Abstract
n this paper, we develop a set of research hypotheses concerning the effects of six groups of factors on firms’ behavior during the 2008 global economic crisis with respect to ICT investment: three groups of internal factors (overall firm resource endowment, ICT-related resource endowment, ICT-related capabilities) and three groups of factors (competition, liquidity problems, macro-economic conditions concerning demand). These research hypotheses are tested using data from Greek firms for the economic crisis period 2009–2014

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to develop a methodology for predicting the resilience of individual firms to economic crisis, using historical government data to optimize one of the most important and costly interventions that governments undertake, the huge economic stimulus programs that governments implement for mitigating the consequences of economic crises, by making them more focused on the less resilient and more vulnerable firms to the crisis, which have the highest need for government assistance and support. Design/methodology/approach – The authors are leveraging existing firm-level data for economic crisis periods from government agencies having competencies/ responsibilities in the domain of economy, such as Ministries of Finance and Statistical Authorities, to construct prediction models of the resilience of individual firms to the economic crisis based on firms’ characteristics (such as human resources, technology, strategies, processes and structure), using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques from the area of machine learning (ML). Findings – The methodology has been applied using data from the Greek Ministry of Finance and Statistical Authority about 363 firms for the Greek economic crisis period 2009–2014 and has provided a satisfactory prediction of a measure of the resilience of individual firms to an economic crisis. Research limitations/implications – The authors’ study opens up new research directions concerning the exploitation of AI/ML in government for a critical government activity/intervention of high importance that mobilizes/ spends huge financial resources. The main limitation is that the abovementioned first application of the proposed methodology has been based on a rather small data set from a single national context (Greece), so it is necessary to proceed to further application of this methodology using larger data sets and different national contexts. Practical implications – The proposed methodology enables government agencies responsible for the implementation of such economic stimulus programs to proceed to radical transformations of them by predicting the resilience to economic crisis of the firms applying for government assistance and then directing/focusing the scarce available financial resources to/on the ones predicted to be more vulnerable, ιncreasing substantially the effectiveness of these programs and the economic/social value they generate. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first application of AI/ML in government that leverages existing data for economic crisis periods to optimize and increase the effectiveness of the largest and most important and costly economic intervention that governments repeatedly have to make: the economic stimulus programs for mitigating the consequences of economic crises.

Abstract
This article analyzes the ICT-related behavior of the five ‘system-relevant’ Greek banks in the first years 2010–2014 of the Greek economic crisis. We conclude that besides the standard immediate reaction to the crisis by reducing ICT-related expenses, the Greek banks in a later phase of the economic crisis proceeded to a substantial rationalization of their ICT processes/practices and improvement of their ICT capabilities, as well as the adaptation of their ICT plans to the crisis conditions.

Abstract
Abstract— Previous political sciences research has revealed that democracy (democratic institutions, consultations with citizens) and technocracy (specialized knowledge of experts) are the main foundations for the development of effective and socially acceptable public policies, and that there should be balance as well as interaction and exchange of knowledge between them. However, there is a lack of e-participation platforms supporting this required ‘duality’: the collection of policy related information, knowledge and opinions from both citizens and experts, as well as the communication and interaction between them. This paper contributes to filling this critical research gap. It describes the development of an innovative e-participation platform, which supports on one hand structured consultation and argumentation between experts/technocrats concerning important social problems and public policies for addressing them, and on the other hand the collection and interrelation of relevant citizensgenerated textual content from numerous external social media. This platform enables the meaningful combination of technocrats’ expertise with public opinion, allowing the technocrats participating in policy related structured consultations to retrieve, understand and get insights from citizens’ perceptions. Evaluation results show that users appreciate the potential of exploiting the synergy of machine and human reasoning enabled by the proposed platform through a combination of data mining and structured consultation/argumentation - collaborative decision-making services.

Abstract
In this paper, we examine empirically the possibility that an economic crisis could affect firms’ innovation performance through the ICT investment channel. In connection with this, it is also interesting to analyze the ICT characteristics of a firm (both ICT inputs and ICT infrastructures) that are associated with its ICT-enabled innovation performance. Our study is based on firm data from the glass /ceramics /cement industry of six European countries. We find a statistically significant negative relationship between ICT-enabled product/service innovation and firm’s crisis vulnerability with respect to ICT investment (pro-cyclical behavior) only for new products/services that contain ICT components. Employment of specialized ICT personnel, ICT infrastructure that supports firm’s internal functions (use of a series of standard administration and production support ICT applications), e-procurement, ICT outsourcing (only for process innovation), the awareness of the relevance of new ICTs, and quality competition (only for product/service innovation) are ICT characteristics that positively correlate with ICT-enabled innovation. Our findings have interesting implications for research and practice.

Abstract
Purpose: Public sector has started exploiting artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, however mainly for operational and to a lower extent for tactical level tasks. The purpose of this study is to exploit AI for the highest strategic level task of government: to develop an AI-based public sector data analytics methodology for supporting policy-making for one of the most serious and large-scale challenges that governments repeatedly face: the economic crises giving rise to economic recessions (though the proposed methodology has much wider applicability) Design/Methodology/Approach: A public sector data analytics methodology has been developed, which enables the exploitation of existing public and private sector data, through advanced processing of them using a big data oriented AI technique, ‘all-relevant’ feature selection, in order to identify characteristics of firms and their external environment that affect (positively or negatively) their resilience to economic crisis. Findings: A first application of the proposed public sector data analytics methodology has been conducted, using Greek firms’ data concerning the economic crisis period 2009-2014, which has led to interesting conclusions and insights, revealing some factors that affect the extent of sales revenue decrease in Greek firms during the above crisis period, and providing a first validation of our methodology. Research Implications: Our research contributes to the advancement of two emerging highly important for the society, but minimally researched, digital government research domains: public sector data analytics (and especially policy analytics) and government exploitation of AI. It exploits an AI feature selection algorithm, the Boruta ‘all-relevant’ variables identification one, which has been minimally exploited in the past for public sector data analytics, in order to support the design of public policies for addressing one of the most serious and large-scale economic challenges that governments repeatedly face: the economic crises. Practical Implications: The proposed methodology allows the identification of characteristics of firms and their external environment that affect positively or negatively their resilience to economic crisis. This enables a better understanding of the kinds of firms that are more strongly hit by the crisis, which is quite useful for the design of public policies for supporting them; and at the same time reveals firms’ resources, capabilities and practices that enhance their ability to cope with economic crisis, in order to design policies for promoting them through educational and support activities. Social Implications: This methodology can be very useful for the design of more effective public policies for reducing the negative impacts of economic crises on firms, and therefore mitigating their negative consequences for the society, such as unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. Originality/Value: Our research develops a novel approach to the exploitation of public and private sector data, based on a minimally exploited for such purposes AI technique (‘all-relevant’ feature selection), in order to support the design of public policies for addressing one of the most threatening disruptions that modern economies and societies repeatedly face the economic crises.

Abstract
Driven by ‘success stories’ reported by private sector firms, government agencies have also started adopting various Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in diverse domains (e.g. health, taxation, and education); however, extensive research is required in order to exploit the full potential of AI in the public sector, and leverage various AI technologies to address important problems/needs. This paper makes a contribution in this direction: it presents a novel approach, as well as the architecture of an ICT platform supporting it, for the advanced exploitation of a specific AI technology, namely chatbots, in the public sector in order to address a crucial issue: the improvement of communication between government and citizens (which has for long time been problematic). The proposed approach builds on natural language processing, machine learning and data mining technologies, and leverages existing data of various forms (such as documents containing legislation and directives, structured data from government agencies' operational systems, social media data, etc.), in order to develop a new digital channel of communication between citizens and government. Making use of appropriately structured and semantically annotated data, this channel enables ‘richer’ and more expressive interaction of citizens with government in everyday language, facilitating and advancing both information seeking and conducting of transactions. Compared to existing digital channels, the proposed approach is appropriate for a wider range of citizens' interactions, with higher levels of complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. In close co-operation with three Greek government agencies (the Ministry of Finance, a social security organization, and a big local government organization), this approach has been validated through a series of application scenarios.

