bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Monitoring Technologies and Digital Governance
Authors: Danielson P.
Published: May 2011

Digital government is a technological adventure. It applies new technologies—in particular, computer-mediated communication—to the ongoing development of democratic forms of government. While the primary focus in digital government literature is on computer-mediated politics and formal governance, these technologies have wider effects. Generally, new information technologies enable new forms of control (see Beniger, 1986, for an excellent history and the general connections between information, control, and governance). The technological changes that make digital government an option alter the possibilities of governance at all levels. Driven by the declining price of computer hardware (so-called Moore’s law) sensors (e.g., cameras, RFID tags), computers and networking make it possible to find out about and to control many hithertofore uncontrolled aspects of our lives. This article considers the effect of new monitoring technologies in the broad sense introduced by McDonald (2001) as inclusive of the range of control mechanisms—personal, informal, social, market, legal, and political—that we deploy. In general, we expect technological innovation to create ethical problems. Innovations move communities from technological and social situations for which their norms are well adapted to new situations in which the fit tends to be worse (Binmore, 2004). Even seemingly small changes in technology, especially communications and monitoring technology, produce significant stress on norms. (Consider how cell phones and then cell phone cameras challenge norms governing privacy in public spaces.) Therefore, we should expect moves toward digital government to face ethical problems. This article considers problems due to a suite of monitoring and surveillance technologies that promises significant benefits but raises issues in terms of the values of control, privacy, and accountability.
Negotiation Strategies Based on Decision Conferencing
Authors: Blanco J. A.R.
Published: May 2011

Our current democratic institutions stem from times in which transportation and communications were difficult and time consuming. With the time, politics have evolved little and politicians have developed a style in which, except at political campaigns, they have little feedback from citizens. Most ideas so far relating Internet and politics are directed toward facilitating traditional political methods through new technologies. Our feeling is that there are ways to transform, rather than facilitate. This transformation is possible because when the way in which the citizens interact with their representatives is modified, and this transformation makes possible that citizens play an active role, they could make decisions of major quality and more agreed by consensus, which is not possible with the mere automatic use of the new technologies, since it is not the same thing to allow that a citizen could vote from his or her house, facilitating the use of the traditional political methods, that in addition to be able to guide to this one in the different phases of the decision making, doing that his or her judgments and preferences are taken in account by the system. We propose migrating to Internet methodology of decision conferencing to support group-decision conferences through our architecture, QUIXOTE, born of Toward Electronic Democracy (TED) project of the European Science Foundation (ESF). Thanks to our architecture we distribute rationality to better resolve political decision making, helping groups through the Web facilitating them the use of decision and negotiation analysis methods.
Promoting Citizen Participation via Digital Government
Authors: Phang C. W.
Published: May 2011

The advent of digital government unveils new opportunities in how government can address citizens’ needs and requirements in innovative ways. One of the growing citizens’ demands toward government today is the participation in policy making. This is reflected in a recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2001) report entitled Citizens as Partners, which concludes that “governments are under pressure to adopt a new approach to policy making—one which places greater emphasis on citizen involvement both upstream and downstream to decision-making” (p. 71). Digital government, enabled by information and communication technology (ICT), may help government in addressing such needs of citizens through network-based ICT applications. ICT, particularly the Internet, may enhance citizen participation in several ways: By offering capabilities that transcend time and space limitations, ICT has the potential to overcome barriers of large-scale citizen participation. One of these barriers is the difficulty to achieve the desired level of face-to-face interaction during off-line participation (e.g., public meeting) (Adams, 2004). In off-line participation, citizens need to take turns to voice their opinions within a limited time frame. This often results in poor deliberation, a situation where the consequences of various policy options and views of others are not weighed carefully and sufficiently (Mathews, 1994). The mass communication and information exchange capabilities afforded by the Internet may be especially useful in enhancing participation of citizens in policy deliberation. Despite the potential of ICT to enhance participation, it is vital to motivate citizens to participate. It is ironic that, while citizens increasingly demand for more participation, studies reveal that citizen participation has been declining in recent years (e.g., Lyons & Alexander, 2000). The paradox suggests that there is a need to investigate the factors that can lead to participation of citizens in policy making. Toward this end, we begin with a review of extant literature from political science to identify pertinent theories that may help explain citizen participation. As citizen participation via digital government is enabled by ICT, we also explore pertinent ICT features that may support participation.
Public Network Access Points
Authors: Haseloff A. M.
Published: May 2011

