MCIS 2015 in Samos


9th MEDITERRANEAN CONFERENCE ON
INFORMATION SYSTEMS – MCIS 2015


“Information Systems
in a changing economy and society”"


3-5 OCTOBER 2105,
SAMOS, GREECE










The  9th Mediterranean
Conference on Information Systems was held in Samos on 3-5 October 2015,
organized by the Information Systems Laboratory (ISL) of the Department of
Information and Communication Systems Engineering, of the University of the
Aegean, under the auspices of Association of Information Systems (AIS).
   The main theme of MCIS 2015 was “Information
Systems in a changing economy and society”, reflecting the critical role
Information Systems play for enterprises and administrations, in their effort to
accommodate radical economic and societal changes.  





MCIS 2015 was joined by academics and researchers,
from all over the world but also especially from the Mediterranean region, to reflect
on innovative research in information systems, from the point of view of a rapidly
changing world.  







Participants of the MCIS 2015 Conference in Samos





The conference proceedings can be found online at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/mcis2015/







With the Best Paper Award Winner, Adam Hayes (2nd from left), for the paper "Cryptocurrency Value Formation: An Empirical Analysis Leading to a Cost of Production Model for Valuing Bitcoin" 








Conference Chairs


Euripidis Loukis, Associate
Professor, University of the Aegean

Yannis Charalabidis, Assistant
Professor, University of Aegean






Program Committee Chairs




Spyros Kokolakis, Assistant Professor, University of Aegean sak@aegean.gr


Maria Karyda, Assistant Professor, University of Aegean  mka@aegean.gr



Doctoral Consortium Chair

Dimitrios Drosos, Lecturer, University of Aegean




Programme Committee


M. Amami, RMC, Kingston, Ontario, Canada


S. Arvanitis, University of Zurich


H. A. Ismail, German University in Cairo


M. Kajtazi, Örebro University


E. Kolkowska, Örebro University


A. Kokkinaki, University of Nicosia


F. Lampathaki, National Technical University of Athens


G. Lekakos, Athens Univ. of Economics & Business


D. Lekas, Univ. of the Aegean


L. Mitrou, Univ. of the Aegean


A. Montalero, Politecnico di Torino


A. Polydoropoulou, Univ. of the Aegean


A. Pouloudi, Athens Univ. of Economics & Business


B. R. Schlichte, Aarhus University


P. Svejvig, Aarhus University


M. Themistocleous, University of Pireaus


C. L.  Tucci,  École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne




Summer School on Youth Entrepreneurship, Chios July 2015

For the fourth consecutive year, the 4th Summer School on Youth Entrepreneurship was organized with great success by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit of the University of the Aegean, in collaboration with the School of Management, in Chios, from 6th to 10th July 2015.



The aim of the Summer School was to guide students from various University departments in turning their business ideas into practice, through lectures and mentoring given by University teachers and business executives.  Six business ideas were formed by the 18 participating pre-graduate and post-graduate students, targeting agricultural, tourism, health and education products and services.









Winning teams and judging committee members at the Summer School awards ceremony





The Summer School is an initiative of the Employment & Career Structure of the University of the Aegean, within the Operational Programme "Education and Lifelong Learning: 2007-2015". 





More information on the Summer School can be found at: http://summerschool2015-mke.aegean.gr/ 

The Samos 2015 Summit - "Beyond Government 2.0"


The 6th Samos Summit was held in Doryssa Hotel, in Samos Greece on June 29 - July 3 2015.  The overall topic of the Summit was On ICT-enabled Governance : “Beyond Government 2.0”.  Specific focus in this year’s summit was given to the following 4 areas of ICT-enabled governance, aiming at delivering high level insights on the new roadmap for research and practice:






  • Information (big, open and linked data, information processing and visualization for governance)

  • Infrastructures (cloud infrastructures, machine intelligence, pervasive computing)

  • People (collaborative decision making, social media in governance, social computing)

  • Organisation (legal issues, process re-engineering, interoperability guidelines and standards)






Also, specific attention was given to Smart Cities examples and practices, followed by a workshop on Samos smart city / smart island possibilities, with the collaboration of Samos Municipality officials.







Samos 2015 Summit participants at Doryssa Resort 





In conjunction with the 6th Samos Summit, the 3rd International Summer School On Open and Collaborative Governance was held, with the participation of students from European Union, the Balkans and US.





