An Exploratory Investigation of System Success Factors in Data Warehousing

Despite the increasing role of the data warehouse as a strategic information source for decision makers, academic research has been lacking, especially from an organizational perspective. An exploratory study was conducted to improve general understanding of data warehousing issues from the perspective of IS success. For this, the effect of variables pertaining to system quality, information quality, and service quality on user satisfaction for the data warehouse was studied. Additional characterization was made on data warehouse users, their organizational tasks, and data warehouse usage. Empirical data were gathered at a large enterprise from three different information sources: a survey, unstructured group interviews with end-users, and informal interviews with an IT manager who was in charge of the data warehouse. Data analysis showed that user satisfaction with the data warehouse was significantly affected by such system quality factors as data quality, data locatability, and system throughput. Interviews also supported the existence of system design and management issues that have to be addressed to optimize the utility of the data warehouse as an effective decision support environment. In the meantime, data analysis indicated that first-line (or lower) and middle managers were the main users of the system. Managers and knowledge workers were taking advantage of the system to perform complex tasks, to support decision making, and to seek information critical for enhanced productivity. The group interviews revealed additional benefits of the data warehouse and major roadblocks in its successful usage

Public policy: turning open data into democratic data - Portal Quality Assessment - Comparative Analysis

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceAs data, information, and their respective provisioning gets more and more ubiquitous, people start to look for - and even demand - transparency and data to support the policies in effect right now that, either directly or indirectly, affects them. There are many expectations related with Open Government Data initiatives, such as improving policymaking, increase in transparency of government spending, advance citizen engagement with the institutions, etc. This master’s proposal aims to offer research that pertains to this theme; including an in depth look into one of the most reputed OGD maturity report (EU Open Data Maturity Report), a systematic literature review of Open Data’s main objectives and goals, the influence on publication of scientific literature as well as the potential socio-economic and transparency impact they may have, in order to proceed to an assessment of the portal quality in Portugal by evaluating the usage of its data on scientific papers and articles; through the usage of bibliometrics and PRISMA methodology. My thesis research drills down on these topics: What are the most used Portuguese OGD portals in academic literature? What are the authors that make the most use of Portuguese OGD portals? What characterizes the authors and the publications

ICTs usage and skills matching at work: some evidence from Spain

This research is a post-print version of the article "ICTs usage and skills matching at work: some evidence from Spain" published by International Journal of Manpower (Vol. 42 No. 6, pp. 1064-1083).This article focuses on the Spanish labour market, and its primary objectives are to analyse the factors determining the ICTs usage at workplace, and examine how the workers’ e-skills match with the job tasks requiring ICTs. Furthermore, it will explore whether doing ICTs training activities has a positive effect on the probability of carrying out appropriately the ICTs at work. The methodology applied is an ordered response model analysing how the workers’ e-skills match with the knowledge required to the ICTs usage at the job. This econometric specification will control by the selection bias generated because not all employees use ICTs to perform the job tasks. Data are obtained from the Survey on Equipment and Use of ICTs in Households (ICTS-H Survey). Educational attainment and the type of ICTs training are the most relevant variables to explain the ICTs usage and the quality of the job match. Data used are cross-sectional, and it excludes the possibility of observing how the workers’ careers evolve depending on their ICTs training. The methodology applied allows us to obtain the marginal effects to the variables explaining the probability of using ICTs at job, and how the workers’ knowledge match with the e-skill required by the employers. The results are a source of information to policymakers about how workers face the introduction of ICTs in the labour market. To the best of our knowledge, the article’s topic and its methodology are unprecedented in the economic literature and, specially, in the Spanish case

Global coordination and standardisation in marine biodiversity through the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and related databases

