Assessing regional digital competence: Digital futures and strategic planning implications

Understanding strategic decisions aimed at addressing regional economic issues is of increasing interest among scholars and policy makers today. Thus, studies that proffer effective strategies to address digital futures concerns from social and policy perspectives are timely. In light of this, this research uses strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis tool to frame a regional strategy for digital futures to enhance place-specific digital connectivity and socio-economic progress. Focus group discussions and a structured questionnaire were conducted to examine a SWOT for a digital economy strategy in the Southern Downs Region in Queensland, Australia. The findings show that while the proposed regional strategies for digital futures are susceptible to internal and external forces, strategic planning makes them manageable. The study’s findings also reveal that adaptive strategic planning can help regulate the effects of internal and external factors that shape individual and organisational responses to digital transformation, and that these factors promote regional competitiveness

Digital Government Strategy Derivation: A Matter of Design

The fast pace of technological development coupled with intensified competition and changing customers’ expectations are heavily affecting traditional industries such as banks. Once a stable industry, banks find themselves in need of developing agile operations that quickly detect and respond to volatile markets and changing customer needs and expectations. In this paper, we present an explorative case study on how a large European bank (EuroBank) creates this customer agility. The findings show that customer agility requires the formation of dynamic capabilities that combine ICT capabilities and organizational routines in harmonious and active ways. Based on the dynamic capabilities approach and the case data analysis, we develop a Customer Agility Capabilities (CAC) framework. It depicts the dynamic capabilities, with their alignment, that are necessary for achieving customer agility and the associated operational agility

A Pedagogy for Original Synners

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the UnexpectedThis essay begins by speculating about the learning environment of the class of 2020. It takes place entirely in a virtual world, populated by simulated avatars, managed through the pedagogy of gaming. Based on this projected version of a future-now-in-formation, the authors consider the implications of the current paradigm shift that is happening at the edges of institutions of higher education. From the development of programs in multimedia literacy to the focus on the creation of hybrid learning spaces (that combine the use of virtual worlds, social networking applications, and classroom activities), the scene of learning as well as the subjects of education are changing. The figure of the Original Synner is a projection of the student-of-the-future whose foundational literacy is grounded in their ability to synthesize information from multiple information streams

Rhizomatic Strategizing in Digital Transformation: A Clinical Field Study

Most organizations today are involved in transformation initiatives; this has led to a burgeoning interest in the phenomenon of digital transformation strategy. Here, we present the findings of a clinical field study of a large Swedish municipality that has been involved in an ambitious digital transformation program since 2017. Despite explicitly not having a formal strategy, the organization utilizes a pseudo-formalized and emergent strategy-as-practice for digital transformation that involves a set of key traits that have emerged over the years. We show how these traits have emerged and theorize on how the process can be understood as rhizomatic strategizing. The strategy emerges over time through a series of de- and reterritorializations, expanding through amalgamating new concepts into a strategy-as-practice for digital transformation

Summary Report of the First IAALD Africa Chapter Conference

The First IAALD Africa Conference aimed at creating a platform to share experiences and challenges that would help mobilise and apply agricultural information and knowledge to improve food security, win the fight against hunger, and enhance the livelihoods of rural communities across the African continent. The conference brought together major stakeholders in agriculture and related fields, especially information and communication professionals, researchers, policy makers, extension officers, farmers, information providers, private sector players and development partners actively involved in agricultural development, among others. A total of 221 delegates attended the conference from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Latin America. The theme of the Conference was “Managing Agricultural Information for Sustainable Food Security and Improved Livelihoods in Africa”. The specific objectives of the conference were: • To showcase promising agricultural information activities and results in Africa. • To exchange ideas and help develop the skills of African agricultural information specialists in information handling and management. • To create a platform where agriculture information professionals, scientists and other stakeholders interested in African agricultural information can interact and learn from each other’s experiences. • To establish and launch an African chapter of IAALD.The First IAALD Africa Conference aimed at creating a platform to share experiences and challenges that would help mobilise and apply agricultural information and knowledge to improve food security, win the fight against hunger..

Language acquisition and machine learning

In this paper, we review recent progress in the field of machine learning and examine its implications for computational models of language acquisition. As a framework for understanding this research, we propose four component tasks involved in learning from experience - aggregation, clustering, characterization, and storage. We then consider four common problems studied by machine learning researchers - learning from examples, heuristics learning, conceptual clustering, and learning macro-operators - describing each in terms of our framework. After this, we turn to the problem of grammar acquisition, relating this problem to other learning tasks and reviewing four AI systems that have addressed the problem. Finally, we note some limitations of the earlier work and propose an alternative approach to modeling the mechanisms underlying language acquisition

E-Governance, Metropolitan Governance and Development Programming. The Case of the Thessaloniki Metropolitan Area

e-Governance has recently emerged as a new field of interest for both researchers and public policy makers. This has to do in the first instance with the rise of information and communication technologies and with the strategy for promotion of the information society. It also reflects growing interest in the capacity of various forms of governance to manage complex development issues and facilitate decision-making in the era of globalization. The potential of e-Governance extends from improvement of public services at the various levels of administration to empowerment of community engagement within decision-making processes. e-Governance is also of manifest relevance to questions such as the digital divide and democratic participation. Metropolitan areas in particular are considered to be at the centre of the developmental process. They thus become the appropriate spatial level for the implementation of development programmes aimed at enhancement of competitiveness and employment. New forms of multilevel metropolitan governance emerge, in response to the economic and institutional transformations occurring in them. e-Governance represents a new challenge for metropolitan governance and in particular for development programming. In the context of the EU structural regional policy, development programming in Greece identifies the development of metropolitan areas as one of its main policy objectives. e-Governance is in any case a basic component of the Information Society strategy. This paper examines the implementation of e-Governance in the Thessaloniki metropolitan area, in the specific context of development programming. From this starting point, lessons are drawn for the necessity of e-Governance as an element of metropolitan governance.