Data Security for Connected Governments and Organisations

Digital ecosystems have grown rapidly over the years, and governments are investing in digital provision for their processes and services. Despite the advantages of distributed technologies, there are many security issues as well that result in breaches of data privacy with serious impact including legal and reputational implications. To deal with such threats, government agencies need to thoughtfully improve their security defences to protect data and systems by using automation and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as easing the data security measures including early warning of threats and detection. This study provides a comprehensive view of AI and automaton to highlight challenges and issues concerning data security and suggests steps to combat the issues. The authors demonstrate the role of AI-driven security tools and automation to mitigate the impact of data breaches to also propose recommendations for government agencies to enhance their data security protection.

Digital Ecosystem Security Issues for Organizations and Governments

The growth of the digital ecosystem has given a sense that the rise of security implementations must be considered by every organization including governments in terms of adopting the best digital ethical approaches and awareness on the importance of ensuring privacy. Increased use of the internet has also increased matters of cyber threats and unethical behaviors. Therefore, implementation of digital ethics has become crucial to prevent or minimize the impacts of cybercrime, and so, securing sensitive information from unauthorized access has become extremely important. This study analyses and describes the future trends regarding security in digital ethics and privacy within the digital ecosystem. The results point to a relative correlation between the government and business sector and the types of attacks and that digital ethics and privacy makes up the core elements of security. Implementing cautionary steps are also necessary to prevent from any form of cyber-attack.

Sentiment Analysis in Crisis Situations for Better Connected Government

One of the pillars of connected government is citizen centricity: an approach in which citizen participation is essential. In Mexico, social networks are currently one of the most important means by which citizens express their needs and provide opinions to the government. The goal of this chapter is to contribute to citizen centricity by adapting the methodology of sentiment analysis of social media posts to an expanded version for crisis situations. The main difference in this approach from the normally accepted one is that instead of using pre-defined classes (positive and negative) for sentiments, the authors first determined the different data categories and then applied them to the classic process of sentiment analysis. This approach was tested using posts on Mexico's earthquake in 2017. They found that needs, demands, and claims made in the posts reflect sentiments in a better way, and this can help to improve the government-citizen connection.

Towards Connected Government Services

Cloud computing technologies are being used highly successfully in large-scale businesses. Therefore, it is useful for governments to adopt cloud-driven multi-channel, and multiple devices to offer their services such as e-tax, e-vote, e-health, etc. Since these applications require open, flexible, interoperable, collaborative, and integrated architecture, service-oriented architecture approach can be usefully adopted to achieve flexibility and multi-platform and multi-channel integration. However, its adoption needs to be systematic, secure, and privacy-driven. In this context, micro services architecture (MSA), a direct offshoot of SOA, is also a highly attractive mechanism for building and deploying enterprise-scale applications. This chapter proposes a systematic framework for cloud e-government services based on the cloud software engineering approach and suggests a cloud adoption model for e-government, leveraging the benefits of MSA patterns. The proposed model is based on a set of evaluated application characteristics that, in turn, support emerging IT-based technologies.

Collaborating Decision Support and Business Intelligence to Enable Government Digital Connectivity

Many governments around the world are actively engaging in digital transformation, aiming to turn themselves into digital governments. Here, innovation management is one of the most critical factors for such transformation. One approach is to implement business intelligent (BI) and decision support systems (DSS). Collaboration of these two technologies is essential to bring out the best within the organizations, by way of allowing the management to make timely, effective, and correct decisions, including better processing in terms of knowledge and data that the organizations hold. Evidence suggests that implementation and collaboration of DSS and BI results in a positive impact on businesses, organizations, and governments, as well as on other related aspects of the workforce. This chapter proposes and discusses a novel implementation of innovation management approach showcasing the use of DSS and BI in achieving more open digital and connected governments.

Technologies for Connected Government Implementation

This chapter aims to identify critical success factors and examines the best use of Web 2.0 technologies to improve the effectiveness and transparency of electronic government (e-government) provision. To this end, the chapter presents the use of e-Portals for connected government (c-government), e-government, and mobile government. Since the connected government practices rely not only on the technologies used but also on the culture, regime, and structure of the population, a number of other relevant factors are also discussed to further determine the impact of latest technologies on c-government practices. This study has resulted in the identification of six basic critical success factors affecting the success of c-government. At the same time, it is suggested that Web 2.0 technologies may be used to make e-government applications more human-centred, transparent, social, dynamic, and applicable. New concepts such as Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 are also examined.

Citizen Data in Distributed Computing Environments

Data security is paramount in the increasingly connected world. Securing data, while in transit and rest, and while under usage, is essential for deriving actionable insights out of data heaps. Incorrect or wrong data can lead to incorrect decisions. So, the confidentiality and integrity of data have to be guaranteed through a host of technology-inspired security solutions. Organizational data is kept confidentially by the businesses and governments, often in distant locations (e.g., in cloud environments), though more sensitive data is normally kept in house. As the security mechanisms are getting more sophisticated, cyber security attacks are also becoming more intensive, so there is a constant battle between the organisations and the hackers to be one step ahead of the other. In this chapter, the aim is to discuss various mechanisms of accomplishing citizens' data confidentiality and privacy and to present solution approaches for ensuring impenetrable security for personal data.

Towards Connected Governance

This contribution examines the factors (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and trust) that influence continuance usage intention of Web 2.0 by citizens. A questionnaire was administered to 311 users of Federal Inland Revenue Service and Federal Road Safety Commission's Facebook and Twitter pages in Lagos and Ibadan in Nigeria. Descriptive analyses were used to answer three research questions, while linear regression was used to test seven research hypotheses stated in the study. Findings reveal that there is a significant joint influence of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence on citizens' continuance usage intention of Web 2.0. There is also a significant joint influence relating to trust in the internet and the government on citizens' continuance usage intention of Web 2.0. Among others, the study recommends that government agencies should engage citizens more in public decisions making processes through the use of Web 2.0-related applications.

Cloud Computing Technologies for Connected Digital Government

Connected digital government vision is about putting a government in the hands of its citizens. It suggests the use of digital connectivity technologies for the development of electronic services, collaboration with governmental institutions, and interacting with citizens for their full involvement in governments' processes and operations to make them transparent and more effective. Some of the latest technologies that can help to enhance connected governance include cloud distributed computing paradigm, internet of things vision, mobile technologies, social media, and Web 2.0-based communication tools. Although all these are well developed, the focus of this chapter is on cloud computing. In this chapter, the author first introduces the cloud computing paradigm, and then, outlining the characteristics and requirements of an open connected government, the chapter discusses how cloud-based provision and related technologies can support governments to enhance their functioning, transparency, openness, and interaction, in real time, with the citizens.

Digital Social Innovation for Better Connected Government

Social innovation (SI) refers to new products, processes, and methods that, in a creative and sustainable way, offer a better solution to social demands, which often requires changes in the practices of existing social systems. Digital social innovation (DSI) is ICT-based SI that uses digital technologies to invoke such changes. This chapter presents an insight into DSI in the Republic of Macedonia and reports the results of a survey to show the level of understanding, awareness, and knowledge of DSI in the country. Although the idea of DSI is to bypass the governments, motivate people to self-organize, and solve their societal problems, results suggest that without a good strategy, enough funding, and suitable societal governance, it is difficult to tackle the challenges of raising the awareness of an individual or a community that it is they themselves who are the change-enablers as members of a social network.