Sotirios Koussouris

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.

A review of the European Union eParticipation action pilot projects

Purpose – As the society has long ago left the “industrial age” and entered the “information age”, people, enterprises and above all decision makers are constantly trying to get the best out of the opportunities and the technologies offered, for facilitating their life and their work. One of the most active and promising domains nowadays, is eParticipation, which is actively promoted by all stakeholders, as there is a great need of reconnecting citizens with the decision makers and re‐engaging them into the democratic procedures, especially as during the last years this gap is expanding, with the most convincing proof being the huge figure of voter turnout during the latest European elections. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.Design/methodology/approach – A review of the most active and well‐known eParticipation action pilot projects funded in the European Union is presented, alongside with a methodological framework that has been followed for mapping, assessing and evaluating those pr...

Infusing scientific foundations into Enterprise Interoperability

In a turbulent world where technological evolution has surpassed even the most imaginative scenarios predicted a few years ago, interoperability remains an intangible and elusive challenge. Associated with cost, risk and complexity reduction, Enterprise Interoperability can be defined as a capability of two or more enterprises, including all the systems within their boundaries and the external systems that they utilize or are affected by, to cooperate seamlessly, over a sustained period of time to pursue a common objective. During the last decade, substantial advancements at an application level have been made through EU- and national funded research. However, the lack of scientific foundations seems to hinder unlocking its full potential. In this context, the aim of this paper is to investigate the pathway towards establishing a science base and to provide an overview of the main milestones in the fascinating quest that shall eventually shape interoperability as a scientific discipline.

E-Government Services Composition Using Multi-faceted Metadata Classification Structures

The connectivity generated by the Internet is opening new opportunities in service delivery since administrations are forming online alliances in order to deliver integrated value-adding services. However, due to lack of a step-by-step method for identification and further processing of services, the development of such composite e-Government services is usually ad-hoc. In this paper, we demonstrate how a systematic service composition can be accomplished: with the help of the proposed Service Description Worksheet, the e-Government Services can now be classified, searched for and composed into larger groups. This goal-driven approach can be used to understand the needs of different organizations and to depict the various functional characteristics of the cooperative processes in a declarative manner, suitable for prototyping projects in the public sector. Applying this method in the context of the Greek e-Government Services Framework, various services have been analysed, populating the worksheet database and leading to corresponding process models.

Towards Adopting Dynamic Manufacturing Networks for Future Manufacturing: Benefits and Risks of the IMAGINE DMN End-to-End Management Methodology

Exiting the global economic crisis, the manufacturing domain seeks new ways to take a leap forwards, mostly by exploiting the latest advancements in ICT that promise a more productive, cost-effective and sustainable future. Distributed and flexible manufacturing configurations have been around the latest years, however the lack of an agile and responsive management methodology of such structures has hindered them from reaching their full potential. Today, the novel concept of Dynamic Manufacturing Networks stands out as a cutting-edge solution in this quest, carrying a wide set of assets that aim to drive manufacturing organisations into the new global economy. This concept is incarnated through the IMAGINE DMN end-to-end Management Methodology presented in this paper, along with the benefits and risks that the former promises to respectively enhance and mitigate.

Empowering Open and Collaborative Governance

This chapter approaches the complex relationship between eParticipation processes and democratic legitimacy by analysing several strategies for recruiting participants, a specific issue in the design of eParticipation processes with farreaching implications. The central argument of this chapter is that the possibility of strengthening systems of representative democracy through eParticipation initiatives depends on the strategies used to recruit participants into those initiatives. First, a review of the theoretical discussion around strategies for the recruitment of participants and their normative implications for democratic legitimacy is presented. Thereafter, a broad empirical overview of eParticipation projects is carried out, surveying the diffusion of different recruitment strategies in local eConsultations. This is followed by a case study of the European Citizens’ Consultations (ECC). In the chapter’s concluding discussion, lessons are drawn from the ECC case, and a set of questions are formulated that should be considered in the design of eParticipation projects related to the normative implications of different recruitment strategies.

