Alois Paulin

Informating Public Governance: Towards a Basis for a Digital Ecosystem

This treatise explores the possibilities and constraints to informate public governance. Informating as used in this context refers to the ability to technically control / steer the core provision of public governance by means of information technology, rather than steering public governance through political policies. Thus informating governance is about technology-enabled direct control of public service provision, in contrast to electronic or digital governance, which is about technology for government agencies. Well-established disciplinary theories from political sciences, sociology, and jurisprudence on public governance are explored to establish a foundation for understanding governance informatability, and a shared semantic context is established, to align the complex concepts of governance provision, and governance informatization. Based on thus established trans-disciplinary foundation, it is argued that a natural evolution of dedicated technological ecosystems can take place.

Technological Ecosystems' Role in Preventing Neo-Feudalism in Smart-City Informatization

The paper argues that the Smart City idea lacks grounding in shared base technology and instead yields black-box artefacts. The reliance on black-box systems in public governance is considered a great hazard since it may result in sinecures, stifles democratic control of the public domain, and results in neo-feudal monopolies. Base technology (such as the WWW technology stack) on the other hand is use-neutral, implementation-neutral, open, and teach-/learn-able, thus enabling the emergence of cascading technological ecosystems, which can drive large-scale economic and societal progress. The concepts of a primary, secondary, and tertiary technological ecosystem are introduced to delineate the role and importance of base technology. The paper calls for stronger focus on Smart City foundational research and a change in culture from quick fixes to solutions that would survive generations.

Wicked problem or clear mission?: understanding governance informatability

In this paper we search for and analyze the atomic components of governance systems and discuss whether or not they can be informated, i.e. tangibly represented within the digital realm of information systems. We draw a framework based on the theories of Downs, Jellinek, and Hohfeld and find that the therein identified atomic components cannot be informated directly, but only indirectly, due to the inherent complexity of governance. We outline pending research questions to be addressed in the future.

Determinants of next generation e-Health network and architecture specifications

This paper summarizes the determinants for future e-Health network and IT infrastructures in the health care environment. The paper bases on observations conducted as part of a larger study at a university hospital in Munich, and summarizes ongoing discussions, key determinants from relevant whire papers, and challenges of the domain. The objective of the paper is to provide a broad overview over the implications of the e-Health domain to provide inputs in ongoing discussion on 5G characteristics.

Dynamic fine-grained access control in e-Health using: The secure SQL server system as an enabler of the future Internet

This paper describes the use of the Secure SQL Server system (SecSQL) - a system for dynamic fine-grained access control, in the context of e-Health. The system was used in two heterogeneous use-cases of a European project, namely: to govern drugs along the supply chain from the manufacturer to the consumer (to fight counterfeit drugs, and to recall drugs), and to govern the movement of things in the operating theatre. This way, the feasibility of SecSQL to be used as a system to dynamically govern fine-grained access control to Hippocratic data in the e-Health context has been demonstrated.

e-Gov Theory and the Role of Design Science in Transforming Public Governance

This paper aims to contribute to understanding design challenges and opportunities in public governance, and as such contribute to the debate on e-government theory. The paper discusses the role of design science in radical innovation in the domain of public governance, from perspectives of both relevant political, as well as technical innovation. To this end, it elaborates on and puts into context the concepts at stake, namely design science (method of designing novel artefacts), technology, and radical innovation (form of innovation that enables transformation).

Data Traffic Forecast in Health 4.0

This chapter discusses the expected implications of Health 4.0 on hospital and general healthcare system data traffic. The interactive nature of Health 4.0 introduces an unprecedented complexity of stakeholder relations related to the access, storage, transmission, and governance of data in the domain of healthcare and beyond: data is made available through governed channels to healthcare-providing stakeholders, to researchers, for purposes of personalized care provision, for reasons of public interest, and for the use by the data owner itself through smart devices, etc. This chapter describes the status quo of data traffic in a modern German hospital, outlines the ongoing and future trends towards informated healthcare provision, digitalization and virtualization of care and Personalized Medicine (Health 4.0), and based on these foundations makes an informed estimation of the future data traffic characteristics.

Civicracy: Establishing a Competent and Responsible Council of Representatives Based on Liquid Democracy

This paper describes Civicracy, an experimental instantiation of a system for enabling collaborative decision-making through liquid democracy. Civicracy was established as a research initiative in 2012 at the Vienna University of Technology, where a prototype was instantiated and a model tested under laboratory conditions. A real-world experiment was planned, however failed to come to life due to a lack of support by potential target environments. Compared with other liquid democracy models like Zhupa, or LiquidFeedback, Civicracy constrains the liquidity of vote delegation through a dampening algorithm to increase stability of representation, and focusses on the liquid-democratic constitution of a council of representatives, rather than policy-making or general decision-making, respectively.

Smart Cities Governance Informatability?: Let's First Understand the Atoms

In this paper we search for and analyze the atomic components of general governance systems and discuss whether or not they can be informated, i.e. tangibly represented within the digital realm of information systems. We draw a framework based on the theories of Downs, Jellinek, and Hohfeld and find that the therein identified atomic components cannot be informated directly, but only indirectly, due to the inherent complexity of governance. We outline pending research questions to be addressed in the future.