Abstract
Software as a Service (SaaS) is increasingly used by firms for sourcing business application software. SaaS can enable a cost reduction and quality improvement of existing operations and provide rapid and low-cost innovation. However, decision makers are unclear about how they can benefit from SaaS. This study contributes to filling this knowledge gap by investigating factors that determine the magnitudes of operational and innovational benefits and firm performance. These research hypotheses were tested using data collected through a survey of 102 Dutch firms that use sophisticated financial SaaS services. The results show that a firm's adaptation to the SaaS model as well as its ACAP positively affects operational and innovation benefits, whereas contractual governance positively affects only the innovational benefits, and relational governance does not affect any of these two types of benefits. Although both operational and innovational benefits positively impact a firm's performance, the former have a stronger impact than the latter. The insights gained from our survey can support firms' decision-making concerning the maximization of the business benefits and firm performance

Abstract
Purpose – Previous empirical research on Cloud Computing (CC) adoption factors has examined the effects of only a small number of firm’s characteristics on CC adoption, and this has resulted in a limited understanding about firm’s internal conditions that favor and promote it. So, the research objective of this paper is to investigate empirically the effects of a wide set of firm’s characteristics, which concern four important aspects of it, its strategy, processes, personnel, and technology, on the propensity to adopt CC. Design/Methodology/Approach – Having as theoretical background the Technology, Organization, and Environment (TOE) theory of technological innovation adoption, in combination with Scott-Morton’s framework on firm’s main elements, which is used for elaborating the organizational perspective of this theory, twelve research hypotheses have been developed based on previous CC and management literature. They were tested using data collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission from 676 European firms from three traditional manufacturing sectors. Findings – Our results reveal three characteristics of a firm that affect positively its propensity to adopt CC for all firm sizes: the adoption of ICT investment reduction strategy, the adoption of product/service innovation strategy and the sophistication of firm’s administration support ICT infrastructure. Furthermore, they reveal five additional characteristics of a firm that affect positively the propensity for CC adoption only in the small firms: the adoption of process innovation strategy, the employment of ICT personnel, as well as the sophistication of firm’s production support, e-sales and e-invoicing ICT infrastructures. Research implications/limitations – First, our study proposes a theoretical foundation for the elaboration of the organizational perspective of the TOE theory of technological innovation adoption, which opens a new stream of CC adoption factors research, investigating the effects of a wide range of firm’s characteristics on CC adoption. Second, our study enriches the empirical literature on CC adoption factors, by examining the effects of different kinds of strategies, processes and ICT infrastructures, and also of ICT personnel, which have not been examined in previous relevant empirical literature, on firm’s propensity for CC adoption. The main limitation of our study is that it has been based on data from only three European manufacturing sectors, so findings may have been influenced to some extent by this specific sectoral and national context. Practical implications - Our findings provide new interesting insights concerning specific firm’s characteristics and therefore internal conditions that increase its propensity for CC adoption, and reveal specific kinds of strategy, processes and ICT infrastructures for which CC is more appropriate and beneficial; these are also shedding light on the main aspects of CC usefulness - value potential perceived by firms, as well as the envisioned ways/forms of CC exploitation. These insights can be useful to both CC user firms, as well as CC provider firms, for supporting various CC related decisions. Originality/value – We have developed a theoretical foundation for extending our knowledge concerning the characteristics and internal conditions of firms that favor/promote the adoption of CC, which enables the substantial extension of the existing knowledge base on CC adoption factors, quite useful for both CC user and provider firms. Based on this theoretical foundation we have formulated and tested twelve research hypotheses concerning effects of firm’s strategic directions, processes, ICT infrastructures and ICT personnel, which have not been investigated previously, on CC adoption propensity; our findings provide interesting and practically relevant novel insights concerning kinds of strategy, processes and ICT infrastructures that favor/promote CC adoption, as well as the role of ICT personnel.

Abstract
Open government data (OGD) initiatives have proliferated over the last years in many countries all over the world as the result of a long-standing movement towards the ‘open government’ paradigm. These initiatives have been launched and maintained by a variety of government organizations with different strategies and technical capacities, and under different social, political and legal conditions. As a result, the OGD sources (defined as various types of portals enabling access to government datasets by the public through the Internet and providing various capabilities/functionalities in this direction) developed through these initiatives demonstrate a great diversity in both content, functionality and technology. However, limited research has been conducted on these OGD sources for understanding better their main characteristics from various perspectives, and identifying their strengths and weaknesses. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, by presenting an analysis of the thematic, functional, semantic and technological characteristics of OGD sources in Greece. Sixty OGD sources have analysed from these perspectives and statistical analysis of relevant characteristics have been performed. Interesting conclusions have been drawn from this analysis, and based on them recommendations have been formulated for government policy makers, in order to enhance OGD provision in Greece, and increase the social and economic value that can be generated from them.

Abstract
Motivated by the multiple ‘success stories’ of the open innovation paradigm in the private sector, and also by the increasing complexity of social problems and needs, the public sector has started moving in this direction,attempting to exploit the extensive knowledge of citizens for the development of innovations in public policies and services. As the direct transfer of open innovation methods from the private sector to the public sector is not possible, it is necessary to develop effective ‘citizen-sourcing’ methods, which address the specific needs of the public sector, and then analyze and evaluate them from various political and management sciences' perspectives. This paper makes a two-fold contribution in this direction: i) It evaluates a novel method of monitoring relevant social media (e.g. political blogs, news websites, and also Facebook, Twitter, etc. accounts) by government agencies, by retrieving and making advanced processing of their content, and extracting from it external knowledge about specific domains of government activity or public policies of interest, in order to promote and support open innovation; ii) For this purpose it develops a multi-perspective evaluation framework, based on sound theoretical foundations from the political and management sciences, which can be of wide applicability; it includes three evaluation perspectives: a political perspective (based on the ‘wicked’ social problems theory from the political sciences), a crowd-sourcing perspective (based on previous management sciences research on crowdsourcing) and a diffusion perspective (based on Roger's diffusion of innovation theory from management sciences). The above evaluation provides interesting insights into this novel method of promoting and supporting open innovation in the public sector through social media monitoring, revealing its capabilities and strengths, and at the same time its problems and weaknesses as well, and also ways/interventions for addressing the latter.

Abstract
Cloud computing (CC) is emerging as a new paradigm of resource acquisition and management of information and communication technologies (ICT) by firms, which can offer significant benefits, but at the same time can pose significant risks as well, so its adoption by firms has been lower than the initial expectations. Therefore, it is quite important to gain a better understanding of the factors affecting positively or negatively the adoption of CC. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the effects on a firm’s propensity to adopt CC of a set of firm characteristics referring to technological infrastructure, strategy, personnel skills, size and competition. Its conceptual foundation is the Technology, Organization and Environment theory of technological innovation adoption. Our study is based on data from 676 European manufacturing firms from the glass, ceramics and cement sectors, which have been collected through the e-Business Survey of the European Commission. The results indicate that in the above sectors ICT infrastructure sophistication has the strongest positive effect on CC adoption propensity among all examined firm characteristics. Furthermore, we have found that the existence of an ICT investment reduction strategy, the employment of specialized ICT personnel and the existence of previous experience of ICT outsourcing also have positive effects on a firm’s propensity to adopt CC. On the contrary, employees ICT skills, price and quality competition do not affect CC adoption propensity. Finally, our results also indicate that in the three examined sectors firm size has no significant influence on the propensity to adopt CC.

Abstract
In this paper we empirically investigate and compare to what extent Northern and Southern European firms view cloud computing (CC) as a means of: (a) ICT investment reduction; (b) supporting and facilitating product/service innovation and process innova- tion; (c) experimenting with and exploiting new ICT; and (d) supporting and facilitating electronic innovation collaboration. This is done by estimating econometrically a model of CC adoption propensity containing measures of the four main adoption motives men- tioned above besides further variables that are associated with technology adoption and a series of controls for firm size, sector and country affiliation. Our study is based on a data- set collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission from 556 European firms from the glass, ceramic and cement sectors. These findings indicate that Southern European firms are mainly oriented towards ‘first-level’ cost (and especially investment) reduction related benefits from CC as well as from new emerging ICT, while on the contrary Northern European firms are mainly oriented towards ‘second-level’ trans- formation related benefits from CC, which are associated with support and facilitation of innovation and external collaboration.

Abstract
Firms are increasingly shifting from the ‘closed’ innovation paradigm, in which their innovation design and implementation activities were based on their own internal knowledge resources, skills and production facilities, towards the inter-organizational ‘open’ innovation paradigm, which is based to a significant degree on collaboration with other organizations, aiming at the exploitation of external knowledge resources, skills and production facilities as well. This paper investigates empirically the effects of firm’s inter-organizational collaboration for the design and implementation of innovations, and also use of ICT for supporting this collaboration, on firm’s propensity to adopt cloud computing (CC), and in this way it examines in an ‘objective’ manner to what extent firms regard CC as a cost effective means of supporting inter-organizational collaboration for the design and implementation of innovation. Our study is based on a dataset collected in the e-Business Survey of the European Commission from 676 European firms from the glass, ceramics and cement manufacturing sectors. It has been concluded that firms of these sectors regard CC as a cost effective means of supporting collaboration with other firms for the design of innovations in their products, services and processes, and also of reducing the costs and increasing the capabilities and flexibility of already existing electronic support of inter-organizational innovation design collaboration. Furthermore, our results indicate that firms find CC useful for the reduction of the costs and the increase of the capabilities and flexibility of their existing electronic support of the complex operations required for the inter-organizational implementation of innovations.

Abstract
Motivated by the multiple ‘success stories’ of the open innovation paradigmin the private sector, and also by the\r\nincreasing complexity of social problems and needs, the public sector has started moving in this direction,\r\nattempting to exploit the extensive knowledge of citizens for the development of innovations in public policies\r\nand services. As the direct transfer of open innovation methods from the private sector to the public sector is\r\nnot possible, it is necessary to develop effective ‘citizen-sourcing’ methods, which address the specific needs of\r\nthe public sector, and then analyze and evaluate themfromvarious political and management sciences\' perspectives.\r\nThis papermakes a two-fold contribution in this direction: i) It evaluates a novel method of monitoring relevant\r\nsocial media (e.g. political blogs, news websites, and also Facebook, Twitter, etc. accounts) by government\r\nagencies, by retrieving and making advanced processing of their content, and extracting from it external knowledge\r\nabout specific domains of government activity or public policies of interest, in order to promote and support\r\nopen innovation; ii) For this purpose it develops amulti-perspective evaluation framework, based on sound theoretical\r\nfoundations from the political and management sciences, which can be of wide applicability; it includes\r\nthree evaluation perspectives: a political perspective (based on the ‘wicked’ social problems theory fromthe political\r\nsciences), a crowd-sourcing perspective (based on previous management sciences research on crowdsourcing)\r\nand a diffusion perspective (based on Roger\'s diffusion of innovation theory from management sciences).\r\nThe above evaluation provides interesting insights into this novel method of promoting and supporting\r\nopen innovation in the public sector through social media monitoring, revealing its capabilities and strengths,\r\nand at the same time its problems andweaknesses aswell, and also ways/interventions for addressing the latter.

