North American digital government working group: initial steps in the development of a comparative and transnational agenda
This poster describes the first year's progress of the North American Digital Government Working Group on Comparative and Transnational Digital Government. This group was formed in 2007, with the support of the NSF Digital Government Research Program and the home institutions of the members in Canada, Mexico, and the U. S., to advance e-government research across geographic and political boundaries in the region. During the first year of activities, the group members joined their expertise and interests in two face-to-face meetings. Several intellectual products emerged from these initial interactions. The group members will continue the discussion of its research agenda in Montreal, Canada as part of the activities of the 9th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research.

title: The nature of knowledge and its influence on knowledge sharing practice: experiences from building the MACROS system
abstract: This study investigates how the interactive influences of the nature of knowledge and multiple organizational and technological factors - trust, leadership, incentives and issues, group size and variety, implementation strategy, and technology - facilitated and/or impeded the knowledge sharing processes. Using a case study approach, the research focuses on the modifying effects of four characteristics of knowledge- codifiability, context-embeddedness, practice-embeddedness, and dynamics- on the processes and outcomes of knowledge sharing in a case of building the multi-purpose access for customer relations & operational support (MACROS) system involving multiple organizations, divisions, and geographically separated offices. The case results suggest that modifying effects occurred along at least three dimensions- codifiability, context-embeddedness, and practice-embeddedness. The levels of codifiability appeared to dictate the implementation strategy; reduced context-embeddedness allowed for more effective group coordination; reduced context-embeddedness also enhanced trust; codified knowledge is more effective than uncodified knowledge in demonstrating concrete incentives; and technology interacts with context-embeddedness and practice-embeddedness. The results of this study have theoretical and practical implications for a larger set of problems encountered in sizable organizations. More specifically, even though the relevance of the nature of knowledge has been widely acknowledged by I. Nonaka, et. al. (2001), it is not always clear how it comes into play. This study conceptualized the nature of knowledge as a modifying variable, and the results provide a new and more comprehensive framework for investigating the relevance of the nature of knowledge in knowledge management research.

title: Information Strategies to Support Full Information Product Pricing: the Role of Trust
abstract: In this paper, we report the importance of trust in the development and operation of distribution networks that attach non-price information to products to mitigate market dynamics introduced by information asymmetries. Often this non-price information is transmitted from producers to consumers through trusting networks or under certifiable labels such as Organic or Fair Trade. We are calling such networks Full Information Product Pricing (FIPP) Networks. This study is part of a larger project aimed at understanding the characteristics of FIPP networks. This initial exploration on four cases in Canada and Latin America indicated that trust, in the forms of institutional trust, calculative trust, and relational trust, plays key roles in FIPP operations and expansion. It is critical for building collaboration, coordinating network activities, and mitigating the risks associated with information asymmetry.

title: Research group on digital government in North America: developing a comparative and transnational agenda
abstract: This poster describes the second year's progress of the research group on Comparative and Transnational Digital Government in North America. This group was formed in 2007 to advance electronic government research across geographic and political boundaries in the region, with the support of the National Science Foundation Digital Government Research Program and the home institutions of the members in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. During the second year of activities, the group members joined their expertise and interests in two face-to-face meetings in Canada. During the second year of work, group members advanced research proposals and developed preliminary products on two topical areas as well as a first draft of a Research Agenda for North America. The group members will continue the discussion of this research agenda in Cholula, Mexico as part of the activities of the 10th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2009).

title: Exploring digital government initiatives to expand Full Information Product Pricing (FIPP) networks in NAFTA
abstract: This poster describes research in progress made by the Research Group on Comparative and Transnational Digital government in North America. The main purpose of this project is to explore the impact of product labeling, information architectures and government-sponsored information policies on the expansion of the market share of organic, fair trade, and eco-friendly products in the NAFTA region. In these alternative markets, price is often complemented with information conveying the conditions under which a product is produced and distributed, which is transmitted through trusting networks or certifiable labels such as "Organic" or "Fair Trade." We call such networks Full Information Product Pricing (FIPP) Networks. The transparency of FIPP networks, enabled by the information technology and associated policy and standards, may have the potential to supplement a compliance-enforcement approach with a more market-based voluntary approach that relies on shifts in producer and consumer behavior to significantly expand the share of worker and environmentally friendly products traded. In this paper, we discuss our research focus, research plan, and results from preliminary studies.

