GUISET: A CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF A GRID-ENABLED PORTAL FOR E-COMMERCE ON-DEMAND SERVICES

Conventional grid-enabled portal designs have been largely influenced by the usual functional requirements such as security requirements, grid resource requirements and job management requirements. However, the pay-as-you-use service provisioning model of utility computing platforms mean that additional requirements must be considered in order to realize effective grid-enabled portals design for such platforms. This work investigates those relevant additional requirements that must be considered for the design of grid-enabled portals for utility computing contexts. Based on a thorough review of literature, we identified a number of those relevant additional requirements, and developed a grid-enabled portal prototype for the Grid-based Utility Infrastructure for SMME-enabling Technology (GUISET) initiative – a utility computing platform. The GUISET portal was designed to cater for both the traditional grid requirements and some of the relevant additional requirements for utility computing contexts. The result of the evaluation of the GUISET portal prototype using a set of benchmark requirements (standards) revealed that it fulfilled the minimum requirements to be suitable for the utility context

Towards A Well-Secured Electronic Health Record in the Health Cloud

The major concerns for most cloud implementers particularly in the health care industry have remained data security and privacy. A prominent and major threat that constitutes a hurdle for practitioners within the health industry from exploiting and benefiting from the gains of cloud computing is the fear of theft of patients health data in the cloud. Investigations and surveys have revealed that most practitioners in the health care industry are concerned about the risk of health data mix-up amongst the various cloud providers, hacking to comprise the cloud platform and theft of vital patients’ health data.An overview of the diverse issues relating to health data privacy and overall security in the cloud are presented in this technical report. Based on identifed secure access requirements, an encryption-based eHR security model for securing and enforcing authorised access to electronic health data (records), eHR is also presented. It highlights three core functionalities for managing issues relating to health data privacy and security of eHR in health care cloud

Towards Developing Grid-based Portals for E-Commerce on-Demand Services on a Utility Computing Platform

Trends and current practices in the design and development of grid-enabled portals(GeP) reveal the need to identify and fulfill certain additional relevant requirements in order to build applicable and usable grid-enabled portals for evolving computing platforms such as the utility computing (UC). This paper reports an investigation of the minimum relevant additional requirements that must be fulfilled to attain effective GeP design for UC. A GeP prototype for the Grid-based Utility Infrastructure for Small, Micro, and Medium Enterprises (SMME) Enabling Technology (GUISET) initiative – a UC platform was developed, and an analytic evaluation experiment undertaken in the study to elicit these additional requirements using a set of benchmark requirements (standards) revealed that it fulfilled the minimum requirements to be suitable for UC context. The result of the study underlines the need for more controlled experiments in portal prototyping in order to foster the practice of GeP design for UC

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN E-DELIBERATION SYSTEM A CASE STUDY OF NIGERIA’S FEDERAL MINISTRY OF POWER, WORKS AND HOUSING

The adoption of ICTs by the government has provided opportunities for interaction between the government and her citizens. This has also introduced new steps to be taken towards the future of democracy. The future of democracy entails full participation and engagement of citizens in socio-political and economic decision-making through e- deliberation system. This is already being adopted in some continent including Europe and Asia but yet to be fully embraced by African countries such as Nigeria. Citizen participation in decision-making is very important as their views, opinions and perspectives must always be taken into consideration. The main aim of this study therefore is to investigate the salient requirements for the design and implementation of an e-deliberation system, which creates a platform for deliberation between citizens and their representatives in government and government ministries and agencies. The case study used in this study is the Federal Ministry of Power, works and Housing in Nigeria. The outcome of this research work is a system prototype developed which is aimed at fostering citizen’s participation & engagement in Government decision-making via e- deliberation. The system prototype was developed using PHP, JavaScript, CSS, bootstrap and XAMPP server. Although a fully scale functional evaluation of the system is in-view, however, the first hand user testing done revealed that that system achieved its basic minimum requirements

Design and Implementation of an E-deliberation System Case Study: Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing

The adoption of ICTs by the government has provided opportunities for interaction between the government and her citizens. This has also introduced new steps to be taken towards the future of democracy. The future of democracy entails full participation and engagement of citizens in socio-political and economic decision-making through e-deliberation system. This is already being adopted in some continent including Europe and Asia but yet to be fully embraced by African countries such as Nigeria. Citizen participation in decision-making is very important as their views, opinions and perspectives must always be taken into consideration. The main aim of this study therefore is to investigate the salient requirements for the design and implementation of an e-deliberation system, which creates a platform for deliberation between citizens and their representatives in government and government ministries and agencies. The case study used in this study is the Federal Ministry of Power, works and Housing in Nigeria. The outcome of this research work is a system prototype developed which is aimed at fostering citizen’s participation & engagement in Government decision-making via e-deliberation. The system prototype was developed using PHP, JavaScript, CSS, bootstrap and XAMPP server. Although a fully scale functional evaluation of the system is in-view, however, the first hand user testing done revealed that that system achieved its basic minimum requirements

