MCIS 2015 in Samos

9^th MEDITERRANEAN CONFERENCE ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS – MCIS 2015

“Information Systems in a changing economy and society”"

3-5 OCTOBER 2105, SAMOS, GREECE

The  9^th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems was held in Samos on 3-5 October 2015, organized by the Information Systems Laboratory (ISL) of the Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, of the University of the Aegean, under the auspices of Association of Information Systems (AIS).   The main theme of MCIS 2015 was “Information Systems in a changing economy and society”, reflecting the critical role Information Systems play for enterprises and administrations, in their effort to accommodate radical economic and societal changes.  

MCIS 2015 was joined by academics and researchers, from all over the world but also especially from the Mediterranean region, to reflect on innovative research in information systems, from the point of view of a rapidly changing world.  

Participants of the MCIS 2015 Conference in Samos

The conference proceedings can be found online at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/mcis2015/

With the Best Paper Award Winner, Adam Hayes (2nd from left), for the paper "Cryptocurrency Value Formation: An Empirical Analysis Leading to a Cost of Production Model for Valuing Bitcoin" 

Conference Chairs

Euripidis Loukis, Associate Professor, University of the Aegean

Yannis Charalabidis, Assistant Professor, University of Aegean

Program Committee Chairs

Spyros Kokolakis, Assistant Professor, University of Aegean sak@aegean.gr

Maria Karyda, Assistant Professor, University of Aegean  mka@aegean.gr

Doctoral Consortium Chair
Dimitrios Drosos, Lecturer, University of Aegean

Programme Committee

M. Amami, RMC, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

S. Arvanitis, University of Zurich

H. A. Ismail, German University in Cairo

M. Kajtazi, Örebro University

E. Kolkowska, Örebro University

A. Kokkinaki, University of Nicosia

F. Lampathaki, National Technical University of Athens

G. Lekakos, Athens Univ. of Economics & Business

D. Lekas, Univ. of the Aegean

L. Mitrou, Univ. of the Aegean

A. Montalero, Politecnico di Torino

A. Polydoropoulou, Univ. of the Aegean

A. Pouloudi, Athens Univ. of Economics & Business

B. R. Schlichte, Aarhus University

P. Svejvig, Aarhus University

M. Themistocleous, University of Pireaus

C. L.  Tucci,  École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Summer School on Youth Entrepreneurship, Chios July 2015

For the fourth consecutive year, the 4th Summer School on Youth Entrepreneurship was organized with great success by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit of the University of the Aegean, in collaboration with the School of Management, in Chios, from 6th to 10th July 2015.

The aim of the Summer School was to guide students from various University departments in turning their business ideas into practice, through lectures and mentoring given by University teachers and business executives.  Six business ideas were formed by the 18 participating pre-graduate and post-graduate students, targeting agricultural, tourism, health and education products and services.

Winning teams and judging committee members at the Summer School awards ceremony

The Summer School is an initiative of the Employment & Career Structure of the University of the Aegean, within the Operational Programme "Education and Lifelong Learning: 2007-2015". 

More information on the Summer School can be found at: http://summerschool2015-mke.aegean.gr/ 

The Samos 2015 Summit - "Beyond Government 2.0"

The 6th Samos Summit was held in Doryssa Hotel, in Samos Greece on June 29 - July 3 2015.  The overall topic of the Summit was On ICT-enabled Governance : “Beyond Government 2.0”.  Specific focus in this year’s summit was given to the following 4 areas of ICT-enabled governance, aiming at delivering high level insights on the new roadmap for research and practice:

• Information (big, open and linked data, information processing and visualization for governance)
• Infrastructures (cloud infrastructures, machine intelligence, pervasive computing)
• People (collaborative decision making, social media in governance, social computing)
• Organisation (legal issues, process re-engineering, interoperability guidelines and standards)

Also, specific attention was given to Smart Cities examples and practices, followed by a workshop on Samos smart city / smart island possibilities, with the collaboration of Samos Municipality officials.

Samos 2015 Summit participants at Doryssa Resort 

In conjunction with the 6th Samos Summit, the 3rd International Summer School On Open and Collaborative Governance was held, with the participation of students from European Union, the Balkans and US.

