TRANSPARENCY-ORIENTED DIGITAL TRANSFOR-MATION: REASERCH ISSUES FOR OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA FROM POLICY DOCUMENTS

The digital transformation of government initially focused on the internal processes and work practices of government agencies, and then on the channels and ways of services provision to citizens and firms, as well as on the services themselves, and aimed mainly to increase efficiency. However, later it was extended towards the enhancement of government transparency and accountability, by exploiting the digital technologies in order to provide large amounts of information to citizens and firms about the activities and plans of government agencies, and recently to open and publish large datasets of them. This constitutes a big innovation/transformation, since previously government data were regarded as highly secret, and could be accessed only by limited numbers of competent public servants. The Open Government Data (OGD) have a great potential to promote not only government transparency and accountability, but also economic development (especially concerning the emerging data economy), scientific research as well as efficiency and effectiveness of other government agencies (beyond the one who publishes them). However, the OGD domain is relatively new, rapidly evolving, and has not reached and realized its full potential, so extensive research is required in order to support and facilitate progress in this direction, and finally increase the social and economic value generated from the large amounts of published OGD. So, it is quite important to define rationally the research agenda in this OGD domain: the main research areas as well as the particular research topics of each of them. For this purpose, some research has been conducted, which however is based exclusively on the review and analysis of previous scientific papers in this domain. In this paper we investigate the exploitation of recent OGD-related policy as well as legislation documents, as an additional and complementary source for extracting areas and topics in the OGD domain that require research in the near future. A methodology for this is developed, which is used in order to we analyse the ‘OECD Open Government Data Report – Enhancing Policy Maturity for Sustainable Impact’ and the EU Directive 2019/1024 on ‘Open Data and the Re-use of Public Sector Information’. This results in the identification of interesting new areas and topics of required OGD research, which are highly important and have not been identified by previous relevant research based on the review and analysis of scientific papers in this domain

A Methodology for Economic Crisis Policy Analytics

The development and success of the ‘business analytics’ in the private sector, in combination with the growing availability of large quantities of useful data in government agencies, gives rise to the emergence of the ‘policy analytics’ in the public sector. However, though some knowledge has already been developed in this area, extensive research is required in order to increase our knowledge base concerning the exploitation of these exponentially increasing quantities of data available in government, in combination with data from private sector firms as well, using advanced analytical techniques (from various areas, such as machine learning, statistics, simulation, etc.), in order to provide substantial support for all stages of public policies in various important policy domains. This paper makes a contribution in this direction, by describing a methodology for policy analytics in the economic policy domain, concerning a highly important problem: the economic crises, which repeatedly occur in market-based economies being an inevitable trait of them. Our methodology aims at the identification of firm’s characteristics that affect positively or negatively their sensitivity to the economic crisis, which enables a deeper understanding of the kinds of firms that exhibit higher sensitivity to economic crisis (i.e. have more negative consequences) and provides a basis for the design of public policies for supporting such firms. It exploits existing data from various public sources (e.g. Ministries of Finance, Statistical Authorities), in combination with data from private sources (e.g. business information firms, consulting firms), from which firm-level crisis sensitivity models are estimated. Furthermore, an application of the proposed methodology is presented, using data from Greek firms for the crisis period 2009 – 2014, which provides interesting insights

Framework for Federated Learning Open Models in e-Government Applications

Using open data and artificial intelligence in providing innovative public services is the focus of the third generation of e-Government and supporting Internet and Communication Technologies systems. However, developing applications and offering open services based on (open) machine learning models requires large volumes of private, open, or a combination of both open and private data for model training to achieve sufficient model quality. Therefore, it would be beneficial to use both open and private data simultaneously to fully use the potential that machine learning could grant to the public and private sectors. Federated learning, as a machine learning technique, enables collaborative learning among different parties and their data, being private or open, creating shared knowledge by training models on such partitioned data without sharing it between parties in any step of the training or inference process. This paper provides a practical layout for developing and sharing machine learning models in a federative and open manner called Federated Learning Open Model. The definition of the Federated Learning Open Model concept is followed by a description of two potential use cases and services achieved with its usage, one being from the agricultural sector with the horizontal dataset partitioning and the latter being from the financial sector with a dataset partitioned vertically

“Peri Nomou” System: Automated Codification and Interrelation of Legal Elements Based on Text Mining