The Internet is changing dramatically the way people live, work, communicate, recreate, and participate in public life. But the growth and penetration of the Internet are far from being distributed equally around the globe. In developed countries, the Internet today reaches substantial proportions of the population (e.g., Finland [50,7 %], Germany [56,2 %], the United States [68,8 %]), but in developing countries, Internet penetration often is very low. In Africa, 29 countries still have an Internet penetration of less then 1% (Internet World Stats, 2005). The unequal access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) today often is called the digital divide. This catchy label stands for a multidimensional phenomenon and describes disparities in access to ICTs along various axes and at various levels. Disparities can be found not only in who physically has access to new technologies and who does not, but also in the distribution of the skills required to use the new technologies in an effective way (Hargittai, 2002; Warschauer, 2003). At the next level, disparities can be found in bandwidth and content available to different groups. These disparities are found among countries (global divides) and among different groups within countries (national divides). Although the existence of a digital divide in one or the other form is clearly accepted among scholars, the dimensions, dynamics, and relevance of this phenomenon are still being discussed strongly (for a more detailed discussion, see Cammaertes, Van Audenhove, Nulens & Pauwels, 2003; Compaine, 2001; Mossberger, Tolbert & Stansbury, 2003; Norris, 2001; Warschauer, 2003; ). One of the main strategies that is used to spread access to new technologies is the implementation of public network access points (PNAPs) that provide shared and, therefore, cheaper access to communities with low incomes. PNAPs can be defined as physical spaces where people can access ICT for personal, educational, economic, and democratic development without having to own the necessary hardware and software. This article will give an introduction to PNAPs, starting with a short look at the emergence of this access model, which can be traced back to the early 1980s. After that, the different models that have evolved over the years in different regions of the world will be described briefly before taking a closer look at the role that PNAPs can play in the context of e-governance. Finally, some critical issues like sustainability, content, and management will be discussed before conclusions are drawn.
Reusability in Governmental Electronic Services
Authors: Lepouras G.
Published: May 2011

Reusability in the everyday life is the capacity of using existing objects or even concepts again in the same or other contexts. When applied to information systems reusability is the capability of using the same parts of an application in other applications or in other contexts. As defined by IEEE (IEEE, 1990), reusability is the degree to which a software module or other work product can be used in more than one computing program or software system. Although rapid application development environments such as MS Visual .NETTM (Visual .NET, 2005) and DelphiTM (Borland Delphi, 2005) have to some extent employed reusability of components to aid the fast implementation of software applications, the extent to which existing objects can be used again in the implementation of new software systems is usually limited to basic building blocks of the interface. One problem that hinders reusability of larger building blocks is the fact that once a component which encompasses a number of objects is built it also encapsulates algorithms (sets of well-defined instructions that perform a task) in the form of code that define the functioning of the component. Tight coupling between the program logic and the program code makes portability of the component between applications difficult, when even small modifications in the program logic are required. A second problem that hinders reusability is that even when the same component can be directly used between applications, recognizing that such a component exists and retrieving it, is not an easy task. Reusability plays an important role in software development industry. If a set of well-defined components is available, valuable resources can be saved by utilizing again these components. As Rich Seely observes (2003) “as part of that cost-saving message, Gartner recommends vendors and consultants focus on reusability of Web services applications and components.”
Understanding Usability Issues in a Public Digital Library
Authors: Theng Y. , Khoo A. , Chan M.
Published: May 2011

Designers often design for themselves unless they are trained to realise that people are diverse, and that users are unlikely to be like them. The more errors that can be avoided “up front” by the right method, the less work both test-users and designers will have to put in to refine prototypes to improve their usability. Landauer (1995) points out that it is not good enough to design interactive systems without subjecting it to some form of evaluation, because it is impossible to design an optimal user interface in the first attempt. Dix Finlay, Abowd, and Beale (1998) argue that even if one has used the best methodology and model in the design of usable interactive systems, one still needs to assess the design and test the system to ensure that it behaves as expected and meets users’ requirements. Nielsen’s (1993) advice with respect to interface evaluation is that designers should simply conduct some form of testing. As digital libraries (DLs)—interactive systems with organised collections of information—become more complex, the number of facilities provided by them will increase and the difficulty of learning to use these facilities will also increase correspondingly. Like the Web, DLs also provide non-linear information spaces in which chunks of information are inter-connected via links. However, they are different in character from the Web in several important respects: a DL represents a collection for a specific purpose containing text-based and/or geospatial content and has search strategies that are clearly defined and more powerful. After a decade of DL research and development, DLs are moving from research to practice, from prototypes to operational systems (Borgman, 2002). In the digital world, real world cues such as face-to-face interactions with human librarians and thumbing through hardcopy books have been replaced by drop-down menus, search screens, and Web page browsing. In DLs, users must map their goals onto DLs’ capability without the assistance of a human librarian. As a result, wide acceptance of DLs will only be achieved if they are easy to learn and use relative to the perceived benefit (Borgman, 2000).
Virtual Innovation Environment
Authors: Komninos N.
Published: May 2011