The World Register of Marine Species is an over 90% complete open-access inventory of all marine species names. Here we illustrate the scale of the problems with species names, synonyms, and their classification, and describe how WoRMS publishes online quality assured information on marine species.Within WoRMS, over 100 global, 12 regional and 4 thematic species databases are integrated with a common taxonomy. Over 240 editors from 133 institutions and 31 countries manage the content. To avoid duplication of effort, content is exchanged with 10 external databases. At present WoRMS contains 460,000 taxonomic names (from Kingdom to subspecies), 368,000 species level combinations of which 215,000 are currently accepted marine species names, and 26,000 related but non-marine species. Associated information includes 150,000 literature sources, 20,000 images, and locations of 44,000 specimens. Usage has grown linearly since its launch in 2007, with about 600,000 unique visitors to the website in 2011, and at least 90 organisations from 12 countries using WoRMS for their data management.By providing easy access to expert-validated content, WoRMS improves quality control in the use of species names, with consequent benefits to taxonomy, ecology, conservation and marine biodiversity research and management. The service manages information on species names that would otherwise be overly costly for individuals, and thus minimises errors in the application of nomenclature standards. WoRMS' content is expanding to include host-parasite relationships, additional literature sources, locations of specimens, images, distribution range, ecological, and biological data. Species are being categorised as introduced (alien, invasive), of conservation importance, and on other attributes. These developments have a multiplier effect on its potential as a resource for biodiversity research and management. As a consequence of WoRMS, we are witnessing improved communication within the scientific community, and anticipate increased taxonomic efficiency and quality control in marine biodiversity research and management

Towards reproducible MSMS data preprocessing, quality control and quantification

The development of MSnbase aims at providing researchers dealing with labelled quantitative proteomics data with a transparent, portable, extensible and open-source collaborative framework to easily manipulate and analyse MS2-level raw tandem mass spectrometry data. The implementation in R gives users and developers a great variety of powerful tools to be used in a controlled and reproducible way. Furthermore, MSnbase has been developed following an object-oriented programming paradigm: all information that is manipulated by the user is encapsulated in ad hoc data containers to hide it's underlying complexity. We illustrate the usage and achievements of our software using a published spiked-in data set in which varying quantities of test proteins have been labelled with four different iTRAQ tags. In addition to providing raw MSMS data, MSnbase also stores meta-data and logs processing steps in the data object itself for optimal traceability. We provide graphics on how to inspect precursor data for quality control and how individual or merged MSMS spectra can subsequently be processed, plotted and extracted using a variety of methods. We also demonstrate how reporter ions (or any peaks of interest defined by the user) can easily be quantified and normalised using several build-in alternative strategies and how the effect of each transformation can be recorded, examined and reproduced. MSnbase constitutes a unique versatile working and development environment to process labelled MSMS data and provides in turn important feedback for data acquisition optimisation. We conclude by presenting future extensions of MSnbase and highlight its usage in reproducible proteomics research

Internal audit function attributes and financial reporting quality: the Nigerian case

Financial reporting quality depends on its relevance, faithful representation, comparability, understandability and verifiability that could guide investors make informed decisions. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of internal audit function attributes on financial reporting quality. The study also examined the moderating effect of audit committee interaction, senior management support, and information technology usage on the relationship between internal audit function attributes and financial reporting quality in Nigerian listed organizations. Using survey and purposive sampling, 97 usable questionnaires have been obtained from the head of internal audit functions. The data analysis was conducted using PLS-SEM 3.2.6. The findings reveal evidence of the significant relationships between internal audit work, risk-based audit, internal control activities, coordination between internalexternal auditors and financial reporting quality. This study also discloses that senior management support and information technology usage significantly moderate the relationships between internal audit function attributes and financial reporting quality. The study contributes to the literature on how the internal audit function attributes impact the financial reporting quality, particularly in the Nigerian context, where there are scant similar studies. From another perspective, this study also contributes to the literature on how to test the complex model with three moderators which is a very uncommon practice in the available literature. The study suggests that the internal audit development policymakers and board of directors of Nigerian listed organizations can improve the internal audit function practices that will nurture financial reporting quality. Both policymakers and the board of directors should ensure adequate structures that will strengthen the organisational status of the internal auditors to perform towards improving financial reporting quality and minimising opportunistic management actions

The effect of system reliability, information sharing and service quality on e-learning net benefit in public sector organizations

