A conceptual study of the factors influencing e-inclusion

With the advancement of the Internet and supporting Information and Communication Technologies, e-inclusion has emerged as an effective means to create opportunities for all and to further individual autonomy and capability in terms of using online services offered by public agencies. The aim of this paper is to offer a critical discussion on the role of e-inclusion from the user perspective, which goes beyond the demographic factors when adopting e-government services. Further, this paper explains the fundamental differences between digital divide and e-inclusion and examines why research focus is now shifting towards studying e-inclusion rather that digital divide in Europe. Through a conceptual analysis the authors examine the relationship between social inclusion and e-inclusion and how they contributes towards promoting the use of ICT to overcome exclusion and improve economic performance, employment opportunities, quality of life, social participation and cohesion

Digital-enabled service transformation in public sector: Institutionalization as a product of interplay between actors and structures during organisational change

The derailment of large scale Digitally-Enabled Service Transformation Projects (DEST) in public sector has generated much attention and debate among the research community. However, most of the debates focus on the technology imperatives and/or strategic choices view. The micro-process of institutionalisation involving interplays between actors and structures in forming an institutionalised approach is hardly brought to the surface. Complex structure of government institutions, interaction of actors from various contexts and integration of multiple resources during DEST implementation has made the process of institutionalisation difficult. Combination of Institutional Theory (IT) and Structuration Theory (ST) concepts are used in this paper to examine an exemplar DEST project in the UK - 'Tell Us Once' (TUO). Findings show that actors and structures played significant roles throughout the institutionalisation stages. The actors reinforced or modified existing structures to suit their actions, and in return, the structure governed the actors' actions, to form desired behaviour. This social phenomenon happened recursively over period of time until a common practice emerged and the desired objective is achieved. The findings provide useful insights on good institutionalisation practices concerning the role of actors and structures within the institutionalisation process

Evaluating e-Government services from a citizens' prespective: A reference process model

Evaluating and optimizing e-government services is imperative for governments especially due to the capacity of e-services to transform public administrations and assist the interactions of governments with citizens, businesses and other government agencies. Existing widely applied evaluation approaches neglect to incorporate citizens’ satisfaction measures. Several citizen satisfaction models and indicators have been suggested in academia; however a reference process model that can assist practitioners to apply these performance measures is missing. In this paper we draw upon the evaluation approach proposed by the EU funded project CEES and propose a reference process model that captures re-usable practices for e-government evaluation from a citizens’ perspective. The novelty of the proposed approach is that using DEA for evaluating the e-services the assessment results in suggestions for strategic improvement of the e-services.EU FP7 Marie Curie People Project “CEES - Citizen oriented Evaluation of E-Government Systems” (reference IAPP-2008-230658

The clinical application of electrical impedance technology in the detection of malignant neoplasms: a systematic review

Background: Electrical impedance technology has been well established for the last 20 years. Recently research has begun to emerge into its potential uses in the detection and diagnosis of pre-malignant and malignant conditions. The aim of this study was to systematically review the clinical application of electrical impedance technology in the detection of malignant neoplasms. Methods: A search of Embase Classic, Embase and Medline databases was conducted from 1980 to 22/02/2018 to identify studies reporting on the use of bioimpedance technology in the detection of pre-malignant and malignant conditions. The ability to distinguish between tissue types was defined as the primary endpoint, and other points of interest were also reported. Results: 731 articles were identified, of which 51 reported sufficient data for analysis. These studies covered 16 different cancer subtypes in a total of 7035 patients. As the studies took various formats, a qualitative analysis of each cancer subtype’s data was undertaken. All the studies were able to show differences in electrical impedance and/or related metrics between malignant and normal tissue. Conclusions: Electrical impedance technology provides a novel method for the detection of malignant tissue, with large studies of cervical, prostate, skin and breast cancers showing encouraging results. Whilst these studies provide promising insights into the potential of this technology as an adjunct in screening, diagnosis and intra-operative margin assessment, customised development as well as multi-centre clinical trials need to be conducted before it can be reliably employed in the clinical detection of malignant tissue

Impact of Decision Making, Reward Management on Job Performance: Mediation of Job Satisfaction: A Case of a Private Banks in Sri Lanka

