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The world at present is facing a number of real challenges in the face of persistent economic crisis, local conflicts and huge waves of refugees. All of the above are affecting secure access to and completion of peoples voting rights. The relevant technological solutions appear to have matured and have successfully responded to rigorous testing. The need for digital access to election events is probably higher than ever in digital age. The question that remains to be answered is whether all this enough to inspire people to trust the systems and participate amass in e-voting particularly in areas where the political climate might be volatile. Palestinian have been scattered across the world since the late 1940s. This forced diaspora creates particular challenges as the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to gain international recognition as an emerging state. The PA is experiencing a huge difficulty in enabling its citizens to elect their representative. According to PA officials many countries who are hosting Palestinians as refugees don't accept the facilitation of elections for representatives to the PA government. Using e-voting systems could offer a solution to overcoming this problem and the PA has been evaluating such systems since 2011. The inspiration for this paper is taken from the results of an extensive survey conducted by the authors to evaluate the response amongst Palestinians around the world to the Palestinian Authority's decision to fully embrace e-Voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media is increasingly being used in electronic government. Furthermore, recent research has shown that social media can facilitate transparency and democratization of government processes. Stakeholder and citizen participation is one of the major requirements for successful implementation of electronic governments. Social media applications can support governments in encouraging and empowering their citizens and stakeholders in successful e-Government delivery. Social media such as social networking services, blogs, microblogs and wikis, have proven their capability in attracting and serving a wide range of users. Many researchers have studied how social media applications can be used to serve different positive purposes, such as offering business opportunities or providing e-services. On the other hand, many researchers have studied the negative impacts of social media usage in organisations, such as their impact on productivity and cross-cultural communication, and the fact that they giving rise to new types of security, trust and privacy issues. However, governments are expanding their adoption of social media applications to fulfil various promises, such as user participation and user convenience, efficiency, transparency and improved trust. Therefore, identifying new benefits and addressing the current and emerging risks in using social media applications should be a prime concern of practitioners and researchers in the electronic government field. This paper discusses the goals of electronic governments that can be served by social media; it also explores how such media can transform governance systems. Furthermore, this work highlights the potential risks and benefits derived from using social media to reach different stakeholders and communicate with users of electronic government services. To this effect, the authors propose a risk assessment approach that would maximize the benefits of utilizing social media in e-Government delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper aims at understanding the potential impact of cloud service usage in Nigeria. Currently, cloud computing is gaining a high rise in its acceptability among business organisations in Nigeria due to its affordability and its importance in competitive advantage and operational benefits. Many researchers have predicted that cloud computing will breach the gap between developing and developed countries. Small and Medium Scale enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria are making frantic efforts not to be left out of the benefits associated with the use of the technology. In recent time, SMEs play a critical role in the economic development of the country with about 70% of the working population employed by them and 50% of the GDP generated by SMEs. In summary, this research paper is based on focus group discussion and analysis on the adoption, usage and challenges of cloud services in SMEs in Nigeria as well as questionnaire distribution to SMEs which were selected based on International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC). Similarly, it looks at the current state of cloud usage in SMEs in Nigeria delving into the possible barriers and challenges being faced by cloud computing adoption by SMEs such as infrastructure, government policies, security, trust of users, reliability, payment, service providers etc. Using Nigeria as a case study, the findings of this research will further be used to design a framework for aiding government of developing countries to evaluate and control cloud services for SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at proposing an organizational framework for implementing eGovernment in developing countries. Furthermore a management process to meet the modernization goals of government based on a proposal by Heeks (2006), in his work on managing eGovernment systems, is specified. The challenges that affect the implementation and management of eGovernment systems are critically analysed and the authors expect practitioners and authorities to find the results useful in the planning and implementation of new eGovernment systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London Plan is the London mayor's strategic plan. Policy 4A puts forward the “Tackling climate change” scenario. Many research studies have analyzed the environmental and social aspects of the policy, but lack of an extensive financial assessment is identifiable. The Influence Diagrams in this paper concern financial assessment of Policy 4A.2 of the London Plan. Its nature is complex, uncertain and requires prediction. Probabilistic Networks are novel tools for policy Knowledge Representation. This paper outlines Influence diagrams construction for London Plan case. It also analyses the variables, functions and the relationships in between and gives an overview of ID evaluation. In addition an introduction of efficiency analysis of the ID is given. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the majority of countries in the globe having embraced new technologies and having connections to the internet and the world wide web, more and more governments nowadays (be it national or local) look at engaging these technologies in an effort to improve the way they offer services to citizens. Some do so in order to improve the channels through which they communicate and interact with their citizens, while others look forward to improving the efficiency of delivery of services and consequently introduce savings in the utilization of resources that could be diverted into creating further value adding initiatives. Over the latter half of the first decade of the 21st century, many developing countries have been attempting to imitate the western models and introduce eGovernment services in their portfolio, expecting savings, efficiency and a drive for modernization across their states. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of initiating a programme of delivering enhanced government services through a multitude of channels that embrace electronic communication media, in a developing country. In particular the paper discusses the case of the regional government of Kurdistan in the federated state of Iraq. Through an extensive questionnaire survey the views of all representative groups of stakeholders are captured and this first phase of results is critically analyzed against potential drawbacks and constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a framework for developing electronic government applications from the early stages of the process. In previous work the authors had reviewed four popular staged-development models for electronic government, had highlighted their shortcomings and had proposed a five stage model had for developing electronic government. This framework defines activities required to be performed in each stage. It also addresses some of the limitations and the shortcomings of previous models. Some key considerations in developing the proposed electronic government development framework are digital divide, trust, usability, accessibility as well as education and training. In this work the framework is being evaluated against a best practice case of developing electronic government. This is used to assess the framework's capability in: addressing and maintaining strengths, encouraging possible opportunities, identifying and addressing weaknesses and threats. The findings show that most of the issues arising from the case study have been addressed by the proposed framework but there are some issues which need further exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Serious" games aimed at professional training or teaching students in further and higher education have recently seen a surge in demand. With trainees and students expressing continuous disapproval of traditional teaching methods who fail to attract and / or maintain the interest of the attendees, educators are looking at games to offer a solution. Over the past decade there has been a considerable improvement in the way role-playing games have embraced education at higher levels. Despite major breakthroughs and achievements there is still the feeling the expectations have not been fully addressed and there is much room for improvement. Educators and students look at the way players / students engage with the game and how this fulfils the needs and meets the ever rising expectations of gamers as these are fuelled by experience with entertainment games. Achieving the educational objectives as well as maintaining the entertainment value through advanced playability of the game is the primary concern of the developers. Seeking ways of engaging the user in the development process and ensuring that the game undergoes rigorous review sessions and extensive testing throughout the development cycle is a way forward. Trying to do this within a restricted budget and time for development and without compromising the educational content and value is the main challenge. Test-Driven Development is a methodology currently employed in many disciplines of computing, including the games industry with notable levels of success. Exploring its use and effects on developing games for higher education is the key theme of this paper. The author reviews two educational game development projects that have been implemented under his direction and management. He discusses the use of TDD and story-test-driven development in the more recent of the two projects and highlights the effects of the approaches, with projections as to future developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]