Integrating ICT in Kenyan secondary schools: an exploratory case study of a professional development program

This study explores the introduction of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Kenyan secondary schools. Specifically, it is a case study of four schools with no previous access to ICT. The professional development program from which data for this study were drawn was designed to support teachers learning to integrate ICT in the curriculum. Using a mixed method research approach, we collected data from multiple sources and triangulated the views of various stakeholders: questionnaires with teachers, focus groups with teachers, school leaders and ICT coordinators, field observations and document analysis. While the broader program focused on the use of ICT, the results highlighted in this study focus on the development of the four schools with respect to 1) vision building, 2) leadership, 3) collaboration, 4) expertise, and 5) access to adequate resources. The discussion centers on the challenges and opportunities inherent in understanding how to prepare schools in developing countries to integrate ICT in education

Costs and Benefits of Compliance for HACCP Regulation in the Italian Meat and Dairy Sector

Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Effective strategy making:

For establishing main lines of their future development, governments on several levels of government prepare spatial development visions, for assessing individual plans and initiatives against the background of a desired direction of development. Such strategic visions help to avoid the necessity to start considering again and again the question which direction long-term development should take. The European Commission promotes making such development strategies, hoping this leads to innovation in the regions and increased competitiveness of Europe. More particularly, the Commission expects a substantial contribution to prosperity of the rich diversity of local characteristics as assets for the development and innovation of the European territory. This study aims to explore the factors for success of strategic spatial planning. Strategy making happens in the different circumstances in European countries, legally regulated or informally, using terms like: Structure plans, structural visions, master plans, development visions and spatial development strategies. Here the term (spatial) development vision is used. The central question is: Which aspects of planning processes and place-related conditions support the effectiveness of strategy making? The processes of strategy making and the place related circumstances are intensively interrelated. The diversity of circumstances in the European countries is expressed in the different national and regional planning cultures. That includes the set of procedures, competencies, education of planners and other experts and their resulting attitudes towards strategy making. In a development strategy all interests of society come together. Therefore the constructive working together of representatives of different sectors and interest is key to the success. Because of this crucial issue, we distinguished between co-operation, as just contributing to someone else’s activity, co-producing, as making together a product and collaboration towards a strategy, defined as a common exploration of possibilities. The interactions of the participants in the strategy making process, potentially creating trust and enhancing social cohesion, may be more important than the resulting concept for a development strategy. Therefore our attention focused on the way strategies are made in the black box of specific processes. The interactions aiming at co-ownership and collaboration are central in this novel ’interactions approach’. The resulting strategy does not necessarily contain (infra) structural projects; a spatial strategy concerns a selected localised policy and argumentative framework for future development. Societal relevance Being a planning consultant with over forty years of experience in practice, the author highly values practical applicability in society. Understanding of practice-related factors for effectiveness of strategy making is important because effective public management saves costs for society; a framework expressing the aimed-for direction of development provides clarity for private initiatives; an agreed strategy helps to coordinate sector policies; several EU and national subsidies for projects require a locally agreed structural frame. Because a development vision concerns the direction of an envisaged development, its effectiveness is defined in terms of performance of the argumentative framework based on the story lines developed in the discussions during the strategy making process. Our search aims at identifying recommendations for enhanced chances for performing strategies in praxis. Approach A theoretical frame was composed based on literature in the fields of planning theory, policy analysis and design. Research questions were formulated concerning the importance of the process related variables: open process management, coownership, co-design, the application of scenarios and visualizations. Concerning the importance of the place related aspects, research questions consider: planning culture, multi-level embedding, involvement of politicians and the experiences of actors in previous processes. The explorations for composing the theoretic frame aimed to do justice as much as possible to the complexity of network society in which a strategy has to be agreed. First (im-) possibilities for governing public administrations in network societies are explored. That exploration concluded that since the authority of data, experts and politicians are not self-evident anymore; there is a greater need than before that actors become convinced by arguments. Not interests as they see it (differently) but story lines support converging to an agreed selection of located objectives. Strategy making should therefore be organized as a societal process aimed at sharing ownership of ideas among participants. The second exploration for composing the theoretic frame considered conceiving a development strategy as a decision-making process. The interdependencies of social, economic, ecologic and man-made physical systems in a territory require integrated decision-making involving the relevant interests. Acknowledging that the representatives of different sectors and non-governmental and private organizations foster different views on reality, implies that the specific procedures of spatial planning will generally not be accepted by all, as the procedure for the strategy making process. That entails decision-making occurring in a non-envisaged number of rounds of decision-making in different groupings. The ultimate success of a long-term development policy consists of flexible but continued application of the argumentative frame of the strategic vision. Fairly assessing long-term strategies requires evaluation, often decades after deciding on the strategy. Society seldom allows that time for assessing the success of a strategy because different urgent issues developed since it’s making and the vision became a “historic” view in the eyes of many. Therefore a different approach for establishing expected success was needed. The specific, pivotal round of deciding about the concept of a strategic vision is called here effective, if the agreed strategy as resulting from that round of decision-making is expected to eventually perform. But effectiveness of decision-making is not sufficient; an effective strategy also implies a new promising perspective for the development of a territory. Effective decision-making consisting of effective continuation of an existing trend or more efficiently deciding on a concept does not need a strategic development vision. Those activities are not considered here for effective strategy making. Therefore, the third exploration for composing our strategic frame focused on creativity as a requirement for discovering a novel direction