ABSTRACT. Despite the increased research interest on implementing ICT in local administrations in developed countries, there have been very little systematic investigation concerning the role of the middle managers during the information system implementation process in developing countries The role of the middle managers is very crucial: they promote and disseminate the use of ICT by adopting attitudes from their sense-making and sensegiving. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate the role of the middle managers in creating sense in public administrations such as municipalities when adopting ICT and to investigate the impact of their readiness to implement a winning scenario for action, in which they would contribute to modernizing public administration.

ABSTRACT. In a globalized market, companies are increasingly pushed to implement change projects aimed at creating new value-added products and services. So they have to integrate their business processes in order to provide flexible processes and manage information concerning potential business needs, organizational context and human behavior. A decision support is required to manage on one hand all the possible organizational and functional features that the business process must satisfy, on the other hand all the actions needed to implement specific changes on the process in a flexible manner. We propose our decision-table-based framework as the suitable solution to manage business knowledge and prevent, detect and support the fixing of anomalies that may compromise the flexible adaptation of the process.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims at investigating the application of new technologies in the sport field, more specifically the role played by the technology and Accounting Information Systems (AIS) in the sport events. In the last decades, the overall picture of the sport sector has been deeply changing because of the information technology (IT) and internet. Traditional processes in the sport field have been changed significantly facilitated and affected by the new technologies, such as the knowledge transfer in the sporting event management process, the athletes’ performance and the social integration of disabled persons. We are observing an explosion of technology applications in the sport field in different sub-organizational areas, but this phenomenon is still underrepresented in the literature. This paper aims to analyze the main insights and challenges concerning the application of IT and AIS in the sport setting, specifically in the area of the sport events. Indeed, we exam in which way IT and AIS can affect the sport events management process identifying and discussing specific key performance indicators, and trying to apply the Balanced Scorecard tools for controlling and measuring the overall sport event management process. This study, starting from a review of the literature and previous research contributions on the topic, represents a research starting point that may provide significant theoretical and managerial implications.

ABSTRACT. Internet has become the most important channel to disclose information and to reduce the distance between Local Government Authorities and its stakeholders, in order to maintain politicians, managers and public administrations accountable. The study examines the relationship between accountability and performance of Italian Local Government Authorities that are obliged to disclose performance data on their website, in order to enhance transparency and participation for improving public performance. Findings show no significant relationship between e-disclosure and performance, underlining that the greater transparency is only symbolic, and a positive and significant relationship between media interest and performance, highlighting the relevant role that media could have in stimulating citizens to control ways through which politicians and public managers spent money and create public value.

ABSTRACT. According to the extant literature, business models may be considered as “cognitive” devices, that require good level of knowledge about customers, suppliers and competitors. Recent studies have shown how the adoption of data-mining tools can create a positive interaction with business models, improving the mangers’ decision support capabilities. But these results are often based on experimental studies assuming that all the respondents play the same role in a virtual company environment, holding similar skills and competencies. The present paper addresses the organizational factors enabling or hindering the effective adoption of data-mining to support the business model design in a real context, where the team of managers involved may show extremely different characteristics in terms of level of authority, skills, and level of experience. By analyzing a case study, the paper highlights how the level of acceptance and perceived usefulness of the information generated by data-mining tools can enhance the speed and ease of designing a business model and support the decision-making process.

ABSTRACT. Co-production is synonymous with complexity. Its success or failure is firmly linked to the capacity of the public organizations. An aspect that has not yet been scrutinized by the research microscope, implying that service delivery redesign is self-implementing, a myth that the findings of our study debunk. Drawing on organization and policy studies literature, it shows that complexity is the flip side of co-production and that it spawns an unpredictable number of variables, with different actors playing different roles in the service lifecycle and the choice of which of the many and variegated approaches is taken influencing the outcomes. This thickens the knots of complexity, making co-production the capacity test of fire that the public administrations must pass to meet the new demands of the citizenry. However, there is no decisive answer to this crux, which is to understand how much administrative capacity is needed to support and implement co-production practices. Indeed, the only certitude is that co-production, whatever its guise, obliges the public organizations to engage with readiness to change.

