Redesigning work organizations and technologies: experiences from European projects

Currently distributed business process (re) design (resulting in components of business networks) basically relies on technical criteria. And that are the main purposes of most research projects supported by EC. Through the process of building a European Research Area, this means a strong influence in the national research programmes. However it is generally accepted that it should also take into account social criteria and aspects such as the quality of working life, or participation in decision processes. Those were some of the objectives of projects in de 80s decade, and framed some of the main concepts and scientific approaches to work organisation. The democratic participation of network and organisations members in the design process is a critical success factor. This is not accepted by everyone, but is based in sufficient case studies. Nevertheless, in order to achieve an optimization that can satisfying the requirements of agility of a network of enterprises, more complex design methods must be developed. Thus, the support to the collaborative design of distributed work in a network of enterprises, through a concurrent approaching business processes, work organisation and task content is a key factor to achieve such purposes. Increasing needs in terms of amounts of information, agility, and support for collaboration without time and space constrains, imposes the use of a computer-based model.business process; networks; decision processes; collaborative design;

AN REVIEW OF THE EFFECTIVE ENERGY CONSUMPTION WITHIN THE GREEN IT AND GREEN ENERGY STRATEGIES

The paper provides analysis on the current state of the art in the field of green technologies, including green information technologies, and methods aimed to achieve effective energy consumption goals. Recent advances in the field summarized in prospective publications, were analysed. Modern Green IT and Green Energy strategies, aimed to reduce power consumption, environmental influence and improve sustainability, which assume the use of Cloud Technologies, renewable energy sources, proper recycling and reuse of devices and resources, were singled out. Finally, recommendations for IT and industrial companies aimed helping to achieve green strategies’ goals, were formulated

Linked Open Data for Environmental Protection in Smart Regions – the New Challenge for the Use of Environmental Data and Information.

This paper will introduce the specific objectives of the recently initiated project SmartOpenData - “Linked Open Data for Environmental Protection in Smart Regions” (SOD project) that is supported by Seventh Framework ENV.2013.6.5-3: Exploiting the European Open Data Strategy to Mobilize the Use of Environmental Data and Information. The main concept of the project is to create a Linked Open Data (SOD) infrastructure (including software tools and data sets) fed by public and freely available data resources, existing sources for biodiversity and environment protection and research in rural and European protected areas and its national parks. The aim of the SOD project to develop real proposals for building a SOD infrastructure for biodiversity and environment protection in European protected areas that satisfy the requirements of four kinds of target users: public bodies, researchers, companies (also small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and citizens. The SOD project will focus also on how the SOD Initiative can be linked with the INSPIRE directive, GEOSS Data-CORE, GMES, completed European scale Geographic Information System (GIS) projects (like a Habitats project, which defines models and tools for managing spatial data in environmental protection areas), and external third parties, as well as how it can impact economic and sustainability progress in European environmental research and protection. The key elements of the project will be five target pilot projects in related areas (agro forestry management, environmental research and biodiversity, water monitoring, forest sustainability and environmental data re-use), where harmonization of metadata, improvement of spatial data fusion, as well as visualization and publication of the resulting information according to user requirements will take place. Key words: Linked Open Data, Geographic Information Systems, GIS, INSPIRE directive, environmental data, natural resources, sustainable development and research

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT TEAM

The necessity of finding the connection between the planning, decision making, actions and results create project management interest to an evaluation of the project team performance. By analyzing the team performance, determining successful projects and assessing results, members of such project will have the necessary information to avoid failures, to monitor the progress, to compare similar projects and move to defined goals. The objective of this paper is to provide guidelines for evaluation of the project team performance in the software development project. This paper summarizes measures for evaluation of the team performance, an evaluation objectives and it benefits as well as factors that may have an influence on the team performance. Demonstration example of the guideline usage has been provided

Social networking and open educational resources: updating quality assurance for e-learning excellence

Quality assurance approaches in higher education are well-established, but it is important to develop methods which are applicable to the domain of e-learning. The E-xcellence methodology (EADTU, 2009a) was therefore designed to assess the quality of e-learning in distance learning and blended learning contexts. The methodology is based around a set of benchmarks, supported by a practitioner handbook and a web-based ‘QuickScan’ self-evaluation tool. Experience shows that the E-xcellence methodology is particularly valuable for the process of improvement through collaborative internal review. E-learning has evolved since the E-xcellence methodology was first developed. In particular, there is increasing awareness and use of open education resources (OERs) and social networking. However, these aspects were not explicit in the original E-xcellence resources. The E-xcellence Next project was therefore established to update the resources, incorporating these developments. To begin this process, a consultation was carried out among E-xcellence Next project members, followed by a participatory workshop on the themes of social networking and OERs. The E-xcellence resources were also used in a series of self-evaluation seminars held at European higher education institutions. Experience and feedback from these activities has been used to update the manual, the benchmarks and the QuickScan tool. The result is a set of quality assurance resources which encompass social networking, OERs and other recent developments in e-learning