Abstract
This paper investigates and compares the relationships for Swiss and Greek firms between indicators for the intensity of use of modern information and communications technologies (ICT), several forms of workplace organization, and human capital, on the one hand, and several measures of innovation performance at firm level, on the other hand. For the Swiss firms, we find that ICT contribute to innovation activities (a) as enablers of process innovation (but not of product innovation) and (b) as means for increasing the efficiency of the R&D process. The organizational variables for “work design” and “employee voice” show significant positive correlations for most innovation indicators. Human capital matters primarily for R&D activities. The findings for the Greek firms indicate positive correlations of ICT with product and process innovation and of new “work design” with product innovation and R&D. No correlation of human capital with innovation could be found. No complementarities for the three factors with respect to innovation performance could be detected in either country.

Abstract
Hospitals are making big investments in various types of ICT, so it is important to investigate their effects on innovation and performance. This paper presents an empirical study in this direction, based on data for 743 hospitals from 18 European countries. We specified and estimated econometrically five equations: one for product innovation, one for process innovation and three equations for the three different dimensions of (ICT-enabled) hospital performance. All five equations included various ICT-related variables reflecting ICT infrastructure and a series of important ICT applications, some of them hospital-specific, and some others of general business use, and also ICT personnel (viewed as a kind of ‘soft’ ICT investment), while the performance equations also included the two innovation measures.

Abstract
The opening of government data, in order to have both social and economic value generated from them, has attracted the attention and interest of both researchers and practitioners from various disciplines, such as information systems, management sciences, political and social sciences and law. Despite the rapid growth of this multidisciplinary research domain, which has led to the emergence and continuous evolution of technologies and management approaches for open government data (OGD), a detailed analysis of the specific areas and topics of this research is still missing. In this paper, a detailed taxonomy of research areas and corresponding research topics of the OGD domain is presented: it includes 4 main research areas (ODG management & policies, infrastructures, interoperability and usage & value), which are further analysed into 35 research topics. An important advantage of this taxonomy, beyond its high level of detail, is that it has been developed through extraction and combination of relevant knowledge from three different kinds of sources: important relevant government policy documents, research literature and experts. For each of these 35 research topics we identified, its research literature has been summarized and main research objectives and directions have been highlighted. Based on the above taxonomy, an extension of the existing in the literature OGD lifecycle has been proposed; also, under-researched topics that require further research have been identified. Our OGD research taxonomy extends and elaborates previous research taxonomies for the ‘ICT-enabled Governance’ and ‘Policy Making 2.0’ domains, which have been developed in the European projects CROSSROAD and CROSSOVER.

Abstract
Purpose - In recent years, there has been much debate about the value generated by the firms’ investments in Information Technology (IT). Although literature suggests that technology itself will rarely create superiority, Web infrastructure can be critical for knowledge sharing and the formation of virtual teams to execute innovation processes which, in turn, may enhance e-Innovation and business value. Building on these antecedents, this study seeks to explore whether and how Web infrastructure and e-Innovation can create business value by complementing each other. Methodology - Based on the Resource-Based View (RBV) of the firm this paper develops a conceptual model to assess the effects of Web infrastructure and e-Innovation on business value as well as the complementarity between these resources. To test the associated hypotheses, a regression model was estimated and tested on a large sample of Spanish firms from different industries. Results - The results show that Web infrastructure is not positively related to business value, but on the contrary e-innovation has a positive impact on business value. However, support for complementarity between Web infrastructure and e-Innovation was not found. Originality/ Value - The present study tests the RBV logic, arguing that not all IT resources are source of competitive advantage. In the same vein, this study shows that e-Innovation, as it requires combination of IT infrastructure with other unique intangible resources, is much more difficult to imitate, leading to competitive advantages.

Abstract
Government agencies all over the world are making big investments for developing information systems that open important data they possess to the society, in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes. It is important to understand what value they create and how, and at the same time – since this is a relatively new type of information systems (IS) – to identify the main improvements they require. This paper contributes in this direction by presenting a methodology for determining the value generation mechanism of open government data (OGD) systems and also priorities for their improvement. It is based on the estimation of a ‗value model‘ of the OGD system under evaluation from users‘ ratings, which consists of several value dimensions and their corresponding value measures, organized in three ‗value layers‘, and also the relations among them. The proposed methodology has been successfully applied to an OGD system developed as part of the European project ENGAGE (‗An Infrastructure for Open, Linked Governmental Data Provision towards Research Communities and Citizens‘), and provided interesting insights and improvement priorities. This first application provides evidence that our methodology can be a useful decision support tool for important ODG systems investment, management and improvement decisions.

Abstract
Both private and public sector organizations tend to participate in networks in order to gain access to knowledge, skills and resources of other organizations and to create synergies to achieve highly demanding and complex goals they cannot attain individually. The governance of these networks has been recognized as being an important variable influencing organizational network performance. This Special Issue aims to contribute to the investigation and understanding of the relationships between ICT and governance of organizational networks. This introductory paper provides the conceptual and theoretical background. The relationship between network governance and technology is bi-directional; evolutions in ICT enable the development of new types of network collaborations and governance, whereas governance of collaboration networks is critical for the development of complex ICT infrastructures.We argue that network governance should be conceptualized as an evolving socio-technical process shaped by actors and aimed at tackling complex and dynamic contemporary challenges.

Abstract
We investigated the effect of modern information and communication technologies (ICT), new forms of workplace organization, and trade (export) activities on the demand for employees with different levels of (vocational) education for Greek and Swiss enterprises. We found positive (negative) effects of the use of ICT for high-educated (low-educated) personnel in both countries and mixed effects for medium-educated employees. New forms of workplace organization do not have uniform effects on the workforce composition. A positive effect of exports for high-educated employees was traced only for Swiss firms.

Abstract
This article investigates the relationships between various types of educational value generated by the Markstrat simulation game. Considering several theoretical models of experiential learning and the research framework proposed by previous studies, an educational value generation model is developed and validated, using primary data collected from 305 UK-based students. Four types of educational value are identified: experience generation, conceptual understanding, skills development, and affective evaluation. The application of structural equation modelling indicates several significant relationships: experience generation has a strong impact on conceptual understanding, and both of them have medium to high direct impacts on skills development. On the other hand, the participants’ perception regarding the professional skills developed during the simulation game determines their affective evaluation of the Markstrat exercise. The model presented in this study is generalizable to other simulation games, and to other academic disciplines that implement the same experiential learning approach.

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to develop a novel approach to e-participation, which is based on “passive crowdsourcing” by government agencies, exploiting the extensive political content continuously created in numerous Web 2.0 social media (e.g. political blogs and microblogs, news sharing sites and online forums) by citizens without government stimulation, to understand better their needs, issues, opinions, proposals and arguments concerning a particular domain of government activity or public policy. Design/methodology/approach – This approach is developed and elaborated through cooperation with potential users experienced in the design of public policies from three countries (Austria, Greece and the UK), using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques: co-operative development of application scenarios, questionnaire surveys, focus groups and workshops and, finally, in-depth interviews. Findings – A process model for the application of the proposed passive crowdsourcing approach has been developed, which is quite different from the one of the usual active crowdsourcing. Based on it, the functional architecture of the required supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure has been formulated, and then its technological architecture has been designed, addressing the conflicting requirements: low response time and, at the same time, provision of sufficiently “fresh” content for policymakers. Practical implications – Taking into account that traditionally government agencies monitor what the press writes about them, our research provides a basis for extending efficiently these activities in the new electronic media world (e.g. newspapers websites, blogs and microblogs, online forums, etc.) to understand better the needs, issues, opinions, arguments and proposals raised by the society with respect to important domains of government activity and public policies. Social implications – The proposed approach provides a new channel for the “voice” of the society to be directly communicated to the government so that the latter can design its policies and activities based on the social needs and realities and not on oversimplified models and stereotypes. Originality/value – Our paper proposes a novel approach to e-participation, which exploits the Web 2.0 social media – but in a quite different way from previous approaches – for conducting “passive crowdsourcing”, and elaborates it: it develops an application process model for it and also an ICT infrastructure for supporting it, which are quite different from the ones of the existing “active crowdsourcing” approaches.

Abstract
Social innovation requires extensive networking, communication, and collaboration among various social actors. This article presents an approach to fostering and supporting social innovation through the combined exploitation of multiple social media. Furthermore, a methodology is developed for evaluating this approach, based on sound theoretical foundations: The wicked problems theory and the diffusion of innovation theory. This methodology is used for evaluating three pilot applications of this approach, organized in cooperation with members of the European Parliament.

