Sotiris Koussouris

Challenges and opportunities in renovating public sector information by enabling linked data and analytics

Linked Data has become the current W3C recommended approach for publishing data on the World Wide Web as it is sharable, extensible, and easily re-usable. An ecosystem of linked data hubs in the Public Sector has the potential to offer significant benefits to its consumers (other public offices and ministries, as well as researchers, citizens and SMEs), such as increased accessibility and re-use value of their data through the use of web-scale identifiers and easy interlinking with datasets of other public data providers. The power and flexibility of the schema-defying Linked Data, however, is counterbalanced by inborn factors that diminish the potential for cost-effective and efficient adoption by the Public Sector. The paper analyzes these challenges in view of the current state-of-the-art in linked data technologies and proposes a technical framework that aims to hide the underlying complexity of linked data while maintaining and promoting the interlinking capabilities enabled by the Linked Data Paradigm. The paper presents the innovations behind our proposed solutions as well as their advantages, especially for the non-expert users.

CloudTeams: Bridging the Gap Between Developers and Customers During Software Development Processes☆

Abstract The main challenge addressed by the EU-funded project CloudTeams is bridging the communication and collaboration gap between software developers and end users during the whole software development process in order to develop better accepted software. CloudTeams solves the problem by bringing together software developers and end users into one platform, thus providing a seamless environment where interaction with customers will feel natural and will validate the software product. It integrates popular software development tools and services and mashes them up with user participation practices. A sustainable community of end users provides feedback to the development teams at any stage of the software development cycle, from idea generation to beta testing. Through the introduction of novel collaboration and engagement methodologies, CloudTeams facilitates the development process and delivers Software-as-a-Service offerings, which are tested and verified with customers. In this paper we present the CloudTeams approach and the results of the first round of face-to-face interviews with stakeholders of the two user groups on the underlying challenges related to CloudTeams.

Current and Future Challenges of Software Engineering for Services and Applications

ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and, in particular, software is more and more pervasive and it cannot be considered anymore as a minor element of a complex systems. In domains like cloud, big data, IoT (Internet of Things), CPS (Cyber-Physical Systems) it is the core element. We need to consolidate the software engineering discipline, which, despite the impressive achievements in the area of software technology, is probably one of the youngest scientific and technological disciplines with about 60 years of history. This paper summarizes the challenges that the Software Engineering for Services and Applications (SE4SA) cluster is considering as relevant.

User Involvement in Software Development Processes

Abstract Costs of software development and deployment are decreasing due to numerous open source projects and novel Cloud-based services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), but competition increases due to lowering entry barriers. The need to bring developers closer to their customer becomes vital for success, especially involving users into the very early stages of software development. This allows detecting flaws of conceptual and design nature, minimize unnecessary development costs, and warrant relevance for customers. This paper presents the CloudTeams methodology and platform that aim to bridge this gap, based on an existing groupware system supporting the notion of collaborative software development.