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It has been said that the spread of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and global interconnectedness has a great potential to accelerate human progress, to bridge the "digital divide" and to develop knowledge societies, in countries where it is available. However, it has also been determined that certain barriers, more prevalent in rural communities, pose an incessant impediment to the access and penetration trends of broadband internet networks and infrastructure in rural areas. These barriers have been identified as 'accessibility', 'affordability', and 'sustainability'. It is hereby asserted, therefore, that a concerted effort is required to address these barriers, with great deliberation and haste, if digital inclusion is to be achieved in rural areas. This paper proposes a broadband internet system that is aimed at addressing these barriers, through a proposed model, which is intended to be implemented as a Proof of Concept (PoC) in the rural area of Mbazwana, located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa (SA). The model has been presented to the community, and subsequently followed by a survey to determine the feasibility of the implementation thereof. This paper will present the proposed model, as well as the results obtained from the research conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of the prestigious Horizon 2020 MIICT: ICT-enabled services for migration innovation project. The project was conducted by a multidisciplinary team of technical developers, social scientists, lawyers, practitioners, and migration experts in three pilot countries of Cyprus, Spain, and Italy. The project focused on deepening societal understanding of the factors that impact upon refugee and migrant populations’ ability to access key public services and subsequently created an ICT solution to solve these problems. The project deployed a co-creation methodology, which proved essential when designing ICT solutions to aid migrant integration, enabling researchers to involve both the migrants and those assisting them in their migration journeys, namely NGOs and service providers in the study as co-researchers. The researchers, together with the participants co-designed a multilingual, intuitive, inclusive, interactive platform called IMMERSE that catered for the real needs of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. The innovative co-creation methodology deployed empowered migrants to be proactive and independent in their migration journeys and the resulting interactive platform created provides vital access to information and services like health, language, housing, employment, education, and legal assistance in a one-stop-shop design. This paper further highlights the lessons learned from the research, concerning the need for digital training courses to be implemented to overcome the digital divide and the inclusion of extensive legal and ethical protocols in migrant languages, to be integrated into the platform to counteract migrants’ fears of digital surveillance and create confidence and wider usage of the ICT platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been rapid growth in the volume of research output on the topic of eGovernment. The analysis of the literature reveals significant insights about the evolution of eGovernment research over time, the assessment of which serves as a basis for recommendations for future research on this global phenomenon. To understand this research better, the specific study has selected papers that contribute to the development of eGovernment research through conceptualizations and clarifications of the field, as well as by addressing significant issues and trends. Through reviewing those studies in eGovernment literature this paper categorises the outcomes and identifies three research areas and twenty dimensions in which the research community targets its efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 21st century, the combination of rapid technological developments as well as the adoption of emerging technologies has impacted almost every area of everyday life. These developments have even affected domains that traditionally operate without the help of Information and Communication technologies (ICT) but now see an increase in digitization of their processes. Healthcare is one of those domains that is being revolutionized via the emergence of the e-health and m-health paradigms as well as the automation of medical processes, robotics, and Internet of Things (IoT) medical devices and sensors. These developments, apart from modernizing healthcare and providing quality-of-life solutions to both healthcare practitioners and patients, have also led to an increase in the availability of digital medical data, which are nowadays being structured in Electronic Health Records (EHRs). EHRs contain various health data about a patient and are the basis for the development and implementation of various innovative solutions in healthcare. Such solutions mainly aim to address some of the current shortcomings of EHRs such as the centralized storage, which makes them vulnerable to mass hacker attacks as well as the lack of interoperability among various medical standards that are used to structure EHRs, which makes it hard to manage and share them across different healthcare providers. The scope of this publication is to introduce blockchain technology as a potential solution to the aforementioned challenges and present a novel methodology and architecture that have been developed to be implemented in a healthcare application. The methodology presented in this paper leverages both blockchain and centralized databases, making it a hybrid approach but aims to set the basis for developing blockchain-powered healthcare solutions for data management. Under that context and the need to combine blockchain with centralized databases, the security parameters of the system are also tailored to work specifically with that kind of approach. The end-goal of the methodology and architecture presented in this publication is to give patients ownership of their data, help them manage and share them as they see fit, while at the same time keeping in mind that large healthcare providers must have access to the same information in a secure manner for the well-being of their patients. It is considered that this hybrid approach offers a well-tailored solution for both stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of information and communication technology is placing the need for the acquisition of digital skills at the same level of the acquisition of conventional reading and calculus competences. The importance of being digitally literate increases as society becomes progressively more digital. This paper explores the concept of digital literacy and it intends to develop a framework for the development and dissemination of digital literacy as well as to propose a survey that will throughout time provide an assessment of individuals' digital