PUBLIC VALUE AND IT CAPACITY IN AN UNSTABLE ENVIRONMENT: CASE STUDY IN GOVERNMENT AGENCY

This study addresses, in a qualitative method, the explanation of how technical artifacts are socially constructed, providing IT flexibility, allowing operational capacity to generate public value. One of the premises of the Public Value Operational Capacity points out that flexibility is a fundamental aspect for success in government agencies. The study consists of a qualitative analysis of the revealing single-case study method. A preliminary analysis indicates a deficiency in the social constructions of IT artifacts, considering that the objectives in government organization are constantly changing due to changes in public policy. As a result, this study helps bridge the gap through a theoretical perspective on IT flexibility by providing an intuitive approach to IT management and public value management. From a practical point of view, we believe the results of this study will offer several management implications for IT and public policy managers

Visualizing multidimensional data similarities:Improvements and applications

Multidimensional data is increasingly more prominent and important in many application domains. Such data typically consist of a large set of elements, each of which described by several measurements (dimensions). During the design of techniques and tools to process this data, a key component is to gather insights into their structure and patterns, which can be described by the notion of similarity between elements. Among these techniques, multidimensional projections and similarity trees can effectively capture similarity patterns and handle a large number of data elements and dimensions. However, understanding and interpreting these patterns in terms of the original data dimensions is still hard. This thesis addresses the development of visual explanatory techniques for the easy interpretation of similarity patterns present in multidimensional projections and similarity trees, by several contributions. First, we propose methods that make the computation of similarity trees efficient for large datasets, and also enhance its visual representation to allow the exploration of more data in a limited screen. Secondly, we propose methods for the visual explanation of multidimensional projections in terms of groups of similar elements. These are automatically annotated to describe which dimensions are more important to define their notion of group similarity. We show next how these explanatory mechanisms can be adapted to handle both static and time-dependent data. Our proposed techniques are designed to be easy to use, work nearly automatically, and are demonstrated on a variety of real-world large data obtained from image collections, text archives, scientific measurements, and software engineering

O ESTRUTURALISMO E TRÊS REAÇÕES: A QUESTÃO DO DISCURSO EM CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS, MICHEL FOUCAULT E EDWARD SAID

A proposta desse artigo é apresentar uma discussão sobre o discurso, perpassando por três autores no campo do estruturalismo e a reação ao neo-estruturalismo: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault e Edward Said. O estudo é de base teórica e salienta a importância do diálogo sobre a dimensão discursiva e a compreensão de seus impactos nas relações sociais. Assim, o texto divide-se em três partes: reflexão sobre Lévi-Strauss e a importância do diálogo da antropologia com outras áreas do conhecimento, especialmente a linguística e a psicologia, para promover uma nova leitura da estrutura de parentesco; o método histórico sugerido por Michel Foucault e sua respectiva crítica aos trabalhos e teses apresentadas nos moldes estruturalistas; o discurso proferido pelos autores neocolonialistas, especialmente por Edward Said e a invenção de um discurso sobre o oriente difundido pelo ocidente