Major new trends of our era emerge from the spread of information society and the increasing role of innovation as source of competitive advantage, development, and wealth. Innovation, however, is a tricky issue. We do not dispose adequate theories for predicting innovation in different sectors of industry and services, though we have plenty of tools and methods which assist and facilitate innovation in product development, process reorganization, and quality improvement. We tend to compensate the lack of theory about radical innovation (none can tell what the next big thing will be in an industry sector) with environments of innovation enabling the use of tools, instruments, and methods: financial tools, institutional tools, communication and information tools, creativity tools, and others. The rise of the information society opened new possibilities in the creation of environments of innovation. Digital tools and virtual (digital) innovation environments may assist organizations in learning and practicing innovation. They offer new forms of government (digital this time), online or offline, for mastering the complex processes of technological development and innovation. These virtual environments are important for companies, research institutions, technology intermediary organizations, and the public administration involved in innovation and research and development (R&D) management as well.
Opportunities and Constraints of Electronic Research
Authors: Roberts L.
Published: May 2011

In the past decade, many paper-and-pencil surveys and measures have been converted into electronic formats for administration via the Internet. In this paper, the evolution of methods of administering surveys and measures is briefly traced. This is followed by an outline of the major opportunities and constraints associated with conducting surveys and measures within the electronic environment. The paper concludes with a consideration of the appropriate situations for use of electronic surveys and measures.
Software Design Tips for Online Surveys
Authors: Artz J.
Published: May 2011

An online survey uses World Wide Web technology to deliver a survey instrument to a geographically dispersed audience, thus providing the benefits in elimination of mailing costs and an elimination of data entry costs. Both of these provide further secondary benefits such as elimination of follow up mailing costs and fewer errors in data collection. This article explains the basics of constructing an online survey using World Wide Web technology and provides some design tips for someone planning to construct such a survey. A simple online survey consists of three basic components. First, the survey is presented to the subject through a web page which allows them to enter information or select options in response to questions. A simple HTML Form will be used for this purpose. Second, a program is needed on the web server where the data will be stored to take the values from the form and store them in a database. An Active Server Page program will be used in this article for this purpose. This is, essentially, a program written in visual basic that takes values from the form and inserts them into a Relational Database. After a very simple example of each of these components is explained, some design tips will be provided that will make constructing and exploiting an online survey much easier.
Measurement in Public Relations
Authors: Botta R.
Published: May 2011

Although public relations has been an established field for more than 100 years, standardized measures have only recently been introduced. In an attempt to make public relations practitioners more accountable and to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of public relations in an era of downsizing, scholars and practitioners have called for more rigorous, reliable, valid, and quantifiable measures for evaluation. In addition, the contribution of public relations is also being measured in terms of the relationships built between an organization and its public. This chapter will review those measures and discuss the development and usage of online surveys and measurements in public relations. Finally, the chapter will conclude with a discussion of the future of measurement in public relations.
Measuring Cognitive Load
Authors: Hogg N.
Published: May 2011

Cognitive load theory describes learning in terms of a processing system when all too often working memory is overloaded and learning is impeded. Measuring cognitive load is an important component of research in the area of information processing. The design, delivery, and administration of an instrument, as well as its reliability and validity are discussed as a solution to the measurement of cognitive load. A nine-point subjective rating scale ranging from very, very low (1) to very, very high (9) measures cognitive load, defined as the mental effort needed to complete a task. It is a replica of the instrument used by Paas (1992) and Paas and van Merriënboer (1994). The measurement instrument can be used both on paper and on the Web.
Web-Based Survey Software for Academic Research
Authors: D’Agruma Hallie , Zollet Erika A.
Published: May 2011