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to develop and evaluate, in “real-life” pilot applications, a framework for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies in their policy-making processes to promote public participation and conduct crowdsourcing. Design/methodology/approach – This framework has been developed through cooperation with public sector employees experienced in public policy-making, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques: semi-structured focus group discussions, scenarios development and questionnaire surveys. The evaluation of the framework has been conducted through semi-structured focus group discussions with public sector employees involved in the pilot applications. Findings – A framework has been developed for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies, which is based on the automated posting of policy-related content to multiple social media, and then retrieval and processing of citizens’ interactions with it (e.g. views, likes, comments and retweets), using the application programming interfaces (API) of these social media. Furthermore, a supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure and an application process model for it were developed. Its evaluation, based on “real-life” pilot applications, leads to useful insights concerning its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. Research limitations/implications – The proposed framework has been evaluated in a small number of pilot applications, so further evaluation of it is required, in various types of government agencies and for different kinds of policy consultations. Practical/Implications – The above framework enables government agencies to communicate with wider and more heterogeneous audiences in a short time and at a low cost, increase public participation in their policy-making processes, collect useful knowledge, ideas and opinions from citizens and, finally, design better, more socially rooted, balanced and realistic policies. Originality/value – This research contributes to the development of knowledge concerning advanced practices for effective social media exploitation in government (which is currently limited, despite the considerable relevant knowledge developed in this area for the private sector), by developing and evaluating a framework for advanced and highly automated exploitation of multiple social media by government agencies. Furthermore, an evaluation methodology for such practices has been developed, which is based on sound theoretical foundations.

Abstract
One essential characteristic of open data ecosystems is their development through feedback loops, discussions and dynamic data suppliers - user interactions. These user-centric features communicate the users’ needs to the open data community, as well to the public sector organizations responsible for data publication. Addressing these needs by the corresponding public sector organizations, or even by utilising the power of the community as ENGAGE supports, can significantly promote and accelerate innovation. However, such elements appear barely to be part of existing open data practices in the public sector. A survey we conducted has shown that professional open data users find the feedback and discussion on open data infrastructures from their users to their providers as highly useful and important, but they state that they do not know at least one open data infrastructure that provides various types of discussion, and feedback mechanisms. In this paper we describe and discuss an open data platform, which contributes to filling this gap and also present a usage scenario of it, explaining the sequence of using its functionality. The discussed open data infrastructure combines functionalities that aim to close the feedback loop and to return information to public authorities that can be useful for better government data opening and publication, as well as establishing communication channels between all stakeholders. This may effectively lead to the stimulation and facilitation of value generation from open data, as such functionality positions the user at the centre of the open data publication process.

Abstract
Emerging pervasive assistive environment applications for remote home healthcare monitoring of the elderly, disabled and also patients with various chronic diseases generate massive amounts of sensor signal data, which are transmitted from numerous homes to local health centers or hospitals. While it is critical to process this data efficiently (in a fast and accurate manner) and cost-effectively, in a large scale application of the above technologies it is not possible to do so manually by specialized human resources. This paper proposes a methodology for automatic real-time screening of heart sound signals (one of the most widely acquired signals from the human body for diagnostic purposes)and identification of those that are abnormal and require some action to be taken, which can be applied to many other similar types of bio-signals generated in assistive environments.It is based on a novel Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Bayesian Inference approach, which estimates conditional probability distributions in structures obtained from a Tree-Augmented Naïve Bayes (TAN) algorithm. It has been applied and validated in a highly ‘difficult’ heterogeneous dataset of 198 heart sound signals, which comes from both healthy medical cases and unhealthy ones having Aortic Stenosis, Mitral Regurgitation, Aortic Regurgitation or Mitral Stenosis. The proposed methodology achieved high classification performance in this difficult screening problem. It performs higher than other widely used classifiers, showing great potential for contributing to a cost-effective large scale application of ICT-based assistive environment technologies.

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of four types of “soft” information and communication technologies (ICT) capital related to ICT knowledge and skills (ICT personnel, ICT training of ICT personnel and users, ICT unit) on the innovation performance of Greek firms. Furthermore, the paper compares these effects with the ones of the hard ICT capital and also of four important “traditional” innovation determinants identified from previous research in this area (demand expectation, price and non-price competition, market concentration). Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative methodology has been adopted for investigating the above effects, based on the estimation of regression models. Using data collected through a survey based on a structured questionnaire from 271 Greek firms, innovation models have been estimated, having as independent variables measures of hard ICT capital, the examined four types of soft ICT capital and also the above traditional innovation determinants. Findings – The paper has been concluded that in the innovation averse Greek national context the examined traditional innovation determinants have very low impact on firms’ innovation performance, however, on the contrary both hard ICT capital, and three out of the four examined types of soft ICT capital (ICT personnel, ICT training of ICT personnel and users) have positive impact on both process and product/services innovation. Furthermore, it has been found that the total effect of these three knowledge and skills related types of soft ICT capital on innovation performance is stronger than the effect of the hard ICT capital. Research limitations/implications – The main limitations of the paper are that it uses simple innovation performance measures (not distinguishing between different types of innovations), and also is based on firm-level data collected from a single country. The paper has interesting implications for future research on the impact of the relation between ICT and innovation, which should not any more neglect the soft ICT capital, but consider various types of both hard and soft ICT capital. Practical implications – The results of the paper can be useful to firms’ chief information officers and chief executive officers and also to consultants and practitioners interested in maximizing the exploitation of the innovation potential of ICT, in order to understand the hard and soft aspects of ICT that have to be developed for this purpose and optimize firms’ ICTrelated investment. Originality/value – The limited previous empirical literature concerning the effect of ICT on innovation focus on the hard ICT capital (mainly on ICT equipment) and neglect the role of the soft ICT capital. The paper contributes to fill this research gap, by examining the effects of three types of ICT capital, and also – for comparison and regression models’ completeness purposes – of hard ICT capital and of four traditional innovation determinants, on firms’ innovation performance.

Abstract
It is widely recognized that the recent economic crisis in Greece is due not only to excessive government spending and tax evasion, but also to the low competitiveness of its economy. Innovation has become of critical importance for the competitiveness of firms, sectors and countries in the modern economy. This paper presents an empirical study of the ‘new’ innovation determinants based on information and communication technologies (ICT) and also of the ‘traditional’ innovation determinants in the Greek economy. In particular, it investigates the impact of three different ICT (internal information systems (IS), e-sales and e-procurements) and also of six important traditional innovation determinants identified by previous relevant research (four ‘external’ ones—demand expectation, price and non-price competition, market concentration—and two ‘internal’ ones—investment in research and development (R&D) and firm size), on the innovation performance of Greek firms. It is based on firm-level data collected through a survey of 271 Greek firms before the start of the economic crisis, which have been used for the estimation of regression models. It is concluded that in the Greek ‘innovation-averse’ national context (characterized by low level of innovation and uncertainty avoidance culture) none of the examined external (market-related) traditional innovation determinants has an impact on product or process innovation of firms, while on the contrary the internal ones, R&Dexpenditure per employee and size, affect positively both. Furthermore, the examined new technologies seem to be important drivers of innovation: it is concluded that the internal IS have a positive impact on both product and process innovation, the e-sales only on process innovation, but the e-procurement on none. Our results indicate the high potential of ICTas innovation drivers even in such innovation-averse and lower economic development contexts, which, however, vary between different types of ICT.

Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of adopting an e-business strategy on two organizational characteristics which have gradually become highly important for organizations in the last 20 years, information and communication technology (ICT) assets and business processes, and also on a ‘traditional’ one, the non-ICT (regular) assets, and finally through them on business performance. Its theoretical foundations are the Contingency Theory of Organizations in combination with the Cobb-Douglas Production Function. Advanced quantitative techniques of structural equation modelling (SEM) have been employed, which allow the estimation of complex multi-layer models including mediator variables that are both dependent (i.e. affected by others) and independent (i.e. affecting some others) at the same time, and enable the investigation of complex networks of relationships. Firm-level data collected through a survey of 271 Greek firms have been used for estimating a SEM connecting the above variables. The results show that the adoption of e-business strategy by Greek firms leads to adaptation of their business processes, which has a positive impact on their business performance, but not to additional investment to ICT or non-ICT assets. In particular, e-business drives Greek firms’ processes adaptations aiming mainly to increase the non-hierarchical decentralized coordination within the firm, in order to cope with the higher task complexity and uncertainty that e-business gives rise to, and also to respond to the specific technical and operational requirements that this strategy poses.

Abstract
It is widely believed that the establishment of interoperability of the information systems (IS) of a firm with those of its collaborators (e.g. customers, suppliers, business partners) can generate significant business value. However, this has been empirically investigated only to a very limited extent. This paper contributes to filling this research gap by presenting an empirical study of the effect of adopting the three main types of IS interoperability standards (industry-specific, proprietary and XML-based ones) on the four important perspectives/dimensions of business performance proposed by the Balanced Scorecard approach (financial, customers, internal business processes, learning and innovation). Our study is based on a large dataset from 14065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors) collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. It is concluded that all three examined types of IS interoperability standards increase considerably the positive impact of firm’s information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure on the above four perspectives/dimensions of business performance; however, their effects differ significantly. The adoption of industry-specific interoperability standards has the highest positive effects, while XML-based and proprietary standards have similar lower positive effects. Furthermore, these effects of the industry-specific IS interoperability standards are quite strong, as they are of similar magnitude with the corresponding effects of the degree of development of firm’s intra-organizational/internal IS, and of higher magnitude than the corresponding effects of the degree of development of firm’s e-sales IS. These conclusions provide valuable empirical evidence of the multidimensional business value generated by IS interoperability, its big magnitude and its strong dependence on the type of IS interoperability standards adopted.

