Journal articles on the topic 'ICT enabling services'

This paper continues with the conspectus of Service Science for academicians and practitioners. It follows the previous paper, entitled Foundations of Service Science: Concepts and Facilities, with the express purpose of defining the scope of the discipline. A thriving flexible service economy has emerged through globalization and digitization, and as a direct result, the modern enterprise has a dynamically changing boundary based on a portfolio of services obtained through make, buy, or rent decisions. Through the application of information and communications technology (ICT), many organizations have adjusted everyday operations enabling them to go through a transformational process to achieve revenue growth by being able to respond more quickly to changing market conditions and by being more effective and efficient in the application of services. The viewpoint taken here is that service management and modern business usually employ a complex computer infrastructure, but their domain is by no means restricted to computer-based services.

Research on the provision of heterogeneous services in the field of intelligent transport is of great interest in the rapidly changing infrastructure of road transport. In particular, the availability of such services has increased through the use of wireless technologies and communication tools. The current development of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and the integration of intelligent transport platforms and service systems make it possible to significantly improve road safety and reduce the likelihood of road accidents. However, the delivery of mobile-smart services requires the development of a rather sophisticated infrastructure to support multicast services. The purpose of this scientific article is to analyze the data transmission capabilities for heterogeneous services while ensuring road safety. The paper deals with the tasks of evaluating the possibilities of integrating such mobile services into the infrastructure of motor vehicles. Measuring bandwidth by enabling multicast services on the base of Ad-hoc wireless networks becomes an important task. The demonstrated results illustrate the capabilities of wireless networks by simulating these services in a transport service generating environment. The paper demonstrates that high-quality heterogeneous services require new wireless network interaction protocols, such as a session initiation protocol (SIP), GPRS functionality, routing protocols, and channel access to provide a large number of supportive service components.

Research on the provision of heterogeneous services in the field of intelligent transport is of great interest in the rapidly changing infrastructure of road transport. In particular, the availability of such services has increased through the use of wireless technologies and communication tools. The current development of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and the integration of intelligent transport platforms and service systems make it possible to significantly improve road safety and reduce the likelihood of road accidents. However, the delivery of mobile-smart services requires the development of a rather sophisticated infrastructure to support multicast services. The purpose of this scientific article is to analyze the data transmission capabilities for heterogeneous services while ensuring road safety. The paper deals with the tasks of evaluating the possibilities of integrating such mobile services into the infrastructure of motor vehicles. Measuring bandwidth by enabling multicast services on the base of Ad-hoc wireless networks becomes an important task. The demonstrated results illustrate the capabilities of wireless networks by simulating these services in a transport service generating environment. The paper demonstrates that high-quality heterogeneous services require new wireless network interaction protocols, such as a session initiation protocol (SIP), GPRS functionality, routing protocols, and channel access to provide a large number of supportive service components.

To enable effective decision-making at the entire city level, both surface water and groundwater should be viewed as part of the extended urban water ecosystem with its spatiotemporal availability, quantity, quality and competing uses being taken into account. The Water4Cities project aims to build an ICT solution for the monitoring, visualization and analysis of urban water at a holistic urban setting to provide added-value decision support services to multiple water stakeholders. This paper presents the main stakeholders identified, the overall approach and the target use cases, where Water4Cities platform will be tested and validated.

In the last decade, many ICT projects in Indian agriculture have emerged, which either substitute or support extension services by enabling farmers' access to information. Information that is context specific to farmers' local situations can have important farm outcomes. The localization of content is influenced by how the ICT projects access, assess and deliver content. This paper develops a content development and management process framework, which is applied to six well-known ICT projects in Indian agriculture. Despite differences in scale, mechanisms of delivery and the extent of content localization, all projects use a network of experts in relevant fields to provide content. Yet, their collective knowledge cannot be tapped easily across the different platforms. To mainstream such ICT efforts and knowledge management in agriculture for rural livelihoods, a centralized search engine to access the dispersed agricultural information and network of experts is thus suggested.

A smart city represents an improvement of today’s cities, both functionally and structurally, that strategically utilizes several smart factors, capitalizing on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to increase the city’s sustainable growth and strengthen the city’s functions, while ensuring the citizens’ enhanced quality of life and health. Cities can be viewed as a microcosm of interconnected “objects” with which citizens interact daily, which represents an extremely interesting example of a cyber physical system (CPS), where the continuous monitoring of a city’s status occurs through sensors and processors applied within the real-world infrastructure. Each object in a city can be both the collector and distributor of information regarding mobility, energy consumption, air pollution as well as potentially offering cultural and tourist information. As a consequence, the cyber and real worlds are strongly linked and interdependent in a smart city. New services can be deployed when needed, and evaluation mechanisms can be set up to assess the health and success of a smart city. In particular, the objectives of creating ICT-enabled smart city environments target (but are not limited to) improved city services; optimized decision-making; the creation of smart urban infrastructures; the orchestration of cyber and physical resources; addressing challenging urban issues, such as environmental pollution, transportation management, energy usage and public health; the optimization of the use and benefits of next generation (5G and beyond) communication; the capitalization of social networks and their analysis; support for tactile internet applications; and the inspiration of urban citizens to improve their quality of life. However, the large scale deployment of cyber-physical-social systems faces a series of challenges and issues (e.g., energy efficiency requirements, architecture, protocol stack design, implementation, and security), which requires more smart sensing and computing methods as well as advanced networking and communications technologies to provide more pervasive cyber-physical-social services. In this paper, we discuss the challenges, the state-of-the-art, and the solutions to a set of currently unresolved key questions related to CPSs and smart cities.

This research aims to synthesise citizen’s perspectives on anti fraud measures that are currently implemented in the Indonesian public services sector. In this sector, various measures to eradicate fraud/corruption have been initiated by the government despite the fact that such practices are still apparent. Two research questions were proposed; first, what are Indonesian citizens’ perspectives on the anti fraud/corruption efforts implemented by the government, in the Indonesian public services sector during the last three years? Second, according to their perspective, which approach on anti fraud/corruption measure that is considered as the most effective way to eradicate fraud and corruption?. Using questionnaires, the research collect responses from 188 respondents – Indonesian citizen older than 21 years old - in 5 cities in Indonesia. The respondents perceive that despite of its low improvement on corruption level, as reflected by the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) score, the anti fraud/anti corruption measures implemented in the Indonesian public service sector are well progressing. The research also reveals that despite of currently low public participation in anti fraud/anti corruption measures, three factors i.e. consistent law enforcement, engaging public participation and implementing information and communication technology (ICT) are perceived as the most effective measures in anti fraud/anti corruption effort. Understanding the importance of those avenues will provide imperative emphasis in designing, formulating and evaluating anti fraud/anti corruption measures, particularly in the Indonesian public services sector. This will in turn provide necessary support for the government to achieve a positive and sustainable economic growth.

ObjectivesThe aim of this paper is to construct a theoretical framework for information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled partnership towards diabetes management.DesignWe conducted an inductive case study and held interviews on the development and use of an artificial pancreas (AP) system for diabetes management.SettingThe study was carried out in the Netherlands with users of an AP system.ParticipantsWe interviewed six patients with type 1 diabetes, five healthcare professionals (two medical specialists and three diabetes nurses), and one policy advisor from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport.ResultsWe built a new theoretical framework for ICT-enabled person-centred diabetes management, covering the central themes of self-managing the disease, shared analysing of (medical) data and experiencing the partnership. We found that ICT yielded new activities of data sharing and a new role for data professionals in the provision of care as well as contributed to carefree living thanks to the semiautomated management enabled by the device. Our data suggested that to enable the partnership through ICT, organisational adjustments need to be made such as the development of new ICT services and a viable financial model to support these services.ConclusionThe management of diabetes through ICT requires an adjustment of the partnership between persons with the chronic condition and the healthcare professional(s) in such a way that the potential for self-managing the condition by analysing the newly available (medical) data (from the AP system) together leads to an experience of partnership between patients and healthcare professionals.