More information on the agenda and participants of the Samos 2015 Summit can be found at http://www.samos-summit.org

What is Government 3.0 ?

Preparing my talk for the Samos 2015 Summit on ICT-enabled governance I noticed a scarcity of resources for Government 3.0 and the new paradigms for the public sector beyond 2015.  Apart from some early developments in Korea and a few presentations, not much to see on what is coming in this vivid domain.  So, I prepared a slideset that can be seen online below, and I only copy/paste a couple of things here:

Government 3.0 definition

Government 3.0 refers to the utilization of Information and Communication Technologies and neighboring scientific and technological domains, towards societal problems solving, resource optimization and citizen well-being, through civic and enterprise collaboration at local and international level

The paradigm shift for Government 3.0 

The e-Governance Hype Cycle

My complete slide set can be found at : http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/government-30 

Workshops on Open Data and Entrepreneurship at Krems, Austria

Being at Krems, Austria is a very nice experience, by itself.  So calming, so picturesque and SO clean that redefines a few performance thresholds and levels of citizen commitment.  A little difficult to reach, maybe as much as it should, by the somewhat busy but also well-managed Vienna International Airport, but very easy and welcoming when you get there - via three train connections, one change involving some goodish walking, should you take the train path (no direct bus, too). Thanks to our host Peter Parycek, friend and new professor of e-governance at Krems University, a shuttle bus took us there in 60 minutes. 

Krems an der Donau

Danube University Krems, exists within a very cosy, manageable Campus, combining the old buildings of the former tobacco processing / cigarette factory with a newly built, modern set of auditoriums and  labs.  Utilising such halls and some nearby hotels, the CEDEM Conference on eDemocracy and Open Government took place, together with the SHARE-PSI 2.0 meeting on open data and public sector transformation.

I has the pleasure to co-organise a workshop on Open Data critical success factors, together with colleagues from Netherlands, Sweden and Austria.  The workshop touched upon the key issues that public sector organisations, enterprises and citizens have to deal with, in order to have success in curating, publishing and using open data.  Get a glimpse at the taxonomy of critical success factors for open data, still being restructured through a series of workshops worldwide.

Workshop on Critical Success Factors for Open Data 

Then, I had the experience of organising another workshop on "University - based Business Accelerators", presenting and deliberating on the work we do with Aegean Startups, our new incubator in University of the Aegean.  My opening presentation on Business Accelerators lists some of the functions and services of these new organisations that Universities now put in place.

Participants of the Workshop on "University-based Business Accelerators"

  

A visit to Bletchley Park

During April 2015, during my latest visit to London, I spent one morning in Bletchley Park, "once Britain's Best Kept Secret" as they call it.  Bletchley is about 1 hour by train from London, on the north.  The place has become very popular after two events in 2014 (I do not really know if one influenced the other):

One of the more than 20 ENIGMA machines
- looking brand new

- The "Imitation Game" movie that went the most popular movie about the story of Alan Turing and the codebrakers of the second world war

- The complete restoration of the place, which opened for the public at the beginning of 2015 (Bletchley was there before, but without the restoration there was not much to see).

So, is it worth the visit ? (the entrance is around 15 GBP, the ticket might cost another 15 GBP and you will need 4-5 hours at least).  My answer is yes.  The visit will give you some unique insights in the ENIGMA machines, the code-braking techniques and of course the Bombe ! (this weird mechanical computer, that was used to find the positions of ENIGMA wheels based on intercepted messages).

Also, you will able to see not one, but actually two Bombes (Not originals - as all of them were destroyed right after the end of the war.  Or at least this is what the British Government said at the time).  One was made for the needs of the Imitation Game movie (it does not seem to work, but is a very well-made replica) and a full-functioning replica made by the Bletchley park and collaborators.

With the working replica of the Bombe 

Another nice opportunity for the visitor is to see all the restored offices and warehouses of the centre, as it was during the war.  You can also have a seat in Alan Turing's office !

Working at Alan Turing's office at Blechley Park

A nice add-on is the near-by National Museum of Computing, where at an extra cost yo can see the remake of the allegedly first-built electronic computer  / Colossus (built in 1943, before the ENIAC in US).

