HOW TO ADDRESS MASTER DATA COMPLEXITY IN IN-FORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT – A FEDERATIVE APPROACH

We investigated the failure of an IS project within a global industrial company. The challenges in the complexity of product master data were one of the failure reasons. We detected a research gap in how to handle master data complexity in IS development, especially in data storage integrations. The tradi-tional approach is to define so-called golden records, “single versions of truth”, for each record, and then harmonize and cleanse data so that only or mainly golden record values will be used. We offer federative approach as an alternative to the golden record approach. According to this approach data interoperability is achieved by identifying shared attributes, by federating data on the basis of shared attributes’ metadata, and by developing IS functionalities to process the metadata and their cross-references. We compare the ontological stances of the approaches theoretically and with figures. We present the results of a case, where the federative approach was probed. Our study contributes to re-search by showing how to link data management to IS development to address the complexity of mas-ter data in data interoperability projects, by comparing the golden record and the federative ap-proaches, and by showing how the federative approach can be used in real-life contexts

Governance of Platform Data : From Canonical Data Models to Federative Interoperability

ABSTRACT As the volume of data generated every day is constantly increasing and, at the same time, ever more complex business networks are using this voluminous data, there is a clear need for better data governance. So far, the academic and practical literature has focused mainly on data governance for intra-organisational purposes. However, in the era of multifaceted business networks and with a rising number of data-driven platforms, the scope of data governance needs to be widened to address interorganisational contexts. From a practical point of view, data on the same subjects are scattered across numerous information systems and attempts to integrate them are often unsuccessful. Thus, new approaches are needed. The object of this dissertation is to study data governance in platform contexts. The goal is to use the existing data governance frameworks as a basis for creating a new framework that encompasses aspects of the networked business and network and platform business models, and the specific features related to data sharing on platforms. Three independent qualitative case studies were conducted to collect empirical evidence for this dissertation. The first case was about data federation in breast cancer patient and treatment data. The other two cases were conducted in the maritime industry to find out how data should be governed on platforms and what aspects affect the willingness of participating organisations to share data on platforms. The qualitative data consists of interviews with 29 people, material from several workshops, and group discussions and interview journals kept during the data collection. The theory building is based on the existing literature on data governance, networks and platforms and on the results of the case studies conducted. The key theoretical contributions of this dissertation are threefold. First, a federative approach to data interoperability is presented, with related tools. The federative approach enables preserving the original and other contexts of data and is based on the use of metadata to explain the various meanings of data. Second, a platform data governance model that includes business model aspects for networks is proposed. This model considers data federation as a means of joining the network and the platform, and has a special focus on data access and ownership. Third and most importantly, this dissertation joins the discussion on whether data is universally or contextually defined by presenting new views on the latter position. The idea is that instead of aiming for objective definitions for data, data should be seen as the representation of facts in their contexts that affect how the facts should be seen. In data-sharing situations, there should be agreements on what data means and how it should be understood. These agreements can be stored as metadata for the data entries. There should be three types of metadata, i.e. information system (IS) technical, information processing and socio-contextual metadata, in order to give a thorough explanation of the meaning of the data. This dissertation provides new insights into how data sharing in networked business environments could be arranged, taking into account the ownership and access issues of data, especially in the platform context. This study also widens the understanding of the ontological nature of data in more complex IS environments. So far, the