ABSTRACT. Governments are facing unprecedented major challenges brought by financial crises, birth declining and aging population, climate and environmental changes, among other issues. All these interrelated factors create a volatile and increasingly complex environment which the public sector must continually adapt to. This raises the question of how governments will continue in the coming years to offer responsibly relevant and effective public services. Several experts in public governance share the view that innovation can be a response to these challenges [5, 8, 15]. In general, we can define innovation as the implementation of a new idea that led to a change in practice in order to create some kind of value [11]. Green et al. [6] reported that most innovations in services, even public, are made possible, activated and stimulated by the development of new technologies of information and communication (ICT). Furthermore they are considered suitable to improve the efficiency, accessibility and transparency, and are crucial to design, implement and monitor policies and services [2]. However these potential benefits, at the state of the art is recognized that implementing ICT-enabled innovation in the public sector, ask to consider the complexity of its relationship with systemic factors related to organizational culture and governance mechanisms, among others [1, 3, 12, 14]. Management of innovation in public sector becomes even more critical in the current scenario where the promotion of open government is imposing itself as the main paradigm for governments willing to be actually open, accountable, and reactive to citizens and constituencies needs. Nowadays, the main results are actually related to a number of data portals that however contributes mainly to increase transparency, whereas resulting not enough for increasing openness and inclusion as promises of open government [10, 13]. These issues are strictly related to the need for a theory of public sector digital innovation which integrate contributions from the research in the field of e-government [4, 7, 9] and theoretical foundations from innovation and management research that surround and can be applied to study and experiment digital and ICT-enabled innovation in public sector, thus, attempting to transpose them on e-government research. In particular, in this paper we question the linkages and influences between open innovation paradigm [16] and e-government research. To this end a literature review is carried out to i) understand how open innovation has been interpreted by e-government scholars and ii) to identify key characteristics of open innovation in the public sector, which are subsequently mapped to some ongoing open government initiatives in Canada.

ABSTRACT. This conceptual paper underscores the importance of approaching inclusion policies by leveraging co-production and by factoring in multiple contexts. Following Pollitt’s ‘contextual analysis’, the European policy for an ageing society is addressed and the program concerning the development of e-services for the elderly examined. Results show that this approach allows for insights and suggestions that supplement the results of the evaluation report prepared for the European Commission by a panel of experts. These suggestions, that can be used in designing future editions of the program, concern the merits of ‘service science’ and the driving roles of both ‘intermediaries’ and ‘gatekeepers’.