In today’s age of new opportunities and emerging technologies, various studies have affirmed that the adoption of information and communication technology required an enabling environment like that of mobile device. Mobile banking is an ICT application considered to be of vital use among people in different countries of the world, who are likely to have different infrastructural development or resource facilitating conditions. Despite all the benefits of mobile banking application, yet its adoption is beyond the industry expectations in Nigeria and most African countries. This can be attributed to some factors. This study examines the resistance factors that influence the adoption of mobile banking application in Nigeria in relation to enabling environment, based on customers perspective and concluded that customer’s resistance to use mobile banking services in Nigeria was significantly influenced by inadequate bank branches, absence of legislative framework, high cost of monthly Internet subscription and poor quality of Internet/telecommunication services. Keywords: Mobile banking usage, customer’s, technology, resistance, resources

Although the health benefits of physical activity and exercise for older people are well established, a largely sedentary lifestyle still prevails in ageing western societies. Finding new ways to make exercise more accessible and acceptable for older adults must be developed to fully unleash its potential in preventing and weakening age-related physical and cognitive decline. Existing barriers to implement effective exercise-based treatment plans include motivational reservations on both the clinician’s and patient’s side, but also physical limitations caused by disease or deconditioning. Particularly in the more senior population, debilitating conditions do not allow adherence to currently recommended exercise regimes. A major rethinking of age- and user-adapted exercise is overdue. The high intensities required for physical and mental adaptations must be modifiable and personalized according to the functional status of each patient. Emerging information and communication technologies (ICT) have brought forward a plethora of attractive solutions for smart and adapted exercise, but there remains a vast gap between technological advancement and clinical relevance. Where in the beginning ICT for active ageing mainly focussed on aspects of usability and user experience, the current status of IT as applied in ageing populations noticeably shifted toward new services, applications, and devices that can be offered with the aim to prevent, compensate, care, and/or enhance daily life functioning of senior citizens. In this perspective paper, we aim to summarize the current state of the art in ICT-based interventions aimed at improved motor-cognitive control and make suggestions about how these could be combined with high-intensive interval exercise regimes to make rehabilitation for the impaired older adults more effective, and more fun.

Some developing countries are currently introducing and implementing an electronic medical record system (EMRs) for improvement in healthcare delivery services. Availability of information and communication technology (ICT), technical skillful staff, and strong resistance to change by the health professionals impacted the successful adoption of EMRs. This study aimed to assess the ICT literacy, knowledge, and readiness for EMRs adoption among health professionals in a tertiary hospital, Myanmar. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 118 health professionals involving in a tertiary hospital at Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar from February to April 2020 using a stratified sampling method. The data were collected through face-to-face interviews using a pretested structured questionnaire after getting informed consent. Data were analyzed by using SPSS version 23.0. Chi-square test, Fisher’s exact test, and logistic regression analysis were performed to assess the associated factors of ICT literacy, knowledge, and overall readiness for EMRs adoption. The prevalence of high ICT literacy and knowledge on EMRs among health professionals were 20.3% and 24.6% respectively. The factors associated with ICT literacy were professional, education, duration of service, and reported English language skills. Duration of service was associated with knowledge on EMRs. The overall readiness was 54.2% (core readiness 59.3% and engagement readiness 61.9%), and postgraduate [Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR): 7.32, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 2.26–23.68] and knowledge on EMRs (AOR: 1.27, 95% CI: 1.13–1.43) were the factors associated with overall readiness for EMRs adoption. Expanding infrastructure and provision of ICT development training are crucial for the improvement of ICT literacy. EMRs training program enabling hands-on experience should be implemented for improvement of knowledge on EMRs. In general, the overall readiness for EMRs adoption was found to be moderate. Enhancing the establishment of comprehensive on-the-job training and contextualization of curriculum in EMRs training program are recommended to improve the health professionals’ readiness for EMRs adoption.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is at the heart of the smart city approach, which constitutes the next level of cities’ and communities’ development across the globe. Thereby, ICT serves as the gluing component enabling different domains to interact with each other and facilitating the management and processing of vast amounts of data and information towards intelligently steering the cities’ infrastructure and processes, engaging the citizens and facilitating new services and applications in various aspects of urban life—e.g., supply chains, mobility, transportation, energy, citizens’ participation, public safety, interactions between citizens and the public administration, water management, parking and many other cases and domains. Hence, given the fundamental role of ICT in cities in the near future, it is of paramount importance to lay the ground for a sustainable and reliable ICT infrastructure, which can enable a city/community to respond in a resilient way to upcoming challenges, whilst increasing the quality of life for its citizens. A structured way of providing and maintaining an open and resilient ICT backbone for a city/community is constituted by the concept of an Open Urban Platform. Therefore, the current article presents the activities and developments necessary to achieve a resilient, standardized smart city, based on Open Urban Platforms (OUP) and the way these serve as a blueprint for each city/community towards the establishment of a sustainable and resilient ICT backbone.

This study investigated information and communication technology use on effective administration of senior secondary schools. It evaluated the extent of use of the various ICT devices and their influence on the administration of secondary schools. To guide the study, one research question and one hypothesis were tested. The design used for the study was survey design and the population comprised the school administrators involved in the running of the schools on a daily basis and these were the principals, vice- principals and heads of the various subjects’ departments in the public senior schools in Lagos State, Nigeria. The instrument for data collection was a 19-item questionnaire while means and t-test statistics were used for data analysis. Findings from the study showed ICT use has a significant positive influence on the effective administrations of public senior secondary schools in Lagos state. Additionally, the study found that the level of ICT use for administrative purposes in public senior secondary schools in Lagos State was moderate. The ICT devices highly utilized were photocopiers and mobile telephones. While printer, computer systems, social media, e-mails services, internet, and scanners were moderately utilized. However, ICT devices like projectors and smart boards were rarely utilized. The study recommends the provision of the necessary ICT equipment and infrastructure in an enabling physical and psychological technological environment for effective public secondary school administration.

Abstract. This paper summarizes expectations and requirements towards future converged communication systems denoted by 5th Generation (5G). Multiple research and standardization activities globally contribute to the definition and specification of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to provide business customers and residential users with both, existing and future upcoming services which demand for higher data rates and granted performance figures in terms of QoS parameters, such as low latency and high reliability. Representative use case families are threefold and represented as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Internet of Things (mIoT), and Critical Communication, i.e. Ultra-Low Latency (ULL)/Ultra-High Reliability (UHR). To deploy and operate a dedicated network for each service or use case separately would raise the expenses and service costs to an unduly high amount. Instead provision of a commonly shared physical infrastructure offering resources for transport, processing, and storage of data to several separated logical networks (slices) individually managed and configured by potentially multiple service providers is the main concept of this new approach. Beside a multitude of other initiatives the EU-funded 5G NORMA project (5G Novel Radio Multiservice adaptive network Architecture) has developed an architecture which enables not only network programmability (configurability in software), but also network slicing and Multi Tenancy (allowing independent 3rd parties to offer an end-to-end service tailored according to their needs) in a mobile network. Major aspects dealt with here are the selectable support of mobility (on-demand) and service-aware QoE/QoS (Quality of Experience/Service) control. Specifically we will report on the outcome of the analysis of design criteria for Mobility Management schemes and the result of an exemplary application of the modular mobility function to scenarios with variable service requirements (e.g. high-terminal speed vs. on-demand mobility or portability of devices). An efficient sharing of scarce frequency resources in new radio systems demands for tight coordination of orchestration and assignment (scheduling) of resources for the different network slices as per capacity and priority (QoS) demand. Dynamicity aspects in changing algorithms and schemes to manage, configure, and optimize the resources at the radio base stations according to slice specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are investigated. It has been shown that architectural issues in terms of hierarchy (centralized vs. distributed) and layering, i.e. separation of control (signaling) and (user) data plane will play an essential role to increase the elasticity of network infrastructures which is in focus of applying SDN (Software Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Function Virtualization) to next generation communication systems. An outlook towards follow-on standardization and open research questions within different SDOs (Standards Defining Organizations) and recently started cooperative projects concludes the contribution.

Abstract. It is widely recognised that an effective exploitation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is an enabling factor to achieve major advancements in Hydro-Meteorological Research (HMR). Recently, a lot of attention has been devoted to the use of ICT in HMR activities, e.g. in order to facilitate data exchange and integration, to improve computational capabilities and consequently model resolution and quality. Nowadays, ICT technologies have demonstrated that it is possible to extend monitoring networks by integrating sensors and other sources of data managed by volunteer's communities. These networks are constituted by peers that span a wide portion of the territory in many countries. The peers are "location aware" in the sense that they provide information strictly related with their geospatial location. The coverage of these networks, in general, is not uniform and the location of peers may follow random distribution. The ICT features used to set up the network are lightweight and user friendly, thus, permitting the peers to join the network without the necessity of specialised ICT knowledge. In this perspective it is of increasing interest for HMR activities to elaborate of Personal Weather Station (PWS) networks, capable to provide almost real-time, location aware, weather data. Moreover, different big players of the web arena are now providing world-wide backbones, suitable to present on detailed map location aware information, obtained by mashing up data from different sources. This is the case, for example, with Google Earth and Google Maps. This paper presents the design of a mashup application aimed at aggregating, refining and visualizing near real-time hydro-meteorological datasets. In particular, we focused on the integration of instant precipitation depths, registered either by widespread semi-professional weather stations and official ones. This sort of information has high importance and usefulness in decision support systems and Civil Protection applications. As a significant case study, we analysed the rainfall data observed during the severe flash-flood event of 4 November 2011 over Liguria region, Italy. The joint use of official observation network with PWS networks and meteorological radar allowed for the making of evident finger-like convection structure.

Over the last few years, we have witnessed an impressive growth of data traffic and a progressive Digital Transformation of Industry and Society: the deployment of the ultra-broadband and low latency network infrastructures (e.g., 5G) are leading to a global digitalization of several domains. These techno-economic trends are expected to continue and even accelerate in the next decade, at end of which, 6G and smart networks and services will be exploited. Innovation will continue to drive the global economy into the next decade. This paper draws some technology trends and applications scenarios for this horizon, where Quantum Optical Communications are likely to disrupt Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Telecommunications. Among the enabling technologies and solutions moving in this direction, this paper briefly addresses: quantum optical switching and computing, THz-to-optical conversions and advanced metamaterials for smart radio-optical programmable environments and Artificial Intelligence. The paper concludes with the description of a future application scenario, called Quantum Optical Twin, where the above Quantum Optical Communications technologies are exploited to provide services such as: ultra-massive scale communications for connected spaces and ambient intelligence, holographic telepresence, tactile Internet, new paradigms of brain computer interactions, innovative forms of communications.

This paper is part of a larger qualitative multiple case study that sought to explore the integration of indigenous knowledge in public libraries in South Africa. The paper draws from semi-structured interviews with selected heads of provincial library services in South Africa to determine the extent to which public libraries provide targeted resources to enhance access to IK. Results reveal that that there are no targeted resources to facilitate access to IK. Concerted efforts to facilitate access by increasing the number of libraries were noted. Notwithstanding these efforts, there seems to be a paucity of IK, which has implication for inclusive services. It is recommended that libraries look beyond enabling access to the Internet but also explore how they can further optimise ICT usage as a way of facilitating access to IK through capturing, organising and disseminating knowledge of indigenous communities.

Financial inclusion assures easy access to financial services by enabling the disadvantaged and vulnerable sections of the society to actively contribute to development and protect themselves against socio-economic shocks. Nigeria has a sizeable rural poor population with limited access to conventional financial institutions or services. This study investigated the impact of financial inclusion on the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) performance in Nigeria. The survey research design method was used, involving the use of questionnaires, in collecting data from respondents. Data were analyzed using the Pearson Chi-square technique. The results show that, whereas financial inclusion positively and significantly impacts the operations and growth of MSMEs, distance to financial services access points and infrastructural deficiency challenged fast and effective access to financial services by MSMEs in Nigeria. The study recommends that deliberate efforts should be made to spread access points to more rural areas and improve infrastructure to promote FI. This should include a policy roadmap for expanding financial services access points to unbanked and underserved areas using the financial services geospatial map. Furthermore, the digitizing of payments across the country should be prioritized to include enhanced ICT/E-banking tools and a consumer protection framework.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been considered as key driving forces for enabling agricultural development ‒ the sector which provides livelihoods for majority of the population in Bangladesh. The Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), the largest public sector agricultural extension service provider in Bangladesh, has recently enacted a new organizational policy for its staffs to use ICTs such as social media to provide better services. However, there is little or merely anecdotal evidence about how extension agents of DAE have been accepting and using social media for their professional work. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this study is a first attempt to investigate social media use and acceptance among extension agents in Bangladesh. Data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires from 140 extension agents of DAE who work in the eastern region of Bangladesh. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that most extension agents (51.4%) used social media for half an hour to one hour every day. Perceived ease of use (PEoU) and Perceived usefulness (PU) are the most influential elements that determine DAE staff acceptance of social media for performing professional functions. Social media was perceived by extension agents as a means for improving professional performance, such as disseminating agricultural information; garnering support for new agricultural policy; networking with clients and colleagues and enabling coordination of services provided by colleagues. Overall, the findings indicate potential uses of social media in an ICT-based agricultural development strategy in Bangladesh.

Europos Komisijos finansuojamo e-NVISION projekto tikslas – sukurti naujovišką e. verslo platformą smulkioms ir vidutinio dydžio įmonėms, sudarant joms sąlygas modeliuoti ir pritaikyti savo organizacijose konkrečius e. verslo scenarijus, kurie tenkintų vartotojų ir tiekėjų poreikius. Straipsnyje nagrinėjamas šių scenarijų įgyvendinimas, grindžiamas sprendimais, integruojančiais partnerių reikalavimus atitinkančias paslaugas. Laikomasi į paslaugas orientuotos sprendimų architektūros kūrimo principo, įvertinančio teisinius, ekonominius ir socialinius veiksnius, lemiančius tokio pobūdžio paslaugų įgyvendinimą. Kuriami technologiniai sprendimai siekti bendro tikslo – paskatinti smulkių ir vidutinių įmonių, ypač naujų šalių narių įmonių, dalyvavimą Europos Sąjungos ateities e. verslo scenarijuose.SMEs in construction sector: future business scenariosRenaldas Gudauskas, Rimantas Gatautis, Elena Vitkauskaitė SummaryFuture business in Europe will be conducted through flexible networks of interdependent organizations. It will be global, open and collaborative, dynamic and adoptive, frictionless and consistent. Information communication technologies (ICT) will be one of the essential presuppositions for successful business development. All industries will be affected by such kind transformations and construction sector is not an exception.Problem: e-Business use in construction sector is very limited comparing with other industries analysed in e-Business W@tch (2005). Most of companies prefer reactive activities to active ones in terms of ICT use. Such situation might be explained by particularities of services provided and construction processes and by slow penetration of ICT in sector there dominates SMEs. The main objective of EU funded project e-NVISION is the development and validation of an innovative e-Business platform enabling Construction SMEs to model and adapt particular business scenarios; to integrate all their enterprise applications and to incorporate legal, economical, social and cultural services, with the final goal of facilitating their participation in the Future European e-Business Scenario.The aim: to identify most important internal processes of construction SMEs and to evaluate possibilities to use ICT to optimise those processes.

The accessibility and quality of public open spaces (e.g., parks, gardens, squares and plazas) are critical for cultural identity development as they provide important gathering points in the urban fabric and offer a place for social activities, enabling interaction among people of different generations and ethnicities. Public open spaces enhance the urban environment by providing important ecological processes and ecosystem services. The current research generates knowledge about co-creation approach to be used to merge the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) with these essential functions of the public spaces. It explores new dynamics of open spaces as a trusted service for the community and expands our understanding of how meditated public open spaces function, paying attention to stakeholders, local context and different social groups. The paper presents the design of Digital Co-Creation Index and methodological guidelines for applying Digital Co-creation monitoring technique for evaluation of co-creation processes in designing attractive, inclusive and responsive public open spaces.

In this article, the authors focused on research in healthcare digitalization with conjunction to modern technologies, such as Big Data and analytics. To achieve a proper direction at start of the consequent research the authors used the mixed mode of quantitative and qualitative analysis by combination of literature investigation and extended thematic analysis. In the extended thematic analysis of the data corpus the processing of the fourteen steps activity helped to create mind mappings, to recognize the most relevant initial codes, such as “Service”, “ICT/IT”, and “Process”, and to depict the associative relationship of sub-codes to the initial codes for better visibility of results. The composition of forty logical textual sequences of healthcare digitalization themes in discussion confirmed the relevance of initial codes and representativeness to healthcare digitalization. The findings are a step towards enabling the healthcare services innovation, should contribute in higher quality of life, and bring business value to healthcare sector.

Summary Objectives: This paper assumes that in addressing major challenges related to telemedicine as networks enabling huge improvements of heath services we need to move beyond complexity and rather focus on the very nature of such networks. Methods: The results of this paper are based on an interpretive analysis of three case studies involving telemedicine, i.e. broadband networks in minimal invasive surgery, EDI infrastructures and telemedicine in ambulances. Results and Conclusion: The well-known concept of “critical mass” focuses on the number of users as a significant factor of network growth. We argue however, that we should not only consider the size of the network, but also the heterogeneity of its elements. In order to discuss heterogeneity along several dimensions, we find Granovetter’s and Schelling’s models of diversity in individual preferences helpful. In addition to the heterogeneity of the individual users, we discuss heterogeneity related to use areas and situation, to technologies, etc. The interdependencies and possible conflicts between these dimensions are discussed, and we suggest “bootstrapping” as a concept to guide the navigation/exploitation in/of these dimensions.

The banking sector has experienced a far leap related to Information Communication and Technology (ICT)-based services. Among them is e-banking that has been used by the community, especially in urban areas. Likewise, the use of ATMs can be used to provide banking services to the wider community, so that it can replace most of the functions of services in banks. However, in communities outside of urban areas such as rural communities there are still limitations in accessing e-banking and ATM services. Limited use of e-banking because this service must use internet media or smart phones to access. Meanwhile, the limited use of ATMs due to the availability of ATMs in rural areas is not as much as in urban areas, considering that rural areas are areas with low settlement densities. Today, banks in Indonesia have provided branchless banking by enabling agents. Branchless banking is found in urban, suburban and rural areas. In previous research, the existence of branchless banking in the form of agents and their utilization by customers has been identified. From previous studies, maps of agent and customer density and analysis related to the condition of regional accessibility have been produced. This research is a further study focusing on sub districts area with high agent density in both rural, suburban and urban areas. The purpose of this research is to analyze the development model of agent-based branchless banking services. Data was collected through primary data through observation, structured interviews and measurement of coordinates of the location of agents and banking services in the form of ATMs and Banks. The final result is expected to be used as a model for the development of branchless banking services in Indonesia.

The paper presents a comparison of state of the art methods and techniques on implementation of learning objects (LO) in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) using semantic web services for e-learning. The web can serve as a perfect technological environment for individualized learning which is often based on interactive learning objects. This allows learners to be uniquely identified, content to be specifically personalized, and, as a result, a learner’s progress can be monitored, supported, and assessed. While a range of technological solutions for the development of integrated e-learning environments already exists, the most appropriate solutions require further improvement on implementation of novel learning objects, unification of standardization and integration of learning environments based on semantic web services (SWS) that are still in the early stages of development. This paper introduces a proprietary architectural model for distributed e-learning environments based on semantic web services (SWS), enabling the implementation of a successive learning process by developing innovative learning objects based on modern learning methods. A successful technical implementation of our approach in the environment of Kaunas University of Technology is further detailed and evaluated.

Summary The Human Genome Project has deeply transformed biology and the field has since then expanded to the management, processing, analysis and visualization of large quantities of data from genomics, proteomics, medicinal chemistry and drug screening. This huge amount of data and the heterogeneity of software tools that are used implies the adoption on a very large scale of new, flexible tools that can enable researchers to integrate data and analysis on the network. ICT technology standards and tools, like Web Services and related languages, and workflow management systems, can support the creation and deployment of such systems. While a number of Web Services are appearing and personal workflow management systems are also being more and more offered to researchers, a reference portal enabling the vast majority of unskilled researchers to take profit from these new technologies is still lacking. In this paper, we introduce the rationale for the creation of such a portal and present the architecture and some preliminary results for the development of a portal for the enactment of workflows of interest in oncology.

This paper presents a critical analysis of power dynamics for telecommunications governance in the context of a developing country. The study used regulatory governance and critical discourse analysis as theoretical underpinnings. The case of telecommunications sector of Malawi was analysed using secondary data comprise policy documents and media reports. The results showed that power relations affected the autonomy of the telecommunications regulator in performing its functions. The effects of power dynamics created practices and conduct of stakeholders that contributed towards the barriers in market entry of mobile network operators in the telecommunications sector. Consequently, there was limited market competition and the cost of ICT services remained high. Power relations were also productive in enabling stakeholders to raise sector problems to the regulator. The study provides an understanding of power relations in the regulation of telecommunications in the context of an African country.

The prospect of information and communication technology (ICT) has given rise to widespread attention and in-depth research on 6G. It is estimated that 6G will not be implemented until 2030; it is currently at the research and foundation stage. Based on the development of the previous five generations, from 1G to 5G, 6G has the potential to provide customized services through a holographic and ubiquitous network. 6G’s achievement will need the support of various technologies. One important factor in the success of 6G will be security. Specifically, 6G’s key enabling technologies include terahertz, a very large scale antenna, a tactile Internet, etc. This study addresses the fundamental principles of 6G security, discusses major technologies related to 6G security, and presents several issues regarding 6G security. This paper will offer value to anyone who is paying attention to the security issues in 6G.

The purpose of the paper is to describe the approach of e-services providing in Ukraine in terms of decentralization reform. Methodology. We suggest describing the approach of e-services providing. According to the subject of description, methodology could be classified in groups presented below: description of the background (part 3), which reveals the need for digital education; analysis of digital transformation in public administration decentralization reform (part 4); strategic analysis of the vision for public e-services providing (part 5); generalization of the approaches (part 6). The development of the method of descriptive analyses has been based on several sources, namely: studies of the case of public e-services providing in Ukraine; analyses of extant literature on public e-services and their development. Results. Developing innovative and flexible public e-services in Ukraine, capable for adapting to the citizens’ current needs, has become crucial for public administrations. Progress in e-Government tools implementation continues in Ukraine in terms of decentralization reform. The e-Government concept puts into practice as the ambition of Ukrainian decentralized government to use information and communication technology (ICT) to provide more efficient public e-services for citizens. The relationship between citizens and the local government is crucial and it is mediated through modeling the process of e-services developing and deeper understanding current citizens’ needs by governmental officials. Practical implications. Our research aims at developing bases for strategic vision on public e-services in Ukraine as a framework that lays the foundations enabling a public administration to build flexible and innovative system of e-services, by relying on four bases (openness, participation, collaboration and integration). Value/originality. Revealing the current stage of decentralization reform of Ukraine enable to provide a case study of the organizational, institutional and social capacities for digitalization of e-services and form a strategic vision for their systemic development.

The Smart City concept is being developed from a lot of different axes encompassing multiple areas of social and technical sciences. However, something that is common to all these approaches is the central role that the capacity of sharing information has. Hence, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are seen as key enablers for the transformation of urban regions into Smart Cities. Two of these technologies, namely Internet of Things and Big Data, have a predominant position among them. The capacity to “sense the city” and access all this information and provide added-value services based on knowledge derived from it are critical to achieving the Smart City vision. This paper reports on the specification and implementation of a software platform enabling the management and exposure of the large amount of information that is continuously generated by the IoT deployment in the city of Santander.

In medium-sized cities in developing countries, transit services without dedicated lanes have issues related to route compliance, schedules, speed control, and safety. An efficient way for dealing with this issue is the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), to implement a Fleet Management and Control Systems (FMCS). Such implementation can be performed using Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs), which allow integration of services and adequate standardization. This article features: (a) a literature review, related to FMCS based on ITS and enabling technologies, (b) design of the ITS architecture of an FMCS, and (c) some advances in the development of the proposed FMCS in a Colombian city (Popayán). The results of the literature review allowed identifying the most important requirements of FMCS in order to design the ITS architecture and build a prototype featuring the suggested technologies. Finally, some experiments were performed to evaluate the operation of the developed prototype. The results showed evidence of adequate operation in sending and receiving messages from and to four prototypes developed for the vehicles, also complying with the established requirements of location, tracking, exchanged data, and security. This allows continuing the development of the proposed FMCS, with some adjustments.

The provision of public information contributes to the enrichment and enhancement of the data produced by the government as part of its activities, and the transformation of heterogeneous data into information and knowledge. This process of opening changes the operational mode of public administrations, leveraging the data management, encouraging savings and especially in promoting the development of services in subsidiary and collaborative form between public and private entities. The demand for new services also promotes renewed entrepreneurship centred on responding to new social and territorial needs through new technologies. In this sense we speak of Open Data as an enabling infrastructure for the development of innovation and as an instrument to the development and diffusion of Innovation and Communications Technology (ICT) in the public system as well as creating space for innovation for businesses, particularly SMEs, based on the exploitation of information assets of the territory. The Open Data Trentino Project has initiated and fosters the process of opening of public information and develops as a natural consequence of this process of openness, the creation of innovative services for and with the citizens. In this paper we present how our project acts on long-chain, from raw data till reusable meaningful and scalable knowledge base that leads to the production of data reuse through the implementation of services that will enhance and transform the data into information capable of responding to specific questions efficiency and innovation.

The Industry 4.0 promotes the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in manufacturing processes to obtain customized products satisfying demanding needs of new consumers. The Industry 4.0 approach transforms the traditional pyramid model of automation to a network model of interconnected services, combining operational technology (OT) with Information Technology (IT). This new model allows the creation of ecosystems enabling more flexible production processes through connecting systems and sharing data. In this context, cloud computing and big data are critical technologies for leveraging the approach. Thus, this paper analyzes cloud computing and big data under the lenses of two leading reference architectures for implementing Industry 4.0: 1) the Industrial Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA), and 2) the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0). A main contribution of this paper is to present a comparative analysis of IIRA and RAMI 4.0, discussing needs, benefits, and challenges of applying cloud computing and big data in the Industry 4.0.

Internet has become an everyday tool of people and organizations and, at the same time, indispensable to the proper functioning of business. With the growing increase in network infrastructures and mass popularization of the high-speed network, a breakthrough has emerged related to the use of the Internet, making it a global platform to allow intelligent machines and objects to communicate autonomously. This possibility allows content and services to be around people, always available, facilitating communication and opening the way for new applications; enabling new forms of work, interaction and entertainment; developing a new standard of living and work. This new standard is made possible by advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to a new concept defined as Internet of Things - IoT. This paper presents and discusses the main features that characterize the Internet of Things, its origin, theoretical visions and fields of application, exploring the possibilities of fomenting a discussion about the application of IoT.

In this study, the required capabilities and key element technologies of smart underground ammunition storage were analyzed using the Delphi technique. Twenty-four external experts on industry 4.0 smart technology were selected. A total of 18 required capabilities and 32 key element technologies were derived for the construction of smart underground ammunition storage. Smart ammunition storage can be built through the convergence of a range of ICT technologies such as sensors, clouds, big data, precision control, and mobile technologies, along with existing ammunition storages. The combination of these technologies will support human decision making through the use of numerous sensors applied to ammunition storage for collecting data and converting them into big data. In addition, the intelligent information technology introduced in a smart ammunition store will allow soldiers to detect changes in the surrounding environment, which will bring about innovation to an ammunition service. As a result, high-level automation and an intelligent infrastructure can be provided, enabling an improvement in ammunition management capabilities, energy saving, and the establishment of a safe operating environment and a flexible management system. This form of future ammunition storage will be an example solution for major issues in army ammunition services, as well as overcoming challenges such as a reduction in military forces.

Abstract Information and communication technologies (ICTs) open up new possibilities for development in rural and mountain areas. ICTs are analysed as a factor attracting business and enabling a dispersion of economic activity that is usually concentrated in metropolitan areas. Rural and mountain areas have benefited from the increasing incorporation of ICT in companies because development strategies are now made viable, thus bringing local territories into global markets and vice versa. Competitiveness and the added value of local development companies are incorporated into the product through the value given to local identity factors. Other competitive localisation factors of these zones are lower localisation costs and spatial loyalty among companies in the cluster. On the other hand, there may be an a priori shortage of available skilled workers in these particular areas but this deficit could be balanced out by the small size of companies established in these zones. This paper describes several case studies of specific companies in the Catalan Pyrenees where parts of the productive process with the highest added value—like design, organisation, etc—are carried out, while manufacturing occurs in other countries. It also analyses activities and services offered by smart farms and in smart rural areas. ICTs are important for the educational and informative levels of the population and also for the establishment of new companies and services in rural and mountain areas.

Purpose – This paper aims to assess how entrepreneurship affects knowledge economy (KE) in Africa. Design/methodology/approach – Entrepreneurship is measured by indicators of starting, doing and ending business. The four dimensions of the World Bank’s index of KE are used. Instrumental variable panel-fixed effects are applied on a sample of 53 African countries for the period of 1996-2010. Findings – The following are some of the findings. First, creating an enabling environment for starting business can substantially boost most dimensions of KE. Second, doing business through mechanisms of trade globalization has positive effects from sectors that are not information and communication technology (ICT) and high-tech oriented. Third, the time required to end business has negative effects on KE. Practical implications – The findings confirm the narrative that the technology in African countries at the moment may be more imitative and adaptive for reverse engineering in ICTs and high-tech products. Given the massive consumption of ICT and high-tech commodities in Africa, the continent has to start thinking of how to participate in the global value chain of producing what it consumes. Originality/value – This paper has a twofold motivation. First, given the ambitions of African countries of moving towards knowledge-based economies, the line of inquiry is timely. Second, investigating the nexus may have substantial poverty mitigation and sustainable development implications. These entail, inter alia, the development of technology with value-added services; enhancement of existing agricultural practices; promotion of conditions that are essential for competitiveness; and adjustment to globalization challenges.

The authors are interested in taking the title Evaluation of Policy Implementation of the Integrated Administrative Service District in Central Halmahera, North Maluku. This study aims to determine how the policy evaluation and implementation PATEN enabling and inhibiting factors PATEN policy implementation. The location of this research is in the district of South Weda Central Halmahera in North Maluku province.
 This study uses the theory Waynes Parson in Palumbo and the size of the policy evaluation is based on the theory that the evaluation process, the evaluation of formative and summative evaluation. policy resources, communication among organizations, characteristic of the implementing agencies, economic, social and political conditions and the tendencies of implementation.
 This research uses descriptive method with qualitative approach. Data collection techniques are interviews, document analysis and observation. The data obtained were processed with qualitative data analysis. Informants in this study were 1) the Regent of Halmahera, 2) Regional Secretary, 3) Assistant for Public Administration, Law and Authority, 4) Head of Governance Regional Secretariat of Central Halmahera, 5) Head of Integrated Licensing Service Agency, 6) Head Weda South 7) The community served
 Based on the research results we concluded that the implementation of the PATEN in the district of South Central Halmahera Weda considered not running optimally. This is due not been reflected in the elaboration of management commitment to the programs and activities of the OPD related, yet the drafting SOP to realize the translation of the vision - the mission of the organization, there are no guidelines for minimum service standards, unclear tasks and functions of the technical team so that the conduct of licensing has not been fully included effective, institutional structure did not reflect the needs and interests of improving the service function to society, Inkonsisiten and lack of support of stakeholders in the implementation of technical policy administration services licensing, not optimal formulation of technical policy administration services licensing, weak coordination between leaders and subordinates in the implementation of integrated license service with the technical team in its OPD and has not implemented the promotion and development of quality apparatus BPPT, facilities and infrastructure not meet minimum service standards have not yet optimal application of ICT-based information system

In this paper the authors examine the new public management (NPM) philosophy influencing the organisational environment in which child protection social workers are located. NPM prioritises outputs through policies, such as results based accountability (RBA) predicated on the expectation that responsibility to achieve designated programme outcomes is sheeted to the agency and its workers. Ongoing funding depends on programme results.NPM ideology assumes that workers and managers in agencies tasked with delivering care and protection services are able to control the variables influencing outputs which contribute to outcomes. The authors will analyse four key aspects of NPM thinking (RBA, outputs, outcomes and key performance indicators) and explore their organisational consequences. The influence on social work practice of information and communications technology (ICT), on which NPM depends, is also considered.The paper is not an ideologically based rejection of NPM, but rather an assessment of its consequences for care and protection practice. The authors call for a return to the centrality of relationally based social work processes embodied in common factors (CF) practice, such as the therapeutic alliance. We argue that CF approaches offer a contrasting and more appropriate practice philosophy than NPM thinking while still enabling achievable, multifaceted organisational benefits.

Objectives: To assess the evidence of information communication technology (ICT) use in the training of maternal and child health (MCH) workers, discuss methodological issues present in the identified studies, and identify future work areas. Introduction: The explosive growth of cellphone usage in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) has made mobile technology an increasingly attractive form of information communication technology (ICT) to be used to meet healthcare needs that go unmet, rising due to the paucity of trained clinical workers (O’Donovan, Bersin, & O’Donovan, 2015). The portability and relative low cost of cellphones have made them ubiquitous and efficient to use. For example, subscriptions in Africa have risen from 12.4 per hundred inhabitants in 2005 to per hundred inhabitants in 2015 (ITU, 2017). ICT is an umbrella term that encompasses the hardware, software and networks that provide its users with data and information resources. As far as healthcare is concerned, these resources include access to varied tools and services such as electronic health records, point-of-care databases, decision support systems, clinical guidelines or training modules for continuing education (Machingura et al., 2014). This technology has made healthcare more efficient in affluent countries where funding and infrastructure to build, support and maintain ICT is readily available. However, ICT development is critical to LMIC’s which have the greatest barriers to effective and efficient healthcare systems and fewer resources to overcome challenges. The aims of this paper are to (1) summarize the literature on ICT use in the training of MCH workers, (2) discuss methodological issues present in the identified studies, and (3) identify future work areas. Our specific research questions are: Which ICT tools have been used in developing countries for training the MCH workforce? How successful are the tools for instructing health care workers? A major impediment to health care improvements in underdeveloped countries is the low ratio of health professionals to patients. A developed workforce is critical for sustaining healthcare infrastructure. Because there is an insufficient number of professional practitioners, many MCH health needs are met by community workers with limited or no formal training (Chipps et al., 2015). Since the level of services range from general check-ups to life-saving interventions, training must address a variety of educational requirements. (Agarwal et al., 2015). In addition to primary professional education, health workers require training for re-licensure and continuous professional development (CPD). Training, particularly in remote areas, requires travel, time away from work as well as funding for food and lodging (Chipps et al., 2015). This exacerbates uneven healthcare coverage with the majority of MCH health care workers concentrated in urban centers, leaving rural residents with inadequate services (Middleberg et al., 2013; Modi et al., 2015). ICT reduces costs by enabling personnel to remain in their communities while providing digital access to educational content, mentors, guidelines and decision support systems (Saronga et al., 2015). It is commonly recognized that underdeveloped countries have occasional brown-outs in their urban centers and the power grid may not reach rural or remote areas. Even if seed money is acquired for start-up costs, funding for technology maintenance and technical manpower beyond the pilot stage can be tentative (Achampong, 2012). Secondly, while cell phone use across LMICs has exploded in recent years, its use for advancing training has not grown in comparison. A limited number of reports have been published, reporting the use of ICT for communication (Andreatta et al., 2011), tracking health worker behavior (Awoonor-Williams et al., 2013), attitudes towards using ICT (Sukums et al., 2014; Zakane et al., 2014), and the impact of the design of ICT (Valez et. al., 2014). This paucity of studies understanding the impact of ICT on measurable training outcomes leaves a troubling gap in the literature if progress is to be made in addressing the training needs. Finally, government entities, educators and administrators may be reluctant to adopt ICT into health training for practical, fiscal and political reasons. Because health personnel may not have exposure to technology in their daily lives, staff may require basic computer training on operating systems, file management, word processing and databases in conjunction with ICT projects (Sukums, 2014). In addition to a lack of knowledge about computers in general, use of ICT also comes with associated monetary costs. Both of these issues are also exacerbated by resulting government policy changes. We endeavored to fill this gap by completing a literature review to bring the disparate work together, but to our surprise, it did not really exist. This paper reports on (1) what studies have been conducted on the use of ICT in training; (2) what common methods are used and how they are evaluated and (3) what outcomes have been reported. Methods: Medline (OVID), CINAHL and Web of Science were searched for relevant articles published between January 1, 2007 and February 28, 2017. Studies were included if they included training and education in low and middle-income countries using ICT for maternal child health workers. Results: 111 unique articles from electronic searches with seven additional articles discovered through hand-searching reference lists were identified. After review, 15 articles aligned with the necessities to analyze the current environment of the ICT tools. The study designs in the reviewed articles were usually pre- and post-evaluations (n=7). There were also a small number of single cross-sectional studies (n=3) measuring the use of the tool. Two studies also evaluated the use of electronic clinical decision support systems (CDSS) applications or algorithms. The remainder of the studies (n=3) used ICT to provide resources for meeting information needs, as well as repositories of protocols and best practice documents. The outcomes reported ranged from access to medical resources (n=3), accuracy in clinical documentation (n=2), need for remedial computer training (n=2) and an increase in clinical knowledge and proper use of protocols (n=4) Discussion and conclusion: The current evidence-base does not show a clear indication that there were particular initiatives using ICT for the training of health workers. While the majority of projects identified were shown to improve outcomes, there were limited results reported. This lack of documented evidence hinders decisions about the content and methods that should be used to support training. We are missing an opportunity for advancement. The World Health Organization identified community health worker training as a lever to move the improvement of health care in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). An understanding of barriers and facilitators to using ICTs to meet this need, provides key directions for policy makers and non-governmental organizations as they apply limited resources to these issues.

Although information and communications technologies (ICTs) have the potential of enabling powerful social, economic and environmental benefits, ICT systems give a non-negligible contribution to world electricity consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) footprint. This contribution will sustain since the increased demand for user′s connectivity and an explosion of traffic volumes necessitate continuous expansion of current ICTs services and deployment of new infrastructures and technologies which must ensure the expected user experiences and performance. In this paper, analyses of costs for the global annual energy consumption of telecommunication networks, estimation of ICT sector CO2 footprint contribution and predictions of energy consumption of all connected user-related devices and equipment in the period 2011–2030 are presented. Since presented estimations of network energy consumption trends for main communication sectors by 2030 shows that highest contribution to global energy consumption will come from wireless access networks and data centres (DCs), the rest of the paper analyses technologies and concepts which can contribute to the energy-efficiency improvements of these two sectors. More specifically, different paradigms for wireless access networks such as millimetre-wave communications, Long-Term Evolution in unlicensed spectrum, ultra-dense heterogeneous networks, device-to-device communications and massive multiple-input multiple-output communications have been analysed as possible technologies for improvement of wireless networks energy efficiency. Additionally, approaches related to the DC resource management, DCs power management, green DC monitoring and thermal management in DCs have been discussed as promising approaches to improvement of DC power usage efficiency. For each of analysed technologies, future research challenges and open issues have been summarised and discussed. Lastly, an overview of the accepted papers in the Special Issue dedicated to the green, energy-efficient and sustainable networks is presented.

The rapid urbanization of African cities is one amongst other composite challenges hindering Africa’s objective to provide stable socio-economic development and delivery of quality livelihood for its citizens and visitors at large. The establishment of Smart City initiatives in African cities is meant to improve the quality of lives of the residents of those cities. Information and communications technologies (ICT) are key enabling factors for this transformation and must be integrated into several functional domains of society, such as health, education, transportation, energy, etc., so as to engender efficient and ubiquitous public services, as well as higher socio-economic standards of living for the citizens. This paper highlights the potential benefits, as well as challenges, African cities embarking on Smart City initiatives face. To further grasp the motivations and challenges of implementing Smart City initiatives in Africa, we take a look at a new Smart City initiative (The SmartCity Innovation Hub, by Smart City Resort plc.) that is underway in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. We questioned the developers on their motivations for undertaking such a Smart City initiative in Africa, the potential economic, technological and environmental benefits of the project, and the challenges of embarking on such a project.

Recent Trends and Future of Fog and Edge Computing, Services, and Enabling Technologies
 Cloud computing has been established as the most popular as well as suitable computing infrastructure providing on-demand, scalable and pay-as-you-go computing resources and services for the state-of-the-art ICT applications which generate a massive amount of data. Though Cloud is certainly the most fitting solution for most of the applications with respect to processing capability and storage, it may not be so for the real-time applications. The main problem with Cloud is the latency as the Cloud data centres typically are very far from the data sources as well as the data consumers. This latency is ok with the application domains such as enterprise or web applications, but not for the modern Internet of Things (IoT)-based pervasive and ubiquitous application domains such as autonomous vehicle, smart and pervasive healthcare, real-time traffic monitoring, unmanned aerial vehicles, smart building, smart city, smart manufacturing, cognitive IoT, and so on. The prerequisite for these types of application is that the latency between the data generation and consumption should be minimal. For that, the generated data need to be processed locally, instead of sending to the Cloud. This approach is known as Edge computing where the data processing is done at the network edge in the edge devices such as set-top boxes, access points, routers, switches, base stations etc. which are typically located at the edge of the network. These devices are increasingly being incorporated with significant computing and storage capacity to cater to the need for local Big Data processing. The enabling of Edge computing can be attributed to the Emerging network technologies, such as 4G and cognitive radios, high-speed wireless networks, and energy-efficient sophisticated sensors.
 Different Edge computing architectures are proposed (e.g., Fog computing, mobile edge computing (MEC), cloudlets, etc.). All of these enable the IoT and sensor data to be processed closer to the data sources. But, among them, Fog computing, a Cisco initiative, has attracted the most attention of people from both academia and corporate and has been emerged as a new computing-infrastructural paradigm in recent years. Though Fog computing has been proposed as a different computing architecture than Cloud, it is not meant to replace the Cloud. Rather, Fog computing extends the Cloud services to network edges for providing computation, networking, and storage services between end devices and data centres. Ideally, Fog nodes (edge devices) are supposed to pre-process the data, serve the need of the associated applications preliminarily, and forward the data to the Cloud if the data are needed to be stored and analysed further.
 Fog computing enhances the benefits from smart devices operational not only in network perimeter but also under cloud servers. Fog-enabled services can be deployed anywhere in the network, and with these services provisioning and management, huge potential can be visualized to enhance intelligence within computing networks to realize context-awareness, high response time, and network traffic offloading. Several possibilities of Fog computing are already established. For example, sustainable smart cities, smart grid, smart logistics, environment monitoring, video surveillance, etc.
 To design and implementation of Fog computing systems, various challenges concerning system design and implementation, computing and communication, system architecture and integration, application-based implementations, fault tolerance, designing efficient algorithms and protocols, availability and reliability, security and privacy, energy-efficiency and sustainability, etc. are needed to be addressed. Also, to make Fog compatible with Cloud several factors such as Fog and Cloud system integration, service collaboration between Fog and Cloud, workload balance between Fog and Cloud, and so on need to be taken care of.
 It is our great privilege to present before you Volume 20, Issue 2 of the Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience. We had received 20 Research Papers and out of which 14 Papers are selected for Publication. The aim of this special issue is to highlight Recent Trends and Future of Fog and Edge Computing, Services and Enabling technologies. The special issue will present new dimensions of research to researchers and industry professionals with regard to Fog Computing, Cloud Computing and Edge Computing.
 Sujata Dash et al. contributed a paper titled “Edge and Fog Computing in Healthcare- A Review” in which an in-depth review of fog and mist computing in the area of health care informatics is analysed, classified and discussed. The review presented in this paper is primarily focussed on three main aspects: The requirements of IoT based healthcare model and the description of services provided by fog computing to address then. The architecture of an IoT based health care system embedding fog computing layer and implementation of fog computing layer services along with performance and advantages. In addition to this, the researchers have highlighted the trade-off when allocating computational task to the level of network and also elaborated various challenges and security issues of fog and edge computing related to healthcare applications.
 Parminder Singh et al. in the paper titled “Triangulation Resource Provisioning for Web Applications in Cloud Computing: A Profit-Aware” proposed a novel triangulation resource provisioning (TRP) technique with a profit-aware surplus VM selection policy to ensure fair resource utilization in hourly billing cycle while giving the quality of service to end-users. The proposed technique use time series workload forecasting, CPU utilization and response time in the analysis phase. The proposed technique is tested using CloudSim simulator and R language is used to implement prediction model on ClarkNet weblog. The proposed approach is compared with two baseline approaches i.e. Cost-aware (LRM) and (ARMA). The response time, CPU utilization and predicted request are applied in the analysis and planning phase for scaling decisions. The profit-aware surplus VM selection policy used in the execution phase for select the appropriate VM for scale-down. The result shows that the proposed model for web applications provides fair utilization of resources with minimum cost, thus provides maximum profit to application provider and QoE to the end users.
 
 Akshi kumar and Abhilasha Sharma in the paper titled “Ontology driven Social Big Data Analytics for Fog enabled Sentic-Social Governance” utilized a semantic knowledge model for investigating public opinion towards adaption of fog enabled services for governance and comprehending the significance of two s-components (sentic and social) in aforesaid structure that specifically visualize fog enabled Sentic-Social Governance. The results using conventional TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) feature extraction are empirically compared with ontology driven TF-IDF feature extraction to find the best opinion mining model with optimal accuracy. The results concluded that implementation of ontology driven opinion mining for feature extraction in polarity classification outperforms the traditional TF-IDF method validated over baseline supervised learning algorithms with an average of 7.3% improvement in accuracy and approximately 38% reduction in features has been reported.
 