More information on the agenda and participants of the Samos 2015 Summit can be found at http://www.samos-summit.org




What is Government 3.0 ?


Preparing my talk for the Samos 2015 Summit on ICT-enabled governance I noticed a scarcity of resources for Government 3.0 and the new paradigms for the public sector beyond 2015.  Apart from some early developments in Korea and a few presentations, not much to see on what is coming in this vivid domain.  So, I prepared a slideset that can be seen online below, and I only copy/paste a couple of things here:




Government 3.0 definition





Government 3.0 refers to the utilization of Information and Communication Technologies and neighboring scientific and technological domains, towards societal problems solving, resource optimization and citizen well-being, through civic and enterprise collaboration at local and international level








The paradigm shift for Government 3.0 










The e-Governance Hype Cycle










My complete slide set can be found at : http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/government-30 













Workshops on Open Data and Entrepreneurship at Krems, Austria




Being at Krems, Austria is a very nice experience, by itself.  So calming, so picturesque and SO clean that redefines a few performance thresholds and levels of citizen commitment.  A little difficult to reach, maybe as much as it should, by the somewhat busy but also well-managed Vienna International Airport, but very easy and welcoming when you get there - via three train connections, one change involving some goodish walking, should you take the train path (no direct bus, too). Thanks to our host Peter Parycek, friend and new professor of e-governance at Krems University, a shuttle bus took us there in 60 minutes. 







Krems an der Donau


Danube University Krems, exists within a very cosy, manageable Campus, combining the old buildings of the former tobacco processing / cigarette factory with a newly built, modern set of auditoriums and  labs.  Utilising such halls and some nearby hotels, the CEDEM Conference on eDemocracy and Open Government took place, together with the SHARE-PSI 2.0 meeting on open data and public sector transformation.





I has the pleasure to co-organise a workshop on Open Data critical success factors, together with colleagues from Netherlands, Sweden and Austria.  The workshop touched upon the key issues that public sector organisations, enterprises and citizens have to deal with, in order to have success in curating, publishing and using open data.  Get a glimpse at the taxonomy of critical success factors for open data, still being restructured through a series of workshops worldwide.







Workshop on Critical Success Factors for Open Data 


Then, I had the experience of organising another workshop on "University - based Business Accelerators", presenting and deliberating on the work we do with Aegean Startups, our new incubator in University of the Aegean.  My opening presentation on Business Accelerators lists some of the functions and services of these new organisations that Universities now put in place.







Participants of the Workshop on "University-based Business Accelerators"





  








A visit to Bletchley Park


During April 2015, during my latest visit to London, I spent one morning in Bletchley Park, "once Britain's Best Kept Secret" as they call it.  Bletchley is about 1 hour by train from London, on the north.  The place has become very popular after two events in 2014 (I do not really know if one influenced the other):






One of the more than 20 ENIGMA machines
- looking brand new

- The "Imitation Game" movie that went the most popular movie about the story of Alan Turing and the codebrakers of the second world war



- The complete restoration of the place, which opened for the public at the beginning of 2015 (Bletchley was there before, but without the restoration there was not much to see).




So, is it worth the visit ? (the entrance is around 15 GBP, the ticket might cost another 15 GBP and you will need 4-5 hours at least).  My answer is yes.  The visit will give you some unique insights in the ENIGMA machines, the code-braking techniques and of course the Bombe ! (this weird mechanical computer, that was used to find the positions of ENIGMA wheels based on intercepted messages).



Also, you will able to see not one, but actually two Bombes (Not originals - as all of them were destroyed right after the end of the war.  Or at least this is what the British Government said at the time).  One was made for the needs of the Imitation Game movie (it does not seem to work, but is a very well-made replica) and a full-functioning replica made by the Bletchley park and collaborators.








With the working replica of the Bombe 

Another nice opportunity for the visitor is to see all the restored offices and warehouses of the centre, as it was during the war.  You can also have a seat in Alan Turing's office !






Working at Alan Turing's office at Blechley Park




A nice add-on is the near-by National Museum of Computing, where at an extra cost yo can see the remake of the allegedly first-built electronic computer  / Colossus (built in 1943, before the ENIAC in US).






