Agile Professional Virtual Community Inheritance via Adaptation of Social Protocols

Support for human-to-human interactions over a network is still insufficient, particularly for professional virtual communities (PVC). Among other limitations, adaptation and learning-by-experience capabilities of humans are not taken into account in existing models for collaboration processes in PVC. This paper presents a model for adaptive human collaboration. A key element of this model is the use of negotiation for adaptation of social protocols modelling processes. A second contribution is the proposition of various adaptation propagation strategies as means for continuous management of the PVC inheritance.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure

Social Protocols for Agile Virtual Teams, in

Abstract. Despite many works on collaborative networked organizations (CNOs), CSCW, groupware, workflow systems and social networks, computer support for virtual teams is still insufficient, especially support for agility, i.e. the capability of virtual team members to rapidly and cost efficiently adapt the way they interact to changes. In this paper, requirements for computer support for agile virtual teams are presented. Next, an extension of the concept of social protocol is proposed as a novel model supporting agile interactions within virtual teams. The extended concept of social protocol consists of an extended social network and a workflow model

Designing Institutional Infrastructure for E-Science

A new generation of information and communication infrastructures, including advanced Internet computing and Grid technologies, promises more direct and shared access to more widely distributed computing resources than was previously possible. Scientific and technological collaboration, consequently, is more and more dependent upon access to, and sharing of digital research data. Thus, the U.S. NSF Directorate committed in 2005 to a major research funding initiative, “Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery”. These investments are aimed at enhancement of computer and network technologies, and the training of researchers. Animated by much the same view, the UK e-Science Core Programme has preceded the NSF effort in funding development of an array of open standard middleware platforms, intended to support Grid enabled science and engineering research. This proceeds from the sceptical view that engineering breakthroughs alone will not be enough to achieve the outcomes envisaged. Success in realizing the potential of e-Science—through the collaborative activities supported by the "cyberinfrastructure," if it is to be achieved, will be the result of a nexus of interrelated social, legal, and technical transformations.e-science, cyberinfrastructure, information sharing, research

Building capacity in climate change policy analysis and negotiation: methods and technologies

Capacity building is often cited as the reason “we cannot just pour money into developing countries” and why so many development projects fail because their design does not address local conditions. It is therefore a key technical and political concept in international development. Some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their vulnerability is in part due to a lack of capacity to plan and anticipate the effects of climate change on crops, water resources, urban electricity demand etc. What capacities do these countries lack to deal with climate change? How will they cope? What steps can they take to reduce their vulnerability? This innovative and high-profile research project was part of a larger project (called C3D) and conducted with non-governmental organisations in Senegal, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The research involved several participatory workshops and a questionnaire to all three research centres

TOWARDS INSTITUTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES FOR E-SCIENCE: The Scope of the Challenge

The three-fold purpose of this Report to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Research Councils (UK) is to: • articulate the nature and significance of the non-technological issues that will bear on the practical effectiveness of the hardware and software infrastructures that are being created to enable collaborations in e- Science; • characterise succinctly the fundamental sources of the organisational and institutional challenges that need to be addressed in regard to defining terms, rights and responsibilities of the collaborating parties, and to illustrate these by reference to the limited experience gained to date in regard to intellectual property, liability, privacy, and security and competition policy issues affecting scientific research organisations; and • propose approaches for arriving at institutional mechanisms whose establishment would generate workable, specific arrangements facilitating collaboration in e-Science; and, that also might serve to meet similar needs in other spheres such as e- Learning, e-Government, e-Commerce, e-Healthcare. In carrying out these tasks, the report examines developments in enhanced computer-mediated telecommunication networks and digital information technologies, and recent advances in technologies of collaboration. It considers the economic and legal aspects of scientific collaboration, with attention to interactions between formal contracting and 'private ordering' arrangements that rest upon research community norms. It offers definitions of e-Science, virtual laboratories, collaboratories, and develops a taxonomy of collaborative e-Science activities which is implemented to classify British e-Science pilot projects and contrast these with US collaboratory projects funded during the 1990s. The approach to facilitating inter-organizational participation in collaborative projects rests upon the development of a modular structure of contractual clauses that permit flexibility and experience-based learning.

