Engineering visits the Greek Interoperability Centre / NTUA

Stefano De Panfilis, Director of R&D Laboratories Department at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. visited the Greek Interoperability Centre, in the National Technical University of Athens, on January 26th 2011. 

The two organisations share common research orientations, in the domains of Enterprise Interoperability and Future Internet Enterprise Systems, and discussed research roadmaps and opportunities in the areas of:

• Cloud computing
• Internet of services
• Digital service provision from federated infrastructures  
• Social networks and their utilisation in next generation service environments
• Interoperability standards and technologies
• The general orientations of NESSI and FIA initiatives  

Engineering and NTUA/GIC agreed to continue collaborating and exploring research opportunities of the above areas within the European and global research initiatives

Yannis Charalabidis - GIC Manager, Stefano de Panfilis - Engineering R&D Director, Sotiris Koussouris and Fenareti Lampathaki - Senior Researchers, at NTUA

European Union Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FINES) Cluster Meeting

More than 30 high-level interantional experts attended the European Commission / DG INFSO Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FINES) Cluster Meeting, held in Brussels, on 25th January 2011.  Organised by the SPIKE FP7 project , the Cluster meeting focused on recent developments for FP7 and FP8 programmes, in the area of Future Internet research for enterprises.

The agenda of the meeting covered the following topics:

• Future Internet Assembly (FIA) developments
• The Enterprise Interoperability Science Base development
• The new Roadmap for Future Internet Enterprise Systems
• Other activities from the ENSEMBLE project, supporting the community enlargement
• Visionary ideas for future internet directions

A view of FInES Cluster Meeting in Brussels  

For a full view of the agenda and the presentations of the meeting, please visit http://www.fines-cluster.eu

A Description Framework for Digital Public Services

Service description frameworks and relevant metadata appear as a key enabler that assists management of resources related to the provision of personalized, efficient and proactive services oriented towards the real citizens’ needs. 

As different authorities typically use different terms to describe their resources and publish them in various Digital Service Registries that may enhance the access to and delivery of governmental knowledge, but also need to communicate seamlessly at a national and pan-European level, the need for a unified digital public service metadata standard emerges. 

This approach presents an ontology-based extended metadata set that embraces services, documents, XML Schemas, code lists, public bodies and information systems. Such a metadata set formalizes the exchange of information between portals and registries and assists the service transformation and simplification efforts, while it can be further taken into consideration when applying Web 2.0 techniques in governance.

Problems faced during the adoption and application of the  metadata schema in the Greek National Interoperability Framework and Government Service Gateway (www.ermis.gov.gr) were not trivial - the update from public officials being among them - and have to be to be taken in mind during relevant attempts by government officials and practitioners. The adoption of a common “governance policy” over metadata appears as a worthwhile track towards this direction. Language issues also need to be taken care of early in the process, as the provision of pan-European Government Services is already on the way. Finally, adequate time and effort should be spent for educating and working together with government officials at various levels, for obtaining a common perspective over the metadata set. 

See the presentation made in the 1st International Workshop on Modelling Methodologies (SMART) in 2010 Service Wave: http://slidesha.re/hU7MxU 

The full paper is under publication by Springer LNCS. Find a related article here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/x48j0l4h0nw3657q/

CENT 2011 - Invited Session on Interoperability Science Base

CENT 2011 

Collaborative Enterprises 2011 –

Platforms, Processes, and Practices

Advancing the Enterprise 2.0

in the context of WMSCI 2011, Orlando/FL, USA

19^th  – 22^nd  July, 2011

Call for Papers

Invited Session on:

Science Base for Enterprise Interoperability in the advent of the Future of Internet

Chair/organizers:

Ricardo Gonçalves (UNINOVA, Portugal) and Yannis Charalabidis (University of the Aegean, Greece)                                                              

Contact email: rg@uninova.pt

Thematic outline

Enterprises of the future are based upon extended platforms, processes and practices involving stakeholders, customers, suppliers, scientific and engineering partners. Business practices and processes are increasingly collaborative. Corporations, non-profit institutions, consultants, academics, and government agencies work together in projects, creating and sharing resources often across national, lingual and cultural boundaries. The interaction between partners may be aimed at collaborative production, development, or research, or may simply be targeted at the sharing of resources or support services.  

Interoperability is an important characteristic of information systems, organisations, their processes and data. Achieving automated collaboration of processes and systems may lead to a dramatic increase in productivity for enterprises of any size.   As a result of this projected benefit, nowadays interoperability has been prescribed by numerous  standardization frameworks, guidelines at enterprise level, data schemas and techniques to tackle the problem of non-communicating systems or organisations.  In parallel, most international software, hardware and service vendors created their own strategies for achieving the goal of open, collaborative, loosely coupled systems and components.

This invited session goes beyond the presentation of the main milestones in this fascinating quest for collaboration between people, systems and information. It looks forward to describing how this new interdisciplinary research area can transform into a vibrant scientific domain, by applying the necessary method and tools.  To achieve that, contributions should bring the ingredients of this new domain, proposing its needed formal and systematic tools, exploring its relation with neighbouring scientific domains and finally prescribing the next steps for achieving the thrilling goal of laying the foundations of a new science.