academic literature on platform data governance is sparse, and that on data governance in general has focused more on data management functions and considered data to have universal definitions. On the practical side, the framework presents methods for implementing data governance policies on platforms and offers federative tools that are feasible for actual data integration. KEYWORDS: Data, Data governance, Platforms, Networks, Data federation, Data interoperabilityTIIVISTELMÄ Syntyvän, luotavan ja tallennettavan datan määrä kasvaa yhä kiihtyvällä tahdilla, ja samanaikaisesti yhä monimutkaisemmat liiketoimintaverkostot haluavat hyödyntää näitä valtavia datamassoja. Tämän takia tarvitaan kattavampaa ja kokonaisvaltaisempaa tiedonhallintaa. Aiempi kirjallisuus on käsitellyt tiedonhallintaa pääasiassa organisaation sisäisestä näkökulmasta. Kasvavien ja monitahoistuvien liiketoimintaverkostojen, sekä erilaisten datavetoisten alustojen aikakautena tiedonhallinta tulee ulottaa koskemaan myös organisaatioiden välisiä konteksteja. Käytännön näkökulmasta tarve tiedonhallinnalle nousee samoja objekteja koskevan tiedon hajaantumisesta useisiin järjestelmiin ja organisaatioihin. Tämän hajaantuneen tiedon integraatioyritykset ovat usein epäonnistuneita ja siksi uudenlaisia lähestymistapoja tarvitaan. Tässä väitöskirjassa tiedonhallintaa tutkitaan alustakontekstissa. Tavoitteena on olemassa olevia tiedonhallinnan viitekehyksiä lähtökohtana käyttäen luoda uusi viitekehys, joka huomioi verkostomaisen liiketoiminnan, verkosto- ja alustaliiketoimintamallit sekä alustoilla tapahtuvaan tiedonjakoon liittyvät erityispiirteet. Väitöskirjaan sisältyy kolme itsenäistä tapaustutkimusta, joissa on kerätty tutkielman empiirinen aineisto. Ensimmäinen tapaustutkimus koskee rintasyöpäpotilaita ja heidän hoitoaan koskevan datan federaatiota. Kaksi muuta tapaustutkimusta toteutettiin meriteollisuudessa. Näiden kahden tapaustutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää miten dataa tulisi hallinnoida alustoilla ja mitkä tekijät vaikuttavat organisaatioiden halukkuuteen jakaa tietoa digitaalisilla alustoilla. Laadullinen aineisto koostuu yhteensä 29 henkilöhaastattelusta, useiden työpajojen materiaalista, ryhmäkeskusteluista sekä aineistonkeruun aikana pidetyistä haastattelupäiväkirjoista. Tutkimuksen teoreettisen kontribuution rakentuminen pohjautuu siis aiempaan tiedonhallintakirjallisuuteen, kirjallisuuteen verkostoista ja alustoista sekä kolmen toteutetun tapaustutkimuksen tuloksiin. Väitöskirjan teoreettinen kontribuutio jakautuu kolmeen osaan. Ensiksi esitellään federatiivinen lähestymistapa tiedon yhteen toimivuuteen ja tähän liittyviä työkaluja. Federatiivinen lähestymistapa mahdollistaa datan alkuperäisen ja muiden kontekstien samanaikaisen säilyttämisen sekä datan eri merkitysten ymmärtämisen metadataan perustuen. Toiseksi esitellään ehdotus tiedonhallintamalliksi digitaalisille alustoille. Tämä malli huomioi verkostomaisen liiketoiminnan erityispiirteet. Ehdotetussa tiedonhallintamallissa datafederaatio nähdään tapana liittyä dataa jakavaan verkostoon ja alustalle. Erityistä huomiota kiinnitetään datan käyttöoikeuksiin ja omistajuuteen. Kolmanneksi väitöskirja osallistuu keskusteluun datan luonteen määrittelystä: onko data universaalisti vai kontekstuaalisesti määriteltyä. Väitöskirjassa esitellään jälkimmäistä näkökulmaa puoltavia uusia tekijöitä. Pyrkimyksenä on objektiivisen datan määrittelyn sijaan nähdä datan kuvaavan tosiasioita erinäisissä konteksteissa. Nämä kontekstit vaikuttavat siihen, miten kyseiset tosiasiat tulee ymmärtää. Dataa jaettaessa on sovittava, mitä data tarkoittaa nämä kontekstit huomioiden. Nämä sopimukset voidaan tallentaa dataan liitettävänä metatietona. Datan merkityksen selvittämiseen perinpohjaisesti metatietoa tulisi olla kolmea eri tyyppiä: tietojärjestelmien teknistä, tiedon käsittelyyn liittyvää sekä sosio-kontekstuaalista metatietoa. Tutkimuksessa esitellään uusia näkökulmia datan jakamiseen verkottuneissa liiketoimintaympäristöissä datan omistajuuteen ja saatavuuteen liittyvät tekijät huomioiden. Erityinen painopiste on alustakontekstissa. Lisäksi tutkimus lisää ymmärrystä datan ontologisesta luonteesta monimutkaisemmissa tietojärjestelmäympäristöissä. Tähänastinen akateeminen kirjallisuus tiedonhallinnasta on ollut niukkaa, keskittyen pääasiassa tiedon johtamisen eri toimintoihin. Lisäksi taustaoletuksena on ollut, että data on universaalisti määriteltyä. Käytännölliseltä kannalta väitöskirjassa esiteltävä viitekehys tarjoaa menetelmiä tiedonhallinnan toimintaperiaatteiden implementointiin digitaalisilla alustoilla. Lisäksi esitellään federatiivisia työkaluja, jotka soveltuvat käytännön dataintegraatioihin. ASIASANAT: Data, Tiedonhallinta, Alustat, Liiketoimintaverkostot, Datafederaatio, Datan yhteentoimivuu

Empowering citizens through data interoperability: data federation applied to consumer-centric healthcare

