Tracking Values in Web based Student Teacher Exchanges

When vocational student teachers communicate on a virtual platform in a combined campus and web based university course they focus on the contents of teaching and learning. However, in communicating professional teacher knowledge they implicitly express their personal values too. Without giving it much thought, they embed values in their verbal entries and they assess embedded values in their peers’ texts. This article introduces a soft systems model for categorizing the influence of values on web based interactions.

Software Development Life Cycles and Methodologies

Information Systems as a discipline has generated thousands of research papers, yet the practice still suffers from poor-quality applications. This paper evaluates the current state of application development, finding practice wanting in a number of areas. Changes recommended to fix historical shortcomings include improved management attention to risk management, testing, and detailed work practices. In addition, for industry’s move to services orientation, recommended changes include development of usable interfaces and a view of applications as embedded in the larger business services in which they function. These business services relate to both services provided to parent-organization customers as well as services provided by the information technology organization to its constituents. Because of this shift toward service orientation, more emphasis on usability, applications, testing, and improvement of underlying process quality are needed. The shift to services can be facilitated by adopting tenets of IT service management and user-centered design and by attending to service delivery during application development.

An Integrated Systems Approach for Early Warning and Risk Management Systems

An integrated and interdisciplinary approach to Early Warning and Risk Management is described in this paper as well as the general technical implementation of Early Warning and Risk Management Systems. Based on this systems approach, a concept has been developed for the design of an Integrated System for Coastal Protection. In addition to this, as a prototype implementation of a modern environmental monitoring and surveillance system, a system for the Remote Monitoring of Nuclear Power Plants is presented here in more detail, including a Web Portal to allow for public access. The concept, the architectural design and the user interface of Early Warning and Risk Management Systems have to meet high demands. It is shown that only a close cooperation of all related disciplines and an integrated systems approach is able to fulfil the catalogue of requirements and to provide a suitable solution for environmental monitoring and surveillance, for early warning and for emergency management.

The Importance of Systems Methodologies for Industrial and Scientific National Wealthy and Development

The relationship between industrial and scientific knowledge and systems methodologies is discussed in this paper. As the measure of the former on the macro level, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is assumed to be the consequence of systems’ Research and Development (R&D), which is estimated indirectly by the number of articles published in academic journals in the last 40 years. It is assumed that Production, Management and Information Systems (IS) can be considered suitable main representatives of the quality of organizational processes and that GDP is their consequence. In turn, the Systems Approach (SA), Systems Engineering (SE), Operational Research (OR), Information Systems Development (ISD) and Simulation represent the methodology set for coping with organizational complex processes. We looked for the articles containing the aforementioned variables as topic keywords in core scientific databases. Results show a sufficient correlation between the number of publications and the GDP.

Towards Knowledge Evolution in Software Engineering

This article presents an epistemological reading of knowledge evolution in software engineering (SE) both within a software project and into SE theoretical frameworks principally modeling languages and software development life cycles (SDLC). The article envisages SE as an artificial science and notably points to the use of iterative development as a more adequate framework for the enterprise applications. Iterative development has become popular in SE since it allows a more efficient knowledge acquisition process especially in user intensive applications by continuous organizational modeling and requirements acquisition, early implementation and testing, modularity,… SE is by nature a human activity: analysts, designers, developers and other project managers confront their visions of the software system they are building with users’ requirements. The study of software projects’ actors and stakeholders using Simon’s bounded rationality points to the use of an iterative development life cycle. The later, indeed, allows to better apprehend their rationality. Popper’s knowledge growth principle could at first seem suited for the analysis of the knowledge evolution in the SE field. However, this epistemology is better adapted to purely hard sciences as physics than to SE which also takes roots in human activities and by the way in social sciences. Consequently, we will nuance the vision using Lakatosian epistemology notably using his falsification principle criticism on SE as an evolving science. Finally the authors will point to adaptive rationality for a lecture of SE theorists and researchers’ rationality.