title: The Effect of Organizational/Technological Factors and the Nature of Knowledge on Knowledge Sharing
abstract: This study investigates the dynamics of a knowledge sharing effort in New York State government that involved multiple organizations, divisions, and geographically separated offices in the development of the Multi- Using a case study approach, we address the question of how multiple organizational and technological factors — distributed leadership, alignment of issues and incentives, coordination of a number and variety of groups, trust, technology, and implementation strategy — interact with the nature of knowledge to influence the knowledge sharing process. A major contribution of this study is that it uses a multi-dimensional view of knowledge, examining the interactive impact of the nature of knowledge with multiple organizational and technological factors in public sector knowledge management research.

title: A Multimedia System for Route Sharing and Video-Based Navigation
abstract: Trip planning and in-vehicle navigation are crucial tasks for easier and safer driving. The existing navigation systems are based on machine intelligence without allowing human knowledge incorporation. These systems give turn guidance with abstract visual instruction and have not reached the potential of minimizing driver's cognitive load, which is the amount of mental processing power required. In this paper, we describe the development of a multimedia system that makes driving and navigation safer and easier by offering tools for route sharing in trip planning and video-based route guidance during driving. The system provides a multimodal interface for a user to share his/her route with others by drawing on a digital map, naturally incorporating human knowledge into the trip planning process. The system gives driving instructions by overlaying navigational arrows onto live video and providing synthesized voice to reduce the driver's cognitive load, in addition to presenting landmark images for key maneuvers. We describe our observations which had motivated the development of the system, detailed architecture and user interfaces, and finally discusses our initial test findings in the real-road driving context

title: dbNEI2.0: building multilayer network for drug-NEI-disease
abstract: The neuro-endocrine-immune (NEI) system plays a critical regulatory role in modulating host homeostasis and optimizing health. We created the dbNEI 2 years ago to collect NEI molecules and interactions. For transferring the conceptual NEI to the systematic NEI network and uncovering the NEI's medical function, we updated the dbNEI 2.0 in three ways: (i) extended NEI molecules to 2242 genes and 7657 chemical compounds by using gene ontology-based (GO-based) data mining strategy, (ii) added multilayer interactions of NEI molecules including KEGG signal transduction and metabolic pathways, HPRD protein-protein interactions (PPI), transcription factor and microRNA regulations and (iii) connected 611 drugs and 823 diseases through multilayer NEI interactions. The reconstructed drug-NEI-disease network will facilitate the systematic study of NEI system.

title: Extraction of Text Objects in Video Documents: Recent Progress
abstract: Text extraction in video documents, as an important research field of content-based information indexing and retrieval, has been developing rapidly since 1990s. This has led to much progress in text extraction, performance evaluation, and related applications. By reviewing the approaches proposed during the past five years, this paper introduces the progress made in this area and discusses promising directions for future research.

title: Neuroinformatics Research in China- Current Status and Future Research Activities
abstract: After the Chinese National Neuroinformatics Working Group was formed in 2001, neuroinformatics research has progressed rapidly in China. This paper reviews the history of neuroinformatics in China, reports current researches and discusses recent trends of neuroinformatics in China.

title: Supporting software evolution through model-driven program transformation
abstract: Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD) techniques are being adopted with more frequency in the engineering of computer based systems, especially in the area of distributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems. This brief summary presents two research objectives for supporting software evolution in MDSD. First, the concept of model-driven program transformation is introduced to support evolution of large legacy software systems. The second research objective that is presented involves the application of a mature program transformation engine to automate model interpreter evolution in the presence of meta-model schema changes.