During the era of open systems, healthcare services and related data are in a constant flux caused by digital transformation. The amount, sources and dimensionality of data grow rapidly, and solutions for data governance, integration and interoperability are urgently needed. At the same time, digital data and information technology–enabled healthcare services are offered as a means to empower citizens. The objective is for active citizens to take better care of their own health. It is possible to support empowerment in many ways, such as with easy-to-use information systems (IS) or personal health records (PHR), or by supporting citizens’ participation in health data creation. In this article, we first present the federative approach to data governance with data federation matrixes in order to show how data are made interoperable by combining data from different data storages. Federation matrixes define shared attributes with their technical, information-flow and socio-contextual metadata. We then contemplate how the federative approach can be deployed to citizens’ healthcare data empowerment. We propose that data ontologies, e.g., data federation matrixes, are useful in bridging gaps between the social contexts of citizens and healthcare professionals and, by doing so, to promote citizen empowerment. The present article contributes to research on the federative approach to data governance, its deployment to citizens’ healthcare empowerment, and to the practice-oriented further development of the federation matrix tools for this and other use cases.</p

Local Power as the Basis of the Understanding of the Federative Pact

The research aimed to describe the existing problems in the relationship between City, State and Federal Government, through the Brazilian Federative Pact, mainly for municipalities with population of less than 50,000 inhabitants. The research is structured from a qualitative perspective. The theoretical framework was built from the local power of the discussion based on the understanding of the federal pact and local interest and the municipality in Brazil. The paper argues that the federal pact is little debated, discussed, much less questioned by society in general, it only strengthens the lack of a legal and institutional framework for coordination and cooperation among federal entities in the country, which results in public policy fragmented the territory and without direction, causing waste of public resources

A didactic proposal with the subject of financial education for middle school

This article presents a research on the subject of Financial Education, which aims to contribute to research and construction of didactic activities applicable to High School, which relate mathematical content to this theme. The methodological approach used was the qualitative research, because, through descriptive data, we tried to understand the phenomena involved in the situation under study. Thus, a theoretical contribution was the Olgin's (2015) research on the work with topics of interest for student formation and for the Mathematics Curriculum and another contribution was the research in the Brazilian legislation on the theme Financial Education for High School, aiming at subsidies for the construction of the didactic activities presented. In the analyzes, it was observed that the research participants present adequate knowledge about the mathematical contents involved in the activities, but they have difficulties regarding the labor laws present in a paycheck, as well as in the moment of the decision regarding the most advantageous financial

Does Alliance Formation between National Labor Unions and National Environmental Organizations Exist?

Does alliance formation between national labor unions and national environmental organizations exist? Seven national labor unions and seven national environmental organizations that are representative of the two movements are selected for examination by this study to address this question. The project gathers and analyzes three types of data: documents on the web sites of the selected organizations, interviews with high ranked officials from many of the organizations examined and the hyperlinks or web links from each organization’s web page. An analysis of the document of the web sites and interviews with high ranking officials identifies three issues that national labor unions and national environmental organizations share: global trade/globalization, corporate accountability and human exposure to toxic chemicals. Next, the study examines the hyperlinks from the web sites to discover if they demonstrate a connection between national labor unions, and national environmental organizations. The study found minimal direct web links between national labor unions and national environmental organizations. From the document analysis of the web sites and the interviews conducted with high ranking officials, Warren’s (1967) typology of coalitional (temporary coalitions) and federative (permanent coalitions) arrangement is used to order the efforts of national labor unions and environmental organizations to work together. The AFL-CIO is included among the assessment of organizations participating in coalitional and federative arrangements. Twenty-one coalitional arrangements and 6 federative arrangements are discovered by this study. The majority of coalitional arrangements and 3 of the 6 federative arrangements are associated with the issue of global trade/globalization. The other coalitional and federative arrangements are associated with the issues of corporate accountability, human exposure to toxic chemicals and energy. The issue of energy as a cooperative issue emerged from the discovered coalitional arrangements. The findings of the study indicate that among national labor unions and national environment organizations, industrial labor unions and environmental lobbying organizations have the greatest success in working together. Overall, the ability of national labor unions and national environmental organizations to work together appears to be limited by their lack of shared issues and their inability to align the frames of the issues they do share. Many indicators suggest that national labor unions and national environmental organizations are moving farther away from working together. Besides the lack of shared issues, the factors of conflicts between the labor and the environmental movements, the difficulty of adopting a social justice frame, the adverse political climate, the relationship of the labor and environmental movements to capital/business, the lack of acknowledging coalitional and federative arrangements, the lack of building federative arrangements, and the general difficulties of trying to work together limit cooperation between national labor unions and national environmental organizations. These findings are discussed using a synthesis of the framing perspective, resource mobilization, and the political process model/political opportunity perspective as suggested by Oliver and Myers (2003). The project concludes with an overview of findings, questions for future research and policy recommendations that could improve the ability of national labor unions and environmental organizations to work together

