules and move them outside the application. This paper analyzes and evaluates three well-known business rules approaches. It also outlines some critical factors that have to be taken into account in the decision to introduce business rules facilities in a software system. Based on the concept of explicit manipulation of business rules in a software system, the need for a general approach based on business rules is discussed.methodology, business rules.