E-Government evaluation factors: Citizen’s perspective

The e-government field is growing to a considerable size, both in its contents and position with respect to other research fields. The government to citizen segment of egovernment is taking the lead in terms of its importance and size. Like the evaluation of all other information systems initiatives, the evaluation of egovernments in both theory and practice has proved to be important but complex. The complexity of evaluation is mostly due to the multiple perspectives involved, the difficulties of quantifying benefits, and the social and technical context of use. The importance of e-government evaluation is due to the enormous investment of governments on delivering e-government services, and to the considerable pace of growing in the e-government field. However, despite the importance of the evaluation of e-government services, literature shows that e-government evaluation is still an immature area in terms of development and management. This work is part of a research effort that aims to develop a holistic evaluation framework for e-government systems. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the citizen’ perspective in evaluating e-government services, and present a set of evaluating factors that influence citizens’ utilization of e-government services. These evaluation factors can serve as part of an e-government evaluation framework. Moreover, the evaluation factors can also be used as means of providing valuable feedback for the planning of future egovernment initiatives

Regionalization of landscape pattern indices using multivariate cluster analysis

This project was funded by the Government of Canada through the Mountain Pine Beetle Program, a six-year, $40 million program administered by Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service. Additional information on the Mountain Pine Beetle Program may be found at: http://mpb.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca.Regionalization, or the grouping of objects in space, is a useful tool for organizing, visualizing, and synthesizing the information contained in multivariate spatial data. Landscape pattern indices can be used to quantify the spatial pattern (composition and configuration) of land cover features. Observable patterns can be linked to underlying processes affecting the generation of landscape patterns (e.g., forest harvesting). The objective of this research is to develop an approach for investigating the spatial distribution of forest pattern across a study area where forest harvesting, other anthropogenic activities, and topography, are all influencing forest pattern. We generate spatial pattern regions (SPR) that describe forest pattern with a regionalization approach. Analysis is performed using a 2006 land cover dataset covering the Prince George and Quesnel Forest Districts, 5.5 million ha of primarily forested land base situated within the interior plateau of British Columbia, Canada. Multivariate cluster analysis (with the CLARA algorithm) is used to group landscape objects containing forest pattern information into SPR. Of the six generated SPR, the second cluster (SPR2) is the most prevalent covering 22% of the study area. On average, landscapes in SPR2 are comprised of 55.5% forest cover, and contain the highest number of patches, and forest/non-forest joins, indicating highly fragmented landscapes. Regionalization of landscape pattern metrics provides a useful approach for examining the spatial distribution of forest pattern. Where forest patterns are associated with positive or negative environmental conditions, SPR can be used to identify similar regions for conservation or management activities.PostprintPeer reviewe

Understanding and Specifying Information Security Needs to Support the Delivery of High Quality Security Services

In this paper we present an approach for specifying and prioritizing information security requirements in organizations. It is important to prioritize security requirements since hundred per cent security is\ud not achievable and the limited resources available should be directed to satisfy the most important ones. We propose to explicitly link security requirements with the organization’s business vision, i.e. to provide business\ud rationale for security requirements. The rationale is then used as a basis for comparing the importance of different security requirements.\ud Furthermore we discuss how to integrate the aforementioned solution concepts into a service level management process for security services, which is an important step in IT Governance. We validate our approach by way of a focus group session

Estimating ToE Risk Level using CVSS

Security management is about calculated risk and requires continuous evaluation to ensure cost, time and resource effectiveness. Parts of which is to make future-oriented, cost-benefit investments in security. Security investments must adhere to healthy business principles where both security and financial aspects play an important role. Information on the current and potential risk level is essential to successfully trade-off security and financial aspects. Risk level is the combination of the frequency and impact of a potential unwanted event, often referred to as a security threat or misuse. The paper presents a risk level estimation model that derives risk level as a conditional probability over frequency and impact estimates. The frequency and impact estimates are derived from a set of attributes specified in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). The model works on the level of vulnerabilities (just as the CVSS) and is able to compose vulnerabilities into service levels. The service levels define the potential risk levels and are modelled as a Markov process, which are then used to predict the risk level at a particular time

Innovation dynamics and the role of infrastructure

This report shows how the role of the infrastructure – standards, measurement, accreditation, design and intellectual property – can be integrated into a quantitative model of the innovation system and used to help explain levels and changes in labour productivity and growth in turnover and employment. The summary focuses on the new results from the project, set out in more detail in Sections 5 and 6. The first two sections of the report provide contextual material on the UK innovation system, the nature and content of the infrastructure knowledge and the institutions that provide it. Mixed modes of innovation, the typology of innovation practices developed and applied here, is constituted of six mixed modes, derived from many variables taken from the UK Innovation Survey. These are: Investing in intangibles Technology with IP innovating Using codified knowledge Wider (managerial) innovating Market-led innovating External process modernising. The composition of the innovation modes, and the approach used to compute them, is set out in more detail in Section 4. Modes can be thought of as the underlying process of innovation, a bundle of activities undertaken jointly by firms, and whose working out generates well known indicators such as new product innovations, R&D spending and accessing external information, that are the partial indicators gathered from the innovation survey itself

E-government evaluation: Reflections on three organisational case studies

The deployment of e-Government continues at a significant cost and pace in the worldwide public sector. An important area of research is that of the evaluation of e-Government. In this paper the authors report the findings from three interpretive in-depth organisational case studies that explore e-Government evaluation within UK public sector settings. The paper elicits insights to organisational and managerial aspects with the aim of improving knowledge and understanding of e- Government evaluation. The findings that are extrapolated from the analysis of the three case studies are classified and mapped onto a tentative e-Government evaluation framework and presented in terms lessons learnt. These aim to inform theory and improve e- Government evaluation practice. The paper concludes that e-Government evaluation is an under developed area and calls for senior executives to engage more with the e- Government agenda and commission e-Government evaluation exercises to improve evaluation practice

Integrating Circularity in the Sustainability Assessment of Asphalt Mixtures

Rising concerns about the impacts that the road engineering industry is imposing to the environment have redirected national road authorities to firmly re-consider the sustainability implications of their operations. Lately, though, sustainability has established a forceful correlation with the Circular Economy and its principles. The road engineering industry, therefore, is moving towards more circular approaches. However, this is occurring without the assessment of the potential impacts of such a transition. For this reason, in this study, a composite indicator, namely, Environmental Sustainability and Circularity indicator (ESCi), for investigating the potential effects that increased circularity could have at the environmental sustainability of asphalt mixtures is developed. It can be utilized as a decision-making support tool from stakeholders involved in both asphalt mixture production and road pavement management. In addition, in this study, four asphalt mixtures with different percentages of Reclaimed Asphalt (RA) were assessed in terms of their “cradle-to-gate” environmental impacts and circularity, by means of Life Cycle Assessment, and Material Circularity Index, respectively. Their fatigue and permanent deformation performances play a key role in the assessment and distinctive results obtained for the asphalt mixtures with increasing RA% and thus, significant environmental benefits and increased circularity are observed after specific RA% threshold