Understanding the Success of Government Portals: The Role of Political Leadership, Standards, and a Powerful Centralized IT Agency

Information technologies have become an essential component of government administrative reforms and governance strategies around the world. Although Internet portals are now some of the most mature technologies, they continue to be the most important channel for governments to provide information and services to citizens and other stakeholders. However, studies about government portals still lack the level of detail necessary to better understand the specific variables that affect their success and, more prominently, how these variables intertwine. Based on institutional theory, particularly the technology enactment framework, and one in-depth case study in Mexico, this paper shows how leadership from the governor, the establishment of government-wide rules and standards, and the existence of a powerful centralized IT agency collectively affect the process of enacting a state government website and its potential results. The paper also identifies other variables and discusses some of their interactions and mechanisms of influence

Providing Public Value through Data Sharing: Understanding Critical Factors of Food Traceability for Local Farms and Institutional Buyers

Many of the datasets that could contribute to solutions for current public problems are proprietary and reside outside of government agencies. Accelerating data sharing and collaboration between those who hold valuable data and those able to deliver solutions is key to generating public value from private data. There is still a limited body of literature, however, that addresses data sharing and collaboration between private and public organizations. Using a case study of food traceability from local farms to institutions, this paper contributes to this emerging field by identifying challenges and incentives in data sharing among different types of organizations. In particular, our goal is to study how small farms and institutional buyers can be incentivized to share their data in a way that contributes to food safety, public health, and other societal goals. Our findings demonstrate that initiatives which can show the benefits of having a whole-chain food traceability system, have clear policies and regulations, and opportunities for participation in training activities are key incentives

Public Libraries’ Perceptions of Future Collaborations for the Development of Smart Cities and Communities: Understanding Influential Factors

Recently, the concept of smart city has been adopted by many communities as a strategy to find alternative solutions to increasingly complex social, economic, and environmental issues. Different local actors, including public libraries, are already playing an important role in developing smart cities and communities either by themselves or in collaboration with other organizations. However, most public libraries are not currently collaborating for smart community development. Therefore, this paper analyzes the factors that influence public libraries’ perceptions about future collaborations in developing smart cities and communities as well as their potential benefits. The results show that consequential incentives, the nature of the task, preexisting relationships, an agreement on initial aims, and a collaborative and supportive leader all have a significant positive impact on the extent, effectiveness, and benefits of public libraries’ future collaborations to develop smart cities and communities

The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) as indicator of the soil degradation.

In this work we presenl lhe lemporal evolulion 01 lhe vegelalion and Iheir relalionship wilh lhe soil degradalion in an area loealed in Northeasl 01 lhe Madrid Communily (Spain)

Public Libraries as Anchor Institutions in Smart Communities: Current Practices and Future Development

Local governments around the world are exploring different strategies to become smarter: more efficient, sustainable, and highly interconnected. However, many actors outside government need to be involved too. For instance, public libraries have the potential to play a very important role in the development of smart and connected communities, due to their strong legitimacy in the eyes of citizens and the types of services and programs they are already providing, which in many cases go well beyond what could be considered traditional library services. This paper analyzes innovative practices in public libraries and argue that they already show the potential of public libraries to become catalysts for smart and connected communities. Together, these innovations represent an opportunity for governments and communities to engage and a new way to think about public libraries as very important actors in smart community initiatives

Evaluation of crowdsourcing Wi-Fi radio map creation in a real scenario for AAL applications

Indoor location at room level plays a key role for providing useful services for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) applications. Wi-Fi fingerprinting indoor location methods are extensively used due to the widespread availability of WiFi infrastructures. A main drawback of Wi-Fi fingerprinting methods is the temporal cost involved in creating the radio maps. Crowdsourcing strategies have been presented as a way to minimize the cost of radio map creation. In this work, we present an extensive study of the issues involved when using crowdsourcing strategies for that purpose. Results provided by extensive experiments performed in a real scenario by three users during two weeks are presented. The main conclusions are: i) crowdsourcing data improves accuracy location in most studied cases; ii) accuracy of Wi-Fi fingerprinting methods decay along time; iii) device diversity is an important issue even when using the same device model

RADIOCARBON VS. LUMINESCENCE DATING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL CERAMICS IN THE SOUTHERN ANDES : A REVIEW OF PAIRED DATES, BAYESIAN MODELS, AND A PILOT STUDY

Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press for the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona.Archaeologists have been using luminescence to date pottery in South America since the late 1970s, inspired by early success in northern Chile. However, luminescence dates have not been rigorously compared to independent dating methods, which this paper's goal. First, we present a compilation of 94 paired 14C and luminescence dates from the southern Andes, which reveals discrepancies across a range of contexts and ages. Second, we compare two Bayesian models of sets of 14C and thermoluminescence (TL) dates from three ceramic styles in the Azapa Valley, Chile, and the Inca occupation of Mendoza, Argentina. We find that only the 14C models produce results that agree with expectations based on independent data. Third, we present results from a pilot study in Mendoza that dated 6 sherds with 3 luminescence methods each and closely associated 14C dates. The reasons for disagreement between methods remain unclear, but Andean sediments with low and unstable luminescence sensitivity seem to be an important factor. Even though some luminescence ages are accurate, the clear trend of inconsistent results leads us to recommend that archaeologists use 14C rather than luminescence dates to build cultural chronologies.Peer reviewe

Understanding Drivers and Challenges of Multi-actor Collaborations at the Local Level

In a world increasingly characterized by complexity and ambiguity, problem solving is often achieved through collaboration among multiple actors in multi-level settings, involving national, state, and local agencies. Yet, our knowledge is limited in terms of the drivers and challenges of collaborations that require both inter-organizational collaboration and collaboration with citizens. Using a case study of the development of a mobile app for emergency preparedness and response, this study explores key drivers and challenges of multi-actor collaboration at the local level. Our results show that local leadership and direct communication are key drivers for both inter-organizational collaboration and collaboration with citizens and that political dynamics are a challenge regarding inter-organizational collaboration. The two types of collaboration become distinct and independent processes while they complement each other to achieve the purpose and goals shared among different actors