skills. It begins by examining the various definitions of digital literacies and proceeds then to a discussion of what is being done to promote them and what can be done to improve their dissemination. The framework this paper proposes is composed of three core elements: access to technology, education and culture. The survey it recommends is an European Union-wide instrument of digital literacy measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant changes are currently taking place in scientific research. In particular, there is a greater collaboration among large groups of researchers, which leads to an increase use of information processing techniques, and a need to share results and observations among the participants in the process. Using technologies such as peer-to-peer networks and semantic web, we create an access point to distributed scientific applications, where scientists can work with heterogeneous information and create scientific communities according to their specialties and interests. This paper presents the e-ScienceNet, which is an architecture that supports the creation of scientific communities in the context of semantic e-Science, facilitating the creation and sharing of scientific data and services. This paper also presents the e- ScienceNet prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing use of information and communication technology in teaching and learning process allows users to work in a heterogeneous environment which involves more than just the Learning Management Systems (LMS). Resources such as multimedia players, instant messaging, games, web pages, emails and file sharing programs are often used during learning. Capturing context is the first step to support users during their teaching and learning process. In this paper we present an educational data collection framework based on hybrid sensors networks - composed by physical and logical sensors - that can implicitly collect events of users' focus of attention and forward a rich data set to interested applications. It facilitates the building context-aware e-learning applications and offers a simple and unified way to the acquisition of user's behaviors in online learning. Using our framework, it is possible not only to observe the user's behaviors conventionally monitored in web browsers, or LMS or others databases, but also track user-generated content including their personal digital environment - local desktop application programs, operational system, communication network, etc - and the physical environment surrounding them. The framework implementation allows the easy integration of additional sensors and actuators and makes it domain and platform-independent. To validate our framework, we developed and built three applications: ViTrackeR, that assists students' self-regulated learning promotion providing tracking data visualization and personalized recommendations; ViMonitor, a tool particularly dedicated to assist in real time both teaching staff and academic management staff providing important pieces of information about students and tutors; and ViAssess, that provides accurate support to teachers in online assessment security issues. This paper focus on how our framework conducts a decentralized data collection from sensors networks abstraction. Further, we show the tools: ViTrackeR, ViMonitor and ViAssess in the context of a concrete online course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'presence,' or telepresence has been the subject of research and discussion for over 30 years. In this paper we explore definitions of presence put forth over the last 20 years, and how these apply to middle school students. These students were engaged in using an immersive virtual environment (SAVE Science) designed to assess their knowledge and use of scientific inquiry through several modules planned around curriculum being taught in middle schools in Pennsylvania, U.SA. This paper presents early findings in looking at 154 middle school students', ages 11 - 13, perceived sense of presence in one of two virtual games developed through the SAVE Science research project in the United States as demonstrated through a post module survey and a post module discussion with their teacher. We use Piaget's theory of child development stages as a lens to understand whether these students achieved presence in the modules. In addition we use content analysis, as described by Slater and Usoh (1993), of post module discussion transcripts to identify levels of "presence" as indicated by student talk in the post module discussion. In the end, the seventh grade students demonstrated achieving some level of presence, while the sixth grade students did not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to manage and utilize distributed campus network environment efficiently, a video transmission scheme has been designed for simultaneous communication among multiple areas. The scheme is organized with DVTS (Digital Video Transmission System)-based functional unit, which consists of a specified server, a digital video encoder, client devices and so on. This paper introduces design of our video transmission scheme, formulation procedure for its performance evaluation and demonstration of quantitative evaluation for its application to network conference in a real distributed network environment. Design concept of the video transmission scheme is scalability form one-to-one communication to the more multipoint one. Formulation is described for a case that each system for video transmission is located on the different IP segment and communicates each other and/or one another simultaneously. Experiment for our systems on a real distributed campus network environment are carried out in order to achieve practical communication based on video transmission. And our paper also illustrates a summary of the above performance evaluation and an attempt of problem solving which has happened on such a real experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to manage and utilize distributed campus network environment efficiently, a video transmission scheme has been designed for simultaneous communication among multiple areas. The scheme is organized with DVTS (Digital Video Transmission System)-based functional unit, which consists of a specified server, a digital video encoder, client devices and so on. This paper introduces design of our video transmission scheme, formulation procedure for its performance evaluation and demonstration of quantitative evaluation for its application to network conference in a real distributed network environment. Design concept of the video transmission scheme is scalability form one-to-one communication to the more multipoint one. Formulation is described for a case that each system for video transmission is located on the different IP segment and communicates each other and/or one another simultaneously. Experiment for our systems on a real distributed campus network environment are carried out in order to achieve practical communication based on video