Browsing by Author "Brooks, L."

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    Affordance and Habitus: Understanding Land Records E-services in Bangladesh
    (Springer, 2017-06-01) Brooks, L.; Alam, M. S.
    Technology is ubiquitous, including in some public sector organisations in developing countries. This paper explores the introduction and use of e-services into the land records service in Bangladesh and how the role and position of ‘middlemen’ has re-asserted itself. The concept of affordance, both dispositional and relational, together with social affordance (habitus) offers an opportunity to better understand why this has happened and potentially to look at how to approach this in the future.
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    Comparing Local e-Government Websites in Canada and the UK
    (Springer, 2015-08-11) Brooks, L.; Persaud, A.
    This paper provides an evaluation of eight local e-Government websites in Canada and the United Kingdom, utilizing web diagnostic tools. The results of the diagnostic evaluation are synthesized for a comparative case analysis between the various local e-Government websites, providing recommendations for areas of improvement in terms of accessibility. Furthermore, the study will offer insight into the varied approaches to e-Government website conceptualization and design among local officials. While eight local websites are evaluated, only the city of Calgary and Hillingdon are explored in-depth through interviews with local officials. The exploration of the use of web diagnostic tools as an evaluative method for local e-Government websites will supply local officials and webmasters with a valuable and feasible option for internal evaluation. The study is unique in that it evaluates multiple e-Government websites at a local level rather than a federal level between two countries.
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    eGovPoliNet – Experiences from Building a Policy Informatics Research Community
    (Springer, 2017-10-04) Brooks, L.; Janssen, Marijn; Papazafeiropoulou, Ananstasia
    Policy-making in the digital age is an area which needs knowledge that can be found in communities that traditionally do not connect with each other. The creation of a research community is a challenging endeavour and needs to ad-dress both physical and online elements. In communities, groups of people share some common interests and are often facilitated by interacting with each other through the Internet and face-to-face meeting (Stewart, 2010). The activities should results in a sense of feeling of belonging to the communities. In this paper we outline the community-building activities of creating a policy informatics community which were part of the FP7 eGovPoliNet project. The eGovPoliNet project community organized community building event and provided a platform for sharing experiences and knowledge, which addresses the fragmentation of research communities, as well as the fragmentation among different disciplines, by building a common network where research-ers from different disciplines and countries can interact. The aim was to en-gage different stakeholder groups to work together in exchanging ideas and information. The focus was on e-Government, information systems, complex systems, public administration and policy research and social simulation re-search communities, although persons from other research communities were also involved. The eGovPoliNet community building process consisted of three phases namely: Initiating (period 1), Growing (period 2), and Sustaining (period 3) In the initiating phase (period 1), the European and international multidisciplinary research landscape was outlined by identifying the key players in terms of ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling R&D and by determining the targeted communities. The growing phase (period 2) focused on developing the community by organising events by the project members and involving key players. New members were attracted by organising community building activities at various conferences, organising tracks, workshops, panels and PhD Colloquia. The sustaining phase (period 3) focused on maintaining the community through collaboration type events and PhD colloquia which resulted in further growth of the community. Finally, plans for future sustainability of the community were formulated. Community building is a time-intensive process, as people should gain a sense of belonging to the community. Different type of activities are appealing to different people. Following-up activities is essential, which involves people creating content and organizing events.
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    The Ethical Balance of Using Smart Information Systems for Promoting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
    (MDPI, 2020-06-12) Ryan, Mark; Antoniou, Josephina; Brooks, L.; Jiya, Tilimbe; Macnish, Kevin; Stahl, Bernd Carsten, 1968-
    The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are internationally agreed goals that allow us to determine what humanity, as represented by 193 member states, finds acceptable and desirable. The paper explores how technology can be used to address the SDGs and in particular Smart Information Systems (SIS). SIS, the technologies that build on big data analytics, typically facilitated by AI techniques such as machine learning, are expected to grow in importance and impact. Some of these impacts are likely to be beneficial, notably the growth in efficiency and profits, which will contribute to societal wellbeing. At the same time, there are significant ethical concerns about the consequences of algorithmic biases, job loss, power asymmetries and surveillance, as a result of SIS use. SIS have the potential to exacerbate inequality and further entrench the market dominance of big tech companies, if left uncontrolled. Measuring the impact of SIS on SDGs thus provides a way of assessing whether an SIS or an application of such a technology is acceptable in terms of balancing foreseeable benefits and harms. One possible approach is to use the SDGs as guidelines to determine the ethical nature of SIS implementation. While the idea of using SDGs as a yardstick to measure the acceptability of emerging technologies is conceptually strong, there should be empirical evidence to support such approaches. The paper describes the findings of a set of 6 case studies of SIS across a broad range of application areas, such as smart cities, agriculture, finance, insurance and logistics, explicitly focusing on ethical issues that SIS commonly raise and empirical insights from organisations using these technologies.
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    Resource management in big data initiatives: Processes and dynamic capabilities
    (Elsevier, 2016-08-09) Brooks, L.; Braganza, Ashley; Nepelski, Daniel; Ali, Maged; Moro, Russ
    Effective management of organizational resources in big data initiatives is of growing importance. Although academic and popular literatures contain many examples of big data initiatives, very few are repeated in the same organization. This suggests either big data delivers benefits once only per organization or senior managers are reluctant to commit resources to big data on a sustained basis. This paper makes three contributions to the Special Issue's theme of enhancing organizational resource management. One is to establish an archetype business process for big data initiatives. The second contribution directs attention to creating a dynamic capability with big data initiatives. The third identifies drawbacks of resource based theory (RBT) and it's underpinning assumptions in the context of big data. The paper discusses lessons learnt and draws out implications for practice and business research. The paper's intellectual and practical contributions are based on an in-depth case study of the European ICT Poles of Excellence (EIPE) big data initiative and evidence from the extant literature.
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    Technofixing the Future: Ethical Side Effects of Using AI and Big Data to meet the SDGs
    (IEEE SmartWorld, 2019-08) Ryan, Mark; Antoniou, Josephina; Jiya, Tilimbe; Macnish, Kevin; Brooks, L.; Stahl, Bernd Carsten, 1968-
    While the use of smart information systems (the combination of AI and Big Data) offer great potential for meeting many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), they also raise a number of ethical challenges in their implementation. Through the use of six empirical case studies, this paper will examine potential ethical issues relating to use of SIS to meet the challenges in six of the SDGs (2, 3, 7, 8, 11, and 12). The paper will show that often a simple “technofix”, such as through the use of SIS, is not sufficient and may exacerbate, or create new, issues for the development community using SIS.
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    Understanding the Introduction and Use of a Mobile Device-Supported Health Information System in Nigeria
    (Wiley, 2017-12-05) Ezenwa, C.; Brooks, L.
    This paper presents an in-depth analysis of efforts to introduce a mobile health information system in Nigeria as part of a development initiative aimed at improving maternal and child health. Specifically, it examines the use of mobile devices to facilitate maternal health information accessibility and exchange among health practitioners in order to reducing maternal, newborn and child mortality. Further, it also looks at the challenges raised while introducing mobile devices into work practices in the healthcare sector. The study adopts a case study approach, relying on semi-structured interviews and document analysis as its main methods for collecting data. The specific case examined is a mobile phone-based information system introduced to support a national government effort in Nigeria, known as the midwives service scheme. The findings of this study show that this integrated approach of using mobile phones to support (health) information systems has vast potential; for instance increasing the timeliness of (health) data available to stakeholders for monitoring and planning purposes. However, we also find that over time, attaining the potential of development efforts such as this remains difficult as initiatives involving the use of mobile devices is not just about getting the technical aspect right. It is equally dependent on deep seated social-cultural influences such as poor political and financial commitment. These two mutually reinforcing influences have been identified in this study as significant impediments to efforts of this kind. Therefore, this paper argues for, first a strong political commitment across all levels of government whereby their words are backed with action. Second it is important that the government maintains financial integrity by releasing the funds budgeted to support the smooth running of these efforts, for such initiatives to thrive and ultimately contribute to development.