Multiple objectives relating to Connection, Personal Development and Information were the stated outcomes of establishing a suite of computing facilities in a New Zealand city youth centre named Secret Level. The youth centre offered a wide range of both structured and unstructured activities and events. The computing suite included a wireless local area network with Internet access, six moveable, thin client terminals located in the café area and three high‑specification multimedia computers with printer and scanner in a separate room. The project was financed from the government’s Community Digital Strategy Partnership Fund that aimed to support local, regional and national initiatives to develop and achieve capability, confidence, relevant content and connection to realise community aspirations through information and communication technology (ICT). This paper presents the evaluation of the ICT youth project after just four months of operation. The mixed‑method study, framed by the overlapping constructs of self‑efficacy, social and human capital and third place, involved a survey, semi‑structured interviews and observations. The findings revealed that most of the measures of success defined for the project were met but evaluation of many of the Personal Development objectives relating to an increase in the work, study, ICT and literacy skills of youth was not possible, due to the short evaluation period. 

Hardly a sector of economic activity has remained untouched by the trend of inter‑firm collaboration, particularly among large enterprises, but it seems to remain uncommon among many SMEs especially in some developing countries. The advantages of the SMEs of being faster and flexible are clouded by the lack of resources and skills to develop businesses in the network. Successful development in some economies, mainly in Asia, has been based on effective linkage participation of SMEs as a strategy to cover the scarcities they face. This strategy is now playing an important role on the agenda in many countries in Latin America, but there is still a lack of information to make this strategy more popular among SMEs in these countries. Traditional literature in developed countries has been focused on large companies to explain what makes an alliance successful, how the relationship alliance partners should be, which structure of the alliance or the type of contract may make or break an alliance but, few researches have explored alliance as a strategy to develop SMEs. The critical role of decision‑making process regarding to the choice of being engaging into an alliance deserves particular research attention. This paper is focused on the alliance decision making process with specially emphasis on SMEs. The main contribution is to provide a framework of different factors that have influenced alliance decision making process. Based on Social Capital and Social Exchange, this research concentrates his analysis on a sample of SMEs from Mexico in which both, experienced and inexperienced alliances entrepreneurs, were considered. Our proposal included twelve variables which were analyzed to find their impact on the alliance decision making. The results show that the internal alliance initiative, frequently enterprise diagnose, trust based on partners’ prestige and smaller or similar characteristics of potential partners have strong influence on positive alliance decision making. Opposite expected characteristics were found between alliance experienced entrepreneurs and alliance inexperienced entrepreneurs. 

Over the last fifty years mobility practices have changed dramatically, improving the way travel takes place, the time it takes but also on matters like road safety and prevention. High mortality caused by high accident levels has reached untenable levels. But the research into road mortality stayed limited to comparative statistical exercises which go no further than defining accident types. In terms of sharing information and mapping accidents, little progress has been mad, aside from the normal publication of figures, either through simplistic tables or web pages. With considerable technological advances on geographical information technologies, research and development stayed rather static with only a few good examples on dynamic mapping. The use of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices as normal equipments on automobile industry resulted in a more dynamic mobility patterns but also with higher degrees of uncertainty on road traffic. This paper describes a road accident georeferencing project for the Lisbon District involving fatalities and serious injuries during 2007. In the initial phase, individual information summaries were compiled giving information on accidents and its majour characteristics, collected by the security forces: the Public Safety Police Force (Polícia de Seguran?a Pública ‑ PSP) and the National Guard (Guarda Nacional Republicana ‑ GNR). The Google Earth platform was used to georeference the information in order to inform the public and the authorities of the accident locations, the nature of the location, and the causes and consequences of the accidents. This paper also gives future insights about augmented reality technologies, considered crucial to advances to road safety and prevention studies. At the end, this exercise could be considered a success because of numerous consequences, as for stakeholders who decide what to do but also for the public awareness to the problem of road mortality. 