transmission. And our paper also illustrates a summary of the above performance evaluation and an attempt of problem solving which has happened on such a real experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes with practical insights in developing business models for mobile information and communication technology (ICT) tourism services in a peripheral (rural) region, in this case the Åland Islands in Finland. The paper reports on different barriers that need to be overcome in order to implement mobile tourism services in a peripheral region. The identified barriers depend on: local actor features, regional features and mobile channel features. Nevertheless, the proposed business models also promise greater tourist satisfaction and new cash flow for the local actors. The experiences are dawn from an EU and regional government funded project, New Interactive Media (NIM), which has taken different actions in order to deal with the occurred obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes with practical insights in developing business models for mobile information and communication technology (ICT) tourism services in a peripheral (rural) region, in this case the Åland Islands in Finland. The paper reports on different barriers that need to be overcome in order to implement mobile tourism services in a peripheral region. The identified barriers depend on: local actor features, regional features and mobile channel features. Nevertheless, the proposed business models also promise greater tourist satisfaction and new cash flow for the local actors. The experiences are dawn from an EU and regional government funded project, New Interactive Media (NIM), which has taken different actions in order to deal with the occurred obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the factors that are associated with success in using the Internet as a marketing tool. We administered a questionnaire to companies on three continents, considering six levels, which range from financial results and customer relations to buying efficiency. We divided the companies into three groups using cluster analysis and tested the nature of the companies in each group on two levels, one regarding firm's characteristics and another considering the approach that firms took in the use of the Internet marketing tools. The results show that the benefits vary according to the way the Internet application are explored; that commitment level can affect the results and the impact is superior in the companies that explore the Internet potentialities in a wider perspective. These results demonstrate that the Internet is not only a means of sales promotion, but also relationship management and that companies who invest in an integrated perspective are more successful. As limitations of the study we consider the need for more research into the types of company activities that use the Internet as a fundamental component of the business. This paper contributes to the research on this topic with new evidence in a broad geographic sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new competitive landscape and the new information communication technologies (ICT) thrust for new business configurations for small and medium enterprises (SME) development and local competitiveness, based on the value creating potential of networks. In literature it has been extensively argued that ICT-driven networks could help firms to be more flexible and able to fast react to the changing business conditions. This paper focuses on the service sector, and in particular on the tourism industry, to explore the influence of industry specific factors on the implementation of virtual networks in SMEs. In particular starting from previous research, and through an in-depth field case study of tourism destination's web initiatives, the aim of this paper is to investigate the reasons why emerging virtual networks in tourism have underdeveloped interactive, collaborative, and personalization features. The results highlight that industry specific factors such as the marketing orientation, the nature of the product, and fragmentation could hamper effective implementation of virtual networks in SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new competitive landscape and the new information communication technologies (ICT) thrust for new business configurations for small and medium enterprises (SME) development and local competitiveness, based on the value creating potential of networks. In literature it has been extensively argued that ICT-driven networks could help firms to be more flexible and able to fast react to the changing business conditions. This paper focuses on the service sector, and in particular on the tourism industry, to explore the influence of industry specific factors on the implementation of virtual networks in SMEs. In particular starting from previous research, and through an in-depth field case study of tourism destination's web initiatives, the aim of this paper is to investigate the reasons why emerging virtual networks in tourism have underdeveloped interactive, collaborative, and personalization features. The results highlight that industry specific factors such as the marketing orientation, the nature of the product, and fragmentation could hamper effective implementation of virtual networks in SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper falls within the scope of e-Learning technology. Its main objective is to present how to achieve the integration - within an existing authoring tool - of collaborative tools available in most e-learning platforms. As motivation, the paper also presents a comparative analysis between authoring tools features and Learning Management Systems key collaborative functionalities. The introduction of collaborative scenarios in authoring tools has three key goals. Enhance interactivity and collaboration between the students and the tutor. Promote the sharing of information. Foster the creation of a useful collective pool of knowledge. Finally, in order to put in context, with the scope of current technology, the above mentioned objectives a limited comparative analysis between 5 authoring tools and 6 LMS is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a new teaching-learning method originated from the changes that have occurred in the world economical basis and in the information and communication technologies. The purpose of this paper is to describe the architecture of PBL Virtual Environment and the initial simulation results of tutorial sessions carried out by staff and students participating on the Computer Engineering course at the State University of Feira de Santana (UEFS). The modeling of the PBL method and its mapping in XML schema based on the PBL tutorial sessions have allowed to implement an application that suports presential and distance PBL tutorial sessions. The main contribution of this paper consists on findings obtained from the application of PBL Virtual Environment to a group of students related to the course of Computer