ABSTRACT. Business organizations, whether public or private, operate in a context continuously changing and not just with respect to the competitive areas. These organizations, to survive in their specific markets (private sector), or to guarantee a competitive service level also with respect to ethical and social performance of public services (public sector), are required, among other things: • to comply with a series of standards, constantly updated, which relate to occupational safety, environmental protection, quality management system (e.g. ISO, OHSAS, HACCP, EN, etc...) and • to verify the application of those standards while operating their daily activities. The research presented in this paper arises from the observation that, to date, although there are numerous technological tools and methodologies for the practical application of regulations and procedures, they are poorly integrated for cross management and continuous monitoring of issues relating to several sensitive issues (safety, health, environment, etc...). More in detail, the paper reports the results achieved in the frame of the HSEPGEST project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research (MIUR) in the context of the framework program 2007-2013. HSEPGEST addresses the challenge related to the Integrated Management Systems, following a synergic approach that takes into account different viewpoints (legal, technological, methodological, organizational, etc.) by introducing a set of tools and solutions that allow to align and to update the organizational information system with respect to a set of reference legal norms. In particular, this is possible by supporting the design and execution of organizational processes compliant with constraints introduced by the norms to be applied by the organizations in order to guarantee the required level of Quality, Environmental, and Safety management. This objective is achieved by improving the flexibility and adaptability of current business process management system through the integration of those systems with a knowledge management layer providing access to contextualized information according to the need of the design or of the execution of the business process. The research is founded on two main pillars: • the representation and management of the knowledge related to the application domain and to the organizational environment through the exploitation of semantic technologies; • the design and development of a process management system based on BPMN notation able to exploit, interact, and enrich the knowledge managed through the semantic technologies The management of knowledge related to the application domain has been performed by: • customizing ontological models in order to represent the specific requirements emerging from the application domain • adopting semantic technologies for classifying, searching, and updating the represented knowledge In order to address the specific needs of the project related to the representation of norms, a specific methodology has been introduced in order to analyze the norm and to represent it with the ontological models defined in the project. The result has been the definition of knowledge model able to provide a semantic representation of the Enterprise (including organizational structure, processes, information, resources) integrated with a representation of the regulatory context defined by the system of the norms implemented by the organizations. The Business Process Management System (BPMS), designed and implemented during the research project, provides a full support to the business process lifecycle from the design to the execution. In a standard business process management system, the business analyst that knows the process model tools and a little piece of the domain (such as law, regulation, company,..) has the main task to model the business process. The modelled process is based on the personal point-of-view of the analyst. The presented BPMS uses the ontological model of the domain to support the design process. This support allows the business designer to explore the “knowledge of the organisation” in order to achieve the needed information and to associate the specific elements of the process to specific chunks of knowledge represented through the ontological models. In case of changes, (due to law changes, company reorganization,..), the associations among chunks of knowledge, managed through the semantic technologies allow to redesign quickly the processes that need to be updated and modified. The availability of a semantic representation is also useful during execution phase of the process. The relations defined among the available knowledge and business process elements allow to execute the business processes elaborating information strictly referred to the large wide of information available within the organizational information systems; moreover, also the processes themselves are concepts represented by the concepts of the ontological models. Thus, collecting information about the execution of the processes and relating them to other information, it’s possible to support decisions in order to improve the performance and the quality of the designed process. The results of the project have many innovative and distinctive features compared to current solutions of the market that are focused mainly on the design of the process. The presented solution is an integrated system that makes a powerful and effective use of a semantic layer to improve the quality of the process design. Our experience is focused on the specific intricate domain of safety, health, quality, and environmental protection but we are sure that it is possible to generalize the result of the research.

ABSTRACT. The process of interaction between individuals, through the use of social media, is one of the most complex problems that theorists have had to analyse in recent years (Richards, 2007; Kolbitsch and Maurer, 2006; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; ecc.). Social media tools are becoming an important presence in healthcare and transforming it in the process. Today many organizations, in the health sector, are faced a challenge: they must choose to allow their operators to use this new method of communication with patients and their families or forbid it. The rapid changes that the diffusion of social media has had in the communication processes would undoubtedly impose a drastic change: the use of social media allow an instant sharing of ideas, opinions, knowledge and experiences, creating a new “space-time” dimension that would translate in a new way (additional) to "cure" the patient (Hawn, 2009). Although there are many benefits and promises from social media several risks are associated with their use. The ambiguity related to legal and ethical issues (for example patient privacy) of social media at the same time contains the enthusiasm related to the potentialities that social media offer. In this paper we analyse the perceived risks and benefits of social media in healthcare. Through an empirical study conducted on a sample of European physicians and patients we’ll analyse some items (measured with Likert’s technique) that will allow us to define an "utility function" to measure and compare what they perceive as beneficial and what they perceive as a limit. This work can be useful for managers of healthcare organization to understand that the challenge is due and it must be not only organizational but, above all, cultural.

ABSTRACT. In the Italian Healthcare System's scenario, Global Service Management (GSM) and Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) are taking a fundamental role to support the healthcare organization to achieve quality and efficiencies goals. Process reengineering, ICTs and performance measurement can help in designing a valuable patient-centric care process shared between hospitals and GSM companies. The paper describes a framework aimed to support the choice of the best process innovation methodology according to the main factors of valuable partnerships. The application of the framework to the case study of the Cardiac Surgery Unit of the Sassari Hospital and its own GSM partner shows how it is effective for the improvement and innovation of a complex clinical process and preliminary results gained on the process management

ABSTRACT. Cloud paradigm is currently one of the most remunerative segments of IT. It has gained the interest of a very large number of corporates and organizations. However, despite the promising features, security is the major concern for businesses that want to shift their services to the cloud. On the other hand, business critical systems must be certified against a set of security controls to be compliant to security standards, as well as to mitigate potential security incidents. Therefore, cloud service providers must employ adequate security measures that conform to security controls expected by the information systems they host, moreover, they should be able to grant the correct application of such controls to their customers. Security SLAs are a way to face such issues, trough the definition of contracts among cloud service providers and cloud customers that clearly state the security grants applied to the offered cloud services. This paper illustrates a case study that describes how it is possible to offer such Security SLAs on a concrete cloud service, which offers Apache Hadoop clusters over public cloud providers. The paper outlines how to write and demonstrate security SLAs on such services.