This paper describes the challenges and barriers to the introduction of “IT Governance” into a Hospital environment. It further addresses the relationship between corporate governance (hospital strategy and organization) and the role of IT Governance in managing new services deployment. Both ITIL and COBIT are introduced as a best practice for supporting Hospital Information Systems (HIS) management. IT Governance is an extensive framework; therefore we focused our study on ITIL Assessment combined with COBIT. The assessments were centered on IT Service Management, which, according to our findings, is being carried inefficiently in Hospital S?o Sebasti?o (HSS). We used both COBIT and ITIL assessment to audit and identify IT Governance weakness. These processes revealed a way to assist the organization at becoming aware about IT improvement priorities. The results were used to rethink HIS strategy in order to properly address the need to develop new health services like ambulatory surgery and connecting with out‑patients services. We used the IT Governance standard ISO/IEC 38500 to provide guiding principles for the effective use of IT according to Calder‑Moir framework. Starting with a COBIT assessment we identified IT management priorities and metrics, then we focused on the ITIL assessment steps. Finally, we applied the framework on both Service Desk and Incident Management processes. We analyzed the level of IT governance maturity and produce some recommendations to improve IT Service Management practices. The ITIL assessment identified existing gaps between the current organization practices and how the organization should perform according to ITIL, and what key actions need to be taken to close those gaps. At the end disclosed that IT Governance inefficiency is an important barrier to HIS management, mostly in IT service management which has a direct impact in users' daily work flow, and therefore on Healthcare services delivery. 

Scoping reviews are used to assess the extent of a body of literature on a particular topic, usually in order to ensure that further research in that area is a beneficial addition to world knowledge. It is typically the first stage of a research project, informing the following work, and so can have a significant impact on both methods and results. Without systematic methods, reviews are subject to personal and community biases, whether intended or not. Evidence‑based science is a broad collection of techniques intended to improve research quality by methodically analysing documented relevant facts, rather than relying on expert opinion. Systematic reviews are a key element and are used in many fields from medicine to public policy to engineering. We propose a repeatable, documented, evidence‑based approach to search and manage the literature, in order to assure demonstrated objectivity of the resulting review. Software tools are prototyped, issues identified and some resolved.It is not clear from the three test cases whether the effort spent in researching, designing and developing the guidelines directly outweighs expert‑based reviews. Further applications of the guidelines and comparative tests are needed.  

The strategic role of IT and its significance throughout the organization in?creases com?plexity, variety, and the need of change. Hence IT management must deal with uncertainties derived from different, conflicting and ever changing demands. In this sense Enterprise Architecture is playing an increasingly important role in improving IT management practice. If contemporary organizations do not succeed in managing architectural issues, there is a clear risk that considerable resources will be invested without achieving desirable ef?fects. This paper investigates how Enterprise Architecture Principles impact on the management of IT‑investments in the context of large organizations. The purpose of the paper is to provide a deeper insight of the relationship between Enterprise Architecture and management of IT Investments throughout the elucidation of two significant types of principles: Delineation (differentiation) principles and Interoperability (integration) principles. Our conclusion is that the choice of architectural principles has an impact both on alignment between information systems and business demands and on the management of IT investments. This impact concerns at least four aspects: (1) The responsibility for IT investments (2) Time to value (3) Long term alignment, (4) Coordination of investments in information systems with changes in business processes. 

In this paper, we develop a conceptual model for understanding human‑related information practices and their behavioural activities. Our focus is on forging new possibilities to explore and improve the contemporary dilemma when human activities fail due to the lack of the needed information, which is here understood as information inadequacy. More precisely, information inadequacy is defined as vulnerable and inadequate information, composed by the dichotomy of information lack and/or of information overflow, which imposes complexities and unexpected behaviour on human, social and industrial affairs. By exploring the lack of needed information in human, social and industrial affairs, we conducted an inquiry into different empirical situations manifesting information inadequacy, subsequently examining the various theoretical bodies that relate to information inadequacy. The key question was: Which theories may explicate the key human behavioural patterns that cause information inadequacy? To answer this question, our paper presents initial guidance with a systematic approach that focuses on evaluating and further improving research and practice in terms of information relevance. The empirical cases are largely based on major human, social and industrial dysfunctions: the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy 2008, and the Enron bankruptcy 2001, the disasters of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003, and the Challenger in 1986. The analyses are examined through theories of information behaviour that influence communication processes where two or more different actors are required to engage in activities of communicating information. The results include the identification of four information exchange patterns: influenced, intentional, hindered, and unaware. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of the model for practice with information. The paper concludes by reviewing the role of information inadequacy in economic, social and political contexts that remain challenging. 