Accelerating Policy Making 2.0: Innovation directions and research perspectives as distilled from four standout cases

Abstract People are lately re-considering the advantages of becoming once again an active part of the society, as they everyday discover new ways of connecting with each other towards common goals. This increasing change of attitude calls for new tools and methods as traditional tools for policy making have proved unable to predict and cope with most of todays pressing and persistent challenges. In this context, it is considered as of pivotal importance to study a set of representative set of modern Policy Making 2.0 best cases, in order to scout towards evidence-based future directions, policy propositions, documented results and conclusions. The purpose of the paper at hand is to provide policy makers, practitioners, as well as other interested stakeholders, with a bouquet of (mostly ICT-related) policy implications and practical recommendations that steam through an evidence based, domain-wide study, aiming at directing them towards more efficient and effective launch, steering and sustaining of Policy Making 2.0 initiatives. Early engagement of stakeholders, openness, user friendliness and agility in the whole procedure constitutes only a high level presentation of the propositions and implications derived as a result of the analysis that follows.

ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling: Visionary Directions and Research Paths

The role of government in the society is undergoing continuous change, accelerated in the recent years due to the widespread adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The legitimacy of governments’ actions is increasingly put into question, and it is recognised that the emergence of new and complex problems requires governments to collaborate with non-governmental actors in addressing societal challenges, for example, related to climate change or the financial crisis, moving into a new era in which the provision of public services is oriented towards the creation of public value and user empowerment. In recent years, we have assisted to a flourishing of user-driven ICT tools addressing public service delivery and administrative processes. But yet, this domain is still very much unchartered, led by bottom-up initiatives, with little consolidation, with mostly small-scale experiments, at the margin of government’s initiatives. In this context, consensus is starting to build around the potential that collaborative technologies have in the field of governance and policy modelling. However, in order for effective citizen empowerment and participation to become mainstream at a greater scale, several challenges will have to be faced, which will require new tools to be developed. The major research questions that come to the forefront concern which new ICT-enabled governance models and methods of monitoring, interaction, collaboration for policymaking and enforcement are emerging and which are the appropriate policy-modelling mechanisms that will effectively re-engage citizens in the decision-making process.

Paving the way for future research in ICT for governance and policy modelling

In light of the contemporary societal challenges and the current technological trends that have revolutionized collaboration and creativity, ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling has recently emerged to achieve a better, participative, evidence-based and timely governance. Bringing together two separate worlds, i.e. the mathematical and complex systems background of Policy Modelling with the service provision, participation and open data aspects in Governance, it has recently gathered significant attention by researchers and practitioners. This paper presents the grand challenges that will inspire research in the domain in the next years, as well as the track from the state of play study, the visionary scenarios building and the gap analysis that has eventually led to their recognition. The specific research challenges target at achieving a collaborative, model-based governance with a strong scientific basis, empowered with data in order to reach collective intelligence, and providing public services as a utility.

Building a local administration services portal for citizens and businesses: service composition, architecture and back-office interoperability issues

Two of the most active research fields in information technology nowadays are Internet Services Portals used by governmental organizations and Interoperability Patterns for achieving the seamless cooperation of heterogeneous existing systems. When referring to e-Government applications in Local Administrations, the above mentioned research fields have to be tackled, as the resulting systems need to be functional, easy to implement and maintain, capable of interconnecting with back-office systems and citizen and employee friendly. This paper shows that the conceptualization, design, implementation and maintenance of Municipality Service Portals can be standardized, following a specific methodology. Piloted in a Greek Municipality with almost 50,000 citizens and 3,000 businesses, the methodology comprises of (a) rapid process modeling with the use of BPMN-aware modeling tools, (b) CCTS-based data modeling (c) stepby-step adaptation of Content Management, Citizen Relationship and Workflow Systems, (d) SoA-enabled interconnections with back-office applications and (e) overall guidance based on Service Composition taxonomies.