The Colossus

The MCIS 2015 Conference in Samos

 

 
The  9th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems was held in Samos on 3-5 October 2015, organized by the Information Systems Laboratory (ISL) of the Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, of the University of the Aegean, under the auspices of Association of Information Systems (AIS).  The main theme of this year’s Conference is “Information Systems in a changing economy and society”, reflecting the critical role Information Systems play for enterprises and administrations, in their effort to accommodate radical economic and societal changes. MCIS 2015 solicits original contributions in the following non-exclusive tracks:

Tracks

·       IS and Organizations

·       Smart cities

·       Big data, data protection and privacy in a global society

·       Electronic Government (GOV 2.0)

·       Persuasive Information Systems

·       Project Management and Beyond – accommodation of the critical role of information systems

·       Open Innovation & Knowledge Management

·       Security of Information and IS

·       Digital Entrepreneurship and the Future Enterprise

Paper Submission

We invite research papers that present original contributions to the theme of the conference or the themes of the special tracks in the form of:

·       Full research papers

·       Extended abstracts and short research-in-progress papers

·       Case studies (research and teaching)

·       Panel proposals

Submissions must be original and should not have been published previously.  Papers should be submitted in English, electronically as pdf files via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mcis2015

Authors should indicate, in the main text of the paper, the track for which they wish their paper to be considered. If no track is indicated the paper will be considered for the conference main track. Submissions will be subjected to peer review. Each accepted paper should be presented by one of the authors and accompanied by at least one full registration fee payment, to guarantee publication in the proceedings.  MCIS is a major international conference on Information Systems, endorsed by the American Information Society (AIS) and its proceedings are published in the AIS library and indexed in all major scientific indexes.

Keynote Address                                                                        

Christopher Tucci, Professor of Management of Technology, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) “Information System and Business Model Challenges in The Era of Future Digital Enterprises‏”

Doctoral Consortium

Building upon the success of previous years, MCIS 2015 will include a Doctoral Consortium (DC) program. MCIS 2015 Doctoral Consortium aims to offer doctoral students the opportunity to interact and connect with first-class researchers working in IS fields in a relaxed yet stimulating setting. Ph.D. students currently working on their dissertations are eligible for nomination submission. Candidates should not have successfully defended their dissertation prior the Doctoral Consortium meeting that will be held on October 3rd, 2015, in Samos.  Submissions should be sent by email to ddrosos@aegean.gr‏ by midnight June 15, 2015, Greek time (GMT + 02:00), 2015. More information at http://mcis2015.eu/doctoral-consortium/

               

Programm Committee

M. Amami, RMC, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

S. Arvanitis, University of Zurich

H. A. Ismail, German University in Cairo

M. Kajtazi, Örebro University

E. Kolkowska, Örebro University

A. Kokkinaki, University of Nicosia

F. Lampathaki, National Technical University of Athens

G. Lekakos, Athens Univ. of Economics & Business

D. Lekas, Univ. of the Aegean

L. Mitrou, Univ. of the Aegean

A. Montalero, Politecnico di Torino

A. Polydoropoulou, Univ. of the Aegean

A. Pouloudi, Athens Univ. of Economics & Business

B. R. Schlichte, Aarhus University

P. Svejvig, Aarhus University

M. Themistocleous, University of Pireaus

C. L.  Tucci,  École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Conference Chairs

Dr. Euripidis Loukis, Associate Professor, University of Aegean, eloukis@aegean.gr

Dr. Yannis Charalabidis, Assistant Professor, University of Aegean, yannisx@aegean.gr

Program Chairs

Dr. Spyros Kokolakis, Assistant Professor, University of Aegean, sak@aegean.gr

Dr. Maria Karyda, Assistant Professor, University of Aegean, mka@aegean.gr

Doctoral Consortium Chair

Dr. Dimitrios Drosos, Lecturer, University of Aegean, ddrosos@aegean.gr

Conference Venue

The Conference took place in the Samaina Inn Hotel, at Karlovassi, Samos, which is just a stone’s throw away from the beach. The hotel has a 230-seat conference centre, air-conditioned and stylishly furnished rooms and offers a wide range of activities.

http://mcis2015.eu/

Workshop on raising citizen awarenness on Open Data

The  workshop "Raising awareness and engaging citizens in re-using PSI" was held within the SHARE PSI 2.0 conference in Timisoara, Romania on March 17, 2015.  The workshop was co-chaired by Daniel Pop, West University of Timisoara and Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean.  The workhop touched upon ways to enhance citizen participation and engagement in reusing open governmental data.  