This invited session seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners who are exploring the definition and applicability of Enterprise Interoperability in the advent of the future internet, putting it in a scientific-based perspective. 

We invite high quality papers  (max of 6 pages) to be published and presented in the invited session:

• Theoretical research papers
• System design and development papers
• Empirical evaluations and case studies
• Verification and validation papers

Submissions should contribute to a substantial, original and previously unpublished research in the topics of the CENT 2011 symposium, whenever focusing on the contributions for a science-based Enterprise Interoperability. These include:

·         Collaborative knowledge generation, communication and management

·         Collaborative platforms

·         Tools and approaches for improved collaboration

·         Smart objects in collaborative knowledge management

·         Content management and knowledge representation

·         Semantic technologies

·         Semantic synchronization

·         Customer involvement 

·         Post-deployment responsibility

·         Business process mapping

·         Knowledge network mapping

·         Modeling of inter-enterprise processes

·         Interoperability

·         Collaborative software development

·         Protection of knowledge and intellectual property

·         Collaborative innovation management

·         Collaborative risk management

·         Trust and reputation in collaborations

·         Knowledge network life cycle

·         Resolving cultural and linguistic issues

·         Collaborative work environments

·         Knowledge and information structures

Submission procedure

Full Draft papers (max 6 pages) MUST BE SUBMITED BY EMAIL to the session chair organizers (rg@uninova.pt)

Their format must be in accordance with the guidelines given on the WMSCI 2011 conference web site (http://www.iiis2011.org/cent). All submitted papers will go through a reviewing process according to the international scientific guidelines. Authors of the best papers presented at the symposium will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in a special issue of the JSCI – Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics.

Submission Deadlines

  Papers submission:  March 31, 2011

  Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2011

  Camera ready, final papers submission: April 30, 2011

More Information

about the CENT 2011 Symposium is available on the symposium web site http://www.iiis2011.org/cent

about the 15^th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics WMSCI 2011 can be found on the conference web site  http://www.iiis2011.org/wmsc 

ESWC Workshop on "Semantics in Governance and Policy Modelling"

Call for Papers

Workshop on «Semantics in Governance and Policy Modelling»

in conjunction with Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC) 2011

May 29 - June 2, 2011 Heraclion, Greece

Description and Topics

The workshop is targeting novel approaches, methods, practices and tools for turning the public information overload into an opportunity for Governance and Policy Modelling with the help of semantics, open data and Public Sector Information reuse, linked data and visual analytics. Specific importance is to be placed in multidisciplinary approaches, combining theoretical policy making methodologies, advanced ICT and Government 2.0 collaboration practices. The workshop will also provide a stand for real-life application examples, showing how stakeholders can gain insight and take action into complex and unpredictable real-life situations at international, national or local level.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Semantic components for digital public service definition and provision
• Semantics for policy modelling, including policy planning and policy impact assessment
• Open, governmental data publication and promotion
• Linking of open governmental data
• On-the-fly, context-aware, linked data quality agreements
• Browsing and retrieving linked data in government data mash-ups
• Collaborative analysis and collective intelligence for policy-making, assisted by intuitive visual / geo-visual analytics on public linked data
• Semantic annotation of public policy and citizen opinion
• Semantic components for public deliberation and argument visualization
• Privacy-respecting participatory sensing and data tracking

Workshop Chairs

• Yannis Charalabidis (Corresponding Chair), University of Aegean, yannisx@aegean.gr
• Fenareti Lampathaki, National Technical University of Athens, flamp@epu.ntua.gr
• Gianluca Misuraca, JRC - European Commission, IPTS, Spain, Gianluca.MISURACA@ec.europa.eu

 Workshop Programme Committee

• Dimitris Askounis, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
• Enrico Ferro, ISMB, Italy
• Marko Grobelnik, Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia
• Euripidis Loukis, University of Aegean, Greece
• Michele Missikoff, IASI-CNR, Italy
• David Osimo, Tech4i2, Belgium
• Maria Wimmer, University Koblenz-Landau, Germany

Submission Process

The workshop will accommodate both short and full papers.  Short papers should be up to 4 pages while full papers should not exceed 12 pages. 

All papers should be submitted via email to the workshop corresponding chair, in MS-Word or PDF format, following the format guidelines available at: http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0

Papers will be peer-reviewed using a double-blind review system for rigor, relevance, originality and clarity of presentation. Selected full papers are to be published by Springer LNCS. 

The best papers of the workshop will be considered for publication in the forthcoming book “Empowering Open and Collaborative Governance: Technologies and Methods for On-line Citizen Engagement in Public Policy Making” to be published by Springer.

Key Dates

• Short and Full Paper Submission: 7th March 2011
• Acceptance Notifications: 28th March 2011
• Camera Ready Version: 15th April 2011

You may download the Call for Papers here.
For more information on ESWC 2011 please visit http://www.eswc2011.org/