The features of Datacurious, a web-based survey software program designed specifically for academic research, are examined in this article. Web-based data collection has been deemed an effective, reliable, and safe method of data collection, while also saving researchers time, effort, and cost and reducing data entry error. Recent developments in web-based survey software systems allow data be collected through relatively simple, easy-to-use interfaces, making the technology accessible to researchers with little to no technical expertise. Datacurious, available online at www.datacurious.com, utilizes an intuitive and user-friendly interface with broad capabilities in its survey designer. Programming enables researchers to adhere to ethical guidelines for surveying human subjects. Technical features of datacurious ensure survey participant privacy and confidentiality and provide options for informed consent, incentive, and debriefing pages. Datacurious also allows researchers to control entry to online surveys. Providing a flexible and robust web-based survey platform, datacurious accords to web design standards in survey design, while being responsive to the needs of the academic research community.
Comparison of Online Surveys Tools
Authors: Beidernikl G.
Published: May 2011

The article compares two major online survey tools made in Germany: Rogator and Formgen. Both are of a very high standard and can highly be recommended for carrying out professional online surveys in any social or psychological science setting. The article compares the technical functions, the graphical representation and the usability of both providers.
Hyperlink Analysis
Authors: Thelwall M.
Published: May 2011

Hyperlink analysis is a collection of techniques that researchers can use to identify patterns in the hyperlinks between collections of web sites. The purpose can either be to investigate linking behaviour within a given community or to use links as a convenient data source with which to investigate an aspect of or a reflection of a wider behaviour type. An example of a direct application is investigating the types of links used in political web sites (Foot, Schneider, Dougherty, Xenos, & Larsen, 2003; Park, 2003). Examples of indirect applications include using links between university web sites to identify highly connected pairs of sites (Thelwall, 2002b), and using links to access whether the web publishing of highly-rated scholars is better than that of others (Thelwall & Harries, 2004). There are two general approaches used in hyperlink analysis. The first is a content analysis of the hyperlinks themselves, categorising them by their context in their source web page and using the categorisation results for a descriptive analysis of why hyperlinks are used in the chosen set of web sites. The second general approach for hyperlink analysis is to choose a set of web sites relevant to a research question and then count links between all pairs of sites within the set, then applying statistical techniques to identify or verify a pattern in the link counts.
Servant Leadership Assessment Instrument
Authors: Dennis R. , Bocarnea M.
Published: May 2011

The SLAI measures the seven concepts found in Patterson’s (2003) theory of servant leadership. According to Patterson, the servant leader (a) leads and serves with love (Winston, 2002), (b) acts with humility (Sandage & Wiens, 2001), (c) is altruistic (Kaplan, 2000), (d) is visionary for the followers (Tangney, 2000), (e) is trusting (Hauser and House, 2000), (f) is serving (Wis, 2002), and (g) empowers followers (Covey, 2002). These are the seven constructs that comprise the servant leadership in Patterson’s model. Servant leadership as a theory emerged from Robert Greenleaf’s (1977) work. Recent investigations have expanded servant leadership to include identification and assessment servant leadership factors (Dennis & Bocarnea,2005; Dennis & Winston, 2003; Laub, 1999; Page & Wong, 2000; Patterson, 2003; Russell, 2000; Russell & Stone, 2002). The 42 items of the Servant Leadership Assessment Instrument (SLAI) cover a variety of attitudes and behaviors reflective of the aforementioned research. Reliability Research has indicated that the SLAI is internally consistent and reliable. Alpha reliability coefficients ranging from .89 to .92 have been reported (Dennis, 2004) for factors of love, empowerment, vision, and humility. Trust factor, however, has loaded with two items on two second data collections (Dennis, 2004) and one sample (Irving, 2005). The following alpha coefficients were found, measuring servant leadership at the individual leader level: (a) .92 for the SLAI love scale; (b) .92 for the SLAI empowerment scale; (c) .8637 for the SLAI vision scale; and (d) .92 for the SLAI humility scale. A Cronbach alpha coefficient could not be calculated for the SLAI trust scale because it only has two items in the scale (Irving, 2005).
Motivational Gifts Survey
Authors: DellaVecchio D.
Published: May 2011

