The Role of Process Evolution in Achieving Citizen Centered E-Government

The growth and popularity of e-commerce has both challenged and enabled public sector organizations to redefine their levels of service. In the late 1990¿s E-government provided unparalleled opportunities for governments to streamline processes and improve customer service. As a result, achieving successful citizen centric e-government has become a key concern for many governments. Given the unique characteristics of public sector organizations it is argued in this paper that the evolutionary based development of business process change is appropriate to expanding the use of e-commerce technology. This is due to the fact that cultural acceptance of the technology and its implementation is a critical success factor in public sector organizations due to their individual departmental structures. This paper analyses the Irish Government¿s evolutionary path to the provision of successful e-Government. The lessons learnt from this case provide a valuable insight into a possible roadmap for the successful attainment of citizen-centered e-government in other jurisdictions.peer-reviewe

Implementation Strategies for eGovernment: A Stakeholder Analysis Approach

This paper reports from a comprehensive study of e-government implementation in Ireland, conducted over the last two years. An in-depth case study is presented detailing the development of a dual strategy for implementation and provides a comparison of the results from this approach. The success and shortcomings of both approaches are identified, providing in-depth analysis into the identification and management of critical concerns in the implementation of citizen-centred e-government. Specifically, this paper highlights the importance of accounting for social and political features, unique to the public sector, which in this case have had a decisive impact on e-government implementation. Public sector organisations in particular present unique challenges to the implementation process and implementation strategies often require particular attention to the social and political elements inherent in organisational change. In e-government implementation, the main barriers are not technical but social and cultural. Implementation strategies should therefore support the process of managing stakeholder relations in order to reduce the risk of stakeholder conflict and ensure the success of e-government initiatives

Conduction spectroscopy of a proximity induced superconducting topological insulator

The combination of superconductivity and the helical spin-momentum locking at the surface state of a topological insulator (TI) has been predicted to give rise to p-wave superconductivity and Majorana bound states. The superconductivity can be induced by the proximity effect of a an s-wave superconductor (S) into the TI. To probe the superconducting correlations inside the TI, dI/dV spectroscopy has been performed across such S-TI interfaces. Both the alloyed Bi$_{1.5}$Sb$_{0.5}$Te$_{1.7}$Se$_{1.3}$ and the stoichiometric BiSbTeSe$_2$ have been used as three dimensional TI. In the case of Bi$_{1.5}$Sb$_{0.5}$Te$_{1.7}$Se$_{1.3}$, the presence of disorder induced electron-electron interactions can give rise to an additional zero-bias resistance peak. For the stoichiometric BiSbTeSe$_2$ with less disorder, tunnel barriers were employed in order to enhance the signal from the interface. The general observations in the spectra of a large variety of samples are conductance dips at the induced gap voltage, combined with an increased sub-gap conductance, consistent with p-wave predictions. The induced gap voltage is typically smaller than the gap of the Nb superconducting electrode, especially in the presence of an intentional tunnel barrier. Additional uncovered spectroscopic features are oscillations that are linearly spaced in energy, as well as a possible second order parameter component.Comment: Semiconductor Science and Technology; Special Issue on Hybrid Quantum Materials and Device

Risk Mitigation and Risk Absorption in IOS: A Proposed Investigative Study

This study examines the risk consequences of participation in inter-organisational information systems (IOS). The research aims to identify the risk mitigation and risk absorption impacts of IOS participation and evaluate the extent to which these impacts affect participation decisions. Prior research has called for a greater understanding of risks associated with IS. This paper presents a synthesis of the research on IS risk and illustrates that, to date, this call has been addressed primarily by one-dimensional studies. The paper highlights the changing context of inter-firm trade illustrating its increased reliance on networked collaboration. What remains uncertain is the nature and consequences of risk within this context. The paper presents a framework that will form the basis of the proposed research into the risk mitigation and risk absorption consequences of IOS participation

Patterns of recombination in HIV-1M are influenced by selection disfavouring the survival of recombinants with disrupted genomic RNA and protein structures

Genetic recombination is a major contributor to the ongoing diversification of HIV. It is clearly apparent that across the HIV-genome there are defined recombination hot and cold spots which tend to co-localise both with genomic secondary structures and with either inter-gene boundaries or intra-gene domain boundaries. There is also good evidence that most recombination breakpoints that are detectable within the genes of natural HIV recombinants are likely to be minimally disruptive of intra-protein amino acid contacts and that these breakpoints should therefore have little impact on protein folding. Here we further investigate the impact on patterns of genetic recombination in HIV of selection favouring the maintenance of functional RNA and protein structures. We confirm that chimaeric Gag p24, reverse transcriptase, integrase, gp120 and Nef proteins that are expressed by natural HIV-1 recombinants have significantly lower degrees of predicted folding disruption than randomly generated recombinants. Similarly, we use a novel single-stranded RNA folding disruption test to show that there is significant, albeit weak, evidence that natural HIV recombinants tend to have genomic secondary structures that more closely resemble parental structures than do randomly generated recombinants. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that natural selection has acted both in the short term to purge recombinants with disrupted RNA and protein folds, and in the longer term to modify the genome architecture of HIV to ensure that recombination prone sites correspond with those where recombination will be minimally deleterious