ABSTRACT. During the recent few years Cloud computing has gained a strategic importance in the development of the ICT sector. Cloud services have been adopted by companies, public administrations and private to store and process data. As the requirements of reliability, accessibility and availability of information increase, also the requirements related to confidentiality and security of sensitive and classified (and therefore legal requirements) regarding the confidentiality and security of sensitive data (email, medical records etc.). One of the main problems concerns the geographical distribution of the cloud providers' data center. Indeed it's very common that a cloud provider has its registered office in a Country and several data centers located in different continents of the world. This business strategy, clearly aimed to maximize profit is in contrast with the variegated national laws, which may provide specific requirements and security measures for the treatment of different kind of data. For example in Italy the regulation of reference is the legislative decree 196/2003 which have been joined over time numerous other provisions concerning specific aspects of the treatment of data, which have been combined together in the Consolidated regulations, which took effect January 1, 2004. This paper presents an overview of the current initiatives concerning the legislation awareness in cloud computing and reports the main aspects to take into account to approach to the topic.

ABSTRACT. The digital revolution is impacting many aspects of the society. Collaboration tools are challenging the traditional hierarchical model thanks to pervasive computing and always connected devices. Organizations are transforming to take advantage and to adapt to this new paradigm. When creativity and innovation are critical to the success of a company, flattened hierarchies and decentralized cooperation can leverage human talent better. With this paper authors aim at providing a systematic literature review as a first step of a research project aiming at proposing emergent new organization design approach.

ABSTRACT. High technologies, and ICTs in particular, offer crucial opportunities to address many dramatic problems implied in governing common resources and territorial systems. What are the possible new organizational forms and eco-systems that allow to better exploit these emerging opportunities? What are the key (and possibly new) managerial challenges implied? In this paper, we explore these issues through a longitudinal case study of a smart organization (SO) aimed at the food waste prevention through re-distribution of surplus food to associations that assist socially disadvantaged people. We find that only the cross-fertilization between research streams that have remained separated so far (smart cities/regions/communities; institutional entrepreneurship; and socio-ecological/socio-technical systems) could offer a satisfying explanation for the phenomena we observed. We conclude by suggesting that the emerging SOs are likely to be needed as organizational engines to allow positive techno-institutional innovation for the common good. This appears to be as one of the most relevant and interesting issues for organiza-tion and management studies for the years to come.

ABSTRACT. We investigate the impact of fake online reviews on Internet users’ intention to continue using the reviewing website. We carry out two studies: 1) a study with 1,031 users whom we invited to write fake reviews and 2) a study with 410 users who become the target of these fake reviews. We test a model of continuance intention of using reviewing website, which includes seven hypotheses. Our results indicate that any encounter with deceptive online reviews lowers user satisfaction and, in some cases, negatively impacts continuance intention. This research sheds light on an under-investigated phenomenon, namely the impacts of fake review and points out implications for researchers and practitioners.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to analyze the role of Accounting Information Systems (AIS) in the information management when in the relationships system, characterizing the port communities (PCs), an information technology platform has been adopted, such as the Port Community Systems (PCSs). More in details, we investigate, on one side, the architecture of PCSs for the management of information flows in the relationships among the port users involved in the processes, and, on the other hand, the nature and role of reporting to support the decision making of Port Authorities (PAs) in the landlord port model. In order to achieve our goal, we have conducted a literature review on the PCSs and on AIS in PCSs. Using the case study methodology, we have also conducted some semi-structured inter-views to port users and Port Authority (PA) in an Italian seaports. The analysis conducted out-lines a strong need to get more detailed reporting on goods and also on passengers. In this way, the PCSs, that include the functions of AIS, can help to improve the information basis for PAs in the future developmental decisions of seaports.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates the contribution of digital platforms to management control systems. These platforms are hardware/ software solutions able to connect people in a ‘social’ and safe environment and to provide tools use-ful to create, organize, search, and share documents, information, ideas, cal-endars, and so on. Several studies have investigated the organizational impli-cations of such platforms, but prior studies have provided little attention to the implications of digital platforms to management control systems (MCSs). In order to conduct the study, we examined the case of an Italian subsidiary of a European group, working in bathroom ceramic sector. We describe the introduction of a digital platform to support communication flows inside the organization and we illustrate how this platform has become more important as a device to support management control processes. The implementation of the digital platform affects each components of management control system and contribute to increase the level of integration among those components. The paper aims to contribute both to academia, filling the gap in studies re-garding the relationship between MCSs and ICTs, and to practitioners, high-lighting how a digital platform could be implement to support management control processes.