This Motivational Gifts Survey (MGS) is designed as a seven-scale instrument that measures motivational gifts in order to provide profiles that are useful in person-job fit analysis. The seven factors of the instrument include (a) encouraging, (b) mercy, (c) serving, (d) teaching, (e) perceiving, (f) giving, and (g) ruling. The MGS is the first statistically validated gifts survey of its kind. Organizational leaders can use the results of this survey to better place employees and volunteers in ideal job settings that most fully use a person’s gifts. In addition, the results of this survey can help individuals understand their motivational gifts and how to best use those gifts, which could contribute to a sense of personal effectiveness and satisfaction. Bryant (1991), Bugbee, Cousins and Hybels (1994), Flynn (1974), Fortune and Fortune (1987), as well as Gothard (1986) suggested that motivational gifts are indicators of life purpose, thus valuable to the study of job satisfaction and performance in organizations. It has been proven that there is a relationship between a lack of motivation and an increase in apathy with regard to burnout (Maslach & Jackson, 1984). In support of the relationship between motivational gifts and burnout, Bryant (1991) concluded that people, when using their motivational gifts, may wear out, but they do not burn out.
Situational Communication Apprehension Measure
Authors: Berry S.
Published: May 2011

The Situational Communication Apprehension Measure (SCAM) was developed by McCroskey and Richmond (1982, 1985) to measure state communication apprehension in any context. This self-report instrument utilizes a 20-item questionnaire to assess how one person felt during a recent interaction with another. Richmond (1978) has also investigated a person’s dispositional (trait) anxieties and fears associated with specific situations (state). The SCAM, a Likert-type measure of state anxiety, asks survey takers to think about the last time they interacted with someone who held a supervisory role over them. Based on that interaction, respondents rate 20 statements—10 describing positive and 10 expressing negative feelings—on an accuracy scale of 1–7. A mark of “7” indicates the statement describing the situation is extremely accurate; a “1” notes the most inaccurate assessment of the interaction. An individual’s score on the SCAM is determined by summing all the positive statements and then summing all the negative statements. The two sums are then added and subtracted from 80. The score should range between 20 and 140. A score below the lower limit or above the upper limit indicates the respondent has made an error. Because scores on the SCAM are highly dependent on and variable by the particular situation, norms for score ranges, means and standard deviations are hard to define. However, researchers generally accept a score between 39 to 65 as low, 66 to 91 as moderate, and 92 and above as high levels of apprehension.
Business Process Analysis
Authors: Fisteus Jesu´s Arias , Kloos Carlos Delgado
Published: May 2011

Business-process management (BPM) is nowadays a key technology for the automation and support of processes in medium-sized and large organizations. This technology has been successfully applied to business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce since the ’90s, and it is now being applied also in e-government for the management of administrative procedures. As stated in Aalst, Hofstede, and Weske (2003), the origins of BPM technologies can be found in the ’70s with the research on office information systems. Research in this area was almost stopped in the ’80s, but it rose again in the ’90s under the name of work-flow management. Now it is evolving with a more integral approach and a new name: BPM. It is defined in Aalst, Hofstede, and Weske (2003, p. 4) as “supporting business processes using methods, techniques, and software to design, enact, control, and analyze operational processes involving humans, organizations, applications, documents and other sources of information.” The main functionalities provided by a BPM system are defining business processes, automatically enacting them, controlling their enactment, and analyzing them. This article is focused on the last functionality: business-process analysis (BPA). BPA can be defined as a set of technologies that provide support for obtaining relevant properties of business-process models in order to reason about them, detect functional errors, or improve their performance. BPA was a neglected area in the work-flow management systems developed in the ’90s. Will van der Aalst (1998) was one of the first researchers in this field. He proposed the use of petri nets for modeling business processes and the application of the analysis theory developed for this formalism to demonstrate the correctness of the developed processes, analyze performance, and so forth. Since then, other approaches, based on formal methods, were proposed. BPA is important for BPM because it provides the technology for improving the reliability and efficiency of the business process of organizations. Reliability considerably reduces expenses caused by errors in transactions. Efficiency reduces expenses caused by an inefficient use of resources and can improve the satisfaction of customers. The next section provides a background on the most important analysis technologies: functional verification and performance measuring. Then, the discussion is focused on functional verification. An overview on how different authors applied functional verification to business processes is presented. Then these works are analyzed and an open, modular, and extensible architecture for the functional verification of business processes is presented. Later, the future trends on this topic are outlined. Finally, the conclusion highlights the main concepts introduced in this article.
Classification Systems
Authors: Abels Sven , Hahn Axel
Published: May 2011

