Francesca Spagnoli

MAXICULTURE: Assessing the Impact of EU Projects in the Digital Cultural Heritage Domain

This paper describes the MAXICULTURE methodology for the socio-economic impact assessment of the DigiCult domain and projects funded by the European Commission, including the development process and the implementation trajectory for the MAXICULTURE lifecycle. With the term DigiCult domain we refer to a specific research field of the European Commission in which projects investigate how ICT instruments and future development can be applied to the Cultural Heritage sector for improving access to digital cultural resources and the related user experience, in order to also increase the innovation, the growth of the domain and the interlink with Culture and Creativity industries. The MAXICULTURE methodology is presented here in its second revision while the final version will be made available at the end of the MAXICULTURE project after being tested with DigiCult projects. This document incorporates the feedback received from projects.

Legal Issues and Requirements for Cloud Computing in e-Science

Cloud technologies have increasingly gained momentum in recent years, primarily due to their promise of enhanced performance, such as elasticity, scalability, risk reduction and the easy deployment of end-user services. Despite the great interest and success achieved by the Cloud model, there are still some legal issues raised both in the scientific sector and the information society as a whole. The objective of this paper is to provide the needed starting points for a reflection aimed at the creation of a new governance and legislative model on data protection, privacy and security to develop an efficient strategy on Cloud Computing, notably for government and e-Science, promoting innovation and interoperability in Europe.

The Impact of e-Invoicing on Businesses Eco-Systems: Evidences from Italian Supply Chains and Suggestions for a Research Agenda

In 2007 the European Commission presented the Action Programme for Reducing Administrative Burdens in the European Union, with the aim to work with Member States in order to cut 25 % of administrative burdens on businesses by 2012. In this framework, a set of interesting actions can be summarised into the so-called dematerialization, intended as the substitution of the physical business documentation with digital files and archives that are able to provide better performances in terms of efficiency, as well as the same legal requisites of the documents in the paper format. The aim of this chapter is to introduce the approaches adopted from some Italian Supply Chains and provide some hints for further research developments.

The Paradigm Shift of Living Labs in Service Co-creation for Smart Cities: SynchroniCity Validation

In the literature there are many definitions of co-creation and several disciplines are involved within this approach, especially co-design, participatory design and open innovation. Co-creation has been linked with many tools and platforms, without a coherent framework and specific guiding principles to follow, especially within the smart cities’ context for developing new services. For this reason, it is required to clearly define which are the methods and digital tools that cities should pursue to fully exploit the potential of these platforms in terms of enhancing global collaborations. Starting from the review of the literature on participatory design, co-creation and open innovation, the paper aims to discuss the role of Living Labs in supporting service design for smart cities, by providing an effective approach for involving stakeholders in real life experimentation through digital platforms. The evaluation has taken into account the current use of co-creation approaches by eight smart cities involved in the SynchroniCity project, and considered as the current best practices in Europe. The analysis focused on timing, stakeholders, activities for involving citizens, rewarding systems, tools and metrics used to investigate the success of their implementation. Ten methods and twelve tools have been selected as the one best supporting smart cities in service design and their real application has been investigated through an online questionnaire and in depth interviews to the cities. As a result of the study, Living Lab has resulted as the most used and effective method for the smart cities in the EU for service design.

Creative Industries and Big Data: A Business Model for Service Innovation

Creative Industries have largely contributed to employment, GDP growth and social cohesion, even during recent economic crises. Despite their relevance, there is a lack for monitoring the impacts, especially for new technologies involved into their business. The paper aims to appraise it when specifically related to the use of Big Data. It evaluates the considerable economic benefit on creative business performance linked to exploiting vast new flows of information. A multi-criteria methodology for assessing these effects on Creative Industries, and a model for implementing business performance through collaborative and virtual value chains are presented. The model shows positive spillovers resulting from the collaboration among Digital Creative Industries usually in the fields of innovation, technology and intellectual property benefitting from Big Data applications, distinguishing a macro from a microeconomic level of effectiveness, since transforming data into captured value for the firms, despite their size and volume capacity, increases business performance.

A Methodology for the Impact Assessment of a g-Cloud Strategy for the Italian Ministry of the Economic Development

The paper has the objective to provide a methodology for the socio-economic, technological and environmental impact assessment of a Cloud Computing strategy for the Italian Ministry of the Economic Development and more specific at the service of the Department for Communications. In order to develop a detailed and tailored model for implementing the g-Cloud strategy, we analyse the current services and functions performed by the Department for Communications of the Italian Ministry of the Economic Development, showing the current ways of managing information flows within and outside the administration. Starting from the available background analysis on the current state of the art of the adoption of g-Cloud services in Europe and USA, we provide assumptions and hypotheses for the definition of the g-Cloud Strategy. We then compare the requirements provided by the General Directorates of the Department for Communications of the Italian Ministry of the Economic Development in order to validate the hypotheses previously defined. By reviewing the approaches for the impact assessment available from literature review, we define the best effective methodology for assessing the potential impacts of g-Cloud strategies. The methodology considers four areas of impact: economic, social, legal and environmental impacts. For each area of impact we identify specific indicators for the assessment of efficiency and effectiveness of Cloud Computing initiatives in the Italian PA that have been validated by a set of Cloud Computing experts.

Collective Awareness Platform for Sustainability and Social Innovation (CAPS)

The paper describes the Collective Awareness Platform for Sustainability and Social Innovation domain (CAPS) by using an “inside” perspective, as it is based on the research work of a CAPS project entitled IA4SI—Impact Assessment for Social Innovation. The paper first defines Digital Social Innovation as the technological enabled version of Social Innovation and describes CAPS projects consequently. Then, it presents the framework of the quanti-qualitative methodology developed by the IASI project for analysing the impact of CAPS projects. It considers four main areas of impact: social, economic, political and environmental. Each aspect is then articulated in several sub-categories required in order to map a multi-dimensional and internally diversified domain such as CAPS.

The Economic and Legal Perspectives of Cloud Computing in Italian Public Administration and a Roadmap to the Adoption of g-Cloud in Italy

Cloud computing has reached a high level of adoption worldwide. In Italy, the adoption of Cloud Computing for the Public Administration is still far from the European and American best practices due to infrastructural, economic, legal and organisational culture reasons. The Italian Public Administration is facing enormous challenges in order to build a long term strategy capable of delivering the benefits required from the government and citizens, evaluating and reducing the potential regulatory, economic and environmental risks. The new emerging paradigm of the Public Administration, that many authors called as “g-Cloud”, should be implemented and managed through a common and coherent strategy. Starting from a comparative analysis of the g-Cloud state of the art in Europe and in America, the objective of the paper is to provide a roadmap showing the future steps needed for the adoption of g-Cloud in Italy, by analyzing the main economic and legal perspectives of Cloud Computing for the Italian Government and Public Administration.