Qualitative approach to determine user experience of e-government services

E-government (E-Gov¹) services provide new opportunities to citizens by allowing them to use government services (paying electricity bill, e-filing, e-ticketing, get information about government policies & schemes etc.) anytime from anywhere irrespective of geographical location and releases citizens bound by government official hours. Experience plays an important role to change users' intention to adopt, that impacts their behavior and attitude too. The aim of this study was to investigate how citizens experience e-Gov services and how that experience influences their behavior. The study also investigates how users value e-Gov services. The study has used a qualitative approach involving 31 citizens of India, where e-Gov services are still at an early stage. The findings highlight the extent to which citizens are moving from traditional ways of using government services to using it electronically. The study also takes into account the effect of these technological innovations in government settings from a participant's perspective. The implications for researchers and practitioners are then discussed, with emphasis on government need to develop competent e-Gov services.     

The utilization of e‐government services: citizen trust,innovation and acceptance factors*

Abstract. Electronic government, or e‐government, increases the convenience and accessibility of government services and information to citizens. Despite the benefits of e‐government – increased government accountability to citizens, greater public access to information and a more efficient, cost‐effective government – the success and acceptance of e‐government initiatives, such as online voting and licence renewal, are contingent upon citizens’ willingness to adopt this innovation. In order to develop ‘citizen‐centred’ e‐government services that provide participants with accessible, relevant information and quality services that are more expedient than traditional ‘brick and mortar’ transactions, government agencies must first understand the factors that influence citizen adoption of this innovation. This study integrates constructs from the Technology Acceptance Model, Diffusions of Innovation theory and web trust models to form a parsimonious yet comprehensive model of factors that influence citizen adoption of e‐government initiatives. The study was conducted by surveying a broad diversity of citizens at a community event. The findings indicate that perceived ease of use, compatibility and trustworthiness are significant predictors of citizens’ intention to use an e‐government service. Implications of this study for research and practice are presented.     

The moderating role of customer–technology contact on attitude towards technology-based services

Previous studies in information systems research and service marketing treat customer behaviour towards technology-based services (TBS) homogeneously. However, recent studies recognize that users have different attitude towards different technologies even if these technologies used to support the same service. Drawing on literature from service marketing (i.e. customer contact theory), information systems (unified theory of technology acceptance), and organizational behaviour (task complexity theory), this study proposes a construct that classifies TBS according to the level of customer–technology interaction they require, namely the customer–technology contact (CTC). The moderating effect of this construct on the relationship between individual characteristics – that is technology readiness and attitude towards TBS – is examined through an empirical study. Technology-based retail services scenarios, with different levels of technology contact, are presented to supermarket shoppers (n=600). Results show that CTC, as a unique service attribute, moderates the effect of personality traits to customers’ attitude. The current study introduces this new service attribute that is applicable to ubiquitous computing services, application and design.     

End-to-end reliability of service oriented applications

As organizations move towards adopting a service oriented architecture that permits the coexistence of multiple technology environments, an increasing number of applications will be developed through the assembly of existing software components with standard web service interfaces. These components with web service interfaces may be available in-house, or may be supplied or hosted by external vendors. The use of multiple services, possibly utilizing different technologies, providers, locations, and sources, has implications for the end-to-end reliability of these applications to support a business process. Selecting the best service for individual tasks in a business process does not guarantee the most effective overall solution, particularly if criteria other than functional characteristics are employed. This paper examines reliability issues associated with applications developed within service oriented architecture. It develops a measure for deriving end-to-end application reliability, and develops a model to help select appropriate services for tasks in the business process which accommodate the redundant and overlapping functionality of available services and planned redundancy in task support to satisfy the reliability requirement of the resulting application. A genetic algorithm approach is adopted to select promising services to assemble the application using end-to-end reliability as the criterion of interest. An application to a real-world business process illustrates the effectiveness of the approach.     

QoS中间件中实时发布/订阅服务集成评估

支持QoS的中间件技术在构造分布式实时嵌入式系统中得到了广泛应用,已成为支持实时发布/订阅服务的关键技术.评估并分析了QoS中间件中3种集成实时发布/订阅服务方法.重点研究了容器管理方式的性能,并与面向对象的实时发布/订阅服务比较.研究结果表明,容器管理方式中,CIAO中间件的等待时间稍长,有可预测性,适用于DRE系统.     

Semantic Web service discovery: state-of-the-art and research challenges

Ubiquitous computing paradigms involving social agents require principled selection of services, context-aware analysis, and satisfaction of requests, as well as dynamic interaction and negotiation with other agents. Synergies between semantic technologies and service discovery facilitate rich and formal representations of services and agent interactions as well as specialization and generalization of service needs. In this paper, we provide an extensive review of semantic Web service discovery, highlighting the state-of-the-art approaches, the key semantic formalisms employed, as well as benchmarks and testbeds for performance evaluation. Defining a generic framework for semantic service discovery, we describe the key tasks and criteria involved in agent-based computing. A detailed comparison of the popular discovery systems is performed with a discussion on trade-offs between existing approaches. We conclude by pointing out important research challenges to be addressed for next-generation service discovery by dynamic multi-agent systems in complex environments.     