Abstract
This paper aims at analyzing (a) the factors determining the firms’ propensity to outsource various processes (production of intermediate products, production of final products, R&D activities, ICT activities), and (b) the impact of outsourcing on firms’ innovation performance as well as labour productivity. The integral investigation of the determining factors as well as the impact of outsourcing on innovation and productivity based on the same data in a comparative setting (Switzerland versus Greece) are important new elements and contributions of this study to the existing empirical literature. It has been concluded that in both countries more innovative firms (R&D) were stronger inclined to outsourcing activities than less innovative ones, while on the contrary the educational level of employees and the labour cost showed no effect on outsourcing in for both countries. Also, the intensity of ICT use and organizational aspects, especially those related to the formal structure of workplace organization, were relevant for the Swiss firms but not for the Greek firms. With respect to the impact of outsourcing on performance, it has been concluded that it tends to enhance innovation, particularly process innovation, but only weakly productivity (at least directly).

Abstract
Government agencies are gradually moving from simpler towards more sophisticated and complex practices of social media use, which are characterized by important innovations at the technological, political and organizational level. This paper intends to provide two contributions to the current discourse about such advanced approaches to social media exploitation. The first is of practical nature and has to do with assessing the strengths and the potential and at the same time the weaknesses and the challenges, of a centralized cross-platform approach to social media exploitation by government agencies in their policy making processes. The second contribution is of theoretical nature and consists in the development of a multi-dimensional framework for an integrated evaluation of such advanced practices of social media exploitation in public policy making processes from technological, political and organizational perspectives, which is based on theoretical foundations from various different domains. The proposed framework is applied for the evaluation of a pilot consultation campaign conducted in Italy using multiple social media based on the above approach, concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program, in the context of an international research project named PADGETS (‘Policy Gadgets Mashing Underlying Group Knowledge in Web 2.0 Media’), and leading to interesting insights.

Abstract
Many cities all over the world are making large investments for the construction of big network infrastructures, in order to offer to local public organizations, businesses and citizens high speed connectivity, and on top of them useful e-services, aiming to achieve various social and economic objectives. The value generated from these costly ‘digital city’ investments is actually the value provided to the citizens and businesses by the e-services that will be developed and run on these network infrastructures. This paper proposes and validates a structured methodology for assessing and improving e-services developed in digital cities. The proposed methodology assesses the various types of value generated by an e-service, and also the relations among them, allowing a more structured evaluation, a deeper understanding of the value generation process and also identification and prioritization of the improvements that should be made in the e-service with the usually scarce resources in municipalities. This methodology is applied for the evaluation of an e-learning service developed in the Greek city of Karlovassi for young citizens, and also for the prioritization of the necessary improvements in it. The above application provided positive and encouraging evidence concerning the validity, usefulness and applicability of the proposed method.

Abstract
The extraction and exploitation of existing knowledge assets for supporting decision making and increasing the effectiveness of various internal and external interventions is of critical importance for the success of modern organizations. The use of advanced Operational Research based quantitative methods in combination with high capabilities information systems can be very useful for this purpose. In this paper we are investigating the use of Ensemble Random Forests for extracting, codifying and exploiting existing organizational knowledge on gas turbine blading faults identification, in the form of a large number of decision trees (called a ‘forest’); each of them has internal nodes corresponding to various tests on features of signals acquired from the gas turbine and leaf nodes corresponding to classifications to the healthy condition or particular faults. Two heterogeneous kinds of inserting randomness to the development of these forest trees, based on different theoretical assumptions, have been examined (Random Input Forests and Random Combination Forests). Using data from a large power gas turbine the performance of Ensemble Random Forests has been evaluated, and also compared against other machine learning classification methods, such as Neural Networks, Classification and Regression Trees and K-Nearest Neighbor. The Ensemble Random Forests reached a level of 97% in terms of precision and recall in engine condition diagnosis from new signals acquired from the gas turbine, which was higher than the performance of all the other examined classification methods. These results provide some first evidence that Ensemble Random Forest can be an effective tool for the extraction, codification and exploitation of the technological knowledge assets of modern organizations, and contribute significantly to the improvement of organizations’ decision making and interventions in this area. The extraction and exploitation of existing knowledge assets for supporting decision making and increasing the effectiveness of various internal and external interventions is of critical importance for the success of modern organizations. The use of advanced Operational Research based quantitative methods in combination with high capabilities information systems can be very useful for this purpose. In this paper we are investigating the use of Ensemble Random Forests for extracting, codifying and exploiting existing organizational knowledge on gas turbine blading faults identification, in the form of a large number of decision trees (called a ‘forest’); each of them has internal nodes corresponding to various tests on features of signals acquired from the gas turbine and leaf nodes corresponding to classifications to the healthy condition or particular faults. Two heterogeneous kinds of inserting randomness to the development of these forest trees, based on different theoretical assumptions, have been examined (Random Input Forests and Random Combination Forests). Using data from a large power gas turbine the performance of Ensemble Random Forests has been evaluated, and also compared against other machine learning classification methods, such as Neural Networks, Classification and Regression Trees and K-Nearest Neighbor. The Ensemble Random Forests reached a level of 97% in terms of precision and recall in engine condition diagnosis from new signals acquired from the gas turbine, which was higher than the performance of all the other examined classification methods. These results provide some first evidence that Ensemble Random Forest can be an effective tool for the extraction, codification and exploitation of the technological knowledge assets of modern organizations, and contribute significantly to the improvement of organizations’ decision making and interventions in this area.

Abstract
The rapidly increasing penetration and use of the Internet, in conjunction with the explosion of various technologies based on it, gave rise to the development of numerous e-services, such as e-business, e-banking, e-government and e-learning ones. The websites providing these e-services collect large amounts of users’ activity and evaluation data. It is necessary to transform these data into useful business analytics that allow a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the e-service, the various types of value it generates, and its whole value generation mechanism, and at the same time provide guidance for its improvement and optimization. In this direction this paper proposes and validates a methodology for transforming users’ evaluation data into practically useful business analytics, which is founded on well established theoretical frameworks from previous research in the areas of IS evaluation, Technology Acceptance Models (TAM), IS Success Models and e-services. It is based on the definition of a three layers value model of the e-service, which includes its main value dimensions and measures, concerning its efficiency, effectiveness and impact on users’ future behavior respectively. This value model is used initially for collecting e-service evaluation data from users and for processing them. From these data are then calculated two classes of business analytics: the average users’ ratings for all value measures, dimensions and layers, which allow the identification of strengths and weaknesses of the e-service at various level; and the impacts of first layer value measures (which are ‘independent variables) on the second and third layer value ones (which are ‘dependent’ variables), which allow a better understanding of the value generation mechanism of the e-service and a rational definition of improvement priorities. The proposed methodology has been applied and validated for an e-learning service provided by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) to ICT professionals.

Abstract
This paper describes the research concerning the systematic, intensive and centralized web 2.0 social media exploitation by government agencies for widening and enhancing participative public policy making, which is conducted as part of the research project PADGETS (‘Policy Gadgets Mashing Underlying Group Knowledge in Web 2.0 Media’) partially funded by the European Commission. The proposed approach is based on a central system, which publishes various types of policy-related content (e.g., short text long text, images, video) and micro-applications in multiple social media simultaneously, and also collects from them and processes data on citizens’ interactions (e.g., views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.). This poses difficult research questions and challenges, both technical (analysis and exploitation of social media application programming interfaces (APIs), appropriate design of the central system architecture, processing and integrating the large amounts of collected citizens’ interaction data) and also non-technical (investigation of the value generated by this approach, preconditions for its effective application by government agencies), which are researched in the project. Some first findings on them are presented and discussed.

Abstract
There has been significant research and practice oriented towards the rational exploitation of the rapidly expanding social media by private sector enterprises. However, much less research and practice have been done in this area with respect to the public sector. This paper explores advanced forms of rational exploitation of social media in government policy-making processes, aiming to strengthen and widen participation of and interaction with citizens, concerning new or existing public policies and services. The proposed approach is based on a platform, which can publish policy-related content and micro-applications towards multiple social media simultaneously, also collect data on citizens’ interaction with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.), using the application programming interfaces (API) of the targeted social media. The information gathered through social media will then undergo various types of advanced processing (e.g. access analytics, opinion mining, simulation modelling) in order to extract synthetic conclusions from them and provide substantial support to government policy-makers, always respecting data privacy guidelines. In addition, an extension of this ‘stimulated/ guided crowdsourcing’ approach is presented, based on ‘nonmoderated crowdsourcing’ by government agencies. The above approaches allow a more advanced and rational exploitation of social media by government for supporting evidence-based decision and policy making.

Abstract
This article describes and evaluates two different models of structured electronic consultation, using multiple evaluation methods: discussion tree analysis, quantitative evaluation, and qualitative evaluation. The results indicate that structuring the electronic consultations leads to higher-quality focused debates, however, it can create participation difficulties and barriers to less-sophisticated and educated citizens, so it might result in reduced participation and exclusion of some groups. This can increase the “quality,” but at the same time decrease the “quantity” of e-participation.

Abstract
The article provides a review of the adoption of a resource-based view of the firm (RBV) in eBusiness literature and, then, suggests directions for future research. First, a distinction is drawn between Internet resources and eBusiness capabilities. Second, the relationship between Internet resources and eBusiness value is emphasized. Third, the relationships among Internet resources, eBusiness capabilities and firm performance are argued and, finally, the complementarity of Internet resources and eBusiness capabilities is proposed as source of business value. In this regard, a set of propositions is advanced to help guide future research.