 
 Avinash Kaur and Pooja Gupta in the paper titled “Hybrid Balanced Task Clustering Algorithm for Scientific workflows in Cloud Computing” proposed novel hybrid balanced task clustering algorithm using the parameter of impact factor of workflows along with the structure of workflow and using this technique, tasks can be considered for clustering either vertically or horizontally based on value of impact factor. The testing of the algorithm proposed is done on Workflowsim- an extension of CloudSim and DAG model of workflow was executed. The Algorithm was tested on variables- Execution time of workflow and Performance Gain and compared with four clustering methods: Horizontal Runtime Balancing (HRB), Horizontal Clustering (HC), Horizontal Distance Balancing (HDB) and Horizontal Impact Factor Balancing (HIFB) and results stated that proposed algorithm is almost 5-10% better in makespan time of workflow depending on the workflow used.
 Pijush Kanti Dutta Pramanik et al. in the paper titled “Green and Sustainable High-Performance Computing with Smartphone Crowd Computing: Benefits, Enablers and Challenges” presented a comprehensive statistical survey of the various commercial CPUs, GPUs, SoCs for smartphones confirming the capability of the SCC as an alternative to HPC. An exhaustive survey is presented on the present and optimistic future of the continuous improvement and research on different aspects of smartphone battery and other alternative power sources which will allow users to use their smartphones for SCC without worrying about the battery running out.
 Dhanapal and P. Nithyanandam in the paper titled “The Slow HTTP Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Attack Detection in Cloud” proposed a novel method to detect slow HTTP DDoS attacks in cloud to overcome the issue of consuming all available server resources and making it unavailable to the real users. The proposed method is implemented using OpenStack cloud platform with slowHTTPTest tool. The results stated that proposed technique detects the attack in efficient manner.
 Mandeep Kaur and Rajni Mohana in the paper titled “Static Load Balancing Technique for Geographically partitioned Public Cloud” proposed a novel approach focused upon load balancing in the partitioned public cloud by combining centralized and decentralized approaches, assuming the presence of fog layer. A load balancer entity is used for decentralized load balancing at partitions and a controller entity is used for centralized level to balance the overall load at various partitions. Results are compared with First Come First Serve (FCFS) and Shortest Job First (SJF) algorithms. In this work, the researchers compared the Waiting Time, Finish Time and Actual Run Time of tasks using these algorithms. To reduce the number of unhandled jobs, a new load state is introduced which checks load beyond conventional load states. Major objective of this approach is to reduce the need of runtime virtual machine migration and to reduce the wastage of resources, which may be occurring due to predefined values of threshold.
 Mukta and Neeraj Gupta in the paper titled “Analytical Available Bandwidth Estimation in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks considering Mobility in 3-Dimensional Space” proposes an analytical approach named Analytical Available Bandwidth Estimation Including Mobility (AABWM) to estimate ABW on a link. The major contributions of the proposed work are: i) it uses mathematical models based on renewal theory to calculate the collision probability of data packets which makes the process simple and accurate, ii) consideration of mobility under 3-D space to predict the link failure and provides an accurate admission control. To test the proposed technique, the researcher used NS-2 simulator to compare the proposed technique i.e. AABWM with AODV, ABE, IAB and IBEM on throughput, Packet loss ratio and Data delivery. Results stated that AABWM performs better as compared to other approaches.
 R.Sridharan and S. Domnic in the paper titled “Placement Strategy for Intercommunicating Tasks of an Elastic Request in Fog-Cloud Environment” proposed a novel heuristic IcAPER,(Inter-communication Aware Placement for Elastic Requests) algorithm. The proposed algorithm uses the network neighborhood machine for placement, once current resource is fully utilized by the application. The performance IcAPER algorithm is compared with First Come First Serve (FCFS), Random and First Fit Decreasing (FFD) algorithms for the parameters (a) resource utilization (b) resource fragmentation and (c) Number of requests having intercommunicating tasks placed on to same PM using CloudSim simulator. Simulation results shows IcAPER maps 34% more tasks on to the same PM and also increase the resource utilization by 13% while decreasing the resource fragmentation by 37.8% when compared to other algorithms.
 
 Velliangiri S. et al. in the paper titled “Trust factor based key distribution protocol in Hybrid Cloud Environment” proposed a novel security protocol comprising of two stages: first stage, Group Creation using the trust factor and develop key distribution security protocol. It performs the communication process among the virtual machine communication nodes. Creating several groups based on the cluster and trust factors methods. The second stage, the ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) based distribution security protocol is developed. The performance of the Trust Factor Based Key Distribution protocol is compared with the existing ECC and Diffie Hellman key exchange technique. The results state that the proposed security protocol has more secure communication and better resource utilization than the ECC and Diffie Hellman key exchange technique in the Hybrid cloud.
 
 Vivek kumar prasad et al. in the paper titled “Influence of Monitoring: Fog and Edge Computing” discussed various techniques involved for monitoring for edge and fog computing and its advantages in addition to a case study based on Healthcare monitoring system.
 
 Avinash Kaur et al. elaborated a comprehensive view of existing data placement schemes proposed in literature for cloud computing. Further, it classified data placement schemes based on their assess capabilities and objectives and in addition to this comparison of data placement schemes.
 
 Parminder Singh et al. presented a comprehensive review of Auto-Scaling techniques of web applications in cloud computing. The complete taxonomy of the reviewed articles is done on varied parameters like auto-scaling, approach, resources, monitoring tool, experiment, workload and metric, etc.
 
 Simar Preet Singh et al. in the paper titled “Dynamic Task Scheduling using Balanced VM Allocation Policy for Fog Computing Platform” proposed a novel scheme to improve the user contentment by improving the cost to operation length ratio, reducing the customer churn, and boosting the operational revenue. The proposed scheme is learnt to reduce the queue size by effectively allocating the resources, which resulted in the form of quicker completion of user workflows. The proposed method results are evaluated against the state-of-the-art scene with non-power aware based task scheduling mechanism. The results were analyzed using parameters-- energy, SLA infringement and workflow execution delay. The performance of the proposed schema was analyzed in various experiments particularly designed to analyze various aspects for workflow processing on given fog resources. The LRR (35.85 kWh) model has been found most efficient on the basis of average energy consumption in comparison to the LR (34.86 kWh), THR (41.97 kWh), MAD (45.73 kWh) and IQR (47.87 kWh). The LRR model has been also observed as the leader when compared on the basis of number of VM migrations. The LRR (2520 VMs) has been observed as best contender on the basis of mean of number of VM migrations in comparison with LR (2555 VMs), THR (4769 VMs), MAD (5138 VMs) and IQR (5352 VMs).

In recent years, we have witnessed a continuous increase in the number of embedded devices with communication capabilities that are changing the way we live, work and play. Smart grids, remote monitoring and control of all kinds of consumer devices and industrial equipment, vehicular telematics and e-health devices, are some examples of this revolution. The communication between those devices (Machine-to-Machine communication) is leading to a complexity explosion and a strongly fragmented market. The goal of our work is to design an architecture for a generic communication system enabling many kinds of services and devices to function together in a distributed M2M ecosystem regardless of the application domain. This paper presents an initial communication architecture design for an interoperable Machine-to-Machine (M2M) system. The architecture of the system itself is divided into three main components: gateways, distributed servers and communication overlay. Gateways are designed to enable interoperability with various external systems that are, for some reason, unable to directly become parts of the M2M overlay. Servers are required to act as central points for relaying messages, providing authorization, enforcing security policies such as channel encryption and so on. Multiple intercommunicating servers, or server federation, is supported and considered an essential part of the interoperable M2M system. The overlay component refers to the logical M2M network, which is built on top of the existing ICT infrastructure.Â