BPM News - Folge 3

Die BPM-Kolumne des EMISA-Forums berichtet über aktuelle Themen, Projekte und Veranstaltungen aus dem BPM-Umfeld. Schwerpunkt der vorliegenden Kolumne bildet das Thema Standardisierung von Prozessbeschreibungssprachen und -notationen im Allgemeinen und BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) im Speziellen. Hierzu liefert Jan Mendling von der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien in aktuelles Schlagwort. Des weiteren erhalten Leser eine Zusammenfassung zweier im ersten Halbjahr 2006 veranstalteten Workshops zu den Themen „Flexibilität prozessorientierter Informationssysteme“ und „Kollaborative Prozesse“ sowie einen BPM Veranstaltungskalender für die 2. Jahreshälfte 2006

Business models and information systems for sustainable development

Businesses are expected to explore market opportunities in the area of sustainable development, thus contributing to finding solutions aiming at sustainable quality of life. This will require adaptation and innovation of business models and information systems, with challenges of particular interest to the business modeling and software design community. This paper briefly discusses two relevant topics in this respect, namely (i) goal and value modeling, and (ii) model-driven development. We mention existing work that can be taken as a starting point for addressing sustainability issues, and we make some observations that may be taken into account when extending existing work

Knowledge Management for Public Administrations: Technical Realizations of an Enterprise Attention Management System

The improvement of governments’ efficiency has gained great importance and validity especially in the current times of economic downturn. E-Government constitutes the most contemporary techno-managerial proposition in the track of possible interventions. The paper addresses, more specifically, empowerments necessitated by Public Administration (PA) organizations. Anchored on the needs of three real-life cases, the paper describes the conception and the realization of an IT artefact together with its methodological appeals aiming at improving information access and delivery and thus PAs’ decision making capacity. Our proposition constitutes a novel approach for managing users’ attention in knowledge intensive organizations which goes beyond informing a user about changes in relevant information towards proactively supporting the user to react on changes. The approach is based on an expressive attention model, which is realized by combining ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rules with ontologies. The technical realizations described in the paper constitute the underlying infrastructure of an Enterprise Attention Management System

Baseline study of employability related activities in Scottish colleges

In October 2004, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC)'s predecessor bodies, theSFEFC and the SHEFC, publishedLearning to Work(SFC 2004), a discussion paperabout how Scotland's colleges and universities can help to enhance learners'employability. In subsequent dialogue with stakeholders, there was agreement thatemployability should be a specific focus for quality enhancement in the college sectorfrom 2006-07. As a basis for further development, the SFC commissioned this studyto provide information on the range of current activities and practices in Scotland'scolleges which contribute to enhancing employability

Developing front-end Web 2.0 technologies to access services, content and things in the future Internet

The future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessible from all over the web. This approach has not yet caught on since global user?service interaction is still an open issue. This paper states one vision with regard to next-generation front-end Web 2.0 technology that will enable integrated access to services, contents and things in the future Internet. In this paper, we illustrate how front-ends that wrap traditional services and resources can be tailored to the needs of end users, converting end users into prosumers (creators and consumers of service-based applications). To do this, we propose an architecture that end users without programming skills can use to create front-ends, consult catalogues of resources tailored to their needs, easily integrate and coordinate front-ends and create composite applications to orchestrate services in their back-end. The paper includes a case study illustrating that current user-centred web development tools are at a very early stage of evolution. We provide statistical data on how the proposed architecture improves these tools. This paper is based on research conducted by the Service Front End (SFE) Open Alliance initiative

Summary report of baseline study of employability related activities in Scottish colleges

Providers report strong support for the development of employability skills and attributes,including core and 'soft' skills, both as discrete units and embedded within course provisionalongside other learning goals. Career education and guidance, including employment seeking skills, are addressed to a lesserextent than 'employability' through the inclusion of discrete units or embedded in other courseunits. While some providers include specific units in courses, student development in these areasis often addressed through central student services. Advice and guidance is most likely to beprovided at the pre-exit stage of students' programmes although it is important while students areon-course. Post-exit guidance is least likely to be supported, with colleges indicating thatobtaining progression information was difficult. Enterprise is the least likely aspect to be addressed, either in relation to business start-up or as afocus in developing enterprising skills and attitudes. College staff indicated that there was a needfor clarification on what was meant by enterprise and enterprising approaches and how theymight be incorporated into other units. There was strong support at institutional level to provide resources to enable students to reflecton issues related to employability, with course providers reporting wide use of personaldevelopment review and planning, though a wide range of terms was used to describe this