An Empirical Investigation of Factors that Influence Government Apps Usage/Adoption

Governments worldwide are using technology to provide effective and efficient services; and to improve the lives of all citizens. To date, there are few studies relating to unstructured text data that investigate the factors that influence government and mobile apps’ usage and adoption. To address this issue, we conducted our research and developed the Natural Language Processing Model to sequentially analyze our unstructured text data, which we collected from MetricsCat’s website. Our results from text analysis show that some of the most influential factors in why users adopt and use government apps are the quality of the app, the app’s usefulness, whether or not the app is informative, and whether or not the app remains up to date. Our research contains practical and research implications for key government officials and designers of mobile apps

Technologically Enabling Resource-constrained Enterprises in Developing Nations Through The Implementation of E-Commerce on-Demand Service Portals for a Grid Utility Computing Platform

In most developing countries, e-Commerce is being adopted in large scale organizations, but a large number of the resource-constrained enterprises such as the Small, Micro and Medium Enterprises (SMMEs) especially in the rural areas are yet to enjoy the maximum benefits that e-Commerce technology offers. Some of the reasons as identified include inability to afford the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of e-Commerce tools and applications, and lack of Information Communication Technology (ICT) expertise, amongst others. More so, in order to reduce TCO, SMMEs could pay for just the services and resources used per time (pay-as-you-use), without being burdened with high operational costs and overheads. This mode of resource delivery and utilization is often referred to as Utility Computing (UC) or on-Demand Computing (ODC). This paper reports an investigation of and profiles the relevant requirements and implementation guidelines to facilitate the design and implementation of an effective e-Commerce on-Demand service portal for a Grid Utility Computing (GUC) platform. A service portal prototype for the Grid-based Utility Infrastructure for Small, Micro, and Medium Enterprises Enabling Technology (GUISET) initiative – a Utility Computing platform, is being evolved with the aim of technologically enabling the business activities of these enterprises by facilitating an affordable access to relevant technologies on a pay-as-you-use basis. An analytic functional evaluation experiment was undertaken to determine if the minimum set of identified requirements considered necessary for the design of usable service portal for GUC platforms are satisfied and fulfilled in the portal prototype using a set of benchmark requirements. The result shows that these minimum requirements were satisfied and fulfilled by the service portal. Keywords—e-Commerce technology; on-demand service portal requirements; grid-based service portal development; utility computing

Conceptual Design and Usability Evaluation of a Grid Utility SECOnD Portal for Under-Resourced Business Enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa

Conventional grid-enabled portal designs have been primarily based on the usual traditional requirements specifications such as security requirements, grid resource requirements, job management requirements and the likes. However, the pay-as-you-use service provisioning model of utility computing platforms need to consider and satisfy certain salient requirements considered relevant in a bid to achieve better conceptual designs of Service-based Electronic Commerce On-Demand (SECOnD) that are well-usable for grid utility platforms such as the Grid-based Utility Infrastructure for Small, Micro, and Medium Enterprises (SMME) Enabling Technology (GUISET). The work aspect profiled in paper entails the conceptual design and usability evaluation of a SECOnD portal which serves as the uniform channel through which targeted under-resourced SMMEs can inexpensively access and use e-Commerce technologies and tools without owning them. The outcome of the evaluation experiment revealed that the service portal designed largely achieve the usability expectations of it users

An Empirical Investigation of Factors that Influence Government Apps Usage/Adoption

Governments worldwide are using technology to provide effective and efficient services; and to improve the lives of all citizens. To date, there are few studies relating to unstructured text data that investigate the factors that influence government and mobile apps' usage and adoption. To address this issue, we conducted our research and developed the Natural Language Processing Model to sequentially analyze our unstructured text data, which we collected from MetricsCat's website. Our results from text analysis show that some of the most influential factors in why users adopt and use government apps are the quality of the app, the app's usefulness, whether or not the app is informative, and whether or not the app remains up to date. Our research contains practical and research implications for key government officials and designers of mobile apps