Root Cause Analysis in Business Processes

Conceptual modeling is an important tool for understanding and revealing weaknesses of business processes. Yet, the current practice in reengineering projects often considers simply the as-is control flow and uses the respective model barely as a reference for brain-storming about improvement opportunities. This approach heavily relies on the intuition of the participants and misses a clear description of steps to identify root causes of problems. In contrast to that, this paper introduces a systematic methodology to detect and document the quality dimension of a business process. It builds on the definition of softgoals for each process activity, of correlations between softgoals, and metrics to measure the occurrence of quality issues. In this regard our contribution is a foundation of root-cause analysis in business process modeling, and a conceptual integration of goal-based and activity-based approaches to capturing processes

Identifying patterns and recommendations of and for sustainable open data initiatives: a benchmarking-driven analysis of open government data initiatives among European countries

Open government and open (government) data are seen as tools to create new opportunities, eliminate or at least reduce information inequalities and improve public services. More than a decade of these efforts has provided much experience, practices, and perspectives to learn how to better deal with them. This paper focuses on benchmarking of open data initiatives over the years and attempts to identify patterns observed among European countries that could lead to disparities in the development, growth, and sustainability of open data ecosystems. To do this, we studied benchmarks and indices published over the last years (57 editions of 8 artifacts) and conducted a comparative case study of eight European countries, identifying patterns among them considering different potentially relevant contexts such as e-government, open government data, open data indices and rankings, and others relevant for the country under consideration. Using a Delphi method, we reached a consensus within a panel of experts and validated a final list of 94 patterns, including their frequency of occurrence among studied countries and their effects on the respective countries. Finally, we took a closer look at the developments in identified contexts over the years and defined 21 recommendations for more resilient and sustainable open government data initiatives and ecosystems and future steps in this area.Regional Government of Andalusia, Spain (Research projects number P20_00314 and B-SEJ-556-UGR20).Institutional support of the University of Pardubice and by European Social Fund via IT Academy programme, University of Tartu (Estonia

Estimating investments in General Purpose Technologies: The case of AI Investments in Europe

In spite of a large interest in General Purpose Technologies, it is unclear how much economies invest in their development and diffusion. For example, various sources provide various figures of investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This constantly blurs the understanding of the AI-driven revolution among policy makers and business leaders and constraints informed decision making. The current report presents an original and comprehensive methodology to estimate AI investments. It rests on three assumptions: First, it considers AI as a general-purpose technology (GPT). Second, it includes not only investments in the core AI technology, but in complementary assets and capabilities necessary for its adoption. Finally, the methodology recognises different roles that the public and private sectors play in the process of AI creation and implementation. Using this approach, AI investments in Europe are estimated.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom

Circular economy and economic development in the European Union: a review and bibliometric analysis

Increased changes in the climate and ecosystems call for a sustainable economic development, where economic growth should be compatible with the environment goals. In order to do this, it is urgent to find new ways of life and new production systems that make our ecological footprint compatible with global sustainability. The concept of the circular economy has brought relevant contributions to this problem. The central objective of the study presented here is to highlight the main insights presented through scientific literature about the concept of the circular economy within the European Union. In practice, the intention is to show what has already been done about this topic and what can/should be implemented in the future. To achieve these objectives, 144 articles were considered from the Web of Science (Core Collection) for the topics “circular economy” and “European Union”. These documents were, firstly, analysed through a proper literature review and later explored through bibliometric analysis, considering bibliographic data and the VOSviewer software. As the main findings have revealed, the increased importance of this concept within the European Union is recognized. However, this paper also identifies several challenges in the literature, namely the concentration of the identified publications in certain countries, organizations, and authors.This work is funded by National Funds through the FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology,I.P., within the scope of the project Refª UIDB/00681/2020. Paulo Mourão acknowledges the following:Thispaper is financed by National Funds of the FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the project«UIDB/03182/2020

Establishment of educational module “Climate Change” in the University of Liepaja

Increase of awareness and high knowledge base of society in the field of climate change and environment in general in global and local ranges is vital to prevent future possible increase of climate changes in the world. In order to more involve society in prevention of future climate changes, national government has come up with National Climate Policy [1], which includes possibility for educational institutions such as University of Liepaja to develop educational programs, including lifelong and distance education programs. To achieve given objective, educational module “Climate Change” is created by University of Liepaja. Goal of this activity is to increase knowledge and capacity of governmental institutions, municipalities, scientific and educational institutions, private businesses, societies and foundations as well as separate members of society. Besides overall information on greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate change, University of Liepaja concentrates more on practical questions, since, in our opinion, practical knowledge on how to use renewable resources, reduce greenhouse gas emissions or even reuse them in industry will create larger impact on achieving the objective. Therefore University of Liepaja concentrates on following topics: practical use of different technical solutions in industry, technical equipment used in industry of renewable energy, technologies used to prevent greenhouse gas emissions and mathematical modeling of possible scenarios, when pollution occurs in populated areas. Developed materials will be available for society, especially for the members of the target group for educational purposes. Materials also can and will be used for distance education