One of the most promising developments comes with the use of innovative technologies and thus with the availability of novel services. The combination of text mining with legal elements may contribute to the development of many innovative legal information systems. Moreover, in the case of public admin-istrations and governments, the distribution, availability, and access towards legal information are es-sential and urgent. On the other hand, legal data and law texts are a potential open Government data category in order for innovation to be achieved, regarding the development of new, better, and more cost-effective services for citizens. Those data need to be available 24/7 basis and compliant towards a standard. Yet, there exist some severe issues at the moment regarding this access. This, in turn, makes the use of automated crawling and analysis more than difficult. This paper describes the “Peri Nomou” (about law) system: an innovative legal information system for Greek laws utilising text mining tech-niques to indexing legal documents, identifying correlations and dividing legal documents into their articles. The first version of the system has been evaluated by legal experts and the second version is developed based on the previous evaluation and presented in this paper. The results from the evaluation indicate the significance of the “Peri Nomou” system for the legal experts and allow us to promote the Peri Nomou system to other user groups, such as business, public administration

Geological modelling for investigating CO2 emissions in Florina Basin, Greece

Published version also available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/geo-2015-0039This paper presents an investigation of naturally occurring CO2 emissions from the Florina natural analogue site in Greece. The main objective was to interpret previously collected depth sounding data, convert them into surfaces, and use them as input to develop, for the rst time, 3D geological models of the Florina basin. By also locating the extent of the aquifer, the location of the CO2 source, the location of other natural CO2 accumulations, and the points where CO2 reaches the surface, we were able to assess the potential for CO2 leakage. Geological models provided an estimate of the lithological composition of the Florina Basin and allowed us to determine possible directions of groundwater ow and pathways of CO2 ow throughout the basin. Important modelling parameters included the spatial positions of boundaries, faults, and major stratigraphic units (which were subdivided into layers of cells). We used various functions in Petrel software to rst construct a structural model describing the main rock boundaries. We then de ned a 3D mesh honouring the structural model, and nally we populated each cell in the mesh with geologic properties, such as rock type and relative permeability. According to the models, the thickest deposits are located around Mesochorion village where we estimate that around 1000 m of sediments were deposited above the basement. Initiation of CO2 ow at Florina Basin could have taken place between 6.5 Ma and 1.8 Ma ago. The NESW oriented faults, which acted as uid ow pathways, are still functioning today, allowing for localised leakage at the surface. CO2 leakage may be spatially variable and episodic in rate. The episodicity can be linked to the timing of Almopia volcanic activity in the area

Benefits and Obstacles of Blockchain Applications in e-Government

Nowadays, Blockchain Technologies (BCT) could be characterized as one of the most promising trends. We are currently witnessing a plethora of implementations basically in the economic sector with the creation of cryptocurrencies. The majority of researchers and practitioners argues that many benefits could be derived from the use of this innovative technology with the most significant one being the improved sense of trust to BCT applications. At the same time governments pursue amplified trust from their citizens and BCT is gaining momentum since it addresses this of utmost importance problem based on its unique characteristics. More and more governments realize the advances of this technology and participate in pilot applications in different vertical governmental sectors. Even though there are several implementations in the Government sector, there is no comprehensive study towards the analysis of the major characteristics of these developments. This paper moves towards the fulfilment of this gap conducting a thorough analysis of e-Government pilot applications of BCT in a European level. Furthermore, this study discusses the key benefits and main barriers coming from the application of this technology in different domains with BCT experts

Type and Duration of Dual Antiplatelet Therapy in Complex Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

Complex percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) patients are a high-risk population for ischemic complications. Antiplatelet therapy in such patients remains controversial, as the beneficial effects of more potent agents use or prolonged dual antiplatelet treatment (DAPT) on atherothrombotic complications are hindered by a concomitant increase in bleeding rates. The aim of this article is to describe ischemic and bleeding outcomes associated with complex PCI procedures and to compare different types and durations of DAPT regimens in terms of safety and efficacy outcomes. Issues concerning special patient groups, such as those with left main, chronic total occlusion, or bifurcation lesions, are discussed

Metadata quality matters in Open Government Data (OGD) evaluation! An empirical investigation of OGD portals of the GCC constituents:An empirical investigation of OGD portals of the GCC constituents

Purpose: The study seeks to investigate the quality of metadata associated with the Open Government Data (OGD) portals of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) constituentsBahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), and United Arab Emirates (UAE). Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative framework, supported by extant literature, is adopted to assess the metadata quality of the six OGD portals of the GCC constituents. Findings: Among the six GCC countries, Qatar has the most advanced OGD metadata quality followed by KSA, UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait. Furthermore, the OGD metadata quality of UAE and Oman stand at the same pedestal whereas Bahrain and Kuwait OGD portals are lagging behind. Originality: Whereas the OGD quality has been investigated in extant literature, the metadata quality of the OGD portals for the GCC countries has not been investigated so far- the present study seeks to plug this ga