Engineering (UEFS). These findings would be used to improve the development of collaborative learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting the interests of a user in information is an important process in personalized information systems. In this paper, we present a way to create prediction engines that allow prediction techniques to be easily combined into prediction strategies. Prediction strategies choose one or a combination of prediction techniques at the moment a prediction is required, taking into account the most up -to-date knowledge about the current user, other users, the information and the system itself. Results of two experiments show that prediction strategies improve both the accuracy and stability of prediction engines. One of these experiments involves a TV recommender system. This paper describes the method of prediction strategies, how they have been applied in the TV recommender system and results of the experiment in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this short paper, we propose a new key management architecture for Multicast communications. This architecture combines the complementary variable approach with hashed keys and hierarchical binary trees. This will reduce the number of transmissions at the joins/leaves of participants. Also, we explain a naming method, which allows to facilitate the understanding of the hierarchical binary tree of keys. This new naming method will also facilitates the treatments in the refresh of keys. Customised packets for the key exchange between the sender and the participants are introduced in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of the paper is to conduct a survey and analyze the results for usage and understanding utilization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), clustered in different target groups of users in High Polytechnical School of Uige, Angola. To achieve that goal there are selected the most widely known ICT tools and distributed into seven main categories: learning management systems, blogging, social networks, e-book tools, file sharing tools, wiki tools and video tutorial tools. The results of the survey based on 441 answers from teachers, administrative stuff and university/undergraduate and graduate students. The main hardware tools used to access the Internet are divided to mobile devices and desktop computers. As result the most used ICT tools are web-based, grouped in two separated categories: social networks and file sharing tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies show that online games are popular to students, mainly because of their increased participation engagement and interaction in a game. According to these thoughts, and searching for new educational environments that would motivate the ne(x)t generation, the current research in the e-learning field is focusing its attention in using digital games as educational tools. This paper presents the evolution of digital educational games through the years, and dignifies the need for creating collaborative online educational games, by taking into account the popular commercial Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), in order to provide open-ended educational environments that foster collaboration among students. This interaction could be a solid ground for the development of networked communities, which could trigger cognitive, affective and social aspects of the player's behavior. This work-in-progress paper describes the framework of a research that is currently being conducted and aims at highlighting the important personal and interpersonal issues which develop a strong sense of community in an engaging multiplayer online game. The result of this research could contribute to good game design principles that could be used in the design of good online educational games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of government is a global concern, government administrations should act in accordance with the principles of the common good, transparency and agility. E-Gov is the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to improve access and delivery of information, providing services to citizens, business partners, employees and other government entities. There are some models to help governments to make good use of ICT, but they do not provide a clear guide of how governments can improve their e-gov processes. This paper proposes a new model for e-gov development, aligned with ICT governance concepts and practices. This model provides a guide to government agencies to develop actions to improve their processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of government is a global concern, government administrations should act in accordance with the principles of the common good, transparency and agility. E-Gov is the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to improve access and delivery of information, providing services to citizens, business partners, employees and other government entities. There are some models to help governments to make good use of ICT, but they do not provide a clear guide of how governments can improve their e-gov processes. This paper proposes a new model for e-gov development, aligned with ICT governance concepts and practices. This model provides a guide to government agencies to develop actions to improve their processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on link prediction aims to understand mechanisms that trigger the changes and evolution in social networks, i.e., how they grow and change over time. The evolution of a social network to let larger and more complex. This complicates the prediction of relationships. Consider a network of co-authored among scientists, for example. There are many reasons exogenous to the network, which take two scientists who have published together not to post more in the coming years, or who are very close in the network (considering the graph structure), but never published together. Such collaborations can be difficult to predict. This paper proposes a method (named ConPredict) to predict relationships in co-authored networks based on the content similarity between nodes and a prototype implementation to validate the proposed method. The ConPredict system is based on a hybrid approach (based on the structural patterns on network and similarity between nodes) to relationships predict. Experiments on large co-authored networks suggest that information about future interactions can be extracted from the topology, and the content similarity of each node in the network, and that the hybrid approach can overcome the prediction analysis only of the structural network. We applied the following measures of performance evaluation: precision, recall, F-measure. The experimental evaluation carried out gave encouraging results: precision score of 88% and 84% of recall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Cup is the world's most widely viewed sporting event. There are hundreds of websites that mention this event in some extent. This paper