Tape Mbo'e: A First Experimental Assessment

The development of software not only needs to consider the construction process, but also other aspects such as cost, human resources and communication among stakehold- ers. The lack of simplicity into this context becomes explicit when some restrictions, such as service oriented architecture, must be considered as the basic style to build sus- tainable applications into environments were practitioners are not aware of this software technology. In addition to this, most of the available software processes are not directly applicable nor are they reusable, so learning times becomes risk for the development of the project. Therefore, Tape Mbo'e (TME) has been proposed to support the building of such applications, into development environments like developing countries where we can have economic constraints and scarcity of proficient practitioners. The first application of TME has been to develop a service-based application whose goal is to provide the interoperability among legacy systems of different public agencies in Paraguay. Initial results of this experience indicated the feasibility and simplicity of TME when applied in this field. The evaluation process, its results and conclusions are described in this paper

ICT for Good: Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward

Abstract-ICT seems well understood as a tool and an infrastructure for delivering information and services for the society and for allowing communications through interactions among the service users -mostly, the digital society. Using ICT for ensuring better life requires far more than good infrastructure, ICT know-how and the various techniques and tools in place. If ICT has to address the real problems of the society, it should be at a rescue being environment-friendly, with real and tangible impact, sustainable, seamless, down to the grass-roots and above all with reproducible experiences. In this paper, we introduce a different perspective of looking into and using ICT, which we call ICT for Good (ICT4G). It is about using ICT for addressing problems of societies with low ICT penetration and changing a society's life for the better. More specifically, based on our observation of current promises ICT gives to society, we discuss ICT4G's distinguishing aspects, opportunities it offers, challenges it imposes along with preliminary roadmap for its realization. A high-level correlation of what we pointed out with a relevant case study (i.e., the eGIF4M 1 ) is presented

(Non-)Participation in deliberation at work: a case study of online participative decision-making

Social media are implemented by organisations to enhance productivity and knowledge sharing among employees, but they can also support group deliberation and employee voice. This paper presents a case study of an online deliberation initiative involving the discussion of a contentious internal policy within an organisation of around 550 knowledge workers. The deliberation process lasted 5 weeks and actively involved 167 employees. Different sources of information (user interaction logs, activity patterns, questionnaire responses) were analysed to investigate the impact of participation, or non‐participation, on the level of satisfaction with the deliberation, and on the understanding of the issue discussed. The findings suggest that (1) interest is a driver for participation, but it does not explain active participation, (2) participation, either active or passive, positively influences the understanding of the issue and (3) satisfaction with the outcome is not related to participation, but it may support participation in future initiatives

Reasoning by Analogy via Abstraction

ion Adolfo Villafiorita January 1996 Technical Report MRG/DIST # 96-0030 universit`a di genova facolt`a di ingegneria dipartimento informatica sistemistica telematica Reasoning by Analogy via Abstraction Adolfo Villafiorita Mechanized Reasoning Group I. I., University of Ancona, via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy, DIST, University of Genova, viale Causa 15, 16146 Genova, Italy. [email protected] Abstract Abstraction has been used in theorem proving as a heuristic to reduce the search space (see, for instance, [ Simpson, 1988 ] ) and as a tool for explanation (see, for instance, [ Bundy et al., 1993 ] ). We use abstraction to model certain forms of reasoning by analogy. 1 Introduction Reasoning by analogy can be described as the process of finding the solution of a problem (the target problem) by using the known solution of a similar problem (the source problem). This process consists of "extracting" the relevant information from the source problem,..

Evaluating Procedural Alternatives in an e-Voting Domain: Lesson Learned

The ProVotE project aims at actuating art. 84 of law 2 - 5/3/2003, which promotes the introduction of e-voting in Trentino for the next provincial elections (2008). To provide a smooth transition to the new way of voting ProVotE takes a multi-disciplinary approach that develops along di®erent lines, among which, sociological, normative, organizational, and technological. Carrying out an election is a critical activity that involves several people of di®erent organizations over a period of time that spans months. This paper describes part of the work carried out within the organizational/logistical line of the ProVotE project and describes the approach we are taking in order to provide precise models of the electoral processes of an electronic voting, while, at the same time, providing mechanisms for documenting, reasoning on the possible alternative implementations of the procedures to support the elections of 2008. In particular, the approach is based on defining an alternating sequence of models, written using UML and Tropos, that allow to document the existing electoral processes and, at the same time, that are used to reason, evaluate, and choose possible alternative implementations of the electronic voting processes

Introduction to software project management

xix, 276 p. ; 24 cm

Abstraction as a Form of Elaboration Tolerance

Elaboration tolerance is ``the ability of accepting changes to a person`s or a computer program`s representation of facts without starting all over``. In this paper we investigate how abstraction helps in achieving a certain degree of elaboration tolerance. We do so by mechanizing in ABSFOL (an interactive theorem prover with abstraction) two famous representations of the missionaries and cannibals problem and by showing how abstraction helps in finding solutions in such representations ``... without starting all over.`

Integrating Fault Tree Analysis with Event Ordering Information

Fault tree analysis is a traditional and well-established technique for analyzing system design and robustness. Its purpose is to identify sets of basic events, called cut sets, which can cause a given top level event, e.g., a system malfunction, to occur. In this paper we present an algorithm that extracts ordering information, i.e., finds out possible ordering constraints which are required to hold between basic events in a cut set. The algorithm is completely automatic, and has been incorporated into a more general framework, based on model checking techniques, for automatic fault tree generation and analysis

A Survey: Electronic Voting Development and Trends

Any practitioner working on electronic voting (e-voting) seems to have different opinions on the main issues that seem to affect the area. On the one hand– given the criticality and the risk e-voting systems potentially pose to the democratic process–e-voting systems are permanently under a magnifying glass that amplifies any glitch, be it significant or not. On the other hand, given the interest e-voting raises within the general public, there seems to be a tendency to generalize and oversimplify. This tendency leads to attributing specific problems to all systems, regardless of context, situation, and actual systems used. Additionally, scarce know-how about the electoral context often contributes to make matters even more confused. This is not to say all e-voting systems show the security and reliability characteristics that are necessary for a system of such a criticality. On the contrary, a lot of work still has to be done. Starting from previous experiences and from a large-scale experiment we conducted in Italy, this paper provides some direction, issues, and trends in e-voting. Getting a clearer view of the research activities in the area, highlighting both positive and negative results, and emphasizing some trends could help, in our opinion, to draw a neater line between opinion and facts, and contribute to the construction of a next generation of e-voting machines to be safely and more confidently employed for elections

Inductive Theorem Proving via Abstraction

We use abstraction as a tool to paln proofs by inductive inside ABSFOL, an interactive theorem prover with abstractio