Abstract
This paper investigates the main barriers to the adoption of B2B emarketplaces by large enterprises and at the same time the expected benefits that push in the opposite direction towards the adoption, through a case study conducted at the Hellenic Aerospace Industry (HAI), one of the largest industrial enterprises of Greece. The evidence collected from this case has been analyzed using various frameworks from the literature and also the innovation diffusion theory of Rogers, and shed light on the specificity of the large enterprises concerning e-marketplaces adoption.

Abstract
This paper presents an empirical study of the risk factors of large governmental information systems (IS) projects. For this purpose the Official Decisions of the Greek Government Information Technology Projects Advisory Committee (ITPAC) concerning 80 large IS projects have been analyzed and interviews with its members have been conducted. From this analysis 21 risk factors have been identified, and further elaborated and associated with inherent particular characteristics of the public sector, extending existing approaches in the literature. A categorization of them with respect to origin revealed that they are associated with the management, the processes, and the content of these projects. Results show that behind the identified risk factors there are political factors, which are associated with intra-organizational and inter-organizational politics and competition, and can be regarded as ‘second level’ risk sources. The risk factors identified in this study are compared with the ones found by similar studies conducted in Hong Kong, Finland, and the United States, and also with the ones mentioned by OECD reports. Similarities and differences are discussed.

Abstract
The e-participation research has investigated and suggested some Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) tools such as e-forum, e-petition and e-community tools. This paper investigates the use of an advanced and more structured ICT tool, the ‘structured e-forum’, for supporting and enhancing e-participation and e-consultation in the legislation formation process in Parliaments. For this purpose, we designed and implemented an e-consultation pilot on a law under formation in the Greek Parliament, using a structured e-forum tool based on the Issue-Based Information Systems (IBISs) framework. This pilot has been evaluated using multiple methods (analysis of discussion tree, quantitative evaluation and qualitative evaluation).

Abstract
For long time the strategic alignment of information systems (IS) has been one of the most important issues that IS and business managers face and at the same time a major research topic in the IS domain. In this paper is presented an empirical study of the business value of IS strategic alignment, which examines IS strategic alignment both at the strategy formulation and implementation level; also, we investigate the effect of adopting an innovation strategy on IS strategic alignment. The study is based on firm-level data from Greek companies, which are used for estimating econometric models of firm output based on the Cobb-Douglas production function. It is concluded that IS strategic alignment both at the strategy formulation and implementation level generates significant business value, increasing considerably the contribution of ICT investment to firm output. Also, the adoption of an innovation strategy has a positive effect on the strategic alignment of IS both at the strategy formulation and implementation level, as it puts pressure on firms to direct their IS investment towards the support of their new innovative products/services, and also to increase the involvement of organizational units responsible for these innovations in the projects implementing the required IS and applications.

Abstract
Parliaments possess huge amounts of valuable knowledge on public policies which concerns social needs, problems, and interventions for addressing them. This knowledge is highly useful to other parliaments and also to government agencies of various layers. However, this valuable knowledge is hidden in numerous text documents so that it cannot be efficiently exchanged and exploited. In this regard, it is highly important to extend the concept of interoperability among information systems (IS) of Parliaments and Government Agencies so that it covers not only the ‘operational level’, but also the ‘knowledge level’. This paper presents a methodology for achieving higher level interoperability among IS of parliaments and government agencies with respect to the exchange of public policy related knowledge. It is based on the use of the complex problems representation ontology provided by the ‘Issue-Based Information Systems’ (IBIS) framework for codifying public policy related knowledge. An application of the proposed methodology is presented for the case of the law on the ‘Contracts of Voluntary Cohabitation’, which has been recently passed by the Greek Parliament. The evaluation of this application gave encouraging conclusions as to the usefulness of this methodology and resulted in the development of a refinement of the IBIS ontology.

Abstract
The growing complexity of the problems and needs of modern societies necessitate extensive negotiation and collaboration among government organisations from the same or even from different countries. Therefore it is an important challenge to extend ‘electronic government’ in this direction. In this paper we present the internet/WWW-based information system TNC (Trust-Negotiation-Collaboration), which offers a wide range of functionalities supporting initial trust relationship building and then negotiation and collaboration among public organisations. The development of TNC has been based on extensive analysis of the relevant requirements of public organisations from the USA and the European Union. Also, an application scenario of TNC is presented in the area of environmental policy design and implementation.

Abstract
E-participation is a relatively new approach, so it is necessary to evaluate it carefully so that we can improve e-participation practice. This paper describes a framework that has been developed for evaluating a number of e-participation pilots in the legislation development processes of parliaments. The framework is based on the objectives and basic characteristics of ‘traditional’ public participation, e-participation and the legislation development processes, as well as the existing frameworks for the evaluation of Information Systems (ISs), e-participation and traditional public participation. It includes three perspectives: process, system and outcomes evaluation; each of them is analysed into a number of evaluation criteria.

Abstract
This paper presents the results of the first empirical investigation of the effect of information and communication technologies (ICT) investment on business performance in Greece. It investigates the effect of both ‘hard’ ICT investment (in ICT hardware, software and networks) and ‘soft’ ICT investment (in ICT human resources, skills and organization) on firm output. It is based on data from big Greek industrial firms, which have been collected via a questionnaire-based survey conducted in cooperation with the Federation of Greek Industries (FGI). Using these data, econometric models of output have been constructed based on the microeconomic production theory. Our analysis shows that the Cobb–Douglas production function can adequately describe the output, as compared to the more general transcendental production function. Using this type of production function it has been found that hard ICT investment in Greece makes a positive and statistically significant contribution to firm output; however its output elasticity is lower than the one of the non-computer capital and much lower than the one of the labour. Also, from the dimensions-measures of the soft ICT investment we examined, it has been found that the existence of a separate ICT department has a positive and statistically significant effect on firm output, which is of considerable magnitude of about two thirds of the effect of the hard ICT investment. The possibility of an effect of firm size on the structural stability of the econometric models we employed was also investigated; it was found that for firms with total sales above about €20 million the structure of the models is reasonably stable, and therefore the conclusions drawn from them are valid, at least for the range of firm sizes that our data cover.

Abstract
This paper describes a comparative empirical study of the effect of information and communication technology (ICT) capital, human capital and new organizational practices on labour productivity in Greek and Swiss firms. We use firm-level data collected in 2005 through a common questionnaire administered to samples of similar composition (e.g. similar firm sizes, similar sectors), from which we construct econometric models with similar specifications for Greece and Switzerland. The analytical framework is based on a firmlevel production function. We find statistically significant positive effects for physical capital, ICT capital, human capital and ‘‘employee voice”-oriented organizational practices for both samples. We also identify considerable differences: Swiss firms are more mature and more efficient than Greek firms at creating, using and combining these ‘new’ production factors.

Abstract
Information Systems (IS) evaluation is of critical importance for assessing the value they generate and its main determinants, and identifying weaknesses and improvements priorities. This paper proposes a new approach for the multidimensional evaluation of IS in the domain of e-learning, which enables the assessment of the value generated at various levels and dimensions, and also the identification of the whole mechanism of value creation and flow. The proposed approach has been applied for evaluating an e-learning course in the domain of cultural heritage developed as part of the ERMIONE Project. By using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), and in particular the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach, the value flow model of this e-course has been estimated and used for drawing conclusions concerning the value generated at various levels and improvements priorities.

Abstract
Firms all over the world make significant investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) aiming to increase their efficiency and effectiveness. It is of critical importance to investigate the impact of these investments on firms’ performance in various contexts, and also identify ‘soft factors’ that can increase this impact. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of the effect of ICT investments on Greek firms’ business performance, measured through value added and labor productivity. It also examines for first time in Greece whether and to what extent this effect can be increased if ICT investments are aligned with business strategy. The study is based on a unique research dataset, including data from 237 Greek firms about business performance, usage of ICT, adoption of modern organization forms and innovation, which has been collected through a questionnaire-based survey among Greek firms conducted in cooperation with ICAP, one of the largest business information and consulting companies of Greece. Using these data econometric models of output and labor productivity have been estimated based on the Cobb-Douglas production function. It has been concluded that ICT investments in Greece make a positive and statistically significant contribution to both firm output and labor productivity, so there is no ‘ICT Productivity Paradox’ in Greece. Additionally, it has been found that this contribution can be increased considerably, in the firms for which a very high degree of bilateral relationship between the ICT Plan and the Overall Business/Strategy Plan exists.

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate and compare the moderating effects of the two basic business process change paradigms – business process reengineering (BPR) and total quality management (TQM) – on the business value generated for firms by their information and communication technologies (ICT) investment. Design/methodology/approach – Using data collected through a survey of 271 Greek firms, moderated regression models founded on the Cobb-Douglas production function are estimated, which have as the dependent variable the firm value added (objective measure of business performance), and as independent variables the yearly labour expenses, the value of the non-computer capital, the value of the computer capital and BPR (TQM) measures. Findings – From the above models it is concluded that both BPR and TQM have considerable positive moderating effects of a similar magnitude on the relationship between ICT investment and firm value added. Also, different BPR and TQM activities have different moderating effects on ICT business value; process simplification, process improvement and the creation of a horizontal interdepartmental process are the BPR activities with the largest moderating effects, while measurement of employee satisfaction and simplification of work methods for quality improvement are the TQM activities with the largest moderating effects. Research limitations/applications – The basic limitation of this study is that it is based on data from Greek firms. Another limitation is that only one business performance measure, although quite important and theoretically fundamental (i.e. firm value added), is used. Practical implications – Both BPR and TQM are important ICT “complementary factors”, which, if combined with ICT, can increase the business value it generates. Therefore ICT should not be used simply as a tool for automating existing business processes, but for creating and supporting new business processes and practices, such BPR and TQM. Originality/value – This study investigates and compares the moderating effects of the two main business process paradigms – BPR and TQM – based on reliable measurement of both through validated multi-item scales, and also on theoretically sound models, founded on the Cobb-Douglas production function.