Classification systems are an easy way to assign objects such as products, services, or even company profiles to a category. Classifying information offers many advantages when dealing with a large amount of different information. For example, it enables one to find information by group or to easily detect similar items. They are meaningful wherever a large set of different, but sometimes similar information is managed. In order to clarify the meaning and the application of classification systems, the following text starting with an example in the area of electronic product catalogs. Important background information about classification systems is given as well as a list of typical classification systems. The text will describe the advantages of classification systems and their meaning for future e-commerce scenarios. The main problem of classification systems today is focused as is the compatibility of classification standards and therefore the reclassification process.
Comparative Shopping on Agent Web Sites
Authors: Wang Ming
Published: May 2011

The enormous amount of commercial information available on the Internet makes online shoppers overwhelmed and it difficult to find relevant information. The recent development of shopping agents (bots) has offered a practical solution for this information overload problem. From the customer’s point of view, a shopping agent reduces search complexity, increases search efficiency, and supports user mobility. It has been proposed that the availability of agent Web sites is one of the reasons why e-markets should be more efficient (Mougayar, 1998). Shopping bots are created with agent software that assists online shoppers by automatically gathering shopping information from the Internet. In this comparative shopping environment, shopping agents can provide the customer with comparative prices for a searched product, customer reviews of the product, and reviews of the corresponding merchants. The agent will first locate the merchants’ Web sites selling the searched product. Then, the agent will collect information about the prices of the product and its features from these merchants. Once a customer selects a product with a merchant, the individual merchant Web site will process the purchase order and the delivery details. The shopping agent receives a commission on each sale made by a visitor to its site from the merchant selling the product on the Internet. Some auction agent Web sites provide a negotiation service through intelligent agent functions. Agents will represent both buyers and sellers. Once a buyer identifies a seller, the agent can negotiate the transaction. The agents will negotiate a price and then execute the transaction for their respective owners. The buyer’s agent will use a credit card account number to pay for the product. The seller’s agent will accept the payment and transmit the proper instructions to deliver the item under the terms agreed upon by the agent.
DWDM Technology and E-Government Initiatives
Authors: Littman Marlyn Kemper
Published: May 2011

The pervasive use of the Internet and unprecedented demand for dependable access to bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications motivate utilization of Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) as a technological enabler of electronic government (e-government) operations by public agencies. In the public-sector, DWDM increasingly serves as a reliable technology for enhancing citizen access to inter-agency and intra-agency e-government programs, regulations, and policies and providing high-speed connectivity to e-government resources via optical fiber, a medium that transports voice, video, and data signals as light pulses. In addition to provisioning connections to feature-rich applications, DWDM also supports network backbone operations and accommodates bandwidth requirements for e-government interactions that take the form of government-to-government (G2G), government-to-employee (G2E), government-to-citizen (G2C), and government-to-business (G2B) exchanges (Carter & Belanger, 2004). This chapter delineates the distinctive attributes of DWDM technology and the capabilities of DWDM in providing the capacity necessary for supporting e-government services that are responsive to citizen requirements. Metropolitan area and wider area e-government initiatives that utilize DWDM technology are described. Finally, considerations leading to effective utilization of this technology in supporting public-sector services are explored.
E-Business Planning and Analysis Framework
Authors: Clegg Ben , Tan Boon
Published: May 2011

This article reports on a framework that has been successfully used to analyze the e-business capabilities of an organization with a view to developing their e-capability maturity levels. This should be the first stage of any systems development project. The framework has been used widely within start-up companies and well-established companies both large and small; it has been deployed in the service and manufacturing sectors. It has been applied by practitioners and consultants to help improve e-business capability levels, and by academics for teaching and research purposes at graduate and undergraduate levels. This article will provide an account of the unique e-business planning and analysis framework (E-PAF) and demonstrate how it works via an abridged version of a case study (selected from hundreds that have been produced). This will include a brief account of the three techniques that are integrated to form the analysis framework: quality function deployment (QFD) (Akao, 1972), the balanced scorecard (BSC) (Kaplan & Norton, 1992), and value chain analysis (VCA) (Porter, 1985). The case study extract is based on an online community and dating agency service identified as VirtualCom which has been produced through a consulting assignment with the founding directors of that company and has not been published previously. It has been chosen because it gives a concise, comprehensive example from an industry that is relatively easy to relate to.
E-Commerce Challenges and Policy Considerations in Nigeria
Authors: Olatokun Wole Michael , Ajiferuke Isola
Published: May 2011

