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

Mapping factors influencing EAI adoption in the local government authorities on different phases of the adoption lifecycle

Several private and public organisations have adopted Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), however, its application in the Local Government Authorities (LGAs) is limited. Although, there exist few EAI adoption models, these models mainly focus on a number of different factors (e.g. benefits, barriers, cost) influencing the decision making process for EAI adoption. Moreover, these models do not illustrate which factor(s) influence the decision making process for EAI adoption on the adoption lifecycle phases. Literature indicates that the adoption process involves a sequence of phases an organisation passes through before taking the decision for adoption. This exemplifies that LGAs may also have to pass through several adoption phases before taking the decision to adopt EAI. However, due to the: (a) multiplicity of diverse EAI adoption factors and (b) not able to recognise which factor(s) influence EAI on adoption lifecycle phases, it may not be easy for LGAs to take decisions to adopt EAI by merely focusing on different factors. This may impede the decision making process for EAI adoption in LGAs. Notwithstanding, the implications of EAI have yet to be assessed, leaving scope for timeliness and novel research. Therefore, it is of high importance to investigate this area within LGAs and result in research that contributes towards successful EAI adoption. This paper makes a step forward as it: (a) investigates and proposes four adoption lifecycle phases, (b) validates the adoption lifecycle phases and (c) mapping the factors influencing EAI adoption on the adoption lifecycle phases, through a case study. Hence, it significantly contributes to the body of knowledge and practice. In doing so, providing sufficient support to the decision makers for speeding up the decision making process for EAI adoption in LGAs

Modeling Virtual Organization Architecture with the Virtual Organization Breeding Methodology

While Enterprise Architecture Modeling (EAM) methodologies become more and more popular, an EAM methodology tailored to the needs of virtual organizations (VO) is still to be developed. Among the most popular EAM methodologies, TOGAF has been chosen as the basis for a new EAM methodology taking into account characteristics of VOs presented in this paper. In this new methodology, referred as Virtual Organization Breeding Methodology (VOBM), concepts developed within the ECOLEAD project, e.g. the concept of Virtual Breeding Environment (VBE) or the VO creation schema, serve as fundamental elements for development of VOBM. VOBM is a generic methodology that should be adapted to a given VBE. VOBM defines the structure of VBE and VO architectures in a service-oriented environment, as well as an architecture development method for virtual organizations (ADM4VO). Finally, a preliminary set of tools and methods for VOBM is given in this paper.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Whither enterprise architecture?

Is the current approach to enterprise architecture dogmatic and over-ambitious? Peter Kemp and Dr John McManus MBCS give their vie

Planning strategically, designing architecturally : a framework for digital library services

In an era of unprecedented technological innovation and evolving user expectations and information seeking behaviour, we are arguably now an online society, with digital services increasingly common and increasingly preferred. As a trusted information provider, libraries are in an advantageous position to respond, but this requires integrated strategic and enterprise architecture planning, for information technology (IT) has evolved from a support role to a strategic role, providing the core management systems, communication networks, and delivery channels of the modern library. Further, IT components do not function in isolation from one another, but are interdependent elements of distributed and multidimensional systems encompassing people, processes, and technologies, which must consider social, economic, legal, organisational, and ergonomic requirements and relationships, as well as being logically sound from a technical perspective. Strategic planning provides direction, while enterprise architecture strategically aligns and holistically integrates business and information system architectures. While challenging, such integrated planning should be regarded as an opportunity for the library to evolve as an enterprise in the digital age, or at minimum, to simply keep pace with societal change and alternative service providers. Without strategy, a library risks being directed by outside forces with independent motivations and inadequate understanding of its broader societal role. Without enterprise architecture, it risks technological disparity, redundancy, and obsolescence. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this conceptual paper provides an integrated framework for strategic and architectural planning of digital library services. The concept of the library as an enterprise is also introduced

Introducing mobile edge computing capabilities through distributed 5G Cloud Enabled Small Cells

Current trends in broadband mobile networks are addressed towards the placement of different capabilities at the edge of the mobile network in a centralised way. On one hand, the split of the eNB between baseband processing units and remote radio headers makes it possible to process some of the protocols in centralised premises, likely with virtualised resources. On the other hand, mobile edge computing makes use of processing and storage capabilities close to the air interface in order to deploy optimised services with minimum delay. The confluence of both trends is a hot topic in the definition of future 5G networks. The full centralisation of both technologies in cloud data centres imposes stringent requirements to the fronthaul connections in terms of throughput and latency. Therefore, all those cells with limited network access would not be able to offer these types of services. This paper proposes a solution for these cases, based on the placement of processing and storage capabilities close to the remote units, which is especially well suited for the deployment of clusters of small cells. The proposed cloud-enabled small cells include a highly efficient microserver with a limited set of virtualised resources offered to the cluster of small cells. As a result, a light data centre is created and commonly used for deploying centralised eNB and mobile edge computing functionalities. The paper covers the proposed architecture, with special focus on the integration of both aspects, and possible scenarios of application.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A QFD framework for quality, innovation and high-tech product development dynamics

The customer mostly chooses a product on the base of its quality, which therefore arises as the main cause of its commercial success. In a nearly axiomatic drawing, it follows that the effect of innovation is the improvement of quality, which itself becomes the aim of innovation. Even though the previous statement relates quality and innovation, it still does not explain their dynamics. To stress them, the ‘quality' concept must be analyzed in more detail. In fact, in addition to the ‘perceived quality', the quality ensured through `design, manufacturing and marketing' combined domains should be dealt with. This paper enhances this issue taking advantage of principles and models made available by control theory schemes coupled with quality function development (QFD) and best practice software modeling based on unified modeling language (UML