of development. Discovering new possibilities for developments and re-interpreting existing qualities for new applications require an open creative approach. Design is needed for expanding the possibilities of what society sees as a probable future and above all for avoiding that the search for innovation would be restricted to what important actors consider possible. Central is the search for agreement about a desired future and how to make it possible. A process of co-designing a new vision of the desired future, whereby participating actors become co-authors of something not-existing before is assumed to bring about stronger and longer lasting commitment, which is essential for the long-term success. The assumed larger commitment would result from the combination of a maximal open process of decision-making like in designing, in which ideas of every participant are welcomed as valuable contributions and which takes the freedom of not starting by accepting limitations and conditions as coming from several sides. Such creative process is expected entailing forms of co-authorship. Important is that the relevant higher government level approaches the process positively and supportive, although without unconditional commitment to any outcome of the process. The empiric part contains case studies of five strategy making processes in different European countries. The selection of cases was based on a pre-selection proposed by planners, representing their countries in the European Council of Spatial Planners (ECTP-CEU) They responded to the request for good examples of cases of successful strategy making in their countries. The final selection of five was chosen applying practical considerations about expectations of local help in assembling information. The selected cases were: Piano Strutturale Comunale of Bologna (IT), Scenariostudie Drechtsteden 2030 (NL), the Glasgow and the Clyde Valley Strategic Development Plan (UK), Vision Gherdëina (IT) and Meetjesland 2020 (BE). Next to plan documents and existing evaluations, forty-one interviews formed important sources of information for connecting casuistic and theory. Applying our definition of effectiveness, first the effectiveness of our cases was established. Not all of those five appeared to be effective according to our criteria as formulated in the theoretical frame. Next the cases were analysed, using pre-formulated hypotheses for process and place-related conditions influencing the performance of spatial development strategies. The accounts of cases in different planning cultures related to the process and place-aspects of the theoretic frame provided insight in the different process aspects and the circumstances in which those processes were conducted. That, in combination with the earlier established (non-) effectiveness enabled characterizing the processes within their various administrative and societal environments. Subsequently the process aspects and the place-related aspects of the five cases were compared and analysed applying the research questions, the hypotheses and the chains of evidence. Such comparison allowed for conclusions about factors for effectiveness. Conclusions The study did not provide evidence that strictly regulated, rigid planning cultures were prohibitive for strategy making. In all five processes a form of co-production existed, which in most cases resulted in some form of co-ownership of the results. Co-ownership evaporated soon in the cases that were not qualified as effective. Remaining co-ownership appeared to be most important for the eventual success of the spatial development vision. That has been established in Drechtsteden, Glasgow and Grödental (Vision Gherdëina). The strategy making in Bologna and Meetjesland was not successful. In Bologna lack of success resulted from extensive procedural requirements, political instability and the complexity of the administrative embedding, despite a strong concept for future development. In Meetjesland the failure was related to the lack of a sound administrative embedding together with insufficient specificity of the vision: a set of nine objectives without concrete elaborations and selective site locations did not build lasting support. The study confirmed that effective decision-making processes for long-term developments are open, interactive collaborations towards new concepts applying visualizations (maps) and the related storylines of representatives of the interests that are considered relevant locally. Although the selection of cases consisted of processes, which were found successful by planners of the country in which the cases are located, two of the cases were not effective according to our criteria. Not only satisfaction about the initial result and a form of co-ownership was important, the continuation of the processes in subsequent rounds of decision-making was even more important. The openness of decisionmaking is of special importance for converging to an agreement. Introduction of a design attitude in strategy making, applying maximal openness results in creating coauthorship, which entails stronger, lasting commitment to the agreed vision. Here the specific attitude is not meant of some, who concentrate on conditions and on mapping the limitations set by what important actors see as possible or feasible as a starting point. That approach tends to design in the limited space left over by other sector’s claims. Designing as meant in the current study regards the open “what if, then that” iterations during which designers focus on exploring new possibilities, not respecting conditions and limitations in advance. Preparing a spatial development strategy as a societal decision-making process by applying an open design attitude implies generating ideas, assessing, correcting, improving and refining solutions. The study confirmed the importance of visualizations as tools for enhancing the effectiveness of communication during the collaborative process. In order to open up minds for different ways of viewing during the process and to do justice and pay respect to ideas of the participants, decision-making is preferably organized as scenario planning, considering simultaneously several options and in which every tabled idea is considered and assessed according to its potentials, (im)possibilities and consequences. Discovering new possibilities together and co-designing a desired future entails co-authorship, which goes beyond and enhances co-ownership. This also applies for the administrative embedding: in two of the three successful cases the higher level authority acted as co-authoring partner of the development vision. Important for such vertical commitment is that the number of administrative layers with which the strategy making process must relate, should be small: preferably only one higher authority. In such cases, the strategy making process will not become an arena in which several higher authorities conduct their institutional policies for fighting their struggles for hierarchy. The only (approving) authority can support the process according to its commitment and act as a partner. Acknowledging that the responsibilities of a higher authority do not allow full commitment in advance to a yet unknown output, applying a form of loose coupling is helpful. This implies that the higher authority supports the process and commits to positively considering consequences of the output, provided that specific process conditions are fulfilled. This especially applies if envisaged large infra structural projects require substantial investments of higher authorities. The study confirms the importance of involving spatial designers and a design attitude in the collaborative decision-making process towards long-term development strategies. The necessary openness of such processes requires conducting designing not as a person-focused internal activity but to design as a process of group creativity in the collaboration of relevant participants. The ‘interactions approach’ provided useful conclusions and contributes as a novel to existing planning theory