Electronic commerce (or e-commerce) is the popular term for doing business electronically. According to Haag, Cummings, and McCubbrey (1998), for businesses, electronic commerce includes performing transactions with customers over the Internet for purposes such as home shopping, home banking, and electronic cash use; performing transactions with other organizations through the use of electronic data interchange (EDI); gathering information relating to consumer market research and competitors; and distributing information to prospective customers through interactive advertising, sales, and marketing efforts. Benefits of e-commerce to companies include a wider potential market (i.e., global access); lowering of transaction costs; increase in the speed of transactions; improved economies of scale; minimization of human intervention in business processes; and unlimited access to product information for customers (Sesan, 2000; Wood, 2003). While a few developing countries such as Costa Rica are making inroads into electronic commerce (Travica, 2002), many others are slow in its adoption. For example, a study, which rated 42 developing countries on their “e-readiness,” found that Taiwan and Estonia had emerged as leaders among developing countries in the ability to conduct e-commerce, whereas Russia, much of the Middle East, and Africa were lagging behind (Anonymous, 2000). One of the countries included in the study but that rated poorly in its e-commerce efforts is Nigeria. In this articl, we shall be discussing the challenges being faced by the country as it grapples with the adoption of e-commerce.
E-Health Security and Privacy
Authors: Wang Yingge , Cheng Qiang , Cheng Jie
Published: May 2011

The widespread and fast-developing information technologies, especially wireless communications and the Internet, have allowed for the realization of greater automation systems than ever in health-care industries: E-health has become an apparent trend, and having a clinic at home or even anywhere at anytime is no longer a dream. E-health, including telemedicine featured by conducting health-care transactions over the Internet, has been revolutionizing the well-being of human society. Traditionally, common practices in the health-care industry place tremendous burdens on both patients and health-care providers, with heavy loads of paper-based documents and inefficient communications through mail or phone calls. The transmission of medical data is even messy for cases in which patients have to transfer between different health providers. In addition, the medical documents prepared manually are prone to errors and delays, which may lead to serious consequences. The time, energy, and resources wasted in such processes are intolerable and unimaginable in any fast-paced society. For these problems, e-health provides powerful solutions to share and exchange information over the Internet in a timely, easy, and safe manner (Balas et al., 1997). Incorporating fast and cost-efficient Internet and wireless communication techniques has enabled the substantial development of e-health. The use of the Internet to transmit sensitive medical data, however, leaves the door open to the threats of information misuse either accidentally or maliciously. Health-care industries need be extremely cautious in handling and delivering electronic patient records using computer networks due to the high vulnerabilities of such information. To this extent, security and privacy issues become two of the biggest concerns in developing e-health infrastructures.
Engineering Adaptive Concept-Based Systems for the Web
Authors: Houben Geert-Jan , Aroyo Lora , Dicheva Darina
Published: May 2011

In recent years we have witnessed a growing interest in adaptation and personalization in numerous application domains including business, education, and so forth. Applications that offer large bodies of information have in the Web era turned into systems with a significantly different nature than two decades ago. Think of the typical book catalog database from 20 years ago and the Web site of a book seller nowadays. A characteristic aspect of the restyling is the attention paid to the individual user. Technology has evolved and now allows application designers to include adaptation and personalization in the applications. This is especially important in the field of e-commerce, where users (customers) expect personalized services similar to those they receive in a conventional store. Typical e-commerce systems employ large bodies of information. In the case of a bookstore Web site, the designer defines an appropriate structure for the collection of books with all relevant properties. Generally, the design uses structures of concepts, where the concepts represent the actual information objects. The adaptation engineering is later performed on the level of these (abstract) concepts. We refer to these applications as concept-based systems. Adaptive concept-based systems are especially accepted in areas where the main goal is to tailor large amounts of information to the individual preference and knowledge state of the user. Besides electronic commerce, other examples include online museums (the visitor wandering through the collection on an individual basis) and e-learning applications (the student being involved with learning material in a way that the teacher thinks fits the student’s situation).
E-Supply Chain Orchestration
Authors: Verbraeck Alexander , Tewoldeberhan Tamrat , Janssen Marijn
Published: May 2011

