Delegation, Arbitration and High-Level Service Discovery as Key Elements of a Software Infrastructure for Pervasive Computing

The dream of pervasive computing is slowly becoming a reality. A number of projects around the world are constantly contributing ideas and solutions that are bound to change the way we interact with our environments and with one another. An essential component of the future is a software infrastructure that is capable of supporting interactions on scales ranging from a single physical space to intercontinental collaborations. Such infrastructure must help applications adapt to very diverse environments and must protect people's privacy and respect their personal preferences. In this paper we indicate a number of limitations present in the software infrastructures proposed so far (including our previous work). We then describe the framework for building an infrastructure that satisfies the abovementioned criteria. This framework hinges on the concepts of delegation, arbitration and high-level service discovery. Components of our own implementation of such an infrastructure are presented.

Public Service Broadcasting, Creative Industries and Innovation Infrastructure: The Case of ABC's Pool

The proliferation of media services enabled by digital technologies poses a serious challenge to public service broadcasting rationales based on media scarcity. Looking to the past and future, we articulate an important role that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) might play in the digital age. We argue that historically the ABC has acted beyond its institutional broadcasting remit to facilitate cultural development and, drawing on the example of Pool (an online community of creative practitioners established and maintained by the ABC), point to a key role it might play in fostering network innovation in what are now conceptualised as the creative industries.

Service quality and reliability assessment of mobile communication infrastructure

The service quality of any sector has two major aspects namely technical and functional. Technical quality can be attained by maintaining technical specification as decided by the organization. Functional quality refers to the manner which service is delivered to customer which can be assessed by the customer feed backs. A field survey was conducted based on the management tool SERVQUAL, by designing 28 constructs under 7 dimensions of service quality. Stratified sampling techniques were used to get 336 valid responses and the gap scores of expectations and perceptions are analyzed using statistical techniques to identify the weakest dimension. To assess the technical aspects of availability six months live outage data of base transceiver were collected. The statistical and exploratory techniques were used to model the network performance. The failure patterns have been modeled in competing risk models and probability distribution of service outage and restorations were parameterized. Since the availability of network is a function of the reliability and maintainability of the network elements, any service provider who wishes to keep up their service level agreements on availability should be aware of the variability of these elements and its effects on interactions. The availability variations were studied by designing a discrete time event simulation model with probabilistic input parameters. The probabilistic distribution parameters arrived from live data analysis was used to design experiments to define the availability domain of the network under consideration. The availability domain can be used as a reference for planning and implementing maintenance activities. A new metric is proposed which incorporates a consistency index along with key service parameters that can be used to compare the performance of different service providers. The developed tool can be used for reliability analysis of mobile communication systems and assumes greater significance in the wake of mobile portability facility. It is also possible to have a relative measure of the effectiveness of different service providers.

A design of e-procurement infrastructure model for public service sector

Procurement is one of major business operations in public service sector. The advance of information and communication technology (ICT) pushes this business operation to increase its efficiency and foster collaborations between the organization and its suppliers. This leads to a shift from the traditional procurement transactions to an e-procurement paradigm. Such change impacts on business process, information management and decision making. E-procurement involves various stakeholders who engage in activities based on different social and cultural practices. Therefore, a design of e-procurement system may involve complex situations analysis. This paper describes an approach of using the problem articulation method to support such analysis. This approach is applied to a case study from UAE.

Essential air service : changes in subsidy levels, air carrier costs, and passenger traffic : report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives /

"B-284056"--P. 3.

Public information in the national information infrastructure : report to the Regulatory Information Service Center, General Services Administration, and to the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget /

Mode of access: Internet.

IT service desk process improvement : a narrative style case study

This paper is a detailed case narrative on how a Faculty of a leading Australian University conducted a rigorous process improvement project, applying fundamental Business Process Management (BPM) concepts. The key goal was to increase the efficiency of the faculty’s service desk. The decrease of available funds due to reducing student numbers and the ever increasing costs associated with service desk prompted this project. The outcomes of the project presented a set of recommendations which leads to organizational innovation having information technology as an enabler for change. The target audience includes general BPM practitioners or academics who are interested in BPM related case studies, and specific organisations who might be interested in conducting BPM within their service desk processes.

