Dimitrios Panopoulos

Citizens Collaboration and Co-Creation in Public Service Delivery: The COCKPIT Project

Governments are striving to deliver more efficient and effective public services in order to achieve better public service quality, with reduced waiting times, improved cost effectiveness, higher productivity and more transparency. Its an issue of doing things in new ways that requires fundamental change in the provision of public services in the future and a complete new approach for Governments to work and interact with their citizens. Currently, Societies witness more than ever that Web 2.0 and social media in particular, constitute the emerging, if not already established, mass collaboration and cooperation platform between citizens and administrations, as the latter have started to realise the benefits of such applications. The COCKPIT project builds on these developments and based on a highly synergetic approach aims to define a new Governance model for the next generation public service delivery, by combining various research areas.

Using internet GIS technology for early warning, response and controlling the quality of the public health sector

Recent EU and Greek Government legislation highlights the need for the modernisation of the public health management system and the improvement of the overall health of EU citizens. In addition, the effusion of epidemics even in developed countries makes the need for the enhancement of public health services imperative. In order to best confront the above-described challenges, the National Technical University of Athens, in cooperation with the Greek Ministry of Health and Welfare and the European Commission (EC), designed and developed an integrated public health information network, named GEPIMI (Integrated Geographical System for EPIdemiological and other Medical Information), in the framework of a three-year pilot project. This pilot project, funded by Greek Ministry of Health and Welfare and the EC supported the Programme INTERREG II to establish an advanced and integrated web-based information system that can process and move information in real time, allowing public health authorities to monitor events at hundreds or thousands of public health facilities at once. The system is established among hospitals, primary healthcare authorities and health agents in Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Fyrom, and Turkey. The project aims at demonstrating the best practices, prospects, applications and high potential of Telematics Healthcare Networks in Europe, with a view to promoting cooperation and interconnection between European communities in the field of Telematics Healthcare Applications. The GEPIMI System, implemented via an innovative web based system, constitutes a replication of a highly effective mechanism. It incorporates state-of-the-art technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (G.I.S.), web based databases, GPS, and Smart Card Technology and supports a variety of health-related web applications including early warning and response of epidemics, remote management of medical records, seamless healthcare coverage, comprehensive statistical analysis of data, decision-making procedures, inter-communication between international scientific fora and other.

Benefits and Risks in Dynamic Manufacturing Networks

More and more manufacturing enterprises realize that, by operating as single enterprises in traditional supply chains, they cannot cope with the challenges of the modern demanding environment, and that they need to adopt new and innovative strategies in order to remain competitive. The establishment of Dynamic Manufacturing Networks (DMNs) brings together various innovations, such as just-in-time delivery, flexible manufacturing, organizational streamlining, and total quality, and emerges therefore as an advanced reaction of collaborating enterprises to the constantly changing business environment and its characteristics. This paper aims to expose the benefits and risks involved in such networks, and create thereby the foundation for elaborating further on the key factors that could be utilized for attracting organizations and enterprises into embracing the vision of DMNs, supporting thus not only industrial organizations and practitioners interested in implementing such solutions, but also scholars and researchers who study these new forms of business.

Dynamic Manufacturing Networks Monitoring and Governance

“Monitoring and Governance” is the most important phase of every Dynamic Manufacturing Network (DMN) lifecycle and aims at managing and controlling in a continuous way the operations of the network, resulting either in “small and corrective” actions towards the network’s operation optimisation or to “larger and structural” changes, which are fed back to the initial phases of the network’s lifecycle, for reconstructing the network towards better results. The study at hand aims to review current approaches for controlling and monitoring plant operation or traditional supply chains, and to examine thereby their maturity and adequacy for the management and monitoring of dynamic manufacturing networks, leading to useful conclusions with regard to the requirements and challenges encountered in this particular phase of the DMN lifecycle.