The world today is witnessing a growing interest in conducting supply chain business processes electronically. Different supporting technologies are emerging, and many are already available on the market. The adoption of these technologies is hampered by the fact that organizations constantly face new requirements, constraints and demands. Recent research has shown that service-oriented architectures and its supporting technology, Web services, can address many major issues encountered in complex supply chains. However, one of the largely unsolved issues is the orchestration of the variety of Web services in the supply chain. This chapter presents an investigation on orchestration of supply chain business processes using portals and Web service technologies. The portal-based orchestration concepts were carried out in a project for supporting end-to-end supply chain logistics in the United States Department of Defense. A second supply chain study looked at the added value of Web service orchestration.
Evolution Stages in Web Applications
Authors: de Medeiros Alberto , de Pessoa Marcelo Schneck , Barbin Laurindo Fernando José
Published: May 2011

Among the many important contributions that information technology (IT) applications provide to organizations, Internet based applications may be considered the most important for strategic purposes, according to different authors like Porter (2001). Initially, companies tried many different alternatives for using the great potential of the Web and a great number of completely new businesses that were enabled by the new technology. However, there were many failures (not only successes) and the situation has changed since the late 1990s. Thus, the time of experimentation is over and a business-oriented approach is required (Chen & Tan, 2004; Souitaris & Cohen, 2003). The Internet has indeed represented an opportunity, if properly used, for small and for big enterprises anywhere in the world (Drew, 2003; Kula & Tatoglu, 2003; Wresch, 2003). This article describes the initial steps of an ongoing research that intends to compare the phases of Web dissemination in organizations with the adoption stages of traditional computer systems, based on Nolan’s six stage model (Nolan, 1979). This approach could help describe and predict the integration of WWW into the work of organizations as well as provide a basis for improving management policies and decisions (Laurindo, Carvalho, & Shimizu, 2003). Nolan’s model (Nolan, 1979) is still an important and widespread known reference. In 1977, ARPANet (the network that gave origin to the Internet) had only 107 hosts (Ruthfield, 1995). This number increased to 317 million of hosts in January of 2005 (ISC, 2005). This article is based in secondary data collection, some interviews with professionals from companies present on the Web, research on Web sites, in addition to a bibliography about the issue.
Hypermedia and Associated Concepts
Authors: Lang Michael
Published: May 2011

There has been considerable speculation of late that the design of hypermedia and Web-based systems warrants new methods different from those used in conventional software design (Kautz & Nørbjerg, 2003). However, much confusion abounds within this debate because fundamental concepts such as hypermedia, multimedia, and Web-based systems are rarely explicitly defined and it is often unclear what is actually meant. This article explains the following interrelated terms: multimedia, interactive multimedia, digital multimedia, interactive digital multimedia, hypertext, hypermedia, and Web-based systems. Such clarification is important because for research results to be comparable and scholarly discourse to be logical, there must be a common language.
Information Security for Legal Safety
Authors: Mitrakas Andreas
Published: May 2011

The growing use of information technology in sensitive daily transactions highlights the significance of information security to protect information assets. Vulnerabilities associated with public and private transactions pose challenges that government, private organizations, and individuals are compelled to respond to by adopting appropriate protection measures. Information security responds to the need of transacting parties for confidentiality, integrity, and availability of resources (Pfleeger, 2000). Information security is required in transactions carried out among, businesses, public administrations, and citizens. An organizational response to information security threats includes setting up and implementing appropriate policy frameworks that are typically endorsed by agreement. Beyond organizational objectives lies an emerging legal framework instigated by the role of information security as a means to safeguard information assets that are socially significant. Organizations are often required to implement information security measures mandated by industry regulations or legislation, such as in electronic banking transactions. The scope of these legal and regulatory requirements is to mitigate potential risk that entails liabilities for shareholders, employees, customers, trading partners, or other third parties involved in a transaction. Information security and its subsequent regulation are equally important for public services. In e-government services made available to citizens and businesses, information security ensures e-government transactions. The remainder of this article presents an overview of the prevailing legal and policy issues that are currently associated with information security.
Interaction Standards in E-Business
Authors: Hawk Sephen , Zheng Weijun
Published: May 2011

A standard is a framework of specifications that has been approved by a recognized standards organization (de jure standard), is accepted as a de facto standard by the industry or belongs to the open standards (Hawkins, Mansell, & Skea, 1995). According to Rotem, Olken, and Shear (2001), there are two types of communication standards encountered in the e-business: infrastructure type standards and interaction type standards. Infrastructure type standards such as TCP/IP are important for almost any application that uses the Internet and are not the focus of this chapter. Interaction type standards address communication content and interfaces between e-business systems with the goals of facilitating system interoperability and process integration. These standards cover issues such as data dictionaries, message structure, and remote object invocation.