An Approach to Transform Public Administration into SOA-based Organizations

Nowadays, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) is widely spread in private organizations. However, when transferring this knowledge to Public Administration, it is realized that it has not been transformed in terms of its legal nature into organizations capable to operate under the SOA paradigm. This fact prevents public administration bodies from offering the efficient services they have been provided by different boards of governments. A high-level framework to perform this transformation is proposed. Taking it as starting point, an instance of a SOA Target Meta-Model can be obtained by means of an iterative and incremental process based on the analysis of imperatives and focused on the particular business context of each local public administration. This paper briefly presents a practical experience consisting in applying this process to a Spanish regional public administration.Junta de Andalucía TIC-578

Why Pakistan must break-into the knowledge economy

The author emphasizes in this paper that this was the moment in Pakistan’s economic trajectory for it to learn to leap frog technologically from a labor intensive economy, by passing the intermediate stages of resource based and scale based activities, to a knowledge based economy. A knowledge based economy is one that bases its growth not on increasing capital or land or labor inputs, but on knowledge. The transition required is considerable, the author points out.Knowledge Economy, Economics of Education, Technical Efficiency, Pakistan

Environmental modelling of the Chief Information Officer

Since the introduction of the term in the 1980’s, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has been widely researched. Various perceptions and dimensions of the role have been explored and debated. However, the explosion in data proliferation (and the inevitable resulting information fuelled change) further complicates organisational expectations of the CIOs role. If organisations are to competitively exploit the digital trend, then those charged with recruiting and developing CIOs now need to be more effective in determining (and shaping) CIO traits and attributes, within the context of their own organisational circumstances and in line with stakeholder expectations. CIOs also need to determine their own suitability and progression within their chosen organisation if they are to remain motivated and effective. Before modelling the role of the future CIO, it is necessary to synthesise our current knowledge (and the lessons learnt) about the CIO. This paper, therefore, aims to identify and summate the spectrum of key researched ‘themes’ pertaining to the role of the CIO. Summating previous research, themes are modelled around four key CIO ‘dimensions’, namely (1) Impacting factors, (2) Controlling factors (3) Responses and (4) CIO ‘attributes’. Having modelled the CIOs current environment, and recognising the evolving IT enabled information landscape, the authors call for further research to inform the recruitment and development of the future CIO in terms of personal attributes and the measurable impact such attributes will have on their respective organisation

Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process to Assign Resources to Software Development Projects

This paper describes a real world case of the application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a multi-criterion decision making approach, to the allocation of thousands of software developers to over a hundred development projects. The approach attempts to balance the value of each project to the business with the resources applied to it. Significant cost savings are expected to result from this approach

Hacking in the university: contesting the valorisation of academic labour

In this article I argue for a different way of understanding the emergence of hacker culture. In doing so, I outline an account of ‘the university’ as an institution that provided the material and subsequent intellectual conditions that early hackers were drawn to and in which they worked. I argue that hacking was originally a form of academic labour that emerged out of the intensification and valorisation of scientific research within the institutional context of the university. The reproduction of hacking as a form of academic labour took place over many decades as academics and their institutions shifted from an ideal of unproductive, communal science to a more productive, entrepreneurial approach to the production of knowledge. As such, I view hacking as a peculiar, historically situated form of labour that arose out of the contradictions of the academy: vocation vs. profession; teaching vs. research; basic vs. applied research; research vs. development; private vs. public; war vs. peace; institutional autonomy vs. state dependence; scientific communalism vs. intellectual property

Accountability and Control as Catalysts for Strategic Exploration and Exploitation: Field Study Results

This paper reports the collective finding from 102 field studies that look at the relationship between two organization design variables: span of control and span of accountability. Clustering the data yields propositions suggesting that the relationship between these variables may be an important determinant of strategic exploitation and exploration activities. Data from the field studies suggest that, in accordance with the controllability principle, accountability and control are tightly aligned for exploitation activities. However, this result was found in only a small number of tasks and functions. In the majority of situations, spans of accountability were wider than spans of control. This "Entrepreneurial Gap" is posited to be a result of management's desire for innovation and exploration-and used as a catalyst for changing strategy, creating high levels of customer satisfaction, or motivating people to navigate complex matrix organizations.Ambidextrous Organization, Strategic Exploration and Exploitation, Entrepreneurial Gap, Accountability, Span of Control