ABSTRACT. This article contributes to the growing literature on government transparency by developing a model for analyzing the relationship between government transparency and Accounting Information Systems (AIS). Based on the literature review regarding transparency and AIS, a research model is proposed. The model analyzed the relationship between the integration level of AIS and transparency levels. The Integration of AIS is measured through three levels: accounting- transactional integration; accounting- communication integration, accounting- analytics integration. Each integration dimension is analyzes with regard to three dimensions: automation, information integration, IT integration. The transparency level is assessed by the following dimensions: publication of information, accessibility, information quality, usability, interactivity.

ABSTRACT. Public organizations have to serve the public interest as responsive institutions embracing sustainability as a principle of governance and ongoing dialogue of values. Coproduction emerges at the heart of public service delivery system on leading public service organizations to develop sustainability by using knowledge and building long-term relationship supported by new technologies to provide service effectiveness and create public value. Internet technologies contribute to increase government openness and access, support information or knowledge management approach, help public institutions to engage citizens fostering participation and behave as sustainable institutions driving co-production towards a sustainable development

ABSTRACT. Citizens play a central role in smart cities, both as the users of the services delivered by the city and as active participants in the initiatives aimed at making cities smarter. By assuming the concept of co-production as the lens through which to look at citizen’s participation, the paper discusses the conditions under which citizens, as co-producers, can contribute their smartness to the development of smart cities. Behind the rhetoric of participation that affects many smart city discourses, the paper shows that citizens can fully contribute their smartness to the smart city development only if participation is based on a real redistribution of power between citizens and government.

ABSTRACT. These paper ads to the body of knowledge on the implementation of the e-Government and aims to describe how this process was carried out in the Delta municipality in Northern Italy. This organization is a public or-ganization in an economically important region and provides services to en-trepreneurs such as validation for opening a new business. An interpretative approach used with several interviewees including managers and office em-ployees permitted the collection of insights on the three main phases of im-plementation identified. However, despite efforts to reduce the costs, time, and bureaucracy involved, two years after the introduction of the infor-mation technology tools, the process had not improved. The duration of the validation process had decreased by only one day and the quality of the ser-vice to citizens was no better. With regards to factors hampering the process, our findings highlighted concerns about the governance’s mismanagement of the process in all phases of the implementation. Further, the Delta munic-ipality case study analysis suggested that more studies are needed to better understand the barriers that impeded the implementation from focusing on governance in terms of workflow and organizational change.

ABSTRACT. The paper highlights the possible technological evolution in the Lean manufacturing that concerns 4D Printing. To date there are not case studies of 4D printing application able to demonstrate the effective use of 4D Printing, and its results on the production cycles. The purpose of this article is to review the state of the art of the developments in four dimensional (4D) Printing, through a literature review, in order to define the 4D Printing characteristics, to examine its perspectives for the future application in manufacturing and to identify the potential benefits and manufacturing advantages.

