The ethics of uncertainty for data subjects

Modern health data practices come with many practical uncertainties. In this paper, I argue that data subjects’ trust in the institutions and organizations that control their data, and their ability to know their own moral obligations in relation to their data, are undermined by significant uncertainties regarding the what, how, and who of mass data collection and analysis. I conclude by considering how proposals for managing situations of high uncertainty might be applied to this problem. These emphasize increasing organizational flexibility, knowledge, and capacity, and reducing hazard

Privacy safeguards and online anonymity

In a world that is increasingly more connected, digital citizens, actively or passively accept to transmit information, part of which are “personal data”. This information is often collected and elaborated by third parties to infer further knowledge about users. The act of gathering the data is commonly called “tracking” and can be performed through several means. The act of analysing and processing those data and relate them to the individual is called “profiling”. The aim of this JRC Technical report is to be an instrument of support for the Digital Citizens to help them to protect and to manage their privacy during online activities. After a brief introduction in Chapter 1, the following chapter is dedicated to the description of two legitimate use-cases to track and profile users on-line, namely target advertising and personalisation of the user experience. Chapter 3 and 4 identify and analyse the set of techniques currently used by online digital providers to track citizens and profile them based on their online behaviour. Chapter 5 deals with some of the available tools cited in chapter 6 that could be helpful to protect the privacy while browsing online. Chapter 6 aims to raise awareness among users and provide some guidelines to address specific issues related to privacy through a multidisciplinary approach. The report concludes highlighting the importance of raising awareness among digital users and empower them through education, technical and legal tools, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to overcome possible privacy issues.JRC.E.3-Cyber and Digital Citizens' Securit

Software-based dialogue systems: Survey, taxonomy and challenges

The use of natural language interfaces in the field of human-computer interaction is undergoing intense study through dedicated scientific and industrial research. The latest contributions in the field, including deep learning approaches like recurrent neural networks, the potential of context-aware strategies and user-centred design approaches, have brought back the attention of the community to software-based dialogue systems, generally known as conversational agents or chatbots. Nonetheless, and given the novelty of the field, a generic, context-independent overview on the current state of research of conversational agents covering all research perspectives involved is missing. Motivated by this context, this paper reports a survey of the current state of research of conversational agents through a systematic literature review of secondary studies. The conducted research is designed to develop an exhaustive perspective through a clear presentation of the aggregated knowledge published by recent literature within a variety of domains, research focuses and contexts. As a result, this research proposes a holistic taxonomy of the different dimensions involved in the conversational agents’ field, which is expected to help researchers and to lay the groundwork for future research in the field of natural language interfaces.With the support from the Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Ministry of Business and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia and the European Social Fund. The corresponding author gratefully acknowledges the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Banco Santander for the inancial support of his predoctoral grant FPI-UPC. This paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under project / funding scheme PID2020-117191RB-I00 / AEI/10.13039/501100011033.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

BlogForever: D3.1 Preservation Strategy Report

This report describes preservation planning approaches and strategies recommended by the BlogForever project as a core component of a weblog repository design. More specifically, we start by discussing why we would want to preserve weblogs in the first place and what it is exactly that we are trying to preserve. We further present a review of past and present work and highlight why current practices in web archiving do not address the needs of weblog preservation adequately. We make three distinctive contributions in this volume: a) we propose transferable practical workflows for applying a combination of established metadata and repository standards in developing a weblog repository, b) we provide an automated approach to identifying significant properties of weblog content that uses the notion of communities and how this affects previous strategies, c) we propose a sustainability plan that draws upon community knowledge through innovative repository design

Education alignment

This essay reviews recent developments in embedding data management and curation skills into information technology, library and information science, and research-based postgraduate courses in various national contexts. The essay also investigates means of joining up formal education with professional development training opportunities more coherently. The potential for using professional internships as a means of improving communication and understanding between disciplines is also explored. A key aim of this essay is to identify what level of complementarity is needed across various disciplines to most effectively and efficiently support the entire data curation lifecycle

Knowledge management solutions and selection tool for engineering organisations

It is widely accepted that engineering research, design, development and manufacturing processes are highly reliant upon the valuable knowledge, experiences and skills stored within the company's systems, processes, documents and employees. If these key knowledge resources can be identified, maintained and efficiently controlled, prior successes and failures can be capitalised upon, best practices can be captured and transferred and new solutions can be developed with minimal duplication of efforts and without unnecessary replication of prior work. Away from manufacturing and engineering organisations, in the broader business world, exists an array of solutions, tools and techniques developed specifically to facilitate the management of knowledge and experience these are collectively labelled as Knowledge Management (KM) tools and solutions. Such solutions, tools and techniques have achieved widespread recognition for their capabilities and consequent importance in enhancing processes across a variety of business applications and contexts. However their relevancy, applicability and relative merits in particular manufacturing and mechanical engineering (MME) contexts have generally not been identified or investigated. This thesis reviews and presents a large number of diverse KM solutions and implementations across industries and organisations and creates a new and unique single KM solutions space in which these solutions are characterised. The KM solution space is subsequently utilised by a new KM methodology and support tool that facilitates and demonstrates the enhancement of mechanical and manufacturing engineering processes through analysis followed by selection and implementation of the most appropriate existing KM solutions. The KM Tool is demonstrated via three industrial case studies detailing the process concerns and associated improvements identified and implemented. The KM Solution Space developed during this research has shown that there is significant opportunity to improve mechanical and manufacturing engineering processes through the adoption of appropriate KM solutions from the broader business world. The KM Tool developed via this research facilitates this identification and adoption of the most appropriate KM solution. In addition to the MME processes covered by the scope of this research there is additional scope to extend the use of the KM Tool and KM Solution Space to other business areas that have not yet had extensive exposure to KM

Research Framework, Strategies, And Applications Of Intelligent Agent Technologies (IATs) In Marketing

In this digital era, marketing theory and practice are being transformed by increasing complexity due to information availability, higher reach and interactions, and faster speeds of transactions. These have led to the adoption of intelligent agent technologies (IATs) by many companies. As IATs are relatively new and technologically complex, several definitions are evolving, and the theory in this area is not yet fully developed. There is a need to provide structure and guidance to marketers to further this emerging stream of research. As a first step, this paper proposes a marketing-centric definition and a systematic taxonomy and framework. The authors, using a grounded theory approach, conduct an extensive literature review and a qualitative study in which interviews with managers from 50 companies in 22 industries reveal the importance of understanding IAT applications and adopting them. Further, the authors propose an integrated conceptual framework with several propositions regarding IAT adoption. This research identifies the gaps in the literature and the need for adoption of IATs in the future of marketing given changing consumer behavior and product and industry characteristics

Research Framework, Strategies, And Applications Of Intelligent Agent Technologies (IATs) In Marketing

In this digital era, marketing theory and practice are being transformed by increasing complexity due to information availability, higher reach and interactions, and faster speeds of transactions. These have led to the adoption of intelligent agent technologies (IATs) by many companies. As IATs are relatively new and technologically complex, several definitions are evolving, and the theory in this area is not yet fully developed. There is a need to provide structure and guidance to marketers to further this emerging stream of research. As a first step, this paper proposes a marketing-centric definition and a systematic taxonomy and framework. The authors, using a grounded theory approach, conduct an extensive literature review and a qualitative study in which interviews with managers from 50 companies in 22 industries reveal the importance of understanding IAT applications and adopting them. Further, the authors propose an integrated conceptual framework with several propositions regarding IAT adoption. This research identifies the gaps in the literature and the need for adoption of IATs in the future of marketing given changing consumer behavior and product and industry characteristics