A characteristics framework for Semantic Information Systems Standards

Semantic Information Systems (IS) Standards play a critical role in the development of the networked economy. While their importance is undoubted by all stakeholders—such as businesses, policy makers, researchers, developers—the current state of research leaves a number of questions unaddressed. Terminological confusion exists around the notions of “business semantics”, “business-to-business interoperability”, and “interoperability standards” amongst others. And, moreover, a comprehensive understanding about the characteristics of Semantic IS Standards is missing. The paper addresses this gap in literature by developing a characteristics framework for Semantic IS Standards. Two case studies are used to check the applicability of the framework in a “real-life” context. The framework lays the foundation for future research in an important field of the IS discipline and supports practitioners in their efforts to analyze, compare, and evaluate Semantic IS Standard

Public Funding in Collective Innovations for Public–Private Activities

Whereas in market-driven situations the private parties have an interest in driving innovations towards implementation, in the case of public concerns, it is often the public concern that initiates the innovation process. The issue for the public funding agencies is then to stimulate idea generation and the process towards implementation and impact. However, these innovation processes are complex, as they involve a multiplicity of public and private actors with different and sometimes conflicting concerns. Thus, the benefits and business cases are not immediately clear and this makes it hard to scale beyond the proof of concept. In this paper we examine and derive lessons learned based on a longitudinal case study of a series four EU-funded projects (ITAIDE, INTEGRITY, CASSANDRA and CORE) in the international trade domain that aimed to develop digital trade infrastructure solutions (data pipelines) to address security and trade facilitation challenges. For our case analysis, we adapt and extend Bryson et al.’s framework [1] on cross-sector collaborations. We show how each of these projects covered one part of the public–private innovation trajectory, moving the innovation from the Initial R&D stage, to the Showcasing and dissemination stage to attract critical mass, towards a Turning point stage when the business cases for further upscaling become visible. We identify continuities (i.e. continuity of network & vision, funding and process) as well as a number of alignments as important factors that drive collective innovation processes towards implementation and impact. Further research is needed to establish to what extent these findings are applicable in other contexts.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Information and Communication Technolog

Digital Infrastructures for Monitoring Circular Economy Investments by Financial Institutions and Government: A Research Agenda

Circular Economy (CE) and sustainability are getting high on the political agenda of governments on the global level. Businesses and supply chains are at the heart of that transition, and need to make big steps in the coming years for making the transition from a linear model of make-use-dispose towards a circular model. For this transition, financing plays a key role. Financial institutions operate in a highly regulated environment. In this context, we see two particular, yet complementary, areas where digital infrastructures can be of value to support this transition. They can (1) help the financial institutions gather data about supply chain operations and address the performance of financial instruments used for the green and circular transition (i.e. bottom-up, micro view); and (2) help regulators monitor the activities of financial institutions to ensure that provided financing is indeed used to stimulate circular supply chains (i.e. top-down, macro view). In this paper, we explore the scene for digital infrastructure deployment for CE monitoring when it comes to CE funding, and propose a framework and a research agenda on the topic

Coordinated Border Management Through Digital Trade Infrastructures and Trans-National Government Cooperation: The FloraHolland Case