ABSTRACT. Co-production of public services is well known in the public management literature. Many stud-ies show how co-production makes public services not only more efficient but also more effec-tive. It the recent years, the development of several ICT applications and projects have shown that ICT has the potential to make co-production an easy and common practice for all citizens, changing completely how services are delivered on a large scale. The research, after having pre-sented some existing cases of ICTs application that favorite co-production, shows that using ICT for co-production might help the state to deliver public services that generate Public Value. The paper follows with an in depth analysis according to the Actor Network Theory to understand if co-production through ICT might induce structural changes in the public administration allowing in future citizens to be actively involved in the production of public services. The research will conclude by providing a proposal to implement permanently co-production in the public sector.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays the use of technology is increasing in our society, leading to an evolution in the consumers’ behaviour and opening new frontiers in the communication modalities. Transportation sector is pervaded by this progress: new models of mobility are rising, mainly connected to the preeminent role of technology. Sharing economy is the new aspect of future society, focusing the attention on the goods’ distribution and allocation. This study looks at the economic, environmental and social benefit of this new approach, considering the lack of policies to regulate this phenomenon.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, the users' browsing activity on the Internet is not completely private due to many entities that collect and use such data, either for legitimate or illegal goals. The implications are serious, from a person who expose his private information to an unknown third party entity, without any knowledge, to a company being unable to control the flow of its information to the outside world. As a result, users have lost control over their private data in the Internet. In this paper, we present the entities involved in users' data collection and usage. Then, we highlight what are the ethical issues that arise for users, companies, scientists and governments. Finally, we present some alternative scenarios and suggestions for the entities to address such ethical issues.

ABSTRACT. Behavior in the field of Information systems is a popular topic of research. Researchers in different contexts try to propose models and theories to show the influential factors that influence individuals’ behavior. In these kinds of researches, the behavior of people in a certain context is investigated and a set of variables as its predictor are being investigated. However, in some cases like individuals’ behavior in context of ethical dilemmas is not possible to be observed or asked. In these cases, a scenario-based questionnaire might be very helpful. This paper proposes a method to design proper scenarios for these kinds of questionnaires focusing on Social Networking Sites’ ethical dilemmas.

ABSTRACT. The objective of the paper is to discuss two cases of public sector Cloud adoption, in United Kingdom and Italy, to identify the major trends and implications that different strategies in public sector Cloud adoption might have on service provision and public value creation. The risks, as well as the benefit associated with a selective cloud outsourcing policy will be discussed in the paper in the light of the cases of public sector cloud initiatives in the UK and Italy.

ABSTRACT. The question of the paper is how to solve the problem of automatically controlling systems of High Energy Physics (HEP) accelerators in Italy? The !CHAOS project has been financed by MIUR (Italian Ministry of Research and Education) to solve the previous need [1], since it aims to develop a new concept of control system and data acquisition framework by providing, with a high level of abstraction, all the services needed for controlling and managing a large scientific, or non-scientific, infrastructure. !CHAOS redefines the Control System paradigm by introducing the new concept of Control Service and integrating a Data Acquisitions system, i.e. a distributed, scalable provider offering, to a general class of clients, high-performance services such as data sharing, commands dispatching, continuous historical data archiving, configuration tools, middle-layer resource management, etc ... A beta version of the !CHAOS infrastructure will be released at the end of December 2015 and will run on private Cloud infrastructures based on OpenStack. However, the !CHAOS team is also studying the deployment of the !CHAOS framework in a public Cloud infrastructure on Google and/or Amazon. Currently, a !CHAOS mobile application is under development and will be released in its beta version in September 2015 within the 10 anniversary of the European Researchers Night 2015 organised by Frascati Scienza Association. The application will be able to gather data from smartphones’ sensors at serial intervals and send them to the !CHAOS system. Data collected will be analysed and the !CHAOS team will be able to provide scientific measurements, such as the range of the earth curvature and the amount of energy consumed and produced. The !CHAOS infrastructure and its mobile application will be presented in detail in this paper.