In the last decade several researchers have addressed the problem that there does not seem to be much evidence of extensive use of interpretive evaluation approaches in practice. Researchers have though recognized the interpretive evaluation approach as well founded academically and theoretically offering potential advantages such as stakeholder commitment and learning opportunities. One reason for this non‑use could be that there are few, if any, interpretive evaluation methods ready at hand for evaluators in practice. An interpretive IS evaluation method means a method in support for doing evaluation as interpretation. This research presents a practical method for doing evaluation of information systems as a joint act of interpretation performed by the stakeholders of the information system in use. In our research we have expanded the interpretive philosophical base to embrace a pragmatic knowledge interest in order to underpin the overall strive for evaluation that is to contribute to change and betterment. The method presented is named VISU (Swedish acronym for IS evaluation for workpractice development). The process of evaluating accordingly to the VISU method has been extensively tested in practice and in theoretical grounding processes and is now considered ready for wider use. The research process for developing VISU has been conducted with canonical action research through parallel work with evaluation and method development in six episodes within two cases. VISU consists of prescribed actions that are anchored in a set of underlying principles stemming from the philosophy of American pragmatism. Evaluation according to VISU is performed in three phases; arrange, evaluate and develop. In the paper VISU is described according to phases, actions, main concepts and principles. The use of VISU is demonstrated through examples from a performed evaluation of an information system in support for social welfare services. 

Health Care system has had an ongoing focus on improving access to and quality of care, and more recently on cost reduction. The primary mean to achieve these goals has been to change health care policy, as exemplified by the adoption of health information technology in particular the adoption of patient centred information, characterized by the ability to manage comprehensive patience information such as: medical records; appointments scheduling; theatre management and ward reporting. Different terms are used to refer to these systems including the most common: electronic patient record; electronic medical record; computer based patient record and medical records system (MRS). Despite the importance of these systems in health care, little is known about the adoption. This study addresses the existent research gap by analyzing the adoption of MRS in European hospitals. Study data source is the e‑Business W@tch 2006 decision maker survey, covering 448 hospitals in the European Union. Additional information related to country wealth indicators, was extracted from the EU official statistics and opinion polls website. Variable choice is based on a derivation from the recently introduced framework know as Human, Organization and Technology fit (HOT‑fit) and Technology, Organization and Environment (TOE) framework. Adding the environmental context into the HOT‑fit framework, the Human, Organization, Technology and Environment (HOTE) framework is derivate. HOTE framework identifies four contexts that influence information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption: Technology characteristics including equipment but also processes; Organizational context as size, localization and even managerial structure; Human context relating to ‘User Involvement’; and Environmental context that incorporate the cultural environment of the country and regulatory influence. In order to reduce the number of variables available, a factor analysis (FA) is performed, using the principal component technique with varimax rotation. Three eigen‑value, greater than one are extracted, explaining 69.68% of the variance contained in the data. The three contexts found are: country wealth, competition and technology readiness. To determine the correlation between HOTE framework characteristics and MRS adoption a Logit model is used. For that were used variables obtained from the FA and other variables such as hospital size, education level and research level, gathered directly from the e‑business watch survey. MRS adoption is significantly associated with Education Level, Technology Readiness and Country Wealth. Since MRS adoption may be an organization survival strategy for hospitals to improve quality and efficiency while reducing costs, hospitals that are at risk of missing the wave of implementation should be offered incentives that enable them to implement and maintain patient centred information systems. 

Presented in this paper is the Patient Assessment‑Data Quality Model (PA‑DQM). It is designed to assess how patient datasets which are poor in composition can impact on the decision processes following patient assessment. The PA‑DQM in particular examin es four key Data Quality (DQ) dimensions: timeliness, accuracy, consistency and completeness. This DQ model is generic in nature as any number of decision making processes can be substituted to reflect the medical scenario under consideration. For examp le, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admissions, Emergency Room (ER) triage systems or Modified Early Warning Scorecards (MEWS). The PA‑DQM presented is evaluated using the MEWS process as an exemplar. Paper based MEWS are utilised to assist medical staff identify at risk patients with a declining health status. The calculated MEWS score is designed to trigger earlier medical interventions to avoid or reduce the potential impact of catastrophic events. In particular the existing MEWS system which (i.e. a paper based approach) is evaluated alongside an electronic‑Modified Early Warning Scorecard (e‑MEWS) system, which is designed and developed to reduce the number of DQ issues which continue to persist with the paper based process. To validate the asse rtions presented in this paper a workshop (participation of 51 medical staff) was held in St. Luke?s Hospital, Kilkenny, Ireland, where the paper based MEWS has been adopted for the last 3 years. It is clear from our initial findings that the proposed e ‑MEWS system has the ability to greatly enhance the levels of DQ over its existing paper based counterpart.  

Today, information technology (IT) is universally regarded as an essential tool in enhancing the competitiveness of the economy of a country. There is consensus that IT has significant effects on the productivity of firms. These effects will only be realized if, and when, IT are widely spread and used. It is essential to understand the determinants of IT adoption. Consequently it is necessary to know the theoretical models. There are few reviews in the literature about the comparison of IT adoption models at the individual level, and to the best of our knowledge there are even fewer at the firm level. This review will fill this gap. In this study, we review theories for adoption models at the firm level used in information systems literature and discuss two prominent models: diffusion on innovation (DOI) theory, and the technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework. The DOI found that individual characteristics, internal characteristics of organizational structure, and external characteristics of the organization are important antecedents to organizational innovativeness. The TOE framework identifies three aspects of an enterprise's context that influence the process by which it adopts and implements a technological innovation: technological context, organizational context, and environmental context. We made a thorough analysis of the TOE framework, analysing the studies that used only this theory and the studies that combine the TOE framework with other theories such as: DOI, institutional theory, and the Iacovou, Benbasat, and Dexter model. The institutional theory helps us to understand the factors that influence the adoption of interorganizational systems (IOSs); it postulates that mimetic, coercive, and normative institutional pressures existing in an institutionalized environment may influence the organization’s predisposition toward an IT‑based interorganizational system. The Iacovou, Benbasat, and Dexter model, analyses IOSs characteristics that influence firms to adopt IT innovations. It is based on three contexts: perceived benefits, organizational readiness, and external pressure. The analysis of these models takes into account the empirical literature, and the difference between independent and dependent variables. The paper also makes recommendations for future research. 

Physical inactivity is an important risk factor in several highly prevalent diseases, being associated with worse quality of life and higher mortality. Despite the implementation of a several global, national and local policy instruments and strategies to promote physical activity (PA), including Internet platforms and advertising campaign, approximately two thirds of the European adult population reports low adherence to an active lifestyle, impairing health benefits that exercise can provide. Increasing efforts to provide adequate information have been made, and the use of new technologies tools has increased, but little investigation focus on the effect of information exposure on knowledge retention, regarding effects of physical inactivity in health. The objective of the present study is to evaluate differences among people in the use of new information technologies as information source on PA, regarding their perceptions of benefits of an active lifestyle and characteristics of adequate physical activity to health improvement. The study included a randomly recruited sample of 879 subjects (53% males; 47% females), age 42.3±19.4 years old. A survey was designed to (1) identify main information sources; (2) relate perceived knowledge and PA information sources; (3) relate knowledge retention on adequate PA for health benefits and PA information sources; (4) relate perceived necessity of more information regarding PA and information sources and (5) relate PA levels and information sources. Results show that two information sources (teacher and sport professionals) positively influence perception of proper PA information. Results also found teachers, Internet and sport professionals as PA information sources that most influence their users, regarding Knowledge retention. We also found that rely on friends/family; teachers, Internet and sport professionals as PA information sources positively influence the adoption of an active lifestyle. 

The Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) established the Global Upstream Supply Initiative (GUSI) in order to provide a standard framework for consumer goods manufacturers and their suppliers of ingredients, raw materials and packaging to better integrate across a number of supply chain processes. Without Internal Data Alignment, for example, Global Data Synchronization (GDS) will definitely not improve business performance and will, in fact, magnify the negative impact of poor quality data. What’s more, collaborative initiatives such as those included in Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) will not be economically deployable on a wide scale without the consistently accurate and available information that will result from an Internal Data Alignment program. GDS is based on a global network of data pools, or electronic catalogues, which are all inter‑operable and compliant with the same business requirements and standards. Interoperability means that a manufacturer can publish a product and partner data on one single Data Pool without having to worry about the fact that customers may select different Data Pools to access the data. Integrated Suppliers is a concept for improving the part of supply chain between manufacturers and the tiers of suppliers of ingredients, raw materials and packaging. By sharing information both parties are able to exercise judgment on costs, quantities and timing of deliveries and productions in order to stream line the production flow and to move to a collaborative relationship. GUSI underlined the long term policy on the use of Standards as a key success factor to achieve upstream e‑supply integration. Before exchanging information, partners must agree on product identification. This is a part of the data alignment step defined by GUSI. The UIM (Upstream Integration Model) offers common business processes and data interchanges to support interoperability between manufacturers and suppliers. 

Technical documentation has moved from printed booklets to electronic versions that need to be updated continuously to match product development and user demands. There is an imminent need to ensure the quality of technical documentation, i.e., information that follows a product. In order to ensure the quality of technical documentation, it is important to be able to measure it in a constructive way. In this paper, we approach quality from a software quality perspective and rely on automated measurements and analyses. It is generally not possible to assess quality attributes such as “ease of understanding” using automated measurements. To assess such quality attributes, we suggest the use of visualizations as a communication medium between the machine results and technical writers, and define a visualization‑based quality assessment approach for technical documentation. In order to test our approach, we use it to assess the quality of 3 real‑world documentations from a Swedish mobile phone manufacture, a Japanese camera manufacturer, and a Swedish warship producer. The study shows that our approach can be used to identify potential quality defects. For example, we tested an unclassified subset of the warship’s technical documentation and found that 49% of it was redundant text clones. We performed the study in collaboration with a Swedish company that is in charge of creating and maintaining the 3 documentations, and they acknowledge that our approach has great potential and that our results proved helpful to them. 

This paper describes the design and first results of an information system (SIGLIC) that supports the new integrated management program (SIGA) to improve the access to surgery in Portugal. SIGIC, the Ministry of Health’s agency responsible for access to surgery management, started re‑thinking the system in 2005 by re‑defining key processes and workflows. The designed information system SIGLIC integrates all hospitals with surgery with every other hospital, where it picks the data to allow the search for optimal solutions for each patient. In the context of SIGIC (Waiting List for Surgery's Integrated Management System) “access” means to assure the treatment by services in terms of quality, standards, equity, process and transparency. The existence of a significant number of patients waiting for treatment that exceed the clinical acceptable times has ominous consequences not only for the individuals (increasing suffering, reduce treatment success, more complex treatments) but also for the society (more expensive use of resources, higher absenteeism, etc), which made the government to create SIGIC program. SIGIC's goals are to reduce waiting time for surgery, to apply identical standards to all patients, to profit from good use of resources and, to create a national structure of homogeneous information based in a system of data collection. The methodology followed was to: a) “survey of information systems and technology in Demand/Supply/Resources”; b) “institutionalization and monitoring of procedural standards for management of the Waiting List for Surgery (WLS)”, c) provide “evaluation by results” and, d) “Correction of deviations to the standard”. To fulfill SIGIC’s objectives it was created a management model (SIGA) and SIGLIC to support it. By now 57 public hospitals and 96 private clinics and hospitals (with convention in SIGIC) had joined the SIGIC network. The Information model include the following items: information on patients and events to allow “Process management”, “clinical information” for “Disease Management” and “financial data” to allow management between the health units, from which data is gathered to improve access management. The information is recorded by hospitals in accordance with a set of standards and integrated into the central database of SIGIC. The quality of integrated information from the hospitals is guaranteed by a set of tools to validate its consistency, rejecting non‑compliant data. The information is recorded in hospitals throughout the process of managing the patient on WLS and integrated daily in the central database. The results since 2005 show the importance of an integrated information system to overcome the bureaucracy: There was a 36% improvement in number of scheduled surgical episodes and 60% reduction in days on waiting time.