Effective strategy making

Subject of this study For establishing main lines of their future development, governments on several levels of government prepare spatial development visions, for assessing individual plans and initiatives against the background of a desired direction of development. Such strategic visions help to avoid the necessity to start considering again and again the question which direction long-term development should take. The European Commission promotes making such development strategies, hoping this leads to innovation in the regions and increased competitiveness of Europe. More particularly, the Commission expects a substantial contribution to prosperity of the rich diversity of local characteristics as assets for the development and innovation of the European territory. This study aims to explore the factors for success of strategic spatial planning. Strategy making happens in the different circumstances in European countries, legally regulated or informally, using terms like: Structure plans, structural visions, master plans, development visions and spatial development strategies. Here the term (spatial) development vision is used. The central question is: Which aspects of planning processes and place-related conditions support the effectiveness of strategy making? The processes of strategy making and the place related circumstances are intensively interrelated. The diversity of circumstances in the European countries is expressed in the different national and regional planning cultures. That includes the set of procedures, competencies, education of planners and other experts and their resulting attitudes towards strategy making. In a development strategy all interests of society come together. Therefore the constructive working together of representatives of different sectors and interest is key to the success. Because of this crucial issue, we distinguished between co-operation, as just contributing to someone else’s activity, co-producing, as making together a product and collaboration towards a strategy, defined as a common exploration of possibilities. The interactions of the participants in the strategy making process, potentially creating trust and enhancing social cohesion, may be more important than the resulting concept for a development strategy. Therefore our attention focused on the way strategies are made in the black box of specific processes. The interactions aiming at co-ownership and collaboration are central in this novel ’interactions approach’. The resulting strategy does not necessarily contain (infra) structural projects; a spatial strategy concerns a selected localised policy and argumentative framework for future development. Societal relevance Being a planning consultant with over forty years of experience in practice, the author highly values practical applicability in society. Understanding of practice-related factors for effectiveness of strategy making is important because effective public management saves costs for society; a framework expressing the aimed-for direction of development provides clarity for private initiatives; an agreed strategy helps to coordinate sector policies; several EU and national subsidies for projects require a locally agreed structural frame. Because a development vision concerns the direction of an envisaged development, its effectiveness is defined in terms of performance of the argumentative framework based on the story lines developed in the discussions during the strategy making process. Our search aims at identifying recommendations for enhanced chances for performing strategies in praxis. Approach A theoretical frame was composed based on literature in the fields of planning theory, policy analysis and design. Research questions were formulated concerning the importance of the process related variables: open process management, coownership, co-design, the application of scenarios and visualizations. Concerning the importance of the place related aspects, research questions consider: planning culture, multi-level embedding, involvement of politicians and the experiences of actors in previous processes. The explorations for composing the theoretic frame aimed to do justice as much as possible to the complexity of network society in which a strategy has to be agreed. First (im-) possibilities for governing public administrations in network societies are explored. That exploration concluded that since the authority of data, experts and politicians are not self-evident anymore; there is a greater need than before that actors become convinced by arguments. Not interests as they see it (differently) but story lines support converging to an agreed selection of located objectives. Strategy making should therefore be organized as a societal process aimed at sharing ownership of ideas among participants. The second exploration for composing the theoretic frame considered conceiving a development strategy as a decision-making process. The interdependencies of social, economic, ecologic and man-made physical systems in a territory require integrated decision-making involving the relevant interests. Acknowledging that the representatives of different sectors and non-governmental and private organizations foster different views on reality, implies that the specific procedures of spatial planning will generally not be accepted by all, as the procedure for the strategy making process. That entails decision-making occurring in a non-envisaged number of rounds of decision-making in different groupings. The ultimate success of a long-term development policy consists of flexible but continued application of the argumentative frame of the strategic vision. Fairly assessing long-term strategies requires evaluation, often decades after deciding on the strategy. Society seldom allows that time for assessing the success of a strategy because different urgent issues developed since it’s making and the vision became a “historic” view in the eyes of many. Therefore a different approach for establishing expected success was needed. The specific, pivotal round of deciding about the concept of a strategic vision is called here effective, if the agreed strategy as resulting from that round of decision-making is expected to eventually perform. But effectiveness of decision-making is not sufficient; an effective strategy also implies a new promising perspective for the development of a territory. Effective decision-making consisting of effective continuation of an existing trend or more efficiently deciding on a concept does not need a strategic development vision. Those activities are not considered here for effective strategy making. Therefore, the third exploration for composing our strategic frame focused on creativity as a requirement for discovering a novel direction of development. Discovering new possibilities for developments and re-interpreting existing qualities for new applications require an open creative approach. Design is needed for expanding the possibilities of what society sees as a probable future and above all for avoiding that the search for innovation would be restricted to what important actors consider possible. Central is the search for agreement about a desired future and how to make it possible. A process of co-designing a new vision of the desired future, whereby participating actors become co-authors of something not-existing before is assumed to bring about stronger and