ABSTRACT. The growing difficulties encountered by innovative firms, such as innovative startup companies, to access traditional forms of credit (banks, private and public financing) has increased the necessity to find new financial resources to support new start-ups and the launch of new projects. Thanks to the change produced by new technologies, and the potentials of the web economy (Web 2.0), new ways of financing have been identified. These involve the sharing of resources and projects, not limited to restricted territorial areas, but extended to a network of relationships of global proportions. One of such tools is represented by crowdfunding platforms that allow to overcome the structural limits of traditional funding channels and lead to the creation of global connections between entrepreneurs and investors. This study represents a critical investigation on crowdfunding in Italy. Namely, our research uses an approach based on a multiple compared case study, describes and discusses critical factors related to the use of platforms, and the potentials of th web in fundraising projects. Results highlight the structural limitations of the implementation of crowdsourcing platforms and a normative system that struggles to use new technologies and the web. This work provides a benchmark for further studies on crowdfunding, for politicians and web operators and innovative start-ups

ABSTRACT. Smart city is a recent topic, aiming at improving the quality of life of citizens in urban are-as. Born like a bottom-up trend, it is now becoming crucial for urban planning in larger cities all over the world. The smart city implementation success depends on the synergic action by the triple helix key actors: public bodies, universities, and private companies. However, not ever these subjects share the same smart city vision. This paper aims at in-dividuating similarities and differences in key actor smart city vision, by a large and deep literature review on both scientific papers and practitioner or institutional reports

ABSTRACT. This study takes a first step toward understanding the social media usage by Italian municipalities as a means for external communication. Using content analysis and posts categorization on the Facebook pages, we analyze topics of municipality posts to understand the communicative practices and types of use by municipalities. We examine the Facebook profiles of nine of the largest cities in Italy. The analysis is mainly based on a coding scheme that was derived from literature and findings show that the main communication topics between Italian local governments and citizens are provision of information, local events, local public services, and co-design.

ABSTRACT. Objective. Explore the relation between developers, a knowledge expereince base (KEB) called PROMETHEUS and their presentation in the development of enterprise applications used to propose a theory that expresses relations based on empirical evidences. Methods. Case study carried out in a real context with 5 development teams each of 6 staff members, who have in turn carried out evolutive maintenance tasks on 5 Software Packages commercialized by the enterprise with 5 different process models. Results. In the 5 experimental teams that used KEB productivity is almost double compared to previous data without the KEB. Conclusions. We can assume that the theory is extendible to the development process according to which using KEB in maintenance processes improves developer productivity as it mitigates the errors made due to the amount of decisions taken during project execution. Experience collected in PROMETHEUS becomes part of the organizational culture, being it formalized.

ABSTRACT. The increasing complexity of the web arises the need of tools able to extract knowledge from this huge amount of information. The tool proposed in this work allows automatic extraction of knowledge from Reuters agency news stream. The approach maps relevant terms in a semantic space and selects from the corpus a set of triplets of words in a subject-verb-object (s-v-o) form. The mapping into a semantic space allows for the identification of meaningful relations among the words, giving also a measure of the strength of these relations.

ABSTRACT. The article examines the role of the Internet of Things (IoT) for agriculture and its applications. The paper aims to investigate the previous scientific literature for clarifying perspectives of IoT implementation, to understand its advantages from the viewpoint of organisational sustainability and to describe these benefits based on the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework. The literature review is contains 3 main parts: generic concept of the IoT technologies; IoT applications in agriculture; the human side of the concept in agriculture enterprises. The first part of review describes the main notions and terms of the IoT; the second part describes its implementation in agriculture, corresponding to economic and environmental pillars of TBL, while the social pillar was considered in the third part. The findings consider benefits of IoT application from the TBL viewpoint. The main advantages and disadvantages systematised in SWOT-analysis in paper of discussion. The end conclusions of the paper contain the pathways for enhancing IoT implementation in agriculture.

ABSTRACT. Additive manufacturing represents a disruptive technology in comparison to traditional manufacturing. 3-D printing technology discloses companies’ inner potential, enabling them to reconsider their strategic positioning, organization, production and distribution processes, offering the potential for new supply chain configurations. Tooling and design processes are greatly simplified, while new materials, shapes, more functional products and applications constantly emerge. More efficient processing methods are able to reduce manufacturing and logistics time and costs in such a way that significant economic and financial benefits can be spread along the entire value chain. The purpose of this research is to shed lights on the state of art of this technique, with a focus on the potential impact on the companies’ strategy for the management of spare parts. We considered different scenarios and supply chain configurations related to the Automotive sector, applying the AM to the production of discontinued car parts and evaluating its main benefits.