carried out an Ergonomic criteria evaluation of 51 websites related to 2014 World Cup event, and their mobile version, in order to evaluate their ergonomic quality and to find their ergonomic problems. This work aims to present the problems found in websites, their relation to the ergonomic criteria, and to compare the desktop website versus mobile/app version, besides it also wants to contribute for improving the user interaction with World Cup websites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe an OWL ontology for HDF5 and discuss a few potential applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infrastructure Services Information Technology (IT) are becoming increasingly important in organizations. Among them, there is a communication path between internal and external environment. Due to restrictions on speed Internet access, it is common to deploying caching services in order to optimize link usage. One of the most popular services is the cache Squid that, among other functionalities, stores the content accessed in the external environment. However, the efficiency of Squid varies according to traffic patterns, which require the periodic action of an expert to adjust setting parameters. This paper describes the implementation of an adaptive caching system for Squid based on a Simple Genetic Algorithm. The results were satisfactory for the traffic patterns used. The developed system obtains comparable results to the best outcome of an exhaustive search. Thus, our system can be used in several other traffic patterns to define the best values that will offer the highest percentage (possible) of cache hit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an IT structure developed in the context of an international cooperation project aiming to collect, process and present environmental information about water quality online automatically via the Internet, for different user profiles. The availability of online environmental information is still in an early stage in Brazil, mainly due to the high cost of multi-parameter equipment. The availability of information using the concept of open data, dynamic dashboards and the Social Web Of Things allows this structure to be used for remote queries for learning, research and dissemination of socially valuable information. To achieve this goal, the following systems were created: an open data publication portal, a configurable web dashboard system, a mobile application and water source profiles in social networks, which are all automatically fed by the system. The characteristics of this IT structure are presented, as well as experimental results in the laboratory and in the natural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present the whole process of analysis and implementation of an educational portal on WebQuests in Portuguese Language. The idealized portal was designed for schools and teachers, and was supposed to be a forum of sharing knowledge among Portuguese-speaking countries, thus, contributing for the dissemination to the community of the WebQuests that all Portuguese and Brazilian authors developed and used with their students. We show the stages of development and the layout of the portal, and some preliminary results obtained from a sample of environmental users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing availability of sophisticated technologies for educational purposes, a critical challenge for academics is their effective integration into the curriculum. Too often decisions are based on the available technologies or the latest innovation. The danger of this is that the technologies may not be effective in supporting student learning. After all, it is the activity fostered in learners, not the technology, that ultimately influences learning. This paper introduces the MAPLET Framework for guiding the integration of technologies into curriculum. Based on theories of developing expertise it provides a learner focused perspective that enables an understanding of the relationship between the learning processes underpinning aims and outcomes, the requirements of the learner, and the cognitive-enabling features of technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals who have access to and are users of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tend to benefit from that usage. Even though international migration nowadays is one of the biggest worldwide phenomena, and while integration policies are failing, there is not much research on the influence of ICT usage on immigration issues. Aiming to identify the links between ICT and immigration and to test their importance, author conducted an empirical study presented in this paper. Research shows how ICT addresses the problem of immigration and who is behind web spaces for immigrants. Immigrants are suffering from lack of social networks and lack of social capital, and network technologies can be used to alleviate those problems. In conclusion, author offers some possible solutions for those problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a model for the integration of a formal ontology and a folksonomy within a knowledge-based system. We evaluated such a model by designing ARNEIS 2.0, an "intelligent" and social web-based repository of software solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). ARNEIS 2.0 is a work in progress and aims at exploiting the integration of Semantic Web (ontologies and reasoning) and Web 2.0 techniques (user tagging and folksonomies) to support ICT companies that offer software solutions for SME business automation, and SME that are looking for ICT solution fulfilling their needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lifelong learning as an individual activity that spans over one's life is not a reality yet, despite the general guides of educational policy. Especially the elderly, those over 65 years, are in danger of lagging behind; the solid trust in one's own activity and learning skills is required; besides, many aged today, lack the learning culture (Tikkanen, 2003). In step with an increasing elderly population, more attention needs to be paid on proper old-age education technology, pedagocy, motivation and needs. This paper presents principles taken from literature on old age education based on cognitive ageing (compensating and supporting the deficiencies and strenghts) not forgetting the impact of empowerment by current ICTs in the life of elderly people. The experience gained from directing a computer club for the elderly is demonstrated, based on a WWW-questionnaire, as well as observations made during years 2007-2008 in Pieksämäki, Finland. The results show that the continuing education program for the elderly is strongly facilitated by peer-support which is experienced during informal club-based activities, as well as having a jointly planned content, which is tailored to their needs, motivation and ability. Learning in the club was evaluated according to the Chaffin-Harlow model of cognitive learning (Chaffin & Harlow, 2005), and found to