longer lasting commitment, which is essential for the long-term success. The assumed larger commitment would result from the combination of a maximal open process of decision-making like in designing, in which ideas of every participant are welcomed as valuable contributions and which takes the freedom of not starting by accepting limitations and conditions as coming from several sides. Such creative process is expected entailing forms of co-authorship. Important is that the relevant higher government level approaches the process positively and supportive, although without unconditional commitment to any outcome of the process. The empiric part contains case studies of five strategy making processes in different European countries. The selection of cases was based on a pre-selection proposed by planners, representing their countries in the European Council of Spatial Planners (ECTP-CEU) They responded to the request for good examples of cases of successful strategy making in their countries. The final selection of five was chosen applying practical considerations about expectations of local help in assembling information. The selected cases were: Piano Strutturale Comunale of Bologna (IT), Scenariostudie Drechtsteden 2030 (NL), the Glasgow and the Clyde Valley Strategic Development Plan (UK), Vision Gherdëina (IT) and Meetjesland 2020 (BE). Next to plan documents and existing evaluations, forty-one interviews formed important sources of information for connecting casuistic and theory. Applying our definition of effectiveness, first the effectiveness of our cases was established. Not all of those five appeared to be effective according to our criteria as formulated in the theoretical frame. Next the cases were analysed, using pre-formulated hypotheses for process and place-related conditions influencing the performance of spatial development strategies. The accounts of cases in different planning cultures related to the process and place-aspects of the theoretic frame provided insight in the different process aspects and the circumstances in which those processes were conducted. That, in combination with the earlier established (non-) effectiveness enabled characterizing the processes within their various administrative and societal environments. Subsequently the process aspects and the place-related aspects of the five cases were compared and analysed applying the research questions, the hypotheses and the chains of evidence. Such comparison allowed for conclusions about factors for effectiveness. Conclusions The study did not provide evidence that strictly regulated, rigid planning cultures were prohibitive for strategy making. In all five processes a form of co-production existed, which in most cases resulted in some form of co-ownership of the results. Co-ownership evaporated soon in the cases that were not qualified as effective. Remaining co-ownership appeared to be most important for the eventual success of the spatial development vision. That has been established in Drechtsteden, Glasgow and Grödental (Vision Gherdëina). The strategy making in Bologna and Meetjesland was not successful. In Bologna lack of success resulted from extensive procedural requirements, political instability and the complexity of the administrative embedding, despite a strong concept for future development. In Meetjesland the failure was related to the lack of a sound administrative embedding together with insufficient specificity of the vision: a set of nine objectives without concrete elaborations and selective site locations did not build lasting support. The study confirmed that effective decision-making processes for long-term developments are open, interactive collaborations towards new concepts applying visualizations (maps) and the related storylines of representatives of the interests that are considered relevant locally. Although the selection of cases consisted of processes, which were found successful by planners of the country in which the cases are located, two of the cases were not effective according to our criteria. Not only satisfaction about the initial result and a form of co-ownership was important, the continuation of the processes in subsequent rounds of decision-making was even more important. The openness of decisionmaking is of special importance for converging to an agreement. Introduction of a design attitude in strategy making, applying maximal openness results in creating coauthorship, which entails stronger, lasting commitment to the agreed vision. Here the specific attitude is not meant of some, who concentrate on conditions and on mapping the limitations set by what important actors see as possible or feasible as a starting point. That approach tends to design in the limited space left over by other sector’s claims. Designing as meant in the current study regards the open “what if, then that” iterations during which designers focus on exploring new possibilities, not respecting conditions and limitations in advance. Preparing a spatial development strategy as a societal decision-making process by applying an open design attitude implies generating ideas, assessing, correcting, improving and refining solutions. The study confirmed the importance of visualizations as tools for enhancing the effectiveness of communication during the collaborative process. In order to open up minds for different ways of viewing during the process and to do justice and pay respect to ideas of the participants, decision-making is preferably organized as scenario planning, considering simultaneously several options and in which every tabled idea is considered and assessed according to its potentials, (im)possibilities and consequences. Discovering new possibilities together and co-designing a desired future entails co-authorship, which goes beyond and enhances co-ownership. This also applies for the administrative embedding: in two of the three successful cases the higher level authority acted as co-authoring partner of the development vision. Important for such vertical commitment is that the number of administrative layers with which the strategy making process must relate, should be small: preferably only one higher authority. In such cases, the strategy making process will not become an arena in which several higher authorities conduct their institutional policies for fighting their struggles for hierarchy. The only (approving) authority can support the process according to its commitment and act as a partner. Acknowledging that the responsibilities of a higher authority do not allow full commitment in advance to a yet unknown output, applying a form of loose coupling is helpful. This implies that the higher authority supports the process and commits to positively considering consequences of the output, provided that specific process conditions are fulfilled. This especially applies if envisaged large infra structural projects require substantial investments of higher authorities. The study confirms the importance of involving spatial designers and a design attitude in the collaborative decision-making process towards long-term development strategies. The necessary openness of such processes requires conducting designing not as a person-focused internal activity but to design as a process of group creativity in the collaboration of relevant participants. The ‘interactions approach’ provided useful conclusions and contributes as a novel to existing planning theory

