Eric Afful-Dadzie

Tracking progress of African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a new assessment methodology for the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method (FCEM) and the Delphi technique. The proposed approach by its design simplifies the review processes and also quantifies the outcome of the assessment result for easier interpretation and benchmarking among member countries. The proposed hybrid method demonstrates how the subjective APRM thematic areas and their objectives can be efficiently tracked country by country while addressing the key identified challenges. Design/methodology/approach – Using a numerical example, a demonstration of how the APRM assessment could be carried is shown using the FCEM and the Delphi method. The APRMs own thematic areas are used as the evaluation factors and the weights are assigned using Delphi technique. A novel remark set is constructed to linguistically describe the performance of a country against each or all of the thematic areas. Then in line with ...

Open Government Data in Africa: A preference elicitation analysis of media practitioners

Open Government Data (OGD) continues to receive considerable traction around the world. In particular, there have been a growing number of OGD establishments in the developed world, sparking expectations of similar trends in growing democracies. To understand the readiness of OGD stakeholders in Africa especially the media, this paper (1) reviews current infrastructure at OGD web portals in Africa and (2) conducts a preference elicitation analysis among media practitioners in 5 out of the 7 OGD country centers in Africa regarding desired structure of OGD in developing countries. The analysis gives a view of the relative importance media practitioners ascribe to a selected set of OGD attributes in anticipation of a more functional OGD in their respective countries. Using conjoint analysis, the result indicates that media practitioners put premium on ‘metadata’ and ‘data format’ respectively in order of importance. Results from the review also reveal that features of current OGD web portals in Africa are not consistent with the desired preferences of users. Overall, the study provides a general insight into media expectations of OGD in Africa, and also serves as a foundational knowledge for authorities and practitioners to manage expectations of the media in connection with OGD in Africa.

Selecting start-up businesses in a public Venture capital financing using Fuzzy PROMETHEE

Abstract Public Venture Capital financing often fail rigorous scrutiny in their selection of high-potential start-ups as compared to Private Venture capital. In some developing countries, decision making on final selection for financial support of early stage but high potential Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) are often ‘clouded’ by several factors including consideration of political party affiliations. This results in low capital recovery rate and a mischance in choosing deserving start-ups. This paper applies Fuzzy Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluation (Fuzzy PROMETHEE) method to evaluate and select early-stage but high potential start-up businesses in a government high priority area such as in Information and Communications Technology. A numerical example with pre-defined linguistic terms parameterized by triangular fuzzy numbers is provided. The framework could serve as a useful tool for decision makers in scrutinizing selection of start-ups in other government priority areas.

A decision making model for selecting start-up businesses in a government venture capital scheme

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose an intuitionistic fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) multi-criteria decision making method for the selection of start-up businesses in a government venture capital (GVC) scheme. Most GVC funded start-ups fail or underperform compared to those funded by private VCs due to a number of reasons including lack of transparency and unfairness in the selection process. By its design, the proposed method is able to increase transparency and reduce the influence of bias in GVC start-up selection processes. The proposed method also models uncertainty in the selection criteria using fuzzy set theory that mirrors the natural human decision-making process. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed method first presents a set of criteria relevant to the selection of early stage but high-potential start-ups in a GVC financing scheme. These criteria are then analyzed using the TOPSIS method in an intuitionistic fuzzy environment....

A TOPSIS Extension Framework for Re-Conceptualizing Sustainability Measurement.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a sustainability measurement and scoring system for assessing the efforts of organizations at meeting sustainability targets. Using technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) as the basic framework, the proposed method incorporates all three sustainability dimensions – economic, environmental and social – to establish a threshold below which an organization is considered to have failed a sustainability test. In Addition, an introduction of a time-independent threshold enables a clearer comparison of performance of organizations over time. The proposed method includes plots for visualizing the sustainability performance of organizations under review. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed method first assigns target values to a hypothetical organization. TOPSIS is then used to generate composite scores in which the score of the hypothetical organization is set as the threshold below which organizations are deemed to have fai...