The purpose of this study was to investigate how public sector workers in Indonesia use e-learning systems and how they can benefit from them. The researchers analyzed five variables that contribute to the effectiveness of e-learning: system reliability, information sharing, service quality, user satisfaction, and net benefit. Structural Equation Model analysis was used to analyze the data collected from 203 respondents who were public sector employees in Indonesia. The findings of this study revealed that information sharing, and service quality significantly impact user satisfaction, which in turn has a significant effect on net benefits. Additionally, system reliability was found to significantly impact user satisfaction. This theoretical implication suggests that there is a direct relationship between the level of information sharing and service quality provided by a public sector organization and the level of user satisfaction experienced by its usage of e-learning. The practical implication of the finding is that public sector organizations must prioritize the reliability of their e-learning systems. This includes investing in regular maintenance and updates, ensuring proper testing and quality control procedures, and addressing any issues or downtime quickly and effectively

Image Compression and its Effect on Data

This thesis is intended to define and study different image compression techniques, software programs, image formats (from early ones such as “GIF” to most recent ones such as “JPEG 2000”), compression effect on compressed data (compressed images), and its effectiveness and usefulness in reducing the file size and its transmission time, as a result. In many GeoBioPhysical applications, some information inside any image may be the keys to solve different kinds of problems and classify features. This kind of data and information has to be handled with care; i.e. it’s not allowed to be lost during the compression process. On the other hand, dealing with images is more flexible in regular applications such as images used as pictures for simple purposes such as e-mails. An un-compressed aerial image (DOQQ) of Huntington, WV. (with “.Tiff” extension) was taken as the original file to be compressed using different techniques and software programs. The results were studied and attached to each image. The resulting file size of each image was used to perform some comparisons between different software programs that were also used, trying to find the effectiveness of each technique and software from the quality to file size ratio point of view. Some previous work and research from different references was also studied and discussed to show the differences and the similarities between this work and previous ones. One of the goals of this study is to find the software program(s) and the compression types those give the best quality to file size ratio, and the ones that work best for GeoBioPhysical studies. The results show that dealing with different types of imagery is sensitive and depends strongly on the application; the user has to know what he is doing. The user has to use the proper input imagery and compress them to the proper limits to get best results. The results of this study show that JPEG2000 software programs (such as LuraWave) are very good and effective choices. JPEG2000 and ECW are likely to be extensively used in the near future for imagery and internet usage

Human emotional response to energy visualisations

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2012 Elsevier B.V.Past research has found that frequent energy usage feedback is an important factor in reducing home energy consumption, and that the sensory appeal and cognitive relevance of the feedback are key components of user engagement with energy systems. The visual design of the information interface is important not just due to its role in communicating data of cognitive relevance, but also because the choice of information type and format is important towards achieving interactive Hebbian learning. The objective of the current research study was to investigate the possible effect of image format on the human emotional response to scenes of energy systems, and to evaluate whether any gender related differences in emotional response occurred. An automated PC-based test was developed which utilised five visual image formats (Optical Gray-Scale, Optical Coloured, Optical Augmented, Infrared Gray-Scale and Infrared Blue-Red) and nine home energy scenes (hot water boiler, radiator, water faucet, kitchen oven, tea kettle, toaster, electrical connector, laptop computer and tea mug). The emotional response of the participant was measured in the automated test by means of a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) which provided symbolic graphical representations of the human body under various degrees of emotional response, and associated Likert format rating scales for the valence and activation level of the emotional response. Comparison of the results obtained for the different visual scenes suggests that the greatest level of human emotional activation was achieved by the Infrared Blue-Red (thermal image) format, and that, generally, coloured images provided higher levels of emotional activation than gray-scale images. The increased activation achieved by the infrared images suggests attention capturing potential due to novelty, or due to the direct link to heat and energy, or both. Significant differences in emotional response (both activation and valence) were found to occur as a function of gender. The current results provide first guidance which a designer can use when choosing image spectrum and colours to represent energy systems on the displays of thermostats, smart meters and the energy devices. Relevance to industry - The current results provide first guidance which a designer can use when choosing image spectrum and colours to represent energy systems on the displays of thermostats, smart meters and the energy devices. Such design guidance is currently lacking internationally but is of increasing importance due to the expansion of digital devices, internet services and the upcoming internet-of-things