Aivars Niedritis

Performance Measurement Framework with Formal Indicator Definitions

Definition of appropriate measures of organization’s performance should be conducted in a systematic way. In this paper the performance measurement and indicators are discussed not only from the side of management models, but also from the point of view of measurement theories to find out appropriate definitions. In our work we propose a formal specification of indicators. The principles of indicator reformulation from free form indicators to formal requirements are formulated and applied in several examples from performance measures database. The formally defined indicators could be used in the proposed performance measurement framework that covers five-step indicator lifecycle.

Query-Driven Method for Improvement of Data Warehouse Conceptual Model

We propose a query-driven method that elicits the information requirements from existing queries on data sources and their usage statistics. Our method presumes that the queries against the source database reflect the analysis needs of users. We use this method to recommend changes to the existing data warehouse schemata. In our method, we take advantage of the schema versioning approach to reflect all changes that occur in the analysed process, and we analyse the activity of users in the source system, rather than changes in physical data structure, to infer the necessary improvements to the data warehouse schema.

The Adaptation of a Web Information System: A Perspective of Organizations

We provide a different view on the problem of Web Information System (WIS) adaptation, looking from perspective of organizations that are interested in an adapted Web Information System for their needs if a unified system to support similar business processes is used. We propose an adaptation architecture for WIS. Two levels of adaptation are introduced—coarse grained adaptation for the organization level and fine grained adaptation for the user level. The architecture supports also the situation, when users can work with many instances of the system adapted for different organizations, which are integrated into one instance for a particular user.

Architecture Enabling Adaptation of Data Integration Processes for a Research Information System

Abstract Today, many efforts have been made to implement information systems for supporting research evaluation activities. To produce a good framework for research evaluation, the selection of appropriate measures is important. Quality aspects of the systems’ implementation should also not be overlooked. Incomplete or faulty data should not be used and metric computation formulas should be discussed and valid. Correctly integrated data from different information sources provide a complete picture of the scientific activity of an institution. Knowledge from the data integration field can be adapted in research information management. In this paper, we propose a research information system for bibliometric indicator analysis that is incorporated into the adaptive integration architecture based on ideas from the data warehousing framework for change support. A data model of the integrated dataset is also presented. This paper also provides a change management solution as a part of the data integration framework to keep the data integration process up to date. This framework is applied for the implementation of a publication data integration system for excellence-based research analysis at the University of Latvia.

Publication Data Integration as a Tool for Excellence-Based Research Analysis at the University of Latvia

The evaluation of research results can be carried out with different purposes aligned with strategic goals of an institution, for example, to decide upon distribution of research funding or to recruit or promote employees of an institution involved in research. Whereas quantitative measures such as number of scientific papers or number of scientific staff are commonly used for such evaluation, the strategy of the institution can be set to achieve ambitious scientific goals. Therefore, a question arises as to how more quality oriented aspects of the research outcomes should be measured. To supply an appropriate dataset for evaluation of both types of metrics, a suitable framework should be provided, that ensures that neither incomplete, nor faulty data are used, that metric computation formulas are valid and the computed metrics are interpreted correctly. To provide such a framework with the best possible features, data from various available sources should be integrated to achieve an overall view on the scientific activity of an institution along with solving data quality issues. The paper presents a publication data integration system for excellence-based research analysis at the University of Latvia. The system integrates data available at the existing information systems at the university with data obtained from external sources. The paper discusses data integration flows and data integration problems including data quality issues. A data model of the integrated dataset is also presented. Based on this data model and integrated data, examples of quality oriented metrics and analysis results of them are provided.

Adaptation of the Presentation in a Multi-tenant Web Information System

We introduced a Web Information System (WIS) adaptation architecture that is based on Software as a Service (SaaS) ideas. It includes adaptation components, which allow adaptation in two levels: the organizations and the users get their own adapted instance of the WIS. The user interface in case of multi-tenancy should be dynamically adapted according to the particular organization and user. The same application component that contains a set of fields, controls and other interface elements should be varied according to the usage context. In this paper we provide a method for adapting the user interface within the proposed adaptation architecture that uses a set of rules describing the sequence of allowed actions generated as a response to the performed user’s activities.

The influence of the Information System on administrative processes at the University of Latvia

First we should mention legislation related to the higher education (HE) in the Republic of Latvia. The key laws regulating HE are as follows: ‘Law on higher education establishments’ passed in 1995 (revised in 2000), and ‘Frame Law on Education’ passed in 1998. Regulation of HE is referred to also in the ‘Law on Professional Education’ passed in 1999 and other laws, for instance, the law ‘On Scientific Performance’. Apart from the laws mentioned above, there are also a lot of secondary acts regulating the HE in Latvia. However, the above mentioned acts are in many ways contradictory.