Fuzzy VIKOR approach: Evaluating quality of internet health information

Proliferation of health related information on the Internet is both welcoming and a concern. For instance when solicited information goes wrong, it tends to have dire consequences on the general public. Assessing the quality of Internet health information is often difficult but a rational and systematic approach can be useful in evaluating the quality of the services they render to the public. The paper proposes a fuzzy VIKOR framework for evaluating and ranking Internet health information providers under a fuzzy environment where uncertainties and subjectivities are catered for with linguistic variables. Linguistic variables with triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN) are used to evaluate weights of the evaluation criteria and the rankings of each Internet health information provider. A numerical example is demonstrated using HIV/AIDS online information providers in the most adult prevalent country in the world. The proposed method is compared with TOPSIS and can be applied in evaluating the quality of other specific Internet health information providers.

MEASURING PROGRESS OF THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS: A FUZZY COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION APPROACH

The United Nations’ target date to achieve its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to free people from extreme poverty and multiple deprivations is 2015. As the date approaches, several attempts have been made to evaluate the performance of the set goals, targets, and indicators. Although the methodology used to measure the performance of member countries has been questioned by many, the fiercest criticism so far has been the apparent lack of data with which to measure progress. The subjectivity of the MDGs further increases the complexity of the evaluation systems, but an effective measurability of each MDG is key to the overall success. This study applies a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method (FCEM) in evaluating the performance of individual member countries with regard to the MDGs. The result shows how, in the absence of data, the FCEM can be used to evaluate performance of member countries involved in the MDG project.

User Perception of Security on Social Networking SitesUsing Fuzzy Logic

Human nature often frowns on engaging or interacting with near strangers. However, on online social media networks, this is largely ignored. There is an open interaction among both known users and loosely-connected users, and as a result, the normal social barriers against interacting with strangers are lowered. This rather careless openness has resulted in the rampant increase in cybercrime and identity theft worldwide, awaiting a potential privacy disaster in the near future. Since users raise concerns about the privacy and the security of social media sites, there is the need to evaluate the perception that users have of the security on social media sites. This paper presents a technique for evaluating user perception of level of security on social networking sites using fuzzy logic. The inputs to the system were fuzzy sets representing linguistic variables for information security evaluation goals of confidentiality, integrity and availability. The IF-THEN rules were constructed using the Mamdani fuzzy reasoning technique and the defuzzification technique was done using the centroid technique. The implementation of the design was carried out using the MATLAB Fuzzy logic tool box. Using three of the popular online social networking sites namely, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn the results show a system that can effectively be employed to evaluate user perception of Information Security.

Comparative State-of-the-Art Survey of Classical Fuzzy Set and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets in Multi-Criteria Decision Making

Fuzzy sets extend deterministic multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to deal with uncertainty and imprecision in decision making. Over the years, many generalizations have been proposed to the classical Fuzzy sets to deal with different kinds of imprecise and subjective data. One such generalization is Atanassov’s Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set (IFS) which is becoming increasingly popular in MCDM research. Together, the two notions of uncertainty modeling: ‘classical fuzzy set’ (Zadeh) and intuitionistic fuzzy set (Atanassov) have been utilized in many real-world MCDM applications spanning diverse disciplines. As IFS grows in popularity by the day, this paper conducts a literature survey to (1) compare the trend of publications of ‘classical fuzzy’ set theory and its generalized form, the intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) as used in MCDM methods from 2000 to 2015; (2) classify their contributions into three novel tracks of applications, hybrid, and extended approaches; (3) determine which MCDM method is the most used together with the two forms of fuzzy modeling; and (4) report on other measures such as leading authors and their country affiliations, yearly scholarly contributions, and the subject areas where most of the two fuzzy notions in MCDM approaches are applied. Finally, the study presents trends and directions as far as the applications of classical fuzzy set and intuitionistic fuzzy sets in MCDM are concerned.

Liberation of public data: Exploring central themes in open government data and freedom of information research

Abstract This paper conducts a comparative literature survey of Open Government Data (OGD) and Freedom of Information (FOI), with a view to tracking the central themes in the two civil society campaigns. With seeming similarities and a growing popularity in research, the major themes framing research on the two movements have not clearly emerged. Topic modelling, text mining and document analysis methods are used to extract the themes as well as key named entities. The topics are subsequently labeled and with expert guidance, their semantic meaning are provided. The results indicate that the major theme in FOI research borders on issues relating to disclosure, publishing, access and cost of requests . On the other hand, themes in OGD research have largely centered on technology and related concepts. The approach also helped in determining key similarities and differences in the two campaigns as reported in research.