A meta-design approach to the development of e-government services

This paper describes a meta-design approach to the development of online services for citizens of a government agency. The goal is to transfer the development of government-to-citizen services from professional software developers to administrative employees, without forcing employees to acquire any programming skills. The approach encompasses two main phases. The first phase analyzes the different perspectives of the stakeholders involved in service creation and usage – employees, citizens, software developers and human–computer interaction specialists – in order to derive a meta-model of e-government services. The latter applies the meta-model to design and develop an end-user development environment that properly supports employees in creating an instance of the service meta-model, which is then automatically interpreted to generate the service pages for citizens. A pilot application of the proposed approach is illustrated with reference to a specific class of e-government services offered by the Brescia Municipality, even though the approach is general enough to be applied to different kinds of e-government services and application domains. The results of the evaluation with a group of municipality employees provide initial feedback from the government field and show how to proceed along this research direction.     

高绩效政府网站的潜在安全威胁浅析

高绩效政府网站通过扩展终端设备类型、客户端与服务器交互方式以及系统功能等获得了灵活、快捷等满足大众获取政府信息需求的高绩效特征的同时,也为原本脆弱的政府网站引入了许多新的潜在安全威胁。本文主要从网络层、应用层以及数据层等三个关键层面对这些安全威胁作了初步分析,为提出恰当的安全策略提供设计指南。     

Adoption of e-Government Services in Pakistan: A Comparative Study Between Online and Offline Users

An empirical study was conducted to investigate the critical factors influencing the citizens’ intention to adopt e-government services at different levels of service maturity, i.e., information and transaction levels. An integrated conceptual model is proposed and validated. Data were collected using the quota sampling method from two user groups, i.e., online and offline. The empirical evidence, discussion, and recommendations provide guidelines to the Pakistani government to follow in order to increase citizens’ potential to utilize e-government services.     

Web服务质量动态预测方法研究

随着面向服务计算技术(SOC)的快速发展,网络上出现了大量功能相同而服务质量(QoS)有很大差别的Web服务,QoS成为评价和选择Web服务的重要依据。由于Web服务所在环境的开放性,使得Web服务的QoS具有很强的动态性,如何精确地预测Web服务的QoS成为影响服务选择和服务组合质量的关键问题。对当前已有的Web服务QoS动态预测方法进行了深入的剖析,指出了现有QoS动态预测方法的优点与不足,讨论了未来的研究方向;明确了存在的关键问题以及未来的发展方向。     

Online government advisory service innovation through Intelligent Support Systems

Motivated by lessons learnt from countries with a high e-government readiness index, we used the lens of ‘empowerment’ to understand the ways in which online Intelligent Support Systems can be successfully developed. We found that decision transparency and decision making satisfaction played key roles providing a higher sense of empowerment to the public, including their having a greater perceived power relationship with the government agency and a better feeling of being in control. This approach has improved citizens’ positive perceptions of the government agencies as service providers. These findings make a strong case for the investment in the ISS and have provided useful information for government agencies who wish to develop or improve their online advisory services.     

Assigning service requests in Voice-over-Internet gateway multiprocessors

New and proposed communication systems are entirely digital, including Voice over Internet Protocol tasks as well as traditional data packets, fax, etc. Numerous digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms are available to encode and decode these signals, each having different requirements for data memory, program memory, and processor speed. A DSP multiprocessor having numerous DSP cores receives a stream of requests for encoding and decoding tasks. A service request is “blocked” if no DSP core can handle the task when it arrives. We present algorithms for assigning DSP tasks to cores in order to minimize the number of blocked tasks. This is similar to an online bin-packing problem with the important difference that the program memory can be shared between simultaneous service requests for the same DSP algorithm. Since bin-packing is known to be NP-complete, we develop fast heuristic online methods for this problem.     

The effect of individual and task characteristics on decision aid reliance

This research explores reliance behaviours of decision-makers using a decision aid. Objective and subjective task characteristics in the form of task complexity and task difficulty, respectively, are examined, along with the effect of the individual characteristic of expertise. A total of 130 subjects (65 novices and 65 experienced practitioners) completed a lab experiment using a decision aid (Insolve-DG) to help them make decisions for two insolvency tasks with differing levels of complexity. The research finds that the objective task characteristic (task complexity) and individual characteristic (expertise) both affect reliance behaviours; however, their effects are fully mediated by the subjective task characteristic (task difficulty). Expertise and task complexity are both associated with the degree of task difficulty experienced by an individual user: increasing task complexity increases task difficulty, and increasing expertise reduces task difficulty. Task difficulty and task complexity are established as different constructs; and importantly it is task difficulty, not task complexity, that ultimately affects reliance.     