Learning, language and leadership : conduits to dynamic public service networks

Networks are having a profound impact on the way society is organised at the local, national and international level. Networks are not ‘business as usual’. The defining feature of networks and a key indicator for their success is the strength and quality of the interactions between members. This relational power of networks provides the mechanism to bring together previously dispersed and even competitive entities into a collective venture. Such an operating context demands the ability to work in a more horizontal, relational manner. In addition a social infrastructure must be formed that will support and encourage efforts to become more collaborative. This paper seeks to understand how network members come to know about working in networks, how they work on their relationships and create new meanings about the nature of their linked work. In doing so, it proposes that learning, language and leadership, herein defined as the ‘3Ls’ represent critical mediating aspects for networks.

Managing infrastructure transitions : a complex adaptive systems perspective

Engineering assets such as roads, rail, bridges and other forms of public works are vital to the effective functioning of societies {Herder, 2006 #128}. Proficient provision of this physical infrastructure is therefore one of the key activities of government {Lædre, 2006 #123}. In order to ensure engineering assets are procured and maintained on behalf of citizens, government needs to devise the appropriate policy and institutional architecture for this purpose. The changing institutional arrangements around the procurement of engineering assets are the focus of this paper. The paper describes and analyses the transition to new, more collaborative forms of procurement arrangements which are becoming increasingly prevalent in Australia and other OECD countries. Such fundamental shifts from competitive to more collaborative approaches to project governance can be viewed as a major transition in procurement system arrangements. In many ways such changes mirror the shift from New Public Management, with its emphasis on the use of market mechanisms to achieve efficiencies {Hood, 1991 #166}, towards more collaborative approaches to service delivery, such as those under network governance arrangements {Keast, 2007 #925}. However, just as traditional forms of procurement in a market context resulted in unexpected outcomes for industry, such as a fragmented industry afflicted by chronic litigation {Dubois, 2002 #9}, the change to more collaborative forms of procurement is unlikely to be a panacea to the problems of procurement, and may well also have unintended consequences. This paper argues that perspectives from complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory can contribute to the theory and practice of managing system transitions. In particular the concept of emergence provides a key theoretical construct to understand the aggregate effect that individual project governance arrangements can have upon the structure of specific industries, which in turn impact individual projects. Emergence is understood here as the macro structure that emerges out of the interaction of agents in the system {Holland, 1998 #100; Tang, 2006 #51}.

Final Report : learning system for life prediction of infrastructure

The project has further developed two programs for the industry partners related to service life prediction and salt deposition. The program for Queensland Department of Main Roads which predicts salt deposition on different bridge structures at any point in Queensland has been further refined by looking at more variables. It was found that the height of the bridge significantly affects the salt deposition levels only when very close to the coast. However the effect of natural cleaning of salt by rainfall was incorporated into the program. The user interface allows selection of a location in Queensland, followed by a bridge component. The program then predicts the annual salt deposition rate and rates the likely severity of the environment. The service life prediction program for the Queensland Department of Public Works has been expanded to include 10 common building components, in a variety of environments. Data mining procedures have been used to develop the program and increase the usefulness of the application. A Query Based Learning System (QBLS) has been developed which is based on a data-centric model with extensions to provide support for user interaction. The program is based on number of sources of information about the service life of building components. These include the Delphi survey, the CSIRO Holistic model and a school survey. During the project, the Holistic model was modified for each building component and databases generated for the locations of all Queensland schools. Experiments were carried out to verify and provide parameters for the modelling. These included instrumentation of a downpipe, measurements on pH and chloride levels in leaf litter, EIS measurements and chromate leaching from Colorbond materials and dose tests to measure corrosion rates of new materials. A further database was also generated for inclusion in the program through a large school survey. Over 30 schools in a range of environments from tropical coastal to temperate inland were visited and the condition of the building components rated on a scale of 0-5. The data was analysed and used to calculate an average service life for each component/material combination in the environments, where sufficient examples were available.

Challenges in residual service life assessment for refurbishment

A need for an efficient life care management of building portfolio is becoming increasingly due to increase in aging building infrastructure globally. Appropriate structural engineering practices along with facility management can assist in optimising the remaining life cycle costs for existing public building portfolio. A more precise decision to either demolish, refurbish, do nothing or rebuilt option for any typical building under investigation is needed. In order to achieve this, the status of health of the building needs to be assessed considering several aspects including economic and supply-demand considerations. An investment decision for a refurbishment project competing with other capital works and/or refurbishment projects can be supported by emerging methodology residual service life assessment. This paper discusses challenges in refurbishment projects of public buildings and with a view towards development of residual service life assessment methodology