Luis Guijarro

Interoperability frameworks and enterprise architectures in e-government initiatives in Europe and the United States

Abstract Public administrations have been very much concerned since the 1980s about the need of avoiding vendor lock-in when procuring themselves with information technology (IT) infrastructure. The boost of e-government that has taken place in recent years has put this concern again in the agenda of public administrations. Interoperability has shown up as a principle in the conception and deployment of the e-government initiatives, and the interoperability frameworks have been the tool for implementing the principle. In this paper, the use of the interoperability frameworks and of the enterprise architectures within the e-government initiatives is surveyed. The scope of the survey is Europe and the United States. As far as the author is aware, all trends in interoperability policy fall within the scope of the survey. The survey is focused on the methodological tools that e-government agencies have devised for achieving the interoperability at the public administrations. The tools are interoperability frameworks and enterprise architectures.

Semantic interoperability in eGovernment initiatives

Interoperability has been identified as a major issue to be addressed by every egovernment initiatives. In order to tackle this issue, the egovernment agencies have developed tools to facilitate the interchange of information between departments when providing public services to citizens and businesses through internet. This paper surveys how the egovernment agencies in Europe and the United States have developed tools such as interoperability frameworks and enterprise architectures. It covers specifically how the semantic technologies and standards have been incorporated into the interoperability frameworks. The incorporation is a sign of maturity, because interoperability is to cover not only technical aspects, but also semantic and, in the end, organisational aspects.

Analysis of the Interoperability Frameworks in e-Government Initiatives

Interoperability has been identified as a major issue to be addressed by all e-government agencies. In the first stage of this awareness, interoperability deals with applications and semantics concepts, which will enable the seamless information flow between organizations. However, it will not be enough for enabling the sort of interoperability required for a true seamless service delivery to citizens and business, which is the vision of the e-government strategies. A second stage in interoperability shows up which deals with the building of an enterprise architecture. In the article the main initiatives in interoperability are presented and the degree of fulfillment of the above two-stage roadmap is evaluated.

Modeling and Characterization of Spectrum White Spaces for Underlay Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) networks are envisaged as the key technology to realize dynamic spectrum access and solving the scarcity of radio spectrum. Having a temporal characterization of the spectrum white spaces in the primary network is a key element for studying and designing radio resource management mechanisms in CR networks. In that sense, most of the studies in the literature rely on an ON-OFF model with exponentially distributed on and off times. The usage of that model, however, is principally based on its analytical tractability. In this paper we propose a versatile Markovian model for the duration of the spectrum white spaces. Our model builds on a simple model of the channel holding time (CHT) in the primary network and then matrix-analytic techniques are applied to derive and analyze the duration of the white spaces. Despite its simplicity, the proposed approach is proven to be able to model very accurately scenarios where the CHT distribution is of a more complex type not amenable to mathematical analysis. Our numerical results show that the duration of the white spaces exhibits a low sensitivity to the distribution of the channel holding time beyond the mean.

Policy and practice in standards selection for e-government interoperability frameworks

Interoperability has been identified as a major issue to be addressed by every e-government agency. An interoperability framework aims to provide the basic standards that every department which is relevant for the e-government strategy implementation should adopt. Criteria for selection and inclusion of standards in an interoperability framework are crucial, since they influence the utility that the framework delivers to the e-government agencies. This paper identifies and compares the policies of the main e-government agencies in the definition of these criteria and it checks the policies against the practice that they exhibit in the actual interoperability frameworks.

Interoperability issues of Shared Infrastructures for E-government

This communication describes the activities carried out by the Shared Infrastructures Working Group of the E-Forum Association and its early results. This group is devoted to study the interoperability issues of e-Government shared infrastructures. Firstly, the initial task of analysis of existing initiatives is described and some concluding remarks are given. Secondly, an Interoperability Framework is proposed as a methodological approach to analyze interoperability issues of e-Government. The paper ends up with some ideas for further work.

