A Conceptual Model for Group Support Systems in Local Councils

This paper proposes a conceptual model of a context-aware group support system (GSS) to assist local council employees to perform collaborative tasks in conjunction with inter- and intra-organisational stakeholders. Most discussions about e-government focus on the use of ICT to improve the relationship between government and citizen, not on the relationship between government and employees. This paper seeks to expose the unique culture of UK local councils and to show how a GSS could support local government employer and employee needs

VCU College of Humanities and Sciences Racial Equity Assessment

Racial equity is the process of ensuring that equal possible outcomes are available for every individual. At the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) an important goal is to ensure faculty and staff have access to the same opportunities, while accounting for those facing continued barriers. Following the establishment of the Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Committee, the current state of racial equity and the effectiveness of initiatives meant to correct for imbalance will be assessed

Supporting multi-organisational collaborative groups in the public sector

In this paper, the issues that arise in multi-organisational collaborative groups (MOCGs) in the public sector are discussed and how a technology-based group support system (GSS) could assist individuals within these groups. MOCGs are commonly used in the public sector to find solutions to multifaceted social problems. Finding solutions for such problems is difficult because their scope is outside the boundary of a single government agency. The standard approach to solving such problems is collaborative involving a diverse range of stakeholders. Collaborative working can be advantageous but it also introduces its own pressures. Conflicts can arise due to the multiple contexts and goals of group members and the organisations that they represent. Trust, communication and a shared interface are crucial to making any significant progress. A GSS could support these elements

Techniques for managing strategic partnership working arrangements in local government

Organisations enter into collaborative working arrangements with others to deliver mutual benefits. In Multi-Organisational Collaborative Groups (MOCGs), organisations share knowledge, coordinate their activities, and engage in joint decision-making processes. Local government domains commonly adopt this approach. Strategic partnerships are deployed to develop new solutions to complex social problems because it is believed that these problems can only be solved by pooling the resources of a diverse range of stakeholders. Yet this approach can be problematic. The multitude of perceptions towards a problem increases the difficulty in achieving consensus. The lack of a managerial structure complicates activity coordination. The lack of a shared interface makes transparent information exchange burdensome. Research challenges lie in designing techniques to support such partnerships. Existing techniques for achieving consensus omit key contextual information about local. government strategic partnerships. Furthermore, existing technologies for supporting group work provide insufficient functionality for supporting roles, relationships, responsibilities, and information exchange requirements of these partnerships. To define and structure social problems the partnership domain must be characterised and represented. The identification of relationships, roles, and responsibilities found amongst partners is necessary to devise mechanisms to support activity coordination. The identification of partnership information resources is required to facilitate transparent information exchange. This problem-centred, information systems research PhD project addresses these challenges. A post- modernist position is taken towards research phenomena within the neohumanist paradigm. It draws on the principles of Organisational Semiotics, Soft Systems Methodology, Role-Based Access Control, and Unified Modelling Language. It contributes five IT artefacts designed to enable the development of software solutions: the specification of domain characteristics and solution requirements, a conceptual architecture, a description of partnership stakeholders, a representation of domain entities and relationships, an architecture of partnership information resources. Furthermore, a non-electronic technique for specifying the context of a partnership is provided, as well as specifications for an e-collaboration technology. The latter is a configuration of new and existing functionality designed to meet the requirements of partnerships, which demonstrates how software design could be derived from the IT artefacts.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo