Implementação de software livre na administração pública: um estudo de múltiplos casos no Estado do Rio Grande do Norte

New technologies appear each moment and its use can result in countless benefits for that they directly use and for all the society as well. In this direction, the State also can use the technologies of the information and communication to improve the level of rendering of services to the citizens, to give more quality of life to the society and to optimize the public expense, centering it in the main necessities. For this, it has many research on politics of Electronic Government (e-Gov) and its main effect for the citizen and the society as a whole. This research studies the concept of Electronic Government and wishes to understand the process of implementation of Free Softwares in the agencies of the Direct Administration in the Rio Grande do Norte. Moreover, it deepens the analysis to identify if its implantation results in reduction of cost for the state treasury and intends to identify the Free Software participation in the Administration and the bases of the politics of Electronic Government in this State. Through qualitative interviews with technologies coordinators and managers in 3 State Secretaries it could be raised the ways that come being trod for the Government in order to endow the State with technological capacity. It was perceived that the Rio Grande do Norte still is an immature State in relation to practical of electronic government (e-Gov) and with Free Softwares, where few agencies have factual and viable initiatives in this area. It still lacks of a strategical definition of the paper of Technology and more investments in infrastructure of staff and equipment. One also observed advances as the creation of the normative agency, the CETIC (State Advice of Technology of the Information and Communication), the Managing Plan of Technology that provide a necessary diagnosis with the situation how much Technology in the State and considered diverse goals for the area, the accomplishment of a course of after-graduation for managers of Technology and the training in BrOffice (OppenOffice) for 1120 public servers

On precise three-dimensional environment modeling via UAV-based photogrammetric systems

Abstract : Images acquired from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can provide data with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution for three-dimensional (3D) modeling. Solutions developed for this purpose are mainly operating based on photogrammetry concepts, namely UAV-Photogrammetry Systems (UAV-PS). Such systems are used in applications where both geospatial and visual information of the environment is required. These applications include, but are not limited to, natural resource management such as precision agriculture, military and police-related services such as traffic-law enforcement, precision engineering such as infrastructure inspection, and health services such as epidemic emergency management. UAV-photogrammetry systems can be differentiated based on their spatial characteristics in terms of accuracy and resolution. That is some applications, such as precision engineering, require high-resolution and high-accuracy information of the environment (e.g. 3D modeling with less than one centimeter accuracy and resolution). In other applications, lower levels of accuracy might be sufficient, (e.g. wildlife management needing few decimeters of resolution). However, even in those applications, the specific characteristics of UAV-PSs should be well considered in the steps of both system development and application in order to yield satisfying results. In this regard, this thesis presents a comprehensive review of the applications of unmanned aerial imagery, where the objective was to determine the challenges that remote-sensing applications of UAV systems currently face. This review also allowed recognizing the specific characteristics and requirements of UAV-PSs, which are mostly ignored or not thoroughly assessed in recent studies. Accordingly, the focus of the first part of this thesis is on exploring the methodological and experimental aspects of implementing a UAV-PS. The developed system was extensively evaluated for precise modeling of an open-pit gravel mine and performing volumetric-change measurements. This application was selected for two main reasons. Firstly, this case study provided a challenging environment for 3D modeling, in terms of scale changes, terrain relief variations as well as structure and texture diversities. Secondly, open-pit-mine monitoring demands high levels of accuracy, which justifies our efforts to improve the developed UAV-PS to its maximum capacities. The hardware of the system consisted of an electric-powered helicopter, a high-resolution digital camera, and an inertial navigation system. The software of the system included the in-house programs specifically designed for camera calibration, platform calibration, system integration, onboard data acquisition, flight planning and ground control point (GCP) detection. The detailed features of the system are discussed in the thesis, and solutions are proposed in order to enhance the system and its photogrammetric outputs. The accuracy of the results was evaluated under various mapping conditions, including direct georeferencing and indirect georeferencing with different numbers, distributions and types of ground control points. Additionally, the effects of imaging configuration and network stability on modeling accuracy were assessed. The second part of this thesis concentrates on improving the techniques of sparse and dense reconstruction. The proposed solutions are alternatives to traditional aerial photogrammetry techniques, properly adapted to specific characteristics of unmanned, low-altitude imagery. Firstly, a method was developed for robust sparse matching and epipolar-geometry estimation. The main achievement of this method was its capacity to handle a very high percentage of outliers (errors among corresponding points) with remarkable computational efficiency (compared to the state-of-the-art techniques). Secondly, a block bundle adjustment (BBA) strategy was proposed based on the integration of intrinsic camera calibration parameters as pseudo-observations to Gauss-Helmert model. The principal advantage of this strategy was controlling the adverse effect of unstable imaging networks and noisy image observations on the accuracy of self-calibration. The sparse implementation of this strategy was also performed, which allowed its application to data sets containing a lot of tie points. Finally, the concepts of intrinsic curves were revisited for dense stereo matching. The proposed technique could achieve a high level of accuracy and efficiency by searching only through a small fraction of the whole disparity search space as well as internally handling occlusions and matching ambiguities. These photogrammetric solutions were extensively tested using synthetic data, close-range images and the images acquired from the gravel-pit mine. Achieving absolute 3D mapping accuracy of 11±7 mm illustrated the success of this system for high-precision modeling of the environment.

ONTOLOGIAS DE DOMÍNIO PARA CONVERSÃO DE CONHECIMENTO TÁCITO EM EXPLÍCITO NA MODELAGEM DE REQUISITOS DE SOFTWARE: APLICAÇÃO EM UM PROJETO DE DATA WAREHOUSE PARA A INDÚSTRIA MÉDICA FARMACÊUTICA

A pesquisa tem o objetivo de contribuir para os estudos relacionados ao desenvolvimento de software, mais especificamente à fase de levantamento de requisitos da Engenharia de Software, ao esclarecer como um método não muito popular, a construção de Ontologias de Domínio, pode ajudar na definição de requisitos de qualidade, que consequentemente contribuem para o sucesso de projetos de implementação de sistemas de informação.

PROPOSTA DE UM ARCABOUÇO CONCEITUAL PARA A INTELIGÊNCIA ANALÍTICA NA ENGENHARIA DE SOFTWARE

As pesquisas e as práticas em inteligência analítica na Engenharia de Software têm crescido nas últimas décadas. As informações contidas em um repositório de software podem auxiliar engenheiros de software em suas atividades durante todas as fases do desenvolvimento de software. O uso da inteligência analítica está ajudando os profissionais da Engenharia de Software a obterem informações relevantes do repositório de software, direcionando-os para melhores tomadas de decisões. Por se tratar de um bem intangível, pode ser difícil compreender as informações geradas pelo software. Este trabalho realizou um mapeamento sistemático da literatura sobre inteligência analítica na Engenharia de Software, o que propiciou a elaboração de um arcabouço conceitual para utilização da inteligência analítica capaz de auxiliar nas atividades da Engenharia de Software. Com a finalidade de validar este arcabouço conceitual, foi construído um protótipo de uma aplicação que analisou dados de um software livre. Tal protótipo foi validado e comentado por um grupo focal formado por desenvolvedores e gestores de projetos de software de uma grande empresa da área de Tecnologia da Informação. Concluiu-se que a inteligência analítica é fortemente utilizada durante a fase de manutenção e vem crescendo sua utilização na área de Gestão e na Prática Profissional. Constatou-se que os commits podem ser bons indicadores da evolução de software e que a ferramenta desenvolvida neste trabalho permite compreender o que está sendo alterado no sistema e por que a alteração ocorreu.

Image classification accuracy from LANDSAT data for tropical rain forest in Sumatra: An evaluation of ERDAS imagine software

Abstract not available

Strategic Management of Resources for International Business Operations in Small Consulting Firms - People, Processes and Tools in Managing International operations

Research on strategic management of resources for small consulting firms which are international or planning to operate internationally is scarce or not existing at all. It is however important to start generating the theories that will support managers in their decision making and planning. This thesis investigates how do small management consulting firms manage their internal and external resources while operating in international markets. Throughout the study, aspects related to internal and external resources management as well as management strategies in these firms have been examined in relations to firm’s internationalisation activities. A qualitative analysis was carried out whereby four small consulting firms in Export Management Consulting, Integration Services Consulting-, Software Development Consulting- and Business Solutions Consulting companies were interviewed. In order to generate the holistic understanding of the study, the thesis writer selected Value Enhanced Collaborative Working (VECW) model as an analysis framework. The model focuses on people, processes and tools as key elements that small consulting firms consider when thinking about managing their international operations. The findings of the thesis reveal that, internal and external resources in the interviewed consulting firms are viewed similarly, but managed differently depending on the nature and size of the firm. Firm’s management strategies concentrate on the adequate utilisation of the employees' motivation and experiences, effective stakeholders' management, various administrative evaluation processes and tools, the ability to realise useful networks, constant improvement through employee trainings, employees and customers’ feedbacks as well as enhanced freedom in order to support employees’ creativity. Further research to examine functional administrative tools and tools that small consulting firms could use to assess their resource capabilities when planning to become international would benefit the smaller businesses in terms of resources management and certainty in planning.

COLLABORATIVE TESTING ACROSS SHARED SOFTWARE COMPONENTS

Large component-based systems are often built from many of the same components. As individual component-based software systems are developed, tested and maintained, these shared components are repeatedly manipulated. As a result there are often significant overlaps and synergies across and among the different test efforts of different component-based systems. However, in practice, testers of different systems rarely collaborate, taking a test-all-by-yourself approach. As a result, redundant effort is spent testing common components, and important information that could be used to improve testing quality is lost. The goal of this research is to demonstrate that, if done properly, testers of shared software components can save effort by avoiding redundant work, and can improve the test effectiveness for each component as well as for each component-based software system by using information obtained when testing across multiple components. To achieve this goal I have developed collaborative testing techniques and tools for developers and testers of component-based systems with shared components, applied the techniques to subject systems, and evaluated the cost and effectiveness of applying the techniques. The dissertation research is organized in three parts. First, I investigated current testing practices for component-based software systems to find the testing overlap and synergy we conjectured exists. Second, I designed and implemented infrastructure and related tools to facilitate communication and data sharing between testers. Third, I designed two testing processes to implement different collaborative testing algorithms and applied them to large actively developed software systems. This dissertation has shown the benefits of collaborative testing across component developers who share their components. With collaborative testing, researchers can design algorithms and tools to support collaboration processes, achieve better efficiency in testing configurations, and discover inter-component compatibility faults within a minimal time window after they are introduced.

KE & Science Europe briefing paper: Funding Research Data Management and related infrastructures

Responsible Research Data Management (RDM) is a pillar of quality research. In practice good RDM requires the support of a well-functioning Research Data Infrastructure (RDI). One of the challenges the research community is facing is how to fund the management of research data and the required infrastructure. Knowledge Exchange and Science Europe have both defined activities to explore how RDM/RDI are, or can be, funded. Independently they each planned to survey users and providers of data services and on becoming aware of the similar objectives and approaches, the Science Europe Working Group on Research Data and the Knowledge Exchange Research Data expert group joined forces and devised a joint activity to to inform the discussion on the funding of RDM/RDI in Europe.

A Binary Classifier for Test Case Feasibility Applied to Automatically Generated Tests of Event-Driven Software

Modern software application testing, such as the testing of software driven by graphical user interfaces (GUIs) or leveraging event-driven architectures in general, requires paying careful attention to context. Model-based testing (MBT) approaches first acquire a model of an application, then use the model to construct test cases covering relevant contexts. A major shortcoming of state-of-the-art automated model-based testing is that many test cases proposed by the model are not actually executable. These \textit{infeasible} test cases threaten the integrity of the entire model-based suite, and any coverage of contexts the suite aims to provide. In this research, I develop and evaluate a novel approach for classifying the feasibility of test cases. I identify a set of pertinent features for the classifier, and develop novel methods for extracting these features from the outputs of MBT tools. I use a supervised logistic regression approach to obtain a model of test case feasibility from a randomly selected training suite of test cases. I evaluate this approach with a set of experiments. The outcomes of this investigation are as follows: I confirm that infeasibility is prevalent in MBT, even for test suites designed to cover a relatively small number of unique contexts. I confirm that the frequency of infeasibility varies widely across applications. I develop and train a binary classifier for feasibility with average overall error, false positive, and false negative rates under 5\%. I find that unique event IDs are key features of the feasibility classifier, while model-specific event types are not. I construct three types of features from the event IDs associated with test cases, and evaluate the relative effectiveness of each within the classifier. To support this study, I also develop a number of tools and infrastructure components for scalable execution of automated jobs, which use state-of-the-art container and continuous integration technologies to enable parallel test execution and the persistence of all experimental artifacts.

Ansatzpunkte für das Change-Management beim Aufbau einer Notebook-Universität

Die Einführung von Notebooks an einer Universität bringt zunächst keine grundlegende Innovation mit sich. Die Potenziale, die mit dem Einsatz von Notebooks in der Präsenzlehre verbunden sind, sind vielfältig. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, welche Vorteile der Notebook-Einsatz auf den unterschiedlichen Ebenen Individuum, Gruppe und Organisation beinhaltet. Am Beispiel des eCampus-Projektes der Universität Duisburg-Essen zeigt sich, dass dieser Mehrwert sich jedoch nicht von selbst einstellt, sondern an bestimmte Bedingungen auf den verschiedenen Ebenen geknüpft ist. Es sind Maßnahmen notwendig, um die intendierten Veränderungsprozesse in Gang zu setzen, damit Notebooks im Alltag von Lehre und Forschung verankert werden können. Dazu sind Maßnahmen in den Bereichen Infrastruktur, didaktische Reform, Personal- und Organisationsentwicklung sowie Medienproduktion und -distribution zu ergreifen und in einem angemessenen Gleichgewicht umzusetzen. (DIPF/Orig.)

Influência da revisão de atividades executadas para melhoria da acurácia na estimativa de software utilizando planning poker

Abstract – Background – The software effort estimation research area aims to improve the accuracy of this estimation in software projects and activities. Aims – This study describes the development and usage of a web application tocollect data generated from the Planning Poker estimation process and the analysis of the collected data to investigate the impact of revising previous estimates when conducting similar estimates in a Planning Poker context. Method – Software activities were estimated by Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR) computer students, using Planning Poker, with and without revising previous similar activities, storing data regarding the decision-making process. And the collected data was used to investigate the impact that revising similar executed activities have in the software effort estimates' accuracy.Obtained Results – The UTFPR computer students were divided into 14 groups. Eight of them showed accuracy increase in more than half of their estimates. Three of them had almost the same accuracy in more than half of their estimates. And only three of them had loss of accuracy in more than half of their estimates. Conclusion – Reviewing the similar executed software activities, when using Planning Poker, led to more accurate software estimates in most cases, and, because of that, can improve the software development process.

Definição de política de segurança informática no IPCB

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Tecnologia do Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Desenvolvimento de Software e Sistemas Interativos, realizada sob a orientação científica Professor Doutor Osvaldo Arede dos Santos, do Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco.

Early investigation towards defining and measuring sustainability as a quality attribute in software systems

Sustainability in software system is still a new practice that most software developers and companies are trying to incorporate into their software development lifecycle and has been largely discussed in academia. Sustainability is a complex concept viewed from economic, environment and social dimensions with several definitions proposed making sometimes the concept of sustainability very fuzzy and difficult to apply and assess in software systems. This has hindered the adoption of sustainability in the software industry. A little research explores sustainability as a quality property of software products and services to answer questions such as; How to quantify sustainability as a quality construct in the same way as other quality attributes such as security, usability and reliability? How can it be applied to software systems? What are the measures and measurement scale of sustainability? The Goal of this research is to investigate the definitions, perceptions and measurement of sustainability from the quality perspective. Grounded in the general theory of software measurement, the aim is to develop a method that decomposes sustainability in factors, criteria and metrics. The Result is a method to quantify and access sustainability of software systems while incorporating management and users concern. Conclusion: The method will empower the ability of companies to easily adopt sustainability while facilitating its integration to the software development process and tools. It will also help companies to measure sustainability of their software products from economic, environmental, social, individual and technological dimension.