An explorative approach to the evolving municipal landscape of South Africa: 1993-2020

The establishment of municipalities in South Africa has been a long and difficult process, which still appears to be evolving 25 years later. In 1994, the new democratic government undertook to restructure the country’s racially segregated administrative structure, by integrating areas to form cohesive municipal entities that would allow for the more efficient management of the municipal areas. However, the demarcation approach was easier to pen on paper than to implement in practice. This article explores the South African spatial reform process from 1993 to 2020, by analysing literature and legislative frameworks, in order to determine how municipalities were demarcated and the challenges they experienced. The study found that the spatial restructuring process was particularly complex, due to limited knowledge of the spatial landscape and the many unresolved spatial administrative issues. The study calls for further research to support the formation of more efficient municipal areas

Addressing the needs of the children’s integrated workforce: A method for developing collaborative practice through joint learning

The delivery of welfare, health and educational provision to the majority of children aged 0–18 in England is primarily led by local authorities via their children’s integrated service. In 2004 the children’s integrated service model was launched and it promised the benefits of an integrated and collaborative system of working, regarding flexibility and responsiveness to national policy, local development and capacity building (Robinson et al, 2008). However, the implementation and emergence of this model has been characterised by competing local and national agendas, practitioner misunderstanding and lack of trust, a lack of strong leadership and also financial restrictions. It can therefore be contended that conceptually children’s integrated services are not operating fully with a collaborative and integrated workforce. As a possible solution to the current situation, it is proposed that joint learning, along with a combined continual professional development (CPD) framework, be made available as a valuable starting point for such organisations. Learning and working together has benefits for children and practitioners, and especially, as this article will argue, for playwork practitioners