With the huge competition prevailing in the business world, organizations focusing more on job performance than ever before as less performed employees will lead the organizations for destruction. With this interest, organizations looking forward to recognize how job performance can be enhanced within the organization, which leads to a competitive edge. By identifying this importance, this study is focused on to investigate the impact of decision making and reward management on job performance, and to identify the mediation effect of job satisfaction on the above relationships. self administered questionnaires were used to collect the date and data were collected from 311 employees in private banks in Sri Lanka. The impact of decision making and reward management on job performance were significant and partial mediation of job satisfaction on the above relationships were found out. Thereby, this study sign the managers of the organizations to focus more on practices of the organizations to enhance the performance of the employees. Keywords: Decision Making, Job Performance, Job Satisfaction, Private Banks, Reward Management, Sri Lank

A User Satisfaction Study of London's Congestion Charge e-Service: A Citizen Perspective

YesThe importance of evaluation and optimization of electronic government (e-government) services is imperative if the government organisations are to have an effective impact on the success and take-up of the services offered. Transport For London's (TFL) London Congestion Charging (LCC) is one of the innovative electronic services (e-services) introduced by the United Kingdom (UK) government to the citizens. While some studies have addressed the impact of the introduction of the congestion charge there has been a dearth of research performed to address user (citizen) satisfaction of the online LCC system. Therefore, this research seeks to measure the citizen satisfaction of using the LCC online payment system offered by TFL. The citizen satisfaction in this context is measured using the four dimensions from the COBRA framework that comprise the cost, opportunity, benefits and risk assessment constructs. This paper presents the findings of a survey of 500 users of the TFL LCC online payment system. It also reports the qualitative feedback obtained from the participants that can be used to determine the areas that need further improvement in the current LCC e-service and potential influences on user satisfaction

A case analysis of E-government service delivery through a service chain dimension

YesUnlike e-business few studies have examined how information is generated and exchanged between stakeholders in an e-government service chain to generate value for citizens. This case study applies the concept of service chains to empirically explore: a) how internal and external business activities in local government authorities (LGAs) contribute to electronic service delivery, and b) the impact that internal and external stakeholders have on these activities. The case study found that the diversity of stakeholders involved and lack of appropriate mechanisms for information exchange and collaboration are posing the biggest challenges for efficient local egovernment service delivery

Kinetics of pHLIP peptide insertion into and exit from a membrane

To advance mechanistic understanding of membrane-associated peptide folding and insertion, we have studied the kinetics of three single tryptophan pHLIP (pH-Low Insertion Peptide) variants, where tryptophan residues are located near the N terminus, near the middle, and near the inserting C-terminal end of the pHLIP transmembrane helix. Single-tryptophan pHLIP variants allowed us to probe different parts of the peptide in the pathways of peptide insertion into the lipid bilayer (triggered by a pH drop) and peptide exit from the bilayer (triggered by a rise in pH). By using pH jumps of different magnitudes, we slowed down the processes and established the intermediates that helped us to understand the principles of insertion and exit. The obtained results should also aid the applications in medicine that are now entering the clinic

Towards practical distributed video coding

Multimedia is increasingly becoming a utility rather than mere entertainment. The range of video applications has increased, some of which are becoming indispensable in modem lifestyle. Video surveillance is one area that has attracted significant amount of focus and also benefited from considerable research effort for development. However, it is noted that there is still a notable technological gap between an ideal video surveillance platform and the available solutions, mainly in the form of the encoder and decoder complexity balance and the associated design costs. In this thesis, we tocus on an emerging technology, Distributed Video Coding (DVC), which is ideally suited for the video surveillance scenario, and fits many other potential applications too.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

The impact of social networking sites on socialization and political engagement: Role of acculturation

YesThis research examines the extent to which immigrant consumers' use of social networking sites affect their socialization and political engagement in the Netherlands. The study uses self-administered questionnaires to collect data from 514 Turkish-Dutch respondents of various ages, occupations, levels of education and locations in the Netherlands. The study finds that the propensity to share information, the intensity of use, and privacy concerns positively impact socialization on online social networking sites. In addition, a significant positive relationship between socialization and political involvement positively impacts voting intentions. The study also examines the interaction effects of enculturation and acculturation orientations on the relationship between socialization and political involvement. The study's findings point to a positive moderating role of acculturation in this relationship but a negative one for enculturation. The study is the first to investigate simultaneously the drivers of socialization on social networking sites in the context of immigrant consumers and the impact of their socialization on political involvement and voting intention. The research further contributes to the scholarly work by exploring the interaction effects of acculturation and enculturation orientation. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed