Knowledge Management for Public Administrations: Technical Realizations of an Enterprise Attention Management System

The improvement of governments’ efficiency has gained great importance and validity especially in the current times of economic downturn. E-Government constitutes the most contemporary techno-managerial proposition in the track of possible interventions. The paper addresses, more specifically, empowerments necessitated by Public Administration (PA) organizations. Anchored on the needs of three real-life cases, the paper describes the conception and the realization of an IT artefact together with its methodological appeals aiming at improving information access and delivery and thus PAs’ decision making capacity. Our proposition constitutes a novel approach for managing users’ attention in knowledge intensive organizations which goes beyond informing a user about changes in relevant information towards proactively supporting the user to react on changes. The approach is based on an expressive attention model, which is realized by combining ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rules with ontologies. The technical realizations described in the paper constitute the underlying infrastructure of an Enterprise Attention Management System

On the User Perception of Configurable Reference Process Models - Initial Insights

Enterprise Systems potentially lead to significant efficiency gains but require a well-conducted configuration process. A configurable reference modelling language based on the widely used EPC notation, which can be used to specify Configurable EPCs (C-EPCs), has been developed to support the task of Enterprise Systems configuration. This paper presents a laboratory experiment on C-EPCs and discusses empirical data on the comparison of C-EPCs to regular EPCs. Using the Method Adoption Model we report on modeller’s perceptions as to the usefulness and ease of use of C-EPCs, concluding that C-EPCs provide sufficient yet improvable conceptual support towards reference model configuration

CHORUS Deliverable 3.4: Vision Document

The goal of the CHORUS Vision Document is to create a high level vision on audio-visual search engines in order to give guidance to the future R&D work in this area and to highlight trends and challenges in this domain. The vision of CHORUS is strongly connected to the CHORUS Roadmap Document (D2.3). A concise document integrating the outcomes of the two deliverables will be prepared for the end of the project (NEM Summit)

Supporting arts and enterprise skills in communities through creative engagement with the local area

The project proposes a framework and methodology of artistic and creative social intervention that empowers and supports engagement with communities of young people affected by change in their local environment. This is a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Knowledge Transfer Fellowship aimed at building new and innovative models of creative community engagement and collaboration. The project supports active citizenship among young people by facilitating social capacity building through enterprise structures and transferring the creative lead in socially responsive arts projects to those in need of empowerment. The initial action research project is utilising an arts and enterprise participation model to create self-branded commodities that will give a role to young people within a wider, community driven, gun crime reduction and social cohesion programme. The model seeks to sustain the commitment of those participating by focussing on metrics and benchmarks that young people in the project can own and influence. The blend of creative agendas and enterprise goals provides a breadth of purpose and opportunity, linking outputs to specific environmental and social impacts. The project evidences the role and function of arts media in multi-strand learning and participation projects. As educational policy and practice (14+ age range) in the UK moves more towards action based learning for transferable life skills, the project provides a methodology emphatic of team and collaborative process, individual responsibility and creativity. The process develops ownership and shared responsibility in relation to community initiatives; fostering fresh creativity and a diversity of approach in the exploration of social, physical and racial issues arising from economic disadvantage. The knowledge transfer process is targeting a toolkit relating to multi-agency project working, creative research and action learning, empowerment and applied social arts practices

Leveraging simulation practice in industry through use of desktop grid middleware

This chapter focuses on the collaborative use of computing resources to support decision making in industry. Through the use of middleware for desktop grid computing, the idle CPU cycles available on existing computing resources can be harvested and used for speeding-up the execution of applications that have “non-trivial” processing requirements. This chapter focuses on the desktop grid middleware BOINC and Condor, and discusses the integration of commercial simulation software together with free-to-download grid middleware so as to offer competitive advantage to organizations that opt for this technology. It is expected that the low-intervention integration approach presented in this chapter (meaning no changes to source code required) will appeal to both simulation practitioners (as simulations can be executed faster, which in turn would mean that more replications and optimization is possible in the same amount of time) and the management (as it can potentially increase the return on investment on existing resources)