Chandra S. Amaravadi

Digital repositories for e-government

There is a growing pressure for governments across the world to share information with the public. It is expected that digital libraries, or more appropriately, digital repositories will be a key technology here. Digital repositories need to respond to requests, such as the maximum hours an employee can work. A classification scheme based on DOLCE is proposed and illustrated with examples.

AEI: a knowledge-based approach to integrated office systems

Abstract:Although various attempts have been made in the past to introduce office systems and office models, they have been limited in one or several ways: they have not been based on integrated views; no models were developed or the models were artificial; they have been limited in scope; they used restrictive representation schemes; they were not intelligent; they were not user-friendly. Our research attempts to address these issues with: an integrated view of the office; a model tied to the nature of office activity; integration across various office domains; and a knowledge base. Intelligence is supplied from the interface and from the planner, as well as from the domain knowledge. An important component of the domain knowledge is the functional structure which captures activity relationships with a uniform representation scheme. Users can access explanations about functions of the office and can add comments on them. The realization of these concepts in a prototype system is discussed.

The world and business computing in 2051

Abstract This paper projects the future of information technology within the context of the business and social environment in the mid 21st century. Some time in the next two decades we will enter our fourth industrial era, fueled by evolution in power, genetics, space exploration and information technologies. Unlike other industrial revolutions, this will be attended by widespread consolidations in industries as diverse as utility, retail, pharmaceuticals as well as the government. The trade wing of the UN, the United Nations Trade Organization (UNTO) is established to deal with global issues. The UNTO passes a number of resolutions including # 1/10 which deals with a uniform system of personal identification for all individuals. Due to free trade facilitated by electronic bureaucracies and global transportation grids, GNP growth rates triple. However, the consolidations will lead to the disappearance of clerical, administrative and management employees, leaving only the top management and highly skilled professionals. These changes will result in companies outsourcing all their routine processing to transaction and data centres. Employees will work from well equipped IT centres. The internet is in its third incarnation and is supported by a comprehensive web intelligence to answer all possible questions. Other technological changes include Terahertz computers, Personal identification Devices (PID), AI chips and hierarchical databases with relational interfaces. The cornucopia resulting from progress will lead to a more enlightened society. However, the stress of change will result in an increased degree of philosophical inquiry.

Knowledge management for administrative knowledge

Abstract: Administrative knowledge or office knowledge is the knowledge used in conjunction with the support operations in an organization. Systems managing this knowledge are referred to as extended office systems (EOSs). EOSs will be used to support knowledge exchanges in organizations. The types of knowledge handled by EOSs are illustrated and their characteristics are highlighted. Based on these characteristics, a formalism is proposed, which utilizes structural and descriptive links to achieve an extensible, open-ended representation. A prototype system using the representation and incorporating approximately 200 items of knowledge has been developed and can answer questions about a software engineering company.

A Big Data Approach to Assessing the Impact of Social Norms Reporting One’s Exercise to a Social Media Audience

Assessing the impact of an individual’s social network on an individual is difficult without administering a large number of surveys. Online social networks with built-in data collection circumvent this problem. The data collected by an exercise-focused social media website and mobile app allowed the estimation of the effect of both the behavior of the social network and the size of that network on the behavior of individual service users (31,200 users reporting 67,699 exercise events with a potential range of 87 weeks). The results are consistent with the theory of normative social behavior in that the amount of exercise reported by the user’s social network as well as the size of the user’s on-site social network affected the user’s exercise behavior over time.

The Adequacy of Office Models

Abstract An office model is an abstraction of the office with the mechanism for representing it. Models have two aspects: the domain being modeled, and the representation mechanisms used to express them. In their evolution, several generations of office models can be distinguished. They can be classified as forms/data/information, procedures/activities/tasks, functions/policies/goals, agents/roles, communications, decisions/problems/exceptions, applications, and finally integrative approaches. Several representative models have been reviewed. The measure of completeness of a model is provided by the concepts of domain adequacy and representational adequacy. Domain adequacy captures the extent to which a model is faithful to reality while representational adequacy is concerned with architectural completeness. A model is considered representationally adequate if it provides features for all three levels of the three schema architectures in database theory. The adequacy of office models is evaluated along these dimensions with the help of several tables. The research also references the NIST models for software environments. The survey identifies the need for integrated models, the need for models to provide better conceptual and external level features, and the need for empirical studies of offices. Further progress in office modeling requires more detailed definitions of the conceptual level for all domains, supported by field research. ACM Categories and Subject Descriptors: D.2.1 [Software Engineering]: Requirements/Specifications; E. I. [Data Structures];H.2.1 [Database Management]: Logical Design–data models; schema and subschema; H.4.1 [Office Automation]; 1.2.1 [Artificial Intelligence]: Applications and Expert Systems; 1.2.4 [Artificial Intelligence]: Knowledge Representation Formalisms and Methods; General Terms: Office models, office procedures. Additional Key Words and Phrases: Conceptual office models, evaluation of office models, review of office models, classification of office models, evolution of office models, integrated office models, directions for office models.

An Evolutionary Distributed Agent System: A Framework and Application to Manufacturing Design and Control

Information systems are subject to change from the environment. If systems are to be used beyond their initial purpose as conceived during the requirements definition stage, they must be designed to evolve. One approach to evolutionary complexity is to make systems dynamically configurable so that they can exhibit new behavior in the face of environmental change. In this paper, the authors propose a distributed agent approach to information systems development in order to overcome the inherent inflexibility of the agent systems developed with a traditional systems development methodology. They apply the framework to the development of alternative agent systems for manufacturing process design and scheduling problems. Through a simulation experiment, the authors demonstrate that the fit between the information system and its environment is one of the most important design considerations for the development of the evolutionary distributed agent system.