Towards an Expert Network in Open Standards and Open Source Software: Research, Expertise and Synergy for Open and Libres Standards and Software (RESOLL) - Version 2.0

CIRANO and its partners are proposing the creation of an Expert Network in Open Standards and Open Source Software (Research, Expertise and Synergy for Open and Libres Standards and Software-RESOLL), which would be a partnership between information technology research centres, government and private user organizations, and businesses working in the field. The network will conduct studies and pilot projects that integrate computer solutions based on open standards and open source software, mainly in e-government fields such as health, education, and scientific research, as well as municipal and quasi-public services and business processes for SMEs. The knowledge, expertise and tools thus developed will be disseminated in a number of ways in order to Quebec and Canadian expertise in the field. RESOLL will also have economic and strategic benefits in that it will put the new economic model to the test in terms of open standards and open source software as well as the reuse of software components by organizations. Background The development of on-line government services and e-business is a priority for governments and businesses of all sizes. It requires considerable spending and significant strategic and organizational changes. Of the many information technology solutions available, the use of open standards and open source software is often brought up by those in the know. Although the Internet and many world-renowned software programs were developed largely from open standards and open source software, there is still a need to study, and above all prove the advantages of this approach for public and quasi-public organizations as well as small to medium-sized businesses. It is essential to identify the needs of these organizations, document best practices, experiment with open source software solutions, evaluate the performance of the software and share the knowledge and know-how of Quebec and Canadian research centres and businesses. RESOLL Goals he main goal of the Expert Network on Open Standards and Open Source Software (RESOLL) is to give people an understanding of the benefits of open standards and open source software and suggest an intelligent and advantageous use of them for public and quasi-public organizations and SMEs. More specifically, the goals are as follows: Document and share government and industry policies, strategies, and practices with respect to the use and development of adaptive software and open source software, defining open standards, open source software, adaptive software, and proprietary software; Adapt these practices and share the different methods with partners and the IT management and development communities in government and business; Establish innovative prototypes and pilot projects in order to test and demonstrate the advantages and features of this approach; Develop the expertise of Quebec and Canadian organizations in the field and create synergy between them and their users; P ublish and share the findings of the work, contribute to the enrichment of a collective software asset base available to public and quasi-public organizations and SMEs while explaining the legal issues involved in the various types of licences and electronic services. Process ESOLL is a multilateral partnership founded on the excellence of partners in their respective field. The RESOLL process will be based on the needs of its partners and users. Once these needs have been identified, research will be conducted to identify available solutions, adapt them through an integration process and alpha test them. This would be followed by a pilot project as required by the organizations and businesses. The pilot project will be implemented and evaluated in order to learn from it and ensure that necessary adjustments are made. Solutions thus obtained will be implemented as electronic services either by the client organization’s IT department or by a business partner. It is up to each organization to select their service provider. RESOLL will encourage the transfer of developed tools and services to partners for complete autonomy. Each project will have its own budget, funded by client partners. RESOLL will use part of its operating budget to start projects and develop a start-up asset base for its activities. Expectations and Deliverables The expectations of RESOLL partners and the team can be expressed by the achievement of their goals. RESOLL’s actions will quickly lead to concrete results. The deliverables will be: Policy and position papers to help partners make clear and informed decisions; Needs analyses and suggested solutions; Software solutions based on open standards and open source software integrated into experimental electronic services; Pilot project experiments that combine strategies, plans, software solutions, project support, evaluation and recommendations; Studies and interpretation documents for different types of licences and software; Collaborative Web site for sharing documents and open source software developed in the context of RESOLL projects or available on the Internet, with comments and explanations; Information and knowledge sharing activities for RESOLL and its partners (conferences, workshops, training, etc.). Partners RESOLL is a multilateral partnership. The partners that have been asked to become involved are: CIRANO, CRIM, RISQ, the governments of Quebec and Canada, Industry Canada, university researchers, Canadian and Quebec software and information technology companies, and not-for-profit user organizations from the software and information technology fields. Budget ESOLL’s master infrastructure budget will make it possible to establish a small coordination team involving part-time resources seconded from their parent organizations. We plan to obtain general financing from government and the businesses involved. The individual projects will provide their own financing. Other Benefits RESOLL will contribute to Quebec’s and Canada’s world leadership by sharing the results of its work. It will contribute to the eventual creation of resources that will enable partner companies to commercialize services based on open source software.Open standard, free software, open software, FOSS, e-government, business process, small and medium enterprises,

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Architecture of an ERP System Supporting Project-Oriented Management

Abstract. Existing ERP systems provide an IT solution to the management of enterprise resources based on the function-oriented management approach. With an increasingly wide adoption of the project-oriented management, new models are needed for ERP systems to support the management of enterprise resources in a project-oriented manner. This paper presents an architecture of an ERP system supporting project-oriented management. Two characteristics of the project-oriented management are integrated in the proposed architecture: first, social protocols are used to model interactions between actors (humans or software agents) within a given group. Second, the concept of group actions is detailed as a way to integrate group dynamics to social protocols