Digital infrastructures (DI) that support information exchange related to international trade processes (here referred to as Digital Trade Infrastructures (DTI)) have been seen as an instrument to help address the trade facilitation and security challenges. Data pipelines can be seen as an example of a DTI. Data pipelines are IT innovations that enable the timely provision of data captured at the source from different information systems available in the supply chain. Using the pipeline companies can share information with authorities and enjoy trade facilitation in return. The benefits of such data pipelines have been showcased in demonstrator settings. However, outside the controlled environment of demonstrator installations, the adoption and growth of these DTIs has been limited. The benefits based on purely implementing the data pipeline are limited. Combining data pipeline capability with Coordinated Border Management (CBM) has potential to articulate more clear benefits for stakeholders and push further investments and wider adoption. In this paper based on the FloraHolland trade lane related to exporting flowers from Kenya to the Netherlands we discuss a data pipeline/ CBM innovation. Through the conceptual lens of DI (examining architectural, process and governance dimensions) we demonstrate the potential benefits of data pipeline/ CBM innovation and the complex alignment processes between business and government actors needed for the further adoption. From a theoretical point of view we enhance the understanding regarding the governance dimension of such data pipeline/ CBM innovations by identifying four type of alignments processes involving businesses and government actors nationally and internationally. As such the paper contributes to the body of research on DI and more specifically DTI. Form a point of view of practice, the insights from our analysis can be used to better understand other data pipeline/ CBM innovation alignment processes in other domains as well.Information and Communication Technolog

Multi-level Access Control in the Data Pipeline of the International Supply Chain System

The Seamless Integrated Data Pipeline system was proposed to the European Union in order to overcome the information quality shortcomings of the current international supply chain information exchange systems. Next to identification and authorization of stakeholders, secure access control needs to be considered at design time of the new data pipeline system. This challenge is taken up in this paper. First, based on an analysis of the proposed data pipeline concept, access control requirements are being defined. Second, a new multi-level access control model is being designed. The resulting model organizes access control at two levels, namely, at country and at service level, herewith enabling secure information exchange between global stakeholders. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

A Framework for Understanding Circular Economy Monitoring: Insights from the Automotive Industry

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have paved the way toward a more sustainable future. The 2019 EU Green Deal and the 2020 EU Circular Economy Action Plan [1] introduce laws and regulations to facilitate and encourage the transition towards sustainability and a circular economy (CE). For the implementation of these regulatory measures, public authorities face the challenge to gain access to relevant business data for compliance monitoring. Digital infrastructures and access to business data (sources) such as the material composition of products are useful for compliance monitoring, however CE-relevant data is spread across multiple platforms of the supply chain partners and across multiple supply chains. Therefore, digital infrastructures and information-sharing arrangements need to be developed to create visibility and traceability for monitoring the circular economy flows. In this paper, we use a conceptual framework with four dimensions (context, actors, public value, and digital infrastructures) to analyze key actors and potential data of value they hold in their digital infrastructures to explore options for data-sharing solutions.By focusing predominantly on the actor dimension, we analyze a case study in the automotive industry, taking the perspective of two focal Dutch governmental actors: Customs and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. In our analysis, we also show how this actor dimension is linked to the other dimensions: context, public value, and digital infrastructures. These dimensionsplay an instrumental role in navigating through the complex actornetwork in a systematic way toward identifying pathways for the development of digital infrastructures and data-sharing solutions for circular economy monitoring.Research Support & InnovationInnovation AffairsInformation and Communication Technolog

The anatomy of digital trade infrastructures

In global supply chains information about transactions resides in fragmented pockets within business and government systems. The lack of reliable, accurate and complete information makes it hard to detect risks (such as safety, security, compliance, commercial) and at the same time makes international trade inefficient. The introduction of digital infrastructures that transcend organizational and systems domains is driven by the prospect of reducing information fragmentation, thereby enabling improved security and efficiency in trade process. The potential of such digital trade infrastructures has been showcased in demonstrator settings, but in practice adoption and growth has been slow. In order to understand the problem at hand and build cumulative knowledge about its resolution, we need a way to conceptualize the different infrastructure initiatives. This paper therefore develops the Digital Trade Infrastructure Framework that aims to identify the structural components (anatomy) of the digital infrastructures in the trade area. The framework is developed through an empirically grounded analysis of four digital infrastructures in the trade domain within the conceptual lens of digital infrastructure. The framework can be used to position digital trade infrastructure initiatives to allow for cumulative knowledge building about its challenges as well as to articulate forward-looking agendas covering to development of instruments to oversee its resolution.Information and Communication Technolog