A framework for exploration and cleaning of environmental data : Tehran air quality data experience

Management and cleaning of large environmental monitored data sets is a specific challenge. In this article, the authors present a novel framework for exploring and cleaning large datasets. As a case study, we applied the method on air quality data of Tehran, Iran from 1996 to 2013. ; The framework consists of data acquisition [here, data of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤10 µm (PM10)], development of databases, initial descriptive analyses, removing inconsistent data with plausibility range, and detection of missing pattern. Additionally, we developed a novel tool entitled spatiotemporal screening tool (SST), which considers both spatial and temporal nature of data in process of outlier detection. We also evaluated the effect of dust storm in outlier detection phase.; The raw mean concentration of PM10 before implementation of algorithms was 88.96 µg/m3 for 1996-2013 in Tehran. After implementing the algorithms, in total, 5.7% of data points were recognized as unacceptable outliers, from which 69% data points were detected by SST and 1% data points were detected via dust storm algorithm. In addition, 29% of unacceptable outlier values were not in the PR.  The mean concentration of PM10 after implementation of algorithms was 88.41 µg/m3. However, the standard deviation was significantly decreased from 90.86 µg/m3 to 61.64 µg/m3 after implementation of the algorithms. There was no distinguishable significant pattern according to hour, day, month, and year in missing data.; We developed a novel framework for cleaning of large environmental monitored data, which can identify hidden patterns. We also presented a complete picture of PM10 from 1996 to 2013 in Tehran. Finally, we propose implementation of our framework on large spatiotemporal databases, especially in developing countries

DOD Mission Engineering and Integration Explorative-Exploitative Architecture for Technology Innovation

The ability of U.S. Department of Defense to achieve timely innovation in support of U.S. National Defense and Military Strategies continues to increase in significance. The growing challenges in U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) technological innovation in a context of global security and rapid pace of global competitiveness continue to reveal many shortcomings in current weapon systems development and acquisition practice. As the pace of technological innovation is accelerating, the DoD faces the challenge that the same disruptive technological advances are also being made available to or developed by its adversaries. Based on literature review, no innovation system theory exists that accounts for organization interaction with the environment given socio-economic objectives and associated missions, including a less closed-system approach to interactions across the private and public sector boundaries. The Mission Engineering Explorative-Exploitative Architecture for Innovation expands Bennan & Tushman’s (2003) and O’Reilly & Tushman (1996) explorative-exploitative theory from a process management, innovation behavior, and private firm’s performance within the context of environmental technological change. A System Theory framework based qualitative content analyzes the innovation and Department of Defense dataset and produced a set of initial seed-categories. These seed-categories were interpreted resulting in architectural views and associated propositions. The resulting architecture contributions are propositional definitions for Mission Engineering and Integration Management functions in the context of military missions and complex situations including constructs for identifying socio-technical misalignments as basis for understanding and identifying technological innovation opportunities and associated partnerships

Design and evaluation of improvement method on the Web information navigation - a stochastic search approach

With the advent of fast growing Internet and World Wide Web (WWW), more and more companies start the electronic commerce to enhance the business competitiveness. On the other hand, more and more people surf on the Web for information gathering/processing. Due to unbalanced traffic and poorly organized information, users suffer the slow communication and disordered information organization. The information provider can analyze the traffic and uniform resource locator (URL) counters to adjust the organization; however, heterogeneous navigation patterns and dynamic fluctuating Web traffic make the tuning process very complicated. Alternatively the user may be provided with guidance to navigate through the Web pages efficiently. In this paper, a Web site was modeled as a Markov chain associated with the corresponding dynamic traffic and designated information pages. We consider four models: inexperienced surfers on guidance-less sites, experienced surfers on guidance-less sites, sites with the mean-length guidance, and sites with the known-first-arc guidance (generalized as sites with dynamic stochastic shortest path guidance). Simulation is conducted to evaluate the performance of the different types of navigation guidance. We also propose a reformulation policy to highlight the hyperlinks as steering guidance. The evolution on complexity and applicability is also discussed for the design guideline of general improvement methods. The paper concludes with the summary and future directions.published_or_final_versio