Preventative Actions for Enhancing Online Protection and Privacy

Many citizens rely upon online services, and it is certain that this reliance will increase in the future. However, they frequently lack a solid appreciation of the related safety and security issues, and can be missing out on an essential aspect of awareness in everyday life. Indeed, users are often concerned about online threats, but it would be stretching the point to claim that they are fully aware of the problems. Thus, rather than actually protecting themselves, many will simply accept that they are taking a risk. This paper examines the problem of establishing end-user eSafety awareness, and proposes means by which related issues can be investigated and addressed. Recognising that long-term attitudes and practices will be shaped by early experiences with the technology, it is particularly important to address the issue early and improve awareness amongst young people. However, the problem is unlikely to be addressed via the approaches that would traditionally be applied with adult users. As such, the paper examines information gathering and awareness-raising strategies drawing from qualitative methodologies in the social sciences, whose pluralistic approach can be effectively applied within school contexts.

Mobile Enterprise Architecture Framework

The Mobile Enterprise is a new form of enterprise in the contemporary mobile era. Although several well-known enterprise architecture frameworks are used by enterprises, it is apparent that there is no industry standard available to enable an enterprise to transform its business processes to incorporate mobile technologies to advantage. This paper presents a conceptual Mobile Enterprise Architecture Framework and supporting methodology and process model which can aid enterprise decision makers to evaluate the business values, and analyze the risks and other critical business and technical factors for enterprise mobile initiatives and mobile transitions. The framework covers both the enterprise and mobile enterprise architecture domains that represent the Enterprise, Business, and Mobile Adoption levels. The goal at the Enterprise Level is to obtain a mobile enterprise and the technologies adopted at the Mobile Adoption Level are the different mobile technologies to be incorporated. Each level contains some important components impacting the mobile enterprise transformation. The methodology and process model cover the Strategy, Analysis, Design, Implementation, and Maintenance stages for each mobile initiative, and were validated in a research project against some Ontario Government mobile initiatives.

Minimising Collateral Damage

Investigators often define invasion of privacy as collateral damage. Inquiries that require gathering data from third parties, such as banks, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or employers are likely to impact the relationship between the data subject and the data controller. In this research a novel privacy-preserving approach to mitigate collateral damage during the acquisition process is presented. This approach is based on existing Private Information Retrieval (PIR) protocols, which cannot be employed in an investigative context. This paper provides analysis of the investigative data acquisition process and proposes three modifications that can enable existing PIR protocols to perform investigative enquiries on large databases, including communication traffic databases maintained by ISPs. IDAP is an efficient Symmetric PIR (SPIR) protocol optimised for the purpose of facilitating public authorities’ enquiries for evidence. It introduces a semi-trusted proxy into the PIR process in order to gain the acceptance of the general public. In addition, the dilution factor is defined as the level of anonymity required in a given investigation. This factor allows investigators to restrict the number of records processed, and therefore, minimise the processing time, while maintaining an appropriate level of privacy.

Business Innovation and Service Oriented Architecture

Recent research suggests that a strong link exists between business innovation and service oriented IT architectures: modern IT architecture enables business to quickly create new services. However, the relationship between IT capabilities and business performance is not always straightforward. How does SOA support fast innovation in practice, and under which conditions is it effective? In this paper, the authors investigate these issues and ask: How can a SOA architecture like the Enterprise Service Bus support business innovation? This paper investigates this question through a case study at an airline company. Analyzing the relationship between innovation and IT architecture in the company over time, the authors offer the following conclusion: ESB gives strong support to business innovation, under two conditions. First, the implementation of ESB has to be comprehensive, that is, it should include the core processes of the business. Second, the top management (and partners) need to understand the principles of ESB.

Testable Theory Development for Small-N Studies

Theory testing within small-N research designs is problematic. Developments in the philosophy of social science have opened up new methodological possibilities through, among other things, a novel notion of contingent causality that allows for contextualized hypothesis generation, hypothesis testing and refinement, and generalization. This article contributes to the literature by providing an example of critical realist (one such new development in the philosophy of social science) theory development for a small-N comparative case study that includes hypothesis testing. The article begins with the key ontological assumptions of critical realism and its relation to theory and explanation. Then, the article presents an illustrative example of an e-government comparative case study, focusing on the concept of trust, which follows these ontological assumptions. The focus of the example is on the nature and process of theory and hypothesis development, rather than the actual testing that occurred. Essential to developing testable hypotheses is the generation of tightly linked middle-range and case-specific theories that provide propositions that can be tested and refined. The link provides a pathway to feed back the concrete empirical data to the higher level (more abstract) and generalizable middle-range theories.