Several experiences to boost opendata uptake by citizens and entreprises were presented and discussed, resulting in a set of proposed "ways":

Way #1: Give them a "home"

An open data portal has to offer the ability to citizens / users to create and maintain a profile

Way #2: Make them customers / Create an Open Data marketplace

When a citizen cannot find the dataset he is looking  for, he can put a request that is channeled to the appropriate administration

Way #3: Make them opendata publishers

Allow for upload of datasets by users

Way #4: Allow working on datasets / make them curators

A dataset can be processed by a user and then republished as a new version.  Datasets can be visualised, extended, linked by users

Way #5: Give them incentives

- Measure and publish popularity of the users, based on their activity.

- Give incentives for data usage / utilisation (e.g. free tickets to community events, free parking, to most prominent users)

- Organisation of competitions / datathons with prizes for the best applications

- Organisation of data journalism competitions  for users

Way #6: Involve them upfront

Organise meetings of interest groups (e.g. finance, environment, etc) among interested citizens and entreprises. Use questionnaires, for initial screening of ideas and people.

Way #7: Provide specific support for entreprises

Companies have different viewpoint than citizens: they need data quality, availabiliity, support, etc.  So, provide something like that for companies and utilisation will be higher.

Way #8: Promote the creation of journalism teams

People might want to “tell a story” acting like data journalists within the local communities, but they might not have the skills needed

So, make small groups among citizens to work around open data, generating small or larger stories.

Way #9: Provide training

Citizens without the proper knowledge cannot take advantage of incentives targeting more advanced people.

So, invest in training citizens on basic digital skills (make a web site, work with a dataset, write a story, etc)

A slideset of the main outcomes can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/ways-to-boost-utilisation-of-open-data-by-citizens while a full description will be available in the SHARE PSI 2.0 project open database of best practices. 

The workshop panel. From left to right: 

André Lapa, AMA, Portugal (rapporteur)

Noël Van Herreweghe, CORVe, Belgium

Chris Harding, The Open Group, UK

Jan Kučera, University of Economics, Prague

Daniel Pop, West University of Timişoara, Romania (co-chair)

Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean, Greece (co-chair)

Peter Winstanley, Scottish Government, UK

Robert Ulrich, KIT, Germany

Petya Bozhkova, Balkan Services, Bulgaria

Szymon Lewandowski, DG Connect, European Commission

A taxonomy of critical success factors for Open Data

This is a simple two-tier taxonomy of factors that are critical for the success of open data initiatives at local, national and international level.  It has been developed through a series  of workshops analysing and classifying international open data best practices and initiatives. It can be used as a guidance support for public servants, the overall planning of open data initiatives or classification of best practice scenarios or examples.

This is based on work done by:

Anneke Zuiderwijk^a, Iryna Susha^ab, Yannis Charalabidis^c, Peter Parycek^d, Marijn Janssen^a

^a Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, a.m.g.zuiderwijk-vaneijk@tudelft.nl,