Game Theoretical Analysis of Service Provision for the Internet of Things Based on Sensor Virtualization

The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to bring major benefits to a wide range of areas. However, the successful deployment of the IoT calls for the existence of sustainable and well-understood business models. In this paper, we propose and analyze a business model for a likely scenario in the IoT, which is made up of WSNs, service providers and users. The service providers compete against each other in the intermediation between the virtualized WSNs and the users that benefit from enhanced services built on the sensed data. The service providers pay to the WSNs for the data and charge the users for the service. The model is analyzed by applying oligopoly theory and game theory, the conditions for the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium are established, and the equilibrium and the social optimum are obtained. Our results show that the business model is sustainable, provided that the users’ sensitivity to the value-to-price ratio is not negligible and, in this situation, the number of active service providers is upper bounded by a value that depends on the sensitivity and the market size. Furthermore, the operation of such a market is shown to efficiently use the information provided by the WSNs, and, when compared to the social optimum, to produce an increase in users’ and service providers’ surpluses, but a reduction in WSNs’ surplus.

Dynamic spectrum sharing in cognitive radio networks using truthful mechanisms and virtual currency

Abstract In cognitive radio networks, there are scenarios where secondary users (SUs) utilize opportunistically the spectrum originally allocated to primary users (PUs). The spectrum resources available to SUs fluctuates over time due to PUs activity, SUs mobility and competition between SUs. In order to utilize these resources efficiently spectrum sharing techniques need to be implemented. In this paper we present an approach based on game-theoretical mechanism design for dynamic spectrum sharing. Each time a channel is not been used by any PU, it is allocated to SUs by a central spectrum manager based on the valuations of the channel reported by all SUs willing to use it. When an SU detects a free channel, it estimates its capacity according to local information and sends the valuation of it to the spectrum manager. The manager calculates a conflict-free allocation by implementing a truthful mechanism. The SUs have to pay for the allocation an amount which depends on the set of valuations. The objective is not to trade with the spectrum, but to share it according to certain criteria. For this, a virtual currency is defined and therefore monetary payments are not necessary. The spectrum manager records the credit of each SU and redistributes the payments to them after each spectrum allocation. The mechanism restricts the chances of each SU to be granted the channel depending on its credit availability. This credit restriction provides an incentive to SUs to behave as benefit maximizers. If the mechanism is truthful, their best strategy is to communicate the true valuation of the channel to the manager, what makes possible to implement the desired spectrum sharing criteria. We propose and evaluate an implementation of this idea by using two simple mechanisms which are proved to be truthful, and that are tractable and approximately efficient. We show the flexibility of these approach by illustrating how these mechanisms can be modified to achieve different sharing objectives which are trade-offs between efficiency and fairness. We also investigate how the credit restriction and redistribution affects the truthfulness of these mechanisms.

Maximum-Profit Two-Sided Pricing in Service Platforms Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

A business model for Internet-of-Things-based services is proposed whereby a platform serves as an intermediary between human users and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The platform, acting as a monopolist, posts both the price paid by each user and the price paid to each WSN so as to maximize its profits. In this setting, we propose, analyze, and compare two alternative payment schemes for the WSN side. We demonstrate that the two payment schemes are equivalent from every stakeholders point of view. And then we show that there is a user cost ceiling, which depends both on the number of WSNs and the strength of the cross externality that the WSNs creates on the users, below which the take-up is maximum.

Entry, competition and regulation in cognitive radio scenarios: a simple game theory model

Spectrum management based on private commons is argued to be a realistic scenario for cognitive radio deployment within the current mobile market structure. A scenario is proposed where a secondary entrant operator leases spectrum from a primary incumbent operator. The secondary operator innovates incorporating cognitive radio technology, and it competes in quality of service and price against the primary operator in order to provide service to users. We aim to assess which benefit users get from the entry of secondary operators in the market. A game theory-based model for analyzing both the competition between operators and the subscription decision by users is proposed. We conclude that an entrant operator adopting an innovative technology is better off entering the market, and that a regulatory authority should intervene first allowing the entrant operator to enter the market and then setting a maximum amount of spectrum leased. This regulatory intervention is justified in terms of users utility and social welfare.