Creating a sustainable digital infrastructure: The role of service-oriented architecture

The United Nations’ goal of generating sustainable industry, innovation, and infrastructure is the point of departure for our reflective paper. The paper elaborates on the concepts of digital infrastructure, service-oriented architecture, and microservices. It emphasizes the benefits and challenges of creating a sustainable infrastructure based on a service-oriented environment, in which cloud services constitute an important part. We outline the prerequisites for obtaining a sustainable digital infrastructure based on services. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and recently, microservice architecture, and cloud services, can provide organizations with the improved agility and flexibility essential for generating sustainability in a market focusing on digitalization. The reuse capability of SOA provides a common pool of information technology (IT) resources and qualifies as a green IT approach that impacts environmental protection. Previous research has identified IT and business alignment together with SOA governance as the most critical criteria when implementing SOA. This paper discusses these issues in-depth to explain sustainability.publishedVersio

AI-enabled adaptive learning systems: A systematic mapping of the literature

Mobile internet, cloud computing, big data technologies, and significant breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have all transformed education. In recent years, there has been an emergence of more advanced AI-enabled learning systems, which are gaining traction due to their ability to deliver learning content and adapt to the individual needs of students. Yet, even though these contemporary learning systems are useful educational platforms that meet students’ needs, there is still a low number of implemented systems designed to address the concerns and problems faced by many students. Based on this perspective, a systematic mapping of the literature on AI-enabled adaptive learning systems was performed in this work. A total of 147 studies published between 2014 and 2020 were analysed. The major findings and contributions of this paper include the identification of the types of AI-enabled learning interventions used, a visualisation of the co-occurrences of authors associated with major research themes in AI-enabled learning systems and a review of common analytical methods and related techniques utilised in such learning systems. This mapping can serve as a guide for future studies on how to better design AI-enabled learning systems to solve specific learning problems and improve users’ learning experiences.publishedVersio

Enterprise Architecture Implementation Is a Bumpy Ride: A Case Study in the Norwegian Public Sector

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a widespread approach for the development of new digital solutions in a planned and controlled way for large and complex organisations. EA is also viewed as a prerequisite for the digitalisation of the public sector. However, public sector organisations struggle to implement EA programmes, and research has demonstrated that organisational and managerial issues are critical obstacles to EA implementation. This study aims to increase our understanding of EA implementation in the public sector by investigating the central challenges for EA initiatives and to trace the progress of current EA initiatives in the Norwegian public sector. An additional goal is to disclose some ways to improve the situation. We conducted three interpretive case studies in the hospital, higher education, and labour and welfare sectors. We have identified 28 challenges to the EA initiatives. We find that organisational and technical complexities, as well as a limited understanding of EA and lack of formal EA governance mechanisms, are significant obstacles. Among others, the lack of understanding of EA and its methodology will lead to problems with anchoring the EA approach in the organisation and facilitating the necessary EA arrangements to induce the promised benefits of EA, which are necessary requirements to establish the EA initiative’s legitimacy and foster the organisation’s willingness to implement change. Our study provides four lessons learned for planning and implementing EA initiatives, as follows: #1. It is advisable to take small steps. #2. The use of external consultants should be carefully considered. #3. Formal architectural governance mechanisms are important for legitimacy and enforced use. #4. Executive commitment and understanding of EA are crucial for achieving a sustainable EA initiative. Finally, we find a common evolution of the EA initiatives through the phases of optimism, resistance, decline and finally, reconsolidation of the most persistent ones.publishedVersio

Enterprise Architecture adoption challenges: An exploratory case study of the Norwegian higher education sector

AbstractIT is a challenge to implement Enterprise Architecture (EA) in an organisation. This is also the case in the public sector, like public universities and colleges. There is a very limited research on such issues. It is therefore important to investigate how AE is implemented in various sectors, which benefits are realised and which challenges are most prominent. This interpretive case study investigates the efforts taken towards a common EA in the Norwegian higher education sector. We find that the progress was severely impeded by the lack of top level directions from the ministry, the lack of an overarching architecture council, and the lack of EA competence at the top management level at the individual institutions. The perceived most important benefits were business agility, economies of scale and better decision making

Implementering av digitale enheter – En casestudie av digitalisering i norske skoler

Større satsing på digitale enheter i skoleverket, har gjort implementering av 1:1-dekning utbredt i Norge. Fagfornyelsen [LK20] legger grunnlaget for det som kan bli en stor endring i undervisningens praksis. Konsepter som “å lære å lære” skal gjøre elever mer reflektert rundt egen læring. Studien viser at forankring og støtte hos nøkkelinteressenter, skifte i pedagogisk paradigme og god ledelse spil-ler svært sentrale roller i implementeringen. Eierskapet kommunen tar til prosjek-tet har stor påvirkning på visjonen og ambisjonsnivået

Co-creation in networks of SMEs: a conceptual model of the co-creation process

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The Co-creation Canvas

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Co-creation of IT-value in a cluster of small enterprises

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