Abstract
Taking into account that heart auscultation remains the dominant method for heart examination in the small health centers of the rural areas and generally in primary healthcare set-ups, the enhancement of this technique would aid significantly in the diagnosis of heart diseases. In this context, the present paper initially surveys the research that has been conducted concerning the exploitation of heart sound signals for automated and semi-automated detection of pathological heart conditions. Then it proposes an automated diagnosis system for the identification of heart valve diseases based on the Support Vector Machines (SVM) classification of heart sounds. This system performs a highly difficult diagnostic task (even for experienced physicians), much more difficult than the basic diagnosis of the existence or not of a heart valve disease (i.e. the classification of a heart sound as ‘healthy’ or ‘having a heart valve disease’): it identifies the particular heart valve disease. The system was applied in a representative global dataset of 198 heart sound signals, which come both from healthy medical cases and from cases suffering from the four most usual heart valve diseases: aortic stenosis (AS), aortic regurgitation (AR), mitral stenosis (MS) and mitral regurgitation (MR). Initially the heart sounds were successfully categorized using a SVM classifier as normal or disease-related and then the corresponding murmurs in the unhealthy cases were classified as systolic or diastolic. For the heart sounds diagnosed as having systolic murmur we used a SVM classifier for performing a more detailed classification of them as having aortic stenosis or mitral regurgitation. Similarly for the heart sounds diagnosed as having diastolicmurmur we used a SVM classifier for classifying them as having aortic regurgitation or mitral stenosis. Alternative classifiers have been applied to the same data for comparison (i.e. back-propagation neural networks, k-nearest-neighbour and naïve Bayes classifiers), however their performance for the same diagnostic problems was lower than the SVM classifiers proposed in this work.

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the effect of two external factors – the “generalized” competition an organization faces, and the strategy it follows in response to its external environment – on the business value generated by its ICT investment. Design/methodology/approach – For achieving these research objectives econometric models of output are constructed, using firm-level data from Greek companies, which have been collected through a survey through a structured questionnaire. These econometric models are based on the microeconomic production theory (Cobb Douglas production function). For operationalizing the “generalized competition” an organization faces are used the five dimensions of the generalized competition of M. Porter’s “five forces framework”. Findings – Concerning the above generalized competition dimensions it is concluded that higher level of bargaining power of suppliers results in higher ICT business value generation. Also, concerning strategy it is concluded that in organizations following a strategy of frequent introduction of new innovative products and services is generated higher ICT business value. Originality/value – This paper investigates the effect of external environment related factors on the business value generated by ICT investment. The conclusions constitute of first evidence that there are external conditions that result in higher business value from ICT investment by necessitating a more efficient and effective use of ICT.

Abstract
During the last few years, research and practice worldwide have shown that enhancing interoperability among organizations, systems or software applications is a multi-disciplinary issue of critical importance, touching upon processes, data and technical standardization. Fortunately, researchers and practitioners have started to realize the impact of interoperability in achieving true one-stop service provision for citizens and businesses, in fostering collaboration between enterprises or in minimizing the needed investment for maintaining complex systems. Current research results show that there exist common practices to be shared among public sector organisations and private sector enterprises, in attempts related with aligning organisation and processes, tackling semantic and technical shortcomings, building relevant architectures and finally achieving the legal interconnection and co-operation of systems. The identification of such common areas between eBusiness and eGovernment can then lead to a joint exploration, enhance reuse of the real paradigms and real exploitation of results by enterprises and administrations. Also future interoperability research directions, as emerging from relevant strategies and research roadmaps of important stakeholders, and also from relevant research workshops, are outlined. Furthermore, it is argued that interoperability research should be extended towards ‘knowledge interoperability’ as well, and deal with the development of methods and architectures enabling the exchange of knowledge among co-operating organizations.

Abstract
This paper concerns the development and use of ontologies for electronically supporting and structuring the highest-level function of government: the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies for the big and complex problems that modern societies face. This critical government function usually necessitates extensive interaction and collaboration among many heterogeneous government organizations (G2G collaboration) with different backgrounds, mentalities, values, interests and expectations, so it can greatly benefit from the use of ontologies. In this direction initially an ontology of public policy making, implementation and evaluation is described, which has been developed as part of the project ICTE-PAN of the Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme of the European Commission, based on sound theoretical foundations mainly from the public policy analysis domain and contributions of experts from the public administrations of four European Union countries (Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy). It is a
horizontal ontology that can be used for electronically supporting and structuring the whole lifecycle of a public policy in any vertical (thematic) area of government activity; it can also be combined with
vertical ontologies of the specific vertical (thematic) area of government activity we are dealing with. In this paper is also described the use of this ontology for electronically supporting and structuring the collaborative public policy making, implementation and evaluation through
structured electronic forums,
extended workflows,
public policy stages with specific sub-ontologies, etc., and also for the semantic annotation, organization, indexing and integration of the contributions of the participants of these forums, which enable the development of advanced semantic web capabilities in this area.

Abstract
Purpose – This paper investigates whether and how G2G collaboration for policy and decision-making can be effectively supported by an appropriately developed information system. Design/methodology/approach – The research method adopted in this paper follows the “Design Science Paradigm”, which has been extensively used in information systems research. Findings – As resulted fromthe case study described in this paper, the proposed systemhas significant potential for supportingG2Gcollaboration for policy and decision-making. It can support the collaborative understanding of social problems and needs, and the development of alternative actions or solutions for them. In addition, it can support the collaborative development of detailed action plans for the selected alternative(s). During the implementation of these actions, the system can be used for the collaborative monitoring of them, the identification of implementation problems and issues, and the development of alternatives formanaging them. Finally, it can be also used for the collaborative evaluation of these actions by the involved public organizations, as well as the citizens and groups who are their recipients. Practical implications – Enhanced public policy and decision-making through the use of the proposed web-based system. Originality/value – The main contribution of this paper lies in the development of a web-based system for supporting the G2G collaboration required for public policy and decision-making in the public administration, as well as the creation, leveraging and utilization of the relevant knowledge. The proposed system allows for distributed, synchronous or asynchronous, G2G collaboration and aims at aiding the involved public organizations by providing them a series of argumentation, decision-making and knowledge management features.

Abstract
Current medical technologies allow for capturing patient brain pathology in scans of several different types at the same visit, yielding multiple modality image sequences from which objects of interest, such as multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions, can be extracted. It is of interest to model the development of these objects (e.g., lesions, nodules or tumors) over time and in different modalities, in order to characterize and group them. Grouping lesions of different behavior patterns allows a better understanding of the development of the disease. Information exchange between clinicians and computational experts is possible through a common collection platform that takes into account disparity of data and need for integration as well as security. This paper focuses on the issues related to collaboration with regulated data. We describe an approach based on converting private data into an abstracted form that unprivileged researchers can use.

Abstract
Background: New technologies like echocardiography, color Doppler, CT, and MRI provide more direct and accurate evidence of heart disease than heart auscultation. However, these modalities are costly, large in size and operationally complex and therefore are not suitable for use in rural areas, in homecare and generally in primary healthcare set-ups. Furthermore the majority of internal medicine and cardiology training programs underestimate the value of cardiac auscultation and junior clinicians are not adequately trained in this field. Therefore efficient decision support systems would be very useful for supporting clinicians to make better heart sound diagnosis. In this study a rule-based method, based on decision trees, has been developed for differential diagnosis between "clear" Aortic Stenosis (AS) and "clear" Mitral Regurgitation (MR) using heart sounds. Methods: For the purposes of our experiment we used a collection of 84 heart sound signals including 41 heart sound signals with "clear" AS systolic murmur and 43 with "clear" MR systolic murmur. Signals were initially preprocessed to detect 1st and 2nd heart sounds. Next a total of 100 features were determined for every heart sound signal and relevance to the differentiation between AS and MR was estimated. The performance of fully expanded decision tree classifiers and Pruned decision tree classifiers were studied based on various training and test datasets. Similarly, pruned decision tree classifiers were used to examine their differentiation capabilities. In order to build a generalized decision support system for heart sound diagnosis, we have divided the problem into sub problems, dealing with either one morphological characteristic of the heart-sound waveform or with difficult to distinguish cases. Results: Relevance analysis on the different heart sound features demonstrated that the most relevant features are the frequency features and the morphological features that describe S1, S2 and the systolic murmur. The results are compatible with the physical understanding of the problem since AS and MR systolic murmurs have different frequency contents and different waveform shapes. On the contrary, in the diastolic phase there is no murmur in both diseases which results in the fact that the diastolic phase signals cannot contribute to the differentiation between AS and MR.