  m.f.w.h.a.janssen@tudelft.nl

^b Örebro University, Sweden, iryna.susha@oru.se

^c University of the Aegean, Greece, yannisx@aegean.gr 

A. Factors critical for open data publication by administrations

Categories	Factors
1 Legislation, regulation and licenses	Having in place a (national) legal framework for open data publication
	Enforce publishing and curating of data on administrations (maybe even through penalties)
	Provide information about data protection and privacy legislation and how open data can be published in compliance with this legislation
	Develop a (national) guide on legal Intellectual Property Right (IPR) issues allowing organizations to pick the correct licensing form
2 Strategy and political support	Develop a strategy for open data publication at an (inter)national level
	Ensure that (top) management within governmental agencies supports publishing data
	Generate support of policy-makers for data publication
	Organize focus groups with heads of departments and open data policy implementers to give both proponents and opponents of open data an auditorium
	Introduce incentives schemes for public servants (e.g. explain why a data provider would release data, explain what kind of value is created for the data provider)
	Create consensus between open data publication and the organizational framework for publishing data
3 Management support and publication processes within governmental agencies	Define clear process steps for publishing data
	Determine which type of data is important to address societal issues and focus on the publication of these data
	Start with the publication of data which is interesting for users so that the users see the benefit of open data
	Determine which data and metadata will and will not be published
	Determine which standards and vocabularies will be used for data publication
	Determine which personnel has the key responsibilities for publishing open data
	Determine where datasets will be published
	Release only data which is of high quality
4 Training of and support for civil servants	Create a virtual competence center which assists in answering questions and helping out with administrative data publication processes
	Provide training on open data publication within governmental agencies (e.g. training on how datasets can be anonymized)
	Develop information campaigns in which questions about open data publication are discussed
	Develop information campaigns in which success stories of internal and external open data use are discussed
5 Evaluation of the open data initiative	Develop metrics and success indicators for data publication by government departments
	Evaluate the realization of metrics and success indicators as an integral part of the open data initiative
6 Sustainability of the open data initiative	Identify the need for data
	Create a strategy for maintaining published datasets
	Ensure data provision continuity, including timely and automatic updates of data
	Be transparent towards open data users about the conditions under which data publication takes place
7 Collaboration	Arrange meetings with open data users to find out what their needs are and how the data from the governmental agency are used
	Organize internal meetings to discuss the data publication processes and to evaluate them
	Organize inter-organizational collaboration about and management of open data initiatives
	Ensure agile and  open cooperation with various other organizations (administration, universities, CSO, Open Knowledge Foundation)
	Organize inter-organizational collaboration (e.g. network meetings) to learn from the open data initiatives of other governmental agencies
8 Open data platforms, tools and services	Integrate the open data platform into existing Content Management Systems (CMS) to kick-start the progress
	Have one central portal which combines data from many different governmental organizations (federal level)
	Implement advanced data search functionalities
	Use complementary toolsets for performing additional curation tasks (cleaning, linking, visualizing, analyzing)
	Use a “web 2.0” approach for open data, allowing citizens to post, rate, work with datasets and web services
	Integrate frameworks for assessing data quality and usability of data and platform, providing continuous feedback to developers and administrations
	Provide a forum to discuss what can be learned from open data use
	Develop a clear User Interface (logical symbols, clear setup of the web page, simple design)
9 Accessibility, interoperability and standards	Use standards for data, metadata, licenses, URIs and exchange protocols
	Use cloud infrastructures able to gather, manage and publish open data, interoperable with other sources within the country or region
	Integrate metadata schemas and federated controlled vocabularies for properly categorizing information
	Provide various types of metadata, in line with metadata standards (e.g. CERIF, CKAN, DC, EGMS, DCAT)
	Provide Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) for open data provision in the form of service feeds (from open data to open services)
	Enable multilinguality of metadata and data, allowing for the reuse and integration of data from different countries/languages

B. 

B. Factors critical for open data use by citizens, entreprises and administrations

Categories	Factors
10 Legislation, regulation and licenses	Provide information on the meanings and implications of licenses
	Provide information about privacy legislation and how open data can be used in compliance with this legislation
11 Success stories	Provide readily available examples of open data use (e.g. apps) to non-experts
	Develop stories of successful open data use
	Involve community key players to propagate success stories
12 Incentives for open data use	Provide incentive schemes to  engage citizens in open data usage
	Stimulate the development of specialized, open-data driven startup incubators
	Stimulate the development of business models to allow enterprises to develop add-on services on top of open data platforms, at a cost
	Support issue-oriented community building through participatory events
	Align events, competitions and hackathons with, for example, university curricula, awards, festivals and “direct marketing”
13 Training of and support for open data users	Ensure agile, dynamic, and professional support services and training for potential open data users
	Organize events and ensure community building where the potential benefits of open data are communicated to users (e.g. by building scenarios for usage)
14 Feedback and sustainability	Provide mechanisms for governmental agencies to know how their data have been reused
	Provide mechanisms for governmental agencies to know what can be learned from the reuse of their data
	Provide mechanisms for governmental agencies to know how the publication of their data can be improved based on feedback that they received from open data users
15 Research and education	Develop university and continuous education curricula on open data
	Develop and maintain research areas roadmaps on open data, in order to consolidate research efforts and address open issues