Semantics in the wild : a digital assistant for Flemish citizens

Public service fragmentation across more than 800 digital channels of government administrations in the region of Flanders (Belgium), causes administrative burden and frustrations, as citizens expect a coherent service. Given the autonomy of the various entities, the fragmentation of information and budget constraints, it is not feasible to rewire the entire e-gov ecosystem to a single portal. Therefore, the Flemish Government is building a smart digital assistant, which supports citizens on the governmental portals, by integrating status information of various transactions. This paper outlines our ongoing research on a method for raising semantic interoperability between different information systems and actors. In this approach, semantic agreements are maintained and implemented end-to-end using the design principles of Linked Data. The lessons learned can speed-up the process in other countries that face the complexity of integrating e-government portals

The Relationship between Strategy and Information Systems and Their Impact on Achieving Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Supply Chain- A Survey Study on Samples from Iraqi Industrial Companies

Institutions are accelerating to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in supply chain, its range is expanding to find the tools to help them achieve this purpose, and the growing need for these organizations to understand their current status as well as their potential. Therefore, organizations always depend on information systems to process transactions, develop products, access a large proportion of their budgets to support their operational and commercial activities, and how to acquire knowledge for business owners to access these investments. Wealth, naturally, includes an assessment of information technology and a link to business success and access to potential assets within existing innovation mechanisms primarily on the strategic emphasis of organizations in particular. The aim of this research is: to discuss the importance of integrating business strategy and information systems in the framework of achieving sustainable competitive advantage in supply chain and its impact on the sustainability of organizations and their endurance in a world of intense competition and rapid change. Design / Methodology / Approach: reviews and discusses existing literature of interrelationship and framing between business strategy, and customer relationship management systems (CRM) for related issues. Conceptual models are presented to clarify the interrelationship and impact between search streams. Results - the research finds a set of most important results is that if business organizations achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in supply chain, this requires them to match their own business strategy and information systems with the use of their resources and information and their compatibility with competitors' resources and capabilities in the context of competitive environment and how to maintain this feature which helps them achieve institutional distinction compared to their competitors. Practical fallouts: The main implications of practical fallouts revolve around the idea that "in today's intense competition markets, organizations must aim to seek sustainable competitive advantage in order to be competitive, and information systems will play a critical role in generating the necessary data that can through which organizations develop and implement business strategy, which in turn promotes the practice of success and achieve superiority at the business level

Schema architecture and their relationships to transaction processing in distributed database systems

We discuss the different types of schema architectures which could be supported by distributed database systems, making a clear distinction between logical, physical, and federated distribution. We elaborate on the additional mapping information required in architecture based on logical distribution in order to support retrieval as well as update operations. We illustrate the problems in schema integration and data integration in multidatabase systems and discuss their impact on query processing. Finally, we discuss different issues relevant to the cooperation (or noncooperation) of local database systems in a heterogeneous multidatabase system and their relationship to the schema architecture and transaction processing

Integration of blockchains with management information systems

In the era of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0), many Management Information Systems (MIS) integrate real-time data collection and use technologies such as big data, machine learning, and cloud computing, to foster a wide range of creative innovations, business improvements, and new business models and processes. However, the integration of blockchain with MIS offers the blockchain trilemma of security, decentralisation and scalability. MIS are usually Web 2.0 clientserver applications that include the front end web systems and back end databases; while blockchain systems are Web 3.0 decentralised applications. MIS are usually private systems that a single party controls and manages; while blockchain systems are usually public, and any party can join and participate. This paper clarifies the key concepts and illustrates with figures, the implementation of public, private and consortium blockchains on the Ethereum platform. Ultimately, the paper presents a framework for building a private blockchain system on the public Ethereum blockchain. Then,integrating the Web 2.0 client-server applications that are commonly used in MIS with Web 3.0 decentralised blockchain applications

Integrating mobile robotics and vision with undergraduate computer science

This paper describes the integration of robotics education into an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. The proposed approach delivers mobile robotics as well as covering the closely related field of Computer Vision, and is directly linked to the research conducted at the authors’ institution. The paper describes the most relevant details of the module content and assessment strategy, paying particular attention to the practical sessions using Rovio mobile robots. The specific choices are discussed that were made with regard to the mobile platform, software libraries and lab environment. The paper also presents a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of student results, including the correlation between student engagement and performance, and discusses the outcomes of this experience