The Colossus


The MCIS 2015 Conference in Samos









 






 

The  9th Mediterranean Conference on
Information Systems
was held in Samos on 3-5 October 2015,
organized by the Information Systems Laboratory (ISL) of the Department of
Information and Communication Systems Engineering, of the University of the
Aegean, under the auspices of Association of Information Systems (AIS).
 The main theme of this year’s Conference is “Information Systems in a
changing economy and society
”, reflecting the critical role Information
Systems play for enterprises and administrations, in their effort to
accommodate radical economic and societal changes. MCIS 2015 solicits original
contributions in the following non-exclusive tracks:





Tracks


·      
IS and Organizations


·       Smart cities


·       Big data, data protection and
privacy in a global society


·       Electronic Government (GOV 2.0)


·       Persuasive Information Systems


·       Project Management and Beyond –
accommodation of the critical role of information systems


·       Open Innovation & Knowledge
Management


·       Security of Information and IS


·       Digital Entrepreneurship and the
Future Enterprise





Paper Submission


We invite research papers that present original
contributions to the theme of the conference or the themes of the special
tracks in the form of:


·       Full research papers


·       Extended abstracts and short
research-in-progress papers


·       Case studies (research and teaching)


·       Panel proposals





Submissions must be original and should not
have been published previously.  Papers should be submitted in English,
electronically as pdf files via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mcis2015





Authors should indicate, in the main
text of the paper, the track for which they wish their paper to be considered.
If no track is indicated the paper will be considered for the conference main
track. Submissions will be subjected to peer review. Each accepted paper should
be presented by one of the authors and accompanied by at least one full
registration fee payment, to guarantee publication in the proceedings. 
MCIS
is a major international conference on Information Systems, endorsed by the
American Information Society (AIS) and its proceedings are published in the AIS
library and indexed in all major scientific indexes.





Keynote
Address                                                                        


Christopher Tucci, Professor of Management of
Technology, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) “Information System
and Business Model Challenges in The Era of Future Digital Enterprises‏”





Doctoral Consortium


Building upon the success of previous years,
MCIS 2015 will include a Doctoral Consortium (DC) program. MCIS 2015 Doctoral
Consortium aims to offer doctoral students the opportunity to interact and
connect with first-class researchers working in IS fields in a relaxed yet
stimulating setting. Ph.D. students currently working on their dissertations
are eligible for nomination submission. Candidates should not have successfully
defended their dissertation prior the Doctoral Consortium meeting that will be
held on October 3rd, 2015, in Samos.  Submissions should be sent by email
to ddrosos@aegean.gr‏ by midnight June
15, 2015, Greek time (GMT + 02:00), 2015. More information at http://mcis2015.eu/doctoral-consortium/


               


Programm
Committee


M. Amami, RMC, Kingston, Ontario, Canada


S. Arvanitis, University of Zurich


H. A. Ismail, German University in Cairo


M. Kajtazi,
Örebro University


E. Kolkowska, Örebro
University


A. Kokkinaki, University of Nicosia


F. Lampathaki, National Technical University of
Athens


G. Lekakos, Athens Univ. of Economics &
Business


D. Lekas, Univ. of the Aegean


L. Mitrou, Univ. of the Aegean


A. Montalero, Politecnico di Torino


A. Polydoropoulou, Univ. of the Aegean


A. Pouloudi, Athens Univ. of Economics &
Business


B. R. Schlichte, Aarhus University


P. Svejvig, Aarhus University


M. Themistocleous, University of Pireaus


C. L.  Tucci,  École Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne





Conference Chairs


Dr. Euripidis Loukis, Associate Professor,
University of Aegean, eloukis@aegean.gr


Dr. Yannis Charalabidis, Assistant Professor,
University of Aegean, yannisx@aegean.gr





Program Chairs


Dr. Spyros Kokolakis, Assistant Professor,
University of Aegean, sak@aegean.gr


Dr. Maria Karyda, Assistant Professor,
University of Aegean, mka@aegean.gr





Doctoral Consortium Chair


Dr. Dimitrios Drosos, Lecturer, University of
Aegean, ddrosos@aegean.gr





Conference Venue


The Conference took place in the Samaina
Inn Hotel, at Karlovassi, Samos, which is just a stone’s throw away from the
beach. The hotel has a 230-seat conference centre, air-conditioned and
stylishly furnished rooms and offers a wide range of activities.











http://mcis2015.eu/





Workshop on raising citizen awarenness on Open Data


The  workshop "Raising awareness and engaging citizens in re-using PSI" was held within the SHARE PSI 2.0 conference in Timisoara, Romania on March 17, 2015.  The workshop was co-chaired by Daniel Pop, West University of Timisoara and Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean.  The workhop touched upon ways to enhance citizen participation and engagement in reusing open governmental data.  