reside on the "adjustment learning" level. Recommendations to achieve the "discovery level" are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the global emergence of new electronics, information, and far-reaching communication technologies, the movement towards adoption of E-Government systems has recently inspired governments world-wide to be aware of the potential opportunities of this phenomenon hoping to: reduce operating costs for both businesses and citizens; provide citizens and businesses with more convenient access to on-line government services; improve the quality of government services delivery; and increase effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector organisations .Jordan was placed 68th out of 191 member countries in the 2005 rankings of the UN global E-Government readiness report. While the progress in undertaking the transition into an information society is still modest in comparison to more advanced Western countries, there is a clear sign that Jordan is looking forward to being ahead in the region with the development and progress in all aspects of modern life, including building a state of the art E-Government infrastructure that will gradually move the life of Jordanian people into the communication and networked age. This paper attempts to reach an objective evaluation through reviewing the efforts and current achievements done by the government of Jordan to integrate emerging and existing modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) especially the Internet into its agencies. Examining briefly the challenges encountered in implementing E-Government initiatives in Jordan, as well as the potential opportunities experienced in the context of a Jordanian society. In addition, the understanding of the current status of E-Government in Jordan can help practitioners and researchers in the country to pursue development of the public sector organisations on one hand, and would be generally of importance for Jordan's economic future success on the other hand. However, since the development of an integrated E-Government infrastructure is a necessary issue for effectiveness and competency in the information age, the findings and implications of this review study reveal Jordan is still far behind some in utilizing ICTs for delivering government services and information on-line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and Communication Technology [ICT] has became an important tool for improving the efficiency of health organisations. E-Health applications are increasingly being drawn into evaluating the Internet as a source of end user information for health. This paper is an attempt to explore and investigate issues related to e-health applications and its implementations in developing countries, in particular Saudi Arabia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current access to information and communication technology - ICT facilities can enable individuals to use advanced technology in teaching and learning actions since the beginning of individuals' education, as well as can stimulate the integration and interoperation of educational actions between basic and higher education. This paper presents experience showing how it has been applied advanced technology related to ICT facilities and visual communication to stimulate curriculum improvements, individuals' knowledge development and lifelong learning. It includes basic and higher education collaborative participation in a one-to-one mobile computing model proposed by OLPC. The instruments used to achieve these goals are electronic systems, web-based technology and low cost multimedia tools and files in combination with learning theories and methodologies such as zone of proximal development ZPD, constructionism and experiential learning. The use of web-based technology interoperation and integration such as Hypertext Markup Language - HTML and Virtual Reality Modeling Language - VRML on teaching and learning actions has supported individuals' collaborative work, cognitive and perceptual development, better understanding of curriculum subjects and how technology can be used to sustain ones' professional or hobbyist life development within a lifelong learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supply chains differ in the modalities of coordination and collaboration, the intensity and density of interaction, the way the supply is organized, the technological structure and more in general the eReadiness state of firms. These differentiated features influence the feasibility and the performance of eBusiness models. In this paper we argue that a successful implementation of eBusiness models, in this case a digital marketplace, should be aligned to supply chain configurations. This mean that before starting an emarketplace initiative, it is necessary to afford a context assessment, to firstly establish the level of collaboration among supply chain firms, the intensity and density of interaction, the social climate, the technological structure and coordination modalities. After that it is possible to find and put in place the proper digital marketplace able to enhance the supply chain performance and increase the opportunities of growth in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the global emergence of new electronics, information, and far-reaching communication technologies, the movement towards adoption of E-Government systems has recently inspired governments world-wide to be aware of the potential opportunities of this phenomenon hoping to: reduce operating costs for both businesses and citizens; provide citizens and businesses with more convenient access to on-line government services; improve the quality of government services delivery; and increase effectiveness and efficiency in the public sector organisations .Jordan was placed 68thout of 191 member countries in the 2005 rankings of the UN global E-Government readiness report. While the progress in undertaking the transition into an information society is still modest in comparison to more advanced Western countries, there is a clear sign that Jordan is looking forward to being ahead in the region with the development and progress in all aspects of modern life, including building a state of the art E-Government infrastructure that will gradually move the life of Jordanian people into the communication and networked age. This paper attempts to reach an objective evaluation through reviewing the efforts and current achievements done by the government of Jordan to integrate emerging and existing modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) especially the Internet into its agencies. Examining briefly the challenges encountered in implementing E-Government initiatives in Jordan, as well as the potential opportunities experienced in the context of a Jordanian society. In addition, the understanding of the current status of E-Government in Jordan can help practitioners and researchers in the country to pursue development of the public sector organisations on one