Abstract
e-Government today is focused on the electronic delivery of existing public services (e.g. social services, etc.) and, in general, on offering to citizens/enterprises the capability to transact electronically with Public Administration (e.g. declarations, applications, etc.), mainly over the Internet. In this sense modern e-Government, only to a small extent, exploits the huge capabilities of the Information and Communication Technologies for supporting and transforming the whole lifecycle of public policies, programmes and services design, production, delivery and evaluation. This paper examines the exploitation of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) methodologies and technologies for supporting and transforming G2G collaboration concerning interorganizational processes, public policies/programmes/services design, monitoring and evaluation, as well as decision-making for difficult and complex social problems. An architecture of a flexible Public Sector Collaborative Environment for the above purposes is described, which has been developed, based on a detailed user requirements analysis, as part of the ICTE-PAN (Methodologies and Tools for Building Intelligent Collaboration and Transaction Environments in Public Administration Networks)Project of the European Union IST (Information Society Technologies) Programme. In order to provide the required flexibility for supporting the huge variety of G2G collaboration typologies of modern Public Administration, this Collaborative Environment should consist of a set of adaptable and customisable modules. In order to support the users-centred and participative customisation of this Collaborative Environment for a specific collaborative process, a Collaborative Processes Modeling Methodology has been developed. This Methodology also incorporates an Ontology of the domains of Public Sector Collaborative Decision Making and Public Policies/Programmes Design and Management, consisting of the main concepts-elements used in these domains and the main associations among them.

Abstract
Objective: Differentiating a fourth heart sound (S4), from a split first heart sound (SP1), or ejection click (EC), is often difficult particularly for inexperienced clinicians. The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a computer-assisted classification tool to aid in this difficult differentiation problem, and in general for heart sound differentiation and diagnosis. Design: Developmental study. Methods: Emphasis was given to the selection of appropriate features that are adequately independent from the heart sound signal acquisition method. Relevance analysis was initially performed to identify the features of the heart sound most relevant to aiding diagnosis of S4, SP1 and EC. To detect and differentiate S4, SP1 and EC, a detection decision tree (DeDT) and a differentiation decision tree (DiDT) were used independently and also together in a multiple decision tree architecture. The DeDT provides three suggestions for each heart sound pattern, whereas the DiDT provides one. The MuDT analyses the suggestions of both decision trees to provide one final suggestion for each sound pattern. Results: Relevance analysis on the different heart sound features demonstrated that the most relevant features for aiding diagnosis of S4, SP1 and EC are the frequency features and the morphological features that describe S1. The DeDT architecture demonstrated an average classification accuracy of 80.56%, sensitivity of 70.93%, and specificity of 83.42%, but provided more than one suggestion for many cases. The DiDT architecture demonstrated an average classification accuracy of 66.46%, a sensitivity of 66.15% and a specificity of 82.15%, and only provided one suggestion for each case. The MuDT architecture slightly improved performance compared to the DiDT architecture. Average classification accuracy was improved by 2.79%, classification sensitivity by 2.73% and classification specificity by 1.26% Conclusions: The present work has demonstrated that decision tree algorithms can be successfully used as the basis for a decision support system to assist inexperienced clinicians in heart sound diagnosis. Further work is currently in progress to improve the accuracy, specificity and sensitivity of the system.

Abstract
In this paper a Decision Support System Architecture is proposed for the heart sound diagnosis problem, and in general for complex medical diagnosis problems. It is based on the division of a complex diagnostic problem into simpler sub-problems; each of them is handled by a specialized decision tree. This Multiple Decision Trees Architecture in general consists of a network of detection decision trees and arbitration decision trees, and can also incorporate other classification methods as well (e.g. patterns recognition, neural networks, etc.). The initial motivation for developing this Multiple Decision Trees Architecture has been the problem of Differentiation among Opening Snap (OS), 2nd Heart Sound Split (A2_P2), and 3rd Heart Sound (S3), which is a crucial and at the same time difficult and complicated part of the heart sound diagnosis problem. The Multiple Decision Tree Architecture developed for the above diagnosis/differentiation problem has been tested with real heart sound signals, and its performance and generalisation capabilities were found to be higher than the previous ‘traditional’ architectures.

Abstract
The development of decision support systems for supporting effectively the ill-defined and unstructured enterprise decisions associated with the managerial making and planning both at the strategic & tactical level constitutes a very challenging and at the same time a practically quite useful task. These systems, if properly developed according to the requirements of the users, can be very useful for all kinds of enterprises, and in particular for the small & medium enterprises, which do not have the required specialized personnel and expertise for strategic & tactical planning. In this paper is described the ergonomic development of a decision support system for supporting the managerial, making and the strategic & tactical planning in small & medium industrial enterprises, putting special emphasis on the human factors. The system is based on an extensive knowledge base including more than 500 rules, extracted from structured interviews and planning scenario analyses conducted with managers of small & medium industrial enterprises.

Abstract
Extensive research has been conducted on the main issues that organizations face concerning Information Systems (IS) management, in order to exploit the capabilities of the rapidly evolving Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to the highest possible extent. However most of this research has been directed towards the private sector. The present study attempts to contribute to the research of the critical issues of IS management in the public sector. Based on 32 interviews with IS Managers of Greek Public Sector organizations using a structured questionnaire, the main issues and challenges that the organizations of the Greek Public Sector face concerning the whole cycle of IS management are investigated. From this investigation it is concluded that the most important IS management issue currently faced is to hire 'New IS Human Resources', followed by the issues of 'Extending Use of Office Automation' and of 'Management and Use of Data Resources'. The results shed light on the profile of the modern IS management function, which has become highly complex and multidimensional, containing many both technical and non-technical management issues, which can be either internal or external to the IS Unit. The results also show the highly horizontal nature of the IS function: its success depends more on issues concerning its cooperation and relationship with the other functions of the organization, than on issues concerning its own functional expertise. From the study of the main expected IS management issues after 3 years, it is concluded that about one third of the main agenda currently faced by IS management is expected to change within three years, confirming the highly dynamic nature of the IS management function. The results of the present study were also compared with the results of previous studies of IS management issues conducted in Greece and in USA. From the comparison were determined both similarities and differences as to the main IS management issues faced. Therefore some of the main IS management issues faced by organizations are universal, while some others are specific to particular sectoral and national contexts.

Abstract
Extensive research has been conducted on the computerization of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and on the similarities, differences and specificities it presents compared with the computerization of the large enterprises. However the above research has mainly focused on the larger SMEs, while very little research work has been done on the computerization of the smaller SMEs, though they contribute significantly to the national product and to the total labour employment of most countries. This paper investigates the factors affecting the computerization of the Small Industrial Enterprises (SIEs). both the initial decision to introduce IS in the enterprise. and the subsequent decisions to extend the use of IS in the enterprise. For this purpose data from 427 SIEs were collected and processed, in order to determine statistically significant business and financial factors affecting the above computerization decisions. The resultS shed light on a variety of business and financial factors affecting the computerization of Small Industrial Enterprises.

Abstract
The security aspects of public sector information systems are important as the respective systems are often part of critical infrastructures or deal with personal or sensitive data. A set of 53 Greek public sector organizations were investigated by means of a structured questionnaire concerning important aspects of information systems security. We present the relevant theoretical background, the methodology of our research, and an analysis of the obtained results. Greek public sector organizations have only a basic level of information system security awareness. Most care about digital data confidentiality; however, only a small percentage have developed a systematic, complete, and integrated approach towards the security of their information system, including internal audit procedures. The importance of proper training and generally the importance of the human factor for achieving high levels of information systems security is often underestimated

Abstract
Modern private and public organizations make extensive use of digital systems (information systems, electronic systems, etc.), which support significantly their most critical functions. Digital systems can offer important and multidimensional benefits and can contribute highly to organizational efficiency and effectiveness, but at the same time they can create some new threats and risks and can give rise to a new category of 'digital' crises. In this paper a methodology is proposed for managing these digital crises. based on risks identification, quantification and analysis, and also on contigency planning. The proposed methodology is characterized by wide applicability and therefore can be used for all future massive digital crises. This methodology has been successfully applied for managing the Y2K problem in the information and the electronic systems of the Greek public sector.

Abstract
A method enabling the automated diagnosis of gas turbine compressor blade faults, based on the principles of statistical pattern recognition, is initially presented. The decision making is based on the derivation of spectral patterns from dynamic measurement data and then the calculation of discriminants with respect to reference spectral patterns of the faults while it takes into account their statistical properties. A method of optimizing the selection of discriminants using dynamic measurement data is also presented. A few scalar discriminants are derived, in such a way that the maximum available discrimination potential is exploited. In this way the success rate of automated decision making is further improved, while the need for intuitive discriminant selection is eliminated. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is demonstrated by application to data coming from an industrial gas turbine while extension to other aspects of fault diagnosis is discussed.

Abstract
It is widely accepted in the management literature that Information Technology can greatly contribute to the administrative modernization and especially to the improvement of organizational productivity. This is of great interest for the Greek Public Administration, which faces long term problems of low productivity. The main objective of this work is to analyse the impact of Information Technology on the organizational structure of Greek Public Administration, that is one of the main determinants of its productivity. Initially the theoretical background is presented on which the present work is based. Using data compiled from the whole Central Government, firstly the study is focused on the hardware and software technologies which are employed. At a second stage the impact of the use of Information Technology on a set of dimensions of the organizational structure,which are of critical importance for the productivity of the Greek Public Administration, is examined. The conclusions of the study provide the basis for the development of strategic guidelines for maximizing the benefits from using Information Technology in Greek Public Administration.

Abstract
A method for diagnosing the existence and the kinds of faults in blades of a gas turbine compressor is presented in the present paper. The innovative feature of this method is that it performs the diagnosis automatically, that is, it gives a direct answer to whether a fault exists and what type of fault it is, without requiring the interpretation of results by a human expert. This is achieved by derivation of the values of discriminants calculated from spectral patterns of fast response measurement data. A decision about the corresponding engine status is then derived according to the values of the discriminants. In the paper, the procedure of examining