电子政务软件可靠性评测方法初探

电子政务已经成为政府工作自动化和智能化的重要手段。近年来,中国电子政务软件市场获得了前所未有的发展机遇。随着电子政务软件的飞速发展,软件可靠性成为了建设电子政务的重要指标。软件可靠性测试是保证软件可靠性的有效方法。目前,国内对于电子政务的可靠性研究才刚刚起步,其可靠性测试一般都交给第三方机构。分析当前电子政务软件的可靠性测试特点,基于Musa和Nelson两种可靠性模型提出了一种电子政务软件的可靠性评测方法,从可靠性的评估测试和验证测试两方面具体分析阐述了方法的流程,并使用工具实现。最后用具体案例对方法进行了分析说明。     

Decision tree models for profiling ski resorts’ promotional and advertising strategies and the impact on sales

Based on survey data, this paper builds decision tree models to profile the online and mobile technologies and services that ski resorts use for their promotional and advertising strategies for two important segments, namely millennials (less than and equal to 35) and non-millennials (greater than 35). The technologies and services include resort websites, microblogging services, and online coupon services. The decision tree models reveal that ski resorts use specific strategies for these segments. Also, the paper reveals the impact that the technologies and services have on resort sales. The impact is positive and both immediate and sustained in nature. The research is the first of its type in the ski industry and represents a novel use of decision tree models for profiling promotional and advertising strategies.     

Research on the collaboration of service selection and resource scheduling for IoT simulation workflows

Cloud resources provide a promising way to efficiently perform the needed simulation tasks for a complex manufacturing process. Most of the existing work focuses only on how to effectively schedule computing resources to execute computing requirements of simulation workflows in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Research on the scheduling of simulation workflows in consideration of task ordering, service selection, and resource allocation altogether has not been lacking. To fill in this void, this paper proposes a cloud-based 3-stage workflow scheduling model. Before scheduling computing resources to complete task requirements, the order of the tasks is determined and the services that can meet the task requirements are selected. In this model, the workload to satisfy task requirements is not fixed and takes on a different value depending upon the service selected with its unique complexity and accuracy. An optimization function that transforms and integrates makespan, cost, and accuracy in a unique way is proposed. For its solution, the relatively new symbiotic organisms search (SOS) algorithm is modified and two SOS-based optimization strategies are developed, i.e., joint optimization-based SOS (JOSOS) and split optimization-based SOS (SOSOS). The simulation results reveal that SOS-based algorithms, especially the SOSOS method, outperform all compared algorithms. Based on the proposed method, simulation services and computing resources can be rationally selected and scheduled to ensure the requirements of IoT applications.     

Logistics service scheduling with manufacturing provider selection in cloud manufacturing

In service-oriented manufacturing models, manufacturing resources in different enterprises are integrated and shared through network, cloud platforms, and logistics. On cloud manufacturing platforms, service providers offer on-demand manufacturing services to service demanders according to supply-demand matching results. As a special type of manufacturing services, logistics services provide transportation capabilities for production services and demanders. It is a critical issue to schedule logistics services efficiently, especially when manufacturer selections have been planned. This research focuses on the logistics scheduling problem in cloud manufacturing with pre-selected manufacturers. We analyze this optimization problem from aspects of tasks, production services, logistics services, and optimization objectives. Then a logistics scheduling method is proposed to reduce the average delivery time from manufacturers to customers. In the proposed method, the total time from start points of logistics to demanders is considered to reduce the average delivery time of all tasks. Based on four different scenarios, we build their scheduling models and run simulations to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results show that the average task delivery time of the proposed method is shorter than three typical strategies.     

Does public service delivery through new channels promote citizen trust in government? The case of smart devices*

ABSTRACT

From the government’s perspective, it is important to understand the factors that influence effective utilization of new service channels, particularly the use of smart devices. Furthermore, how the utilization of a new channel affects trust in the government is an important performance factor whose linkage mechanism also needs to be investigated. This study collected 417 questionnaires from Korean citizens who communicate with the government via smart devices; the questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation analysis. This research indicates that in order to maximize trust in government, service delivery via smart devices must be designed with a clear understanding of the three significant components of such communication, namely the service, channel, and citizens. The service selected must be appropriate to the characteristics of the channel, and service reform may be necessary, beyond using the channel simply as a service means. Citizens’ ability to utilize the channel must also be fully considered. In order to increase the efficacy of new channel utilization, fast implementation is less important than understanding how to satisfy citizens’ needs regarding use of the public service via a smart device.     

Efficient category-based service discovery on multi-agent platform

Today, multi-agent technologies are widely used for realizing prevalent ubiquitous computing applications, in which service discovery is a critical task for finding a particular service instance. While JADE is a popular system for multi-agent applications, its directory facilitator (DF) used for service discovery employs a sequential search approach, which shows degraded performance when the number of registered services becomes large. This paper proposes a new DF scheme employing the category-based classification and search approach. It greatly reduces the search space and allows accurate matchmaking. The DF implemented with the proposed approach and JADE-DF are compared in terms of query response time and memory space requirement. It demonstrates that the proposed DF allows faster query processing than JADE-DF and requires smaller memory space, especially for a large number of services and queries of multiple parameters.