Interoperability, Trust Based Information Sharing Protocol and Security: Digital Government Key Issues

Improved interoperability between public and private organizations is of key significance to make digital government newest triumphant. Digital Government interoperability, information sharing protocol and security are measured the key issue for achieving a refined stage of digital government. Flawless interoperability is essential to share the information between diverse and merely dispersed organisations in several network environments by using computer based tools. Digital government must ensure security for its information systems, including computers and networks for providing better service to the citizens. Governments around the world are increasingly revolving to information sharing and integration for solving problems in programs and policy areas. Evils of global worry such as syndrome discovery and manage, terror campaign, immigration and border control, prohibited drug trafficking, and more demand information sharing, harmonization and cooperation amid government agencies within a country and across national borders. A number of daunting challenges survive to the progress of an efficient information sharing protocol. A secure and trusted information-sharing protocol is required to enable users to interact and share information easily and perfectly across many diverse networks and databases globally.Comment: 20 page

Information use by multi-agency teams in time constrained, uncertain and complex environments

This research investigates information practices issues in a time constrained, uncertain and complex environment with a focus on emergency management. During a major incident, commanders from the multi-agency emergency services such as from the police, fire and rescue, and ambulance need to come together to manage the incident. Depending on the nature of the incident, commanders involved in emergency management vary; hence they meet on an ad-hoc basis. The literature states that information should be shared among members of a team for coordination. It is thus necessary to understand issues underlying information sharing. Also, one of the major tasks in emergency management is to make decisions. From an information science perspective, it is imperative to understand how information is used by decision makers to make decisions. Thus, two research questions of interest are (1) the issues which impact information sharing and (2) how information is used for making decisions. This research takes an interpretive approach in which activity theory is used as a methodological and analytical framework to address these research questions. Investigating the first research question, it was found that different components impact information sharing. These components are grouped into six dimensions providing more holistic understanding of the context, which is advocated in information practices research. A model (the POSSTT model) is proposed as a framework to study information sharing of such ad-hoc multi-agency groups. Addressing the second research question, contributions are made to the ongoing debate on types of decision making. In theory, type 2 (analytical) decision making is promoted by many researchers; however, in practice it was found that in a time constrained environment, decision makers may use a combination of type 1 (intuitive) and type 2 (albeit not deliberative) decision making. A model for how experienced people use information to make decision is proposed. In addition, a need is realised for sub-dividing the experienced decision making model into an "experienced decision maker" model, and, an "experienced and confident decision maker" model. These contributions have practical implication for policy making and system design