hand, and would be generally of importance for Jordan's economic future success on the other hand. However, since the development of an integrated E-Government infrastructure is a necessary issue for effectiveness and competency in the information age, the findings and implications of this review study reveal Jordan is still far behind some in utilizing ICTs for delivering government services and information on-line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transactions and especially internet technologies gain the main interest of students, which are involved in a higher degree, to the process of Electronic Democracy (E-Democracy), than to the traditional way of voting. This paper focuses on the alternative ways that students use internet services today, in the sense of electronic voting. This work is centered to the estimation of the citizens of tomorrow behavior, regarding the issue of E-Democracy, and especially how they could satisfy the requirements and the specifications of an electronic voting system. Students' opinions, on the advantages and the disadvantages in the exploitation of technology of E-Democracy, are also presented. Based on the above research results, it is proven that students training, in electronic voting processes, is a matter of great importance, in order E Democracy to be supported in the most appropriate and sufficient way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ICT is a key element of lifelong learning and the internationalization of higher education (HE). An increasing number of HE students are becoming internationally mobile, whether virtually or physically, resulting in increasingly diverse learning situations. As learning situations become more and more diverse, they require a wide-ranging repertoire of pedagogical practices. Within the framework of the Socrates-Minerva funded ESMOS project (Enhancing Student Mobility through Online Support) this paper reports on research into the pedagogical implications for the learning support of international mobility students. Beginning with a brief discussion of international student mobility in the European context, we will then consider the pedagogical implications of supporting mobility students online, followed by an exploration of the study into the support of students in the situations of international exchange and placement and how this is being used to develop a solution for improved didactical support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital transactions and especially internet technologies gain the main interest of students, which are involved in a higher degree, to the process of Electronic Democracy (E-Democracy), than to the traditional way of voting. This paper focuses on the alternative ways that students use internet services today, in the sense of electronic voting. This work is centered to the estimation of the citizens of tomorrow behavior, regarding the issue of E-Democracy, and especially how they could satisfy the requirements and the specifications of an electronic voting system. Students' opinions, on the advantages and the disadvantages in the exploitation of technology of E-Democracy, are also presented. Based on the above research results, it is proven that students training, in electronic voting processes, is a matter of great importance, in order EDemocracy to be supported in the most appropriate and sufficient way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet should be used to improve knowledge through people. Nowadays the communications between people using ICT hasn't a structure able to implement a rich and efficient use of information such as datum. Most of the knowledge management systems for complex organizations are based on technological architectures that are in contradiction with the social processes of information like human language. In particular, centralized architectures are adopted to manage a process that is intrinsically distributed, such "experience". In this paper, we introduce the principal concepts of SEA, an idea based on (DKM) Distribute knowledge Management as example of an extendable and scaleable system architecture for knowledge management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last couple of years, there has been a growing concern about the important role that technology should play in the process of modernization of the financial and banking sector. In fact, the impact of the Information and Communication Technologies on banking services has received significant attention in several academic and scientific researches due to their importance to the sector's reform process. Nowadays, with the introduction of the Internet into the banking activity - Internet Banking - we can assume that the diffusion of those new technologies has been one of the main reasons for a total redefinition of the distribution services and has been responsible for the creation of a very hostile and competitive environment. The Portuguese Government's concern for this matter was reflected in the III Community Framework, where there were two operational boards especially dedicated to Science, Technology and Innovation. In this context, the major point of this paper is that the Information and Communication Technologies development can lead the banking activity to a range of new business opportunities and this evidence can be responsible for the promotion of a higher degree of competition between financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a climate where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is becoming mainstream within the higher education sector, academics are faced with the ongoing challenge of incorporating World Wide Web and Internet technology within their teaching practices. Coupled with a "quality" agenda, academics will be required to examine their instructional strategies and to offer high quality learning opportunities. Reuse, in the form of sharing learning resources and modelling expert practice are seen as strategies to help academics in this change process. Whilst online repositories of learning resources (learning objects) are flourishing, what is lacking are tools to support academics to design pedagogically sound learning environments. This paper describes a prototype tool, the Smart Learning Design Framework (SLDF), that uses "learning designs" to assist academics construct high quality learning environments in which learning objects are incorporated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet Governance has been recognized by governing policies of Internet address and domain names. But in decentralized environment, Internet governance is emerging as a new governing tool with which the Internet users solve the problem invading such as cybersecurty, spam privacy. We regard the terms governance as the enabling dimension including organized and cooperative activities between different stakeholders. That is, the multiple governance actors participate in multi-level governance parties and solve the problem with multiple governance tools. This paper introduces