Several experiences to boost opendata uptake by citizens and entreprises were presented and discussed, resulting in a set of proposed "ways":





Way #1:
Give them a "home"


An open
data portal has to offer the ability to citizens / users to create and maintain
a profile





Way #2:
Make them customers / Create an Open Data marketplace


When a
citizen cannot find the dataset he is looking 
for, he can put a request that is channeled to the appropriate
administration





Way #3:
Make them opendata publishers


Allow for
upload of datasets by users





Way #4:
Allow working on datasets / make them curators


A dataset
can be processed by a user and then republished as a new version.  Datasets can be visualised, extended, linked
by users





Way #5:
Give them incentives


- Measure
and publish popularity of the users, based on their activity.


- Give
incentives for data usage / utilisation (e.g. free tickets to community events,
free parking, to most prominent users)


-
Organisation of competitions / datathons with prizes for the best applications


-
Organisation of data journalism competitions 
for users





Way #6:
Involve them upfront


Organise
meetings of interest groups (e.g. finance, environment, etc) among interested
citizens and entreprises. Use questionnaires, for initial screening of ideas
and people.





Way #7:
Provide specific support for entreprises


Companies
have different viewpoint than citizens: they need data quality, availabiliity,
support, etc.  So, provide something like
that for companies and utilisation will be higher.





Way #8:
Promote the creation of journalism teams


People
might want to “tell a story” acting like data journalists within the local
communities, but they might not have the skills needed


So, make
small groups among citizens to work around open data, generating small or
larger stories.





Way #9:
Provide training


Citizens
without the proper knowledge cannot take advantage of incentives targeting more
advanced people.































































So, invest
in training citizens on basic digital skills (make a web site, work with a
dataset, write a story, etc)





A slideset of the main outcomes can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/ways-to-boost-utilisation-of-open-data-by-citizens while a full description will be available in the SHARE PSI 2.0 project open database of best practices. 










The workshop panel. From left to right: 


André Lapa, AMA, Portugal (rapporteur)


Noël Van Herreweghe, CORVe, Belgium


Chris Harding, The Open Group, UK


Jan Kučera, University of Economics, Prague


Daniel Pop, West University of Timişoara, Romania (co-chair)


Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean, Greece (co-chair)


Peter Winstanley, Scottish Government, UK


Robert Ulrich, KIT, Germany


Petya Bozhkova, Balkan Services, Bulgaria


Szymon Lewandowski, DG Connect, European Commission

A taxonomy of critical success factors for Open Data

This is a simple two-tier taxonomy of factors that are critical for the success of open data initiatives at local, national and international level.  It has been developed through a series  of workshops analysing and classifying international open data best practices and initiatives. It can be used as a guidance support for public servants, the overall planning of open data initiatives or classification of best practice scenarios or examples.




This is based on work done by:

























A. Factors critical for open data
publication by administrations



































































































































































Categories


Factors


1 Legislation,
regulation and licenses


Having in
place a (national) legal framework for open data publication


Enforce publishing and curating of data on
administrations (maybe even through penalties)


Provide information
about data protection and privacy legislation and how open data can be
published in compliance with this legislation


Develop a (national) guide on legal
Intellectual Property Right (IPR) issues allowing organizations to pick the
correct licensing form


2 Strategy and
political support


Develop a
strategy for open data publication at an (inter)national level


Ensure that (top) management within
governmental agencies supports publishing data


Generate
support of policy-makers for data publication


Organize focus groups with heads of
departments and open data policy implementers to give both proponents and
opponents of open data an auditorium


Introduce incentives
schemes for public servants (e.g. explain why a data provider would release
data, explain what kind of value is created for the data provider)


Create consensus between open data publication
and the organizational framework for publishing data


3 Management support and publication
processes within governmental agencies


Define clear
process steps for publishing data


Determine which type of data is important to
address societal issues and focus on the publication of these data


Start with
the publication of data which is interesting for users so that the users see
the benefit of open data


Determine which data and metadata will and
will not be published


Determine
which standards and vocabularies will be used for data publication


Determine which personnel has the key
responsibilities for publishing open data


Determine
where datasets will be published


Release only data which is of high quality


4 Training of and support for civil servants


Create a
virtual competence center which assists in answering questions and helping
out with administrative data publication processes


Provide training on open data publication
within governmental agencies (e.g. training on how datasets can be
anonymized)


Develop
information campaigns in which questions about open data publication are
discussed


Develop information campaigns in which success
stories of internal and external open data use are discussed


5 Evaluation of the open data initiative


Develop
metrics and success indicators for data publication by government departments


Evaluate the realization of metrics and
success indicators as an integral part of the open data initiative


6 Sustainability of
the open data initiative


Identify the
need for data


Create a strategy for maintaining published
datasets


Ensure data
provision continuity, including timely and automatic updates of data


Be transparent towards open data users about
the conditions under which data publication takes place


7 Collaboration


Arrange
meetings with open data users to find out what their needs are and how the
data from the governmental agency are used


Organize internal meetings to discuss the data
publication processes and to evaluate them


Organize inter-organizational
collaboration about and management of open data initiatives


Ensure agile and  open cooperation with various other
organizations (administration, universities, CSO, Open Knowledge Foundation)


Organize inter-organizational
collaboration (e.g. network meetings) to learn from the open data initiatives
of other governmental agencies


8 Open data platforms, tools and services


Integrate the open data platform into existing
Content Management Systems (CMS) to kick-start the progress


Have one
central portal which combines data from many different governmental
organizations (federal level)


Implement advanced data search functionalities


Use
complementary toolsets for performing additional curation tasks (cleaning,
linking, visualizing, analyzing)








Use a “web 2.0” approach for open data,
allowing citizens to post, rate, work with datasets and web services


Integrate
frameworks for assessing data quality and usability of data and platform,
providing continuous feedback to developers and administrations


Provide a forum to discuss what can be learned
from open data use


Develop a
clear User Interface (logical symbols, clear setup of the web page, simple
design)


9 Accessibility, interoperability and
standards


Use standards for data, metadata, licenses,
URIs and exchange protocols


Use cloud
infrastructures able to gather, manage and publish open data, interoperable
with other sources within the country or region


Integrate metadata schemas and federated
controlled vocabularies for properly categorizing information


Provide
various types of metadata, in line with metadata standards (e.g. CERIF, CKAN,
DC, EGMS, DCAT)


Provide Application Programming Interfaces
(API’s) for open data provision in the form of service feeds (from open data
to open services)


Enable multilinguality
of metadata and data, allowing for the reuse and integration of data from
different countries/languages









































B. 



B. Factors critical for open data
use by citizens, entreprises and administrations





































































Categories


Factors


10 Legislation, regulation and licenses


Provide
information on the meanings and implications of licenses


Provide information about privacy legislation
and how open data can be used in compliance with this legislation


11 Success stories


Provide
readily available examples of open data use (e.g. apps) to non-experts


Develop stories of successful open data use


Involve
community key players to propagate success stories


12 Incentives for open data use





Provide incentive schemes to  engage citizens in open data usage


Stimulate
the development of specialized, open-data driven startup incubators


Stimulate the development of business models
to allow enterprises to develop add-on services on top of open data
platforms, at a cost


Support
issue-oriented community building through participatory events


Align events, competitions and hackathons
with, for example, university curricula, awards, festivals and “direct
marketing”


13 Training of and support for open data
users


Ensure
agile, dynamic, and professional support services and training for potential
open data users 


Organize events and ensure community building
where the potential benefits of open data are communicated to users (e.g. by
building scenarios for usage)


14 Feedback and sustainability


Provide
mechanisms for governmental agencies to know how their data have been reused


Provide mechanisms for governmental agencies
to know what can be learned from the reuse of their data


Provide
mechanisms for governmental agencies to know how the publication of their
data can be improved based on feedback that they received from open data
users


15 Research and education


Develop university and continuous education
curricula on open data


Develop and
maintain research areas roadmaps on open data, in order to consolidate
research efforts and address open issues