Friday, April 30, 2010

CROSSROAD Workshop on the Future of ICT for Governance

More than 40 researchers, high-level experts and practitioners participated in the CROSSROAD workshop in Seville, Spain, on 29th and 30th April 2010.


Topics of the Workshop included:

- The current state of the art in the "ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling" domain 

- Visionary scenarios for governance, by the year 2030

- The work done by the CROSSROAD project, towards the definition of a new Research Roadmap, concerning ICT for governance and policy making.

You may find more on CROSSROAD project at: http://www.crossroad-eu.net/

Friday, April 23, 2010

On Enterprise Interoperability re-classification, based on Google, G.Scholar and G.Books Data

This is an attempt to frame interoperability concepts, gather information on the importance and exposure - while also discovering some closeness to a scientific community - in this case the Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) cluster, in European Commission.

See in the table below the results obtained on 23.04.2010, from Google, Google Scholar an Google Books services, through formalised queries.  Keep in mind that:

  • The number of references that came as a result from the query is used as a metric of publicity / importance and is coloured according to size. Blue: Level-1, Light Brown: Level-2, Dark Brown: Level-3

  • The proximity to the FInES community is measured by means of origins of authors or sites.  Green: FInES community represented, Red: Other community (BP, eGOV, IS) or self-standing sites (wikipedia)
See the verdicts on who is who, on the most right column. 
Have Fun.

Figure: Measuring importance and community closeness for interoperability terms.


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Indicative Google Books query on legal interoperability:
http://books.google.gr/books?q=%E2%80%9Clegal+interoperability%E2%80%9D&btnG=%CE%91%CE%BD%CE%B1%CE%B6%CE%AE%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%83%CE%B7+%CE%92%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE%BB%CE%AF%CF%89%CE%BD

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Governance lessons from the Volcano: Reflections from the UK-Greece, 4,000 Km, 3-day trip

After the icelndic volcano erruption an the Coventry to Athens trip, that inluded car, train, boat and plane, between 17 and 19 April, the things I would notice: 

1. Service interoperability is a major challenge for the transportation system. Train-to-Train interoperability is suffering, being substantially lower than Plane-to-Plain. Train-to-Plane or Train-to-Car interoperability is practically non existent. Not to add hotels, ferries, busses, metros, …

2. The telephone network was OK in most places in UK, France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece, during the crisis. Outgoing and incoming calls to US were also fine. Cellular network 3G services were OK around cities, at least. The Smart Phones were must-have items.

3. The telephone centres and phone support lines were completely "out-of-order", in most of the services provided (airports, airlines, train stations, rent a car).

4. All the major “web sites” or “portals” were not able to do any transaction (in trains, ferries, airports, etc) - without an explicit notice that would at least make customers aware of that. Eurostar, CNSF, Artesia, P&O Ferries were bright examples, resulting in making the London – Milan train travel impossible and the channel crossing very expeditious. Scalability and usability are still major issues for electronic services.

5. The inability of ordinary front-desks to cater for incoming customers and travelers (no way back to human-based front desks). 5,000-people queues in Kings Cross station were a sad fact.

6. Web 2.0 / social media were a nice surprise: twitter was a valuable source of “just-in-time” info about everything not covered by google news. Typical examples: Get a shared taxi ride from London to Dover (50 GBP), learn about the situation in Paris-Bercy train station (havoc), find free seats in a travelling, fully booked Eurostar (!)

7. The informational contribution of internet was great (up to sophistication level 2). It was most of the time the only source of information (instead of newspapers, paper catalogues, maps & guides, etc.). And it is a part of Web 2.0, too (coming from the 1.0 version, as in any technological product versioning system).

8. With GPB, EUR, CHF to deal with, credit cards were, once again, the “queens” of payments, provided that your balance can hold numerous hundreds of EUR. Together with Passport and Driving License were the three must-have "documents" for your travel.

9. Road navigation was easy, even with no navigation or map. However, the iPhone / Navigon application and a good paper map (for tunnels and mountains) were a nice supplement to signs and questions (your French ought to be at communication level, even with an accent).

10. Simulation will be the new “king” for curing many of the above shortcomings, as resource utilization and dynamic reorganization must be re-programmed in the systems, if we want them to stand strong in crisis situations.

And, when the profound seems impossible, remember to reach or give help: many problems were better solved thanks to human collaboration.


Or, I will blast again …

Friday, April 16, 2010

PADGETS Project in Greek Daily Press

A column of the Greek daily newspaper "Eleftheros Typos" was devoted to the PADGETS project and the changes it may bring to the political debate on the internet. 

Journalist Areti Daradimou reports that PADGETS and relevant Web 2.0 and modelling / simulation technologies have the potential to significantly enhance the abilities of politicians for publishing, discussing, analysing and simulating the impact of policy. 

On the other side, the user adoption and overall popularity of policy gadgets remains to be seen, in the years to come.

Greek Interoperability Centre and Brunel University explore collaboration opportunities





Members of the Greek Interoperbility Centre visited Brunel University, on April 15 and 16, 2010, to explore collaboration opportunities between the Decision Support Systems Laboratory of National Technical University Athens, the Information Systems Laboratory of Aegean University, the Brunel Business School and the Brunel School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics.

Several future collaboration activities were planned, including participation in common research projects, supervision of PhD theses, collaboration in research publications and researchers exchange.


In the pictures above: Yannis Charalabidis and Dr. Vishanth Weerakkody (Lecturer of Brunel Business School), Dr. Sergio de Cesare (Lecturer of Brunel School of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics), Bahareh Rahmanzadeh Heravi (PhD Researcher at Brunel University)

Workshop on Interoperability Science -The iESA Conference in Coventry, UK

The workshop on Scientific Base for Enterprise Interoperability took place in conjunction with the iESA 2010 Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications, on April 13th, in Coventry University, UK.  The worshop was jointly organised by the Greek Inteoperability Centre, UNINOVA and Coventry University.

More than 70 high-level experts and researchers attended the conference, which was opened with the keynote speech of Gerald Santucci, Head of Unit, INFSO D4, European Commission, titled "Towards Tomorrow’s Enterprise within the Future Internet Agenda".

The main topic of the Interoperability Science workshop was the presentation and discussion of the new FP7 ICT Support Action, that will start within 2010 and target the systematic building of the Enterprise Interoperability community and the development of a Scientific Base for Interoperability. Issues discussed included initial positions relating to :

- The ingredients of the new Interoperability Science
- The way that the scientific foundation for Interoperability can be achieved
- The neighbouring scientific domains, where best practices can be obtained from

Y. Charalabidis (GIC), H.Panetto (Univerity Nancy), K. Popplewell (Coventry University), G.Doumeingts (Interop V-Lab) in the Inteoperability Science Workshop

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The Greek eGovernment Awards

The 1st Panhellenic Competition for Innovation in Electronic Governance is launched, by the University of Aegean, the National Technical University of Athens and the University of Piraeus.  Under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior, Decentralisation and eGovernance, and the support of Microsoft, Oracle and the Greek Interoperability Cetre.

Find more (in Greek) at: http://wegov.blogspot.com/