Rob Peters

Measuring e-government impact: existing practices and shortcomings

Public administrations of all over the world invest an enormous amount of resources in e-government. How the success of e-government can be measured is often not clear. E-government involves many aspects of public administration ranging from introducing new technology to business process (re-)engineering. The measurement of the effectiveness of e-government is a complicated endeavor.In this paper current practices of e-government measurement are evaluated. A number of limitations of current measurement instruments are identified. Measurement focuses predominantly on the front (primarily counting the number of services offered) and not on the back-office processes. Interpretation of measures is difficult as all existing measurement instruments lack a framework depicting the relationships between the indicators and the use of resources. The different measures may fit the aim of the owners of the e-governmental services, however, due to conflicting aims and priorities little agreement exists on a uniform set of measures, needed for comparison of e-government development. Traditional methods of measuring e-government impact and resource usage fall short of the richness of data required for the effective evaluation of e-government strategies.

The SYBAR system: Integrated recording and display of video, EMG, and force plate data

A new system—called SYBAR—is introduced, that employs digital video for registration of the movements of a patient while simultaneously recording electromyogram signals of relevant muscles and ground reaction forces (for the lower extremities in gait studies). All information is stored in a multimedia record, which can be viewed by the clinician with a simple user interface. This setup allows an integrated and more detailed view of the movement of the patient and related information (i.e., muscle physiology). It is used by clinicians to assess the causes of movement disorders in their patients. This paper describes the SYBAR system and focuses on the employed methods of data synchronization for both the time and the spatial domains. It is concluded that, although SYBAR was developed for clinical gait studies, the technology can be applied in all situations in which the relation between physiological signals and human or animal behavior is studied.

The Legal Atlas : Map-Based Navigation and Accessibility of Legal Knowledge Sources

For many reasons citizens, businesses and civil servants need access to regulations. The traditional approaches to provide access to these regulations are not satisfactory to these users, which have to cope with vast amounts of often interfering regulation. Normal questions like “where can I do this kind of activity” or “is this activity allowed here” are hard to answer in traditional web-based services environments. There are many attempts to create one-stop-shop-front ends to eGovernment, but these are seldom build from the perspective of the user. The Legal Atlas© approach offers an innovative approach, an approach that already has shown to be beneficiary to its users.

Using a Base Registry Key in Disaster Information Management: A Dutch Case Study on Linked Data

This paper describes the process of using the Dutch Base Registration Identification number (BAG) as a primary key to link various sorts of information about a particular built-up object. This greatly increases the quality and effectiveness of the common operational picture. Consequently, the paper investigates the usefulness and affordability of Linked Data (a method of publishing structured data so that it can be interlinked). Several practical applications are considered and evaluated. The primary conclusion is that the BAG Base address registration greatly enhances the possibilities for safety workers to gain a common insight about particular built-up objects. This pertains to the “cold” risk-analyses and preparatory work phases, as well as in the “warm” incident and disaster management phases. It is in the combination of these two phases where the profit is maximized: when attempting to assess the consequences of the disaster management processes during and after the incident, relevant data about the particular object is now much easier than before, and with much better quality. This is already turning out to be very profitable for the fire brigade workers, the police officers, the ambulance drivers, as well as the municipal officers.

Using Icons as a Means for Semantic Interoperability in Emergency Management: The Case of Cross-Border Moor Fires and Schiphol Airport

The understanding of terms and maps is considered a vital part of emergency management by its practitioners. This paper describes a solution chosen by the emergency management information officers of the Twente and Kennemerland Dutch regional authorities to bridge the gap of understanding between first responder officers of different agencies. After having implemented a National emergency management system with a strong tendency to standardize protocols and tooling the designers involved realized that one cannot superimpose a single symbology for everyone involved. A need for a more flexible harmonization with partners like colleagues from cross the border and the IATA governed Schiphol Airport was necessary. To achieve flexibility and understanding at the same time a method for on-the-fly translation of icons was developed. The technology that powers the translation is the application of SKOS semantic web trippels. The paper describes some of the challenges that occurred when different icon sets based on different standardization regimes were analyzed.