Decentralisation of pharmaceutical assistance in Brazil: Impacts on access to medicines

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel UniversityThis thesis explores how decentralisation of basic pharmaceutical assistance was introduced in Brazil. Decentralisation aimed to improve access to basic medicines. Nevertheless, the inconsistency in the availability of medicines in the Brazilian public health system (SUS - Unified Health System) justified the development of two seemingly contradictory, yet co-existing, approaches: decentralisation and recentralisation. The central question of my thesis was how the simultaneous processes of decentralisation and recentralisation, which took place between 1998 and 2011, have affected access to medicines distributed by SUS. My second aim was to explore how political and power dynamics impacted the implementation of decentralisation policies. I carried out semi-structured interviews with key actors in policy-making for pharmaceutical assistance; interviewees were selected from among the health secretaries and Ministry of Health officials that participated in interfederative boards of agreement. The Grounded Theory approach, as well as documentary analysis, informed my data collection and analysis. My findings suggest that decentralisation was important for improving the availability of medicines, although levels of improvement varied across the country. Decentralisation in itself was not sufficient to improve the availability of medicines largely due to the regional differences. Federative relationships involved in the decentralised management of pharmaceutical assistance are seen as important by health secretaries, but are considered laborious and time-consuming by Ministry of Health officials. Lack of compliance with agreements at state level was mentioned as one of the main barriers to further improving access to medicines. In this context of struggle, the Popular Pharmacy programme, controlled by the federal government, was created in 2004. The initiative, which can be regarded as a recentralisation process, rapidly improved the availability of basic medicines. There is no clear indication of which is the best approach for improving access to basic medicines in Brazil. Both decentralisation and centralisation worked well in some contexts but failed in others

To Share or to Keep: The Afterlife of Yugoslavia’s Heritage and the Contemporary Heritage Management Practices

This article revisits Yugoslav heritage through the example of the monumental network dedicated to the People’s Liberation Struggle (NOB), now interpreted through the lenses of contemporary heritage management practice. The monumental network of the NOB was created as a part of official identity management strategy of the state, and is unquestionably a shared heritage of the former Yugoslav region. The contemporary heritage-interpretation and management practices within the region tend to provide them with a strong national prefix, commonly disregarding their initial shared nature, and contribute to the processes of contemporary national identification. The efficient managing of the shared properties of heritage in question poses a substantial practical challenge and a burning issue in need of thorough investigation. For this purpose, this critical intervention offers one possible approach for overcoming the current issues in heritage management and interpretation practices of these memorial sites. The article analyses contemporary heritage-focused approaches which are based on performative and internet-based tools, and gives a special focus to the benefits of implementing user-generated content approaches

Framing Social Theory

This book proposes a reconstruction of contemporary social theory, focusing on thematic issues rather than on authors or schools of thought. In so doing, it endeavours to bridge epistemological approaches and locate critical claims shared by the main trajectories and notions of sociological theoretical debate. The book explores the current forms of social science theorization through the key themes of Agency, Anthropocene, Coloniality, Intersectionality, Othering, Singularization, Technoscience and Uncertainty. Focusing on these key themes, it highlights their usefulness for discussions of inequality, neoliberalism, eurocentrism, androcentrism or anthropocentrism – in order to examine these issues in a new light and look beyond the classic divides of social theory. Intended for an academic audience interested in social theory, scholars and post-graduate students in sociology, social sciences, anthropology, social geography, social psychology and globalization studies will find this book useful. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

The process of the enlargement of the Russian regions : economic balancing or landmark of Kremlinization ?

Every state, regardless of its size, faces a problem of spatial organization and distribution of its power over territory, particularly in times of the formation of its statehood and the establishment of the system of governance. The territorial-administrative reform in modern Russia has taken an unprecedented scale over the last five years. Recollecting the experiences of the imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, Putin\u27s reforms aim at elimination of a whole tier of Russia\u27s federative units---autonomous okrugs---by merging them with adjacent regions. Arguably, the enlargement of Russian regions and the reduction of their number from the current eighty-nine would be socio-economically beneficial for regions, and would make Russia a more symmetrical, and thus a more governable federation. There appears to be no single clear rationale for the enlargement. Based on three case studies, I assess the political, economic, and demographic arguments for the regional enlargement in Russia, and draw conclusions whether the process would, as the current Russian government contends, indeed benefit the regions, or would it benefit the state, both the regions and the state, or neither. Assessing the regional enlargement in a qualitative and quantitative analysis, I characterize the process in terms of its top-down or bottom-up qualities, its implications for the regions, and its contribution to the symmetry of Russian federalism. Russia is a state in the making, and the analysis of regional enlargement is one of the linchpins of its development