ABSTRACT. The participation of customer in creation of value is a central issue in the literature about Online Communities (OC). This article investigates a specific instance of co-creation: the emergence of co-design trough the interactions between designers and customers in online co-design communities. Given the relation ties embodied in co-design development I chose Actor-Network Theory perspective to analyse the case of one of the most important co-design OC. The ANT gives the chance to consider both human and non-human actors, as the online co-design platform, and the heterogeneous network they create. The article frames co-design as a successful story of a translation process causing the re-negotiation of traditional identities and roles of designers and customers. When the problematization of design is successful and the enrolment, trough the interessement phase, of allies in the actor-network is sufficiently strong, the co-design emerges as actor-network and is sustained over time.

ABSTRACT. In his classic book on the information society Castells described the relationship between ”the self and the net”. The rise of Internet giants such as Google, Apple and Amazon, have been spectacular successes on an unprecedented scale. However, the relationship we have with these companies is characterized by ambiguity; on the one hand it is part of the daily life, such as searching for information or buying a book, through personalized and easy-to-use services. On the other hand the dominant position of these actors raise concerns on privacy, and monopoly power. In this paper we try to make sense of these asymmetrical relationships, and propose a way forward to achieve a more balanced relationship. Our empirical framing is an investigation of the evolution of Amazon, through the years 1995-2013. We analyse the company at two levels, focusing at first on theof individual interaction and first at then at the level of infrastructure., then at the level. For the customers the infrastructure is not visible, although the aggregates of personal and behavioural information are the basis for the rich set of “individualized” interactions between customers and company. The basic asymmetry of the relationship cannot be solved at an individual level. We therefore call for a new kind of institution, and discuss some alternative strategies.

ABSTRACT. Cloud monitoring is a task of paramount importance for both providers and consumers. On one side, it is a key feature for controlling and managing the infrastructures; on the other side, it provides information and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for both platforms and applications. In order to overcome conflict of interest coming from monitoring data collected by the same provider that is supplying the Cloud environment, a third-party monitoring infrastructure is desirable. However, even if this monitoring infrastructure is available to check performance indexes on a Cloud infrastructure, this framework remains unaware with respect to the specific application that is running on the environment, without any knowledge about its components' distribution. In this work we present an architecture and a prototypal implementation of an agent-based framework that allows the configuration of a monitoring infrastructure for Cloud applications, giving the possibility to customize both the application stressing tests and the analysis of the benchmarking data in order to shape the monitoring infrastructure to the specific application.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, energy consumption in IT infrastructures is a major area of concern for both the academics and the industry. In data centers where computational power is provided by means of virtualized resources, like virtual machines, the policy to allocate them on physical servers can strongly impact the power consumption of the entire system. This affects data center management, and proper estimation means can offer an important guidance to administrators. We propose a lumped Petri net model to investigate the contribution to energy efficiency due to different allocation and deallocation policies on heterogeneous machines with different energy demands, to support estimation and planning of datacenter needs.

ABSTRACT. The efficiency of storage systems is a key factor to ensure sustainability in data centers devoted to provide cloud services. A proper management of storage infrastructures can ensure the best trade off between costs, reliability and quality of service, enabling the provider to be competitive in the market. Heterogeneity of nodes, and the need for frequent expansion and reconfiguration of the subsystems fostered the development of efficient approaches that replace traditional data replication, by exploiting more advanced techniques, such the ones that leverage erasure codes. The optimal configuration of these advanced solutions should be evaluated on the basis of the desired performance and dependability goals, by varying the use of storage devices and the allocation of data chunks and related coding information, and considering that the increased complexity in allocations has effects on the transfer time and rebuild time required to reconstruct lost information. In this paper we use an ad-hoc discrete event simulation approach to study the performances of these mechanisms with different parametric configurations, aiming at the minimization of overheads while obtaining the desired reliability and performances. The approach is demonstrated with a practical application to the SHEC plugin of the increasingly popular CEPH distributed file system.