Solving production scheduling problems using advanced model checking tools

The main scope of this paper is the implementation of a method for production scheduling, using advanced model checking tools. This method makes use of timed automata to model complex production scheduling problems such as the job-shop and the open-shop scheduling problems. By modelling scheduling problems using timed automata, feasible schedules correspond to paths in the automata, while finding the optimum schedule corresponds to finding the shortest path in an automaton. Several algorithms and heuristics have been proposed for finding the shortest paths in timed automata, which are mainly based on the implementation of graph algorithms that search the transition graph. In our work, an advanced model design and checking tool, called UPPAAL, has been used to implement and test the above method on a number of different models and to show the effectiveness of such an approach in terms of finding optimal or near to optimal, schedules in polynomial time, even for large-scale problems.

A methodology for recording, analysing and prioritising public services

The dawn of the new decade has proven to be particularly challenging, as technological developments and societal changes have affected each other in an unpredicted manner, due to the worldwide financial crisis. On the one hand, this situation has propelled changes in the whole socioeconomic system and on the other, it called for more effective, yet less expensive, technological developments. On the basis of these groundings, a new research domain has risen to the surface, called policy modelling, which aims to reengage citizens and decision makers towards a more open and collaborative governance schema. This paper builds on the knowledge springing out of an EC co-funded project in this domain, which aims to establish a collaborative environment for reengineering public services and presents a methodology for recording, analysing and prioritising service scenarios in an effort to minimise the required effort and maximise the impact of reforming the public sector.

Assessing benefits and impact creation in IST research projects

This paper describes novel methodologies for assessing benefits and impact creation in IST related research projects. The paper first includes a Verification & Validation (V&V) method developed for evaluating of Future Internet software components implementation in a multi-sectorial environment. The proposed approach is based on best of breed V&V methodologies characterized by a structured assessment of the software quality at different levels and a reduced set of business indicators able to evaluate the business impact of the integrated solution. All of these are deployed via a configurable V&V Package based on a web interface. Second it includes a methodology for maximising post project impact creating through activity monitoring. The method used is based on impact waves and success tree approaches. Examples are given of practical implementation in the EU FP7, FI-PPP Project FITMAN. At the end of the paper the practical experiences and lessons learned from our work are also described.

Reasoning on the Risks of Dynamic Manufacturing Networks through Cognitive Mapping

Dynamic Manufacturing Networks (DMNs) are increasingly deemed to be the evolution of typical supply chains in the manufacturing sector and a promising solution in the light of the enterprises’ effort to remain flexible and competitive in today’s rapid changing and demanding environment. The decision of joining a DMN however is quite important for any enterprise, since beside significant benefits it brings about changes in the way it operates, bearing thus also considerable risks. This paper attempts to cultivate an understanding around the risks of DMN participation, utilizing the causal characteristics of Cognitive Maps (CMs) for identifying the causes of unsatisfactory or unaccepted DMN operation outcomes. It further elaborates on how DMN risks are inherently dealt with through the IMAGINE framework that guarantees business alignment and interoperability.

A Multicriteria Methodology for the Selection and Prioritisation of Public Services

The pressing need to deploy the information and communications technology in the public sector effectively and efficiently along with the complexity of the decision making process have thrust research towards the development of public services prioritization models. The purpose of this paper is to outline a general multicriteria decision support method in order to identify the services that, if transformed to electronic ones, would act as ambassadors of the new era. Various technological, social, political and economic criteria have been taken under consideration. The proposed model is based on the Analytic Network Process (ANP), which takes into account both tangible and intangible criteria with interdependencies and feedback among them. A real case scenario concerning a Public Services selection process in Greece has been used to validate the presented model.

MEDNET: Telemedicine via Satellite Combining Improved Access to Health-Care Services with Enhanced Social Cohesion in Rural Peru

Peru, officially classified as a middle-income country, has benefited from sustained economic growth in recent years. However, the benefits have not been seen by the vast majority of the population, particularly Perus rural population. Virtually all of the nations rural health-care centres are cut off from the rest of the country, so access to care for most people is not only difficult but also costly. MEDNET attempts to redress this issue by developing a medical health network with the help of the collaboration medical application based on TeleConsult & @HOME medical database for vital signs. The expected benefits include improved support for medics in the field, reduction of patient referrals, reduction in number of emergency interventions and improved times for medical diagnosis. An important caveat is the emphasis on exploiting the proposed infrastructure for education and social enterprise initiatives. The project has the full support of regional political and health authorities and, importantly, full local community support.