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Public sector inter-organisational information sharing and interoperability is an area of increasing concern and intense investment for practice and an area of increasing scholarship. This paper focuses on one particular set of public sector organisations (emergency services) and illuminates the key technological and organisational issues they face concerning information sharing and interoperability. The particular contexts in which these are studied are ones where decisions are non-trivial and made in high-velocity environments. In these conditions the problems and significance of inter-organisational information sharing and interoperability are accentuated. We analyse data gathered from two studies: the first focused on ‘first responders’ (police, fire and ambulance services) in the United Kingdom. The second, a follow on study, with emergency service managers and interoperability project managers in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Using activity theory as a conceptual framework we describe the informational problems critical emergency responders face in their initial response to, and management of, an incident. We argue that rather than focusing on interoperability as a primarily technological issue it should be managed as an organisational and informational issue. Second, we argue that rather than designing for anomalous situations we should design systems, which will function during both anomalous and routine situations. Third, we argue for focus on harmonisation of policies, procedures and working practices.

Social web content such as blogs, videos, and other user-generated content present a vast source of rich “digital-traces” of individuals' experiences. The use of digital traces to provide insight into human behavior remains underdeveloped. Recently, ontological approaches have been exploited for tagging and linking digital traces, with progress made in ontology models for well-defined domains. However, the process of conceptualization for ill-defined domains remains challenging, requiring interdisciplinary efforts to understand the main aspects and capture them in a computer processable form. The primary contribution of this article is a theory-driven approach to ontology development that supports semantic augmentation of digital traces. Specifically, we argue that (a) activity theory can be used to develop more insightful conceptual models of ill-defined activities, which (b) can be used to inform the development of an ontology, and (c) that this ontology can be used to guide the semantic augmentation of digital traces for making sense of phenomena. A case study of interpersonal communication is chosen to illustrate the applicability of the proposed multidisciplinary approach. The benefits of the approach are illustrated through an example application, demonstrating how it may be used to assemble and make sense of digital traces.

The paper presents the results of the investigation of the implementation of mobile technologies in an under researched area: the police. Five key themes of investigation with relation to mobile information and communications technologies were identified in the research: changes in work procedures, changes in the organisational capability, changes in relationships, effectiveness of equipment and effectiveness of infrastructure. These themes provide a framework for analysis of the police context, and one which could perhaps be extended to other contexts in the public safety / service arena.

Working under the guidance of your tutors, you will: examine detailed examples of the main types of assignments introduced in Unit 4 which you will meet on your course; work through the assignments to develop your knowledge and skills.

In this unit, you will: find out the sources of help and information; be given an idea of how to use the help that is available to you.

In this unit, you will: find out about BTEC and BTEC qualifications; identify what is distinctive about BTEC Business and Finance programmes, and the reasons for taking them rather than other programmes.