governance mechanism focused on side-effects of ICT, represented by hacking, viruses, spam, privacy intrusion. And we analyze these issues in view of decentralized modes f governing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last couple of years, there has been a growing concern about the important role that technology should play in the process of modernization of the financial and banking sector. In fact, the impact of the Information and Communication Technologies on banking services has received significant attention in several academic and scientific researches due to their importance to the sector's reform process. Nowadays, with the introduction of the Internet into the banking activity - Internet Banking - we can assume that the diffusion of those new technologies has been one of the main reasons for a total redefinition of the distribution services and has been responsible for the creation of a very hostile and competitive environment. The Portuguese Government's concern for this matter was reflected in the III Community Framework, where there were two operational boards especially dedicated to Science, Technology and Innovation. In this context, the major point of this paper is that the Information and Communication Technologies development can lead the banking activity to a range of new business opportunities and this evidence can be responsible for the promotion of a higher degree of competition between financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a climate where Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is becoming mainstream within the higher education sector, academics are faced with the ongoing challenge of incorporating World Wide Web and Internet technology within their teaching practices. Coupled with a "quality" agenda, academics will be required to examine their instructional strategies and to offer high quality learning opportunities. Reuse, in the form of sharing learning resources and modelling expert practice are seen as strategies to help academics in this change process. Whilst online repositories of learning resources (learning objects) are flourishing, what is lacking are tools to support academics to design pedagogically sound learning environments. This paper describes a prototype tool, the Smart Learning Design Framework (SLDF), that uses "learning designs" to assist academics construct high quality learning environments in which learning objects are incorporated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction industry is quite unusual in that it is a very fragmented industry comprising large numbers of 'Micro' and 'SME' businesses managed in the main by artisans. It is also recognised as being very conservative in outlook and reluctant to change its business methods and processes. This inertia to change has initiated several reports being endorsed to identify routes for improving performance in the construction industry, which recommended an improved coordination of project information, and that identified 'drivers of change' in the industry sector. The advancement of ICT (Information Communication Technology) has opened up potential for industries to offer better products and services to clients, established mechanisms for developing and creating sustainable competitive advantage for businesses and has also created pressure on industries and businesses to change the way they do business. The convergence of resistance to change and factors forcing change within an industry are important to the survival of any organisation and in particular to SMEs. This working paper sets out to investigate the scope of ICT (Information Communication Technology) uptake amongst SMEs from within the building contractor sector of the construction industry. The work also investigates what drives these firms to change and adopt new technologies, whilst also seeking to identify industry or incumbent barriers to change. The underlying aim of this work being an analysis of the impact of successful implementation of new technologies and e-business models on the competitiveness of the business. The investigation was based on the analysis of data obtained from a questionnaire distributed to some 200 SME Construction businesses located throughout the UK. The framework basis being the DTI International Benchmarking Study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual collaboration is emerging as organizations embrace new business processes to take advantage of electronic communication technologies. This paper focuses on virtual collaboration and the application of videoconferencing as the primary medium for collaboration. A combination of questionnaire and a follow up discussion group were utilized. Results were qualitatively analyzed to determine the importance of Social and Human Capital and their influence on perceived interaction qualities, group process satisfaction and previous experience. Along with Social and Human Capital, the inclusion of Technological Capital as a criterion for successful virtual collaboration is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the preparation of technology transition, the contextual and alternative definitions of the usability heuristics of multifaceted role of the best practice methodology of Telecollaboration (TC) business systems that revolve around information and knowledge tangibles give rise to a new measure of System Architecture Independent Quality (SAIQ) metrics. This empirical study considers attributes of usability theory as an engineering problem, and thereby provides a starting point to reformulate the concept of TC from the user perception to embrace the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) initiatives taken in this evolving field. The scope of this paper is to enable the participants of the TC to cope with the successful strategies behind the implication and implementation of the proposed SAIQ metrics through the conceptual model of CeNTIE's (Centre for Networking Technologies for the Information Economy) TC technology transition. This includes detailed observation and analysis through examination of the explanatory power of synergetic use of innovative and value-added TC usability heuristics, through the tradeoffs involved between their alternative and adaptive features for mastering the mysteries of Quality of Experience (QoE) of the users. A critical mass of users is carefully and thoughtfully maintained throughout this study, when integrating other influential areas of complexity, to accompany the proposed measurement and mapping techniques for the pervasive use of the outcome-focused descriptive and prescriptive TC processes. Finally, we discuss on the factors contributing to the early adoption of TC technology transition for the translation of successful survivable cognitive engineering strategies to user acceptance not just to break down the barriers of this emerging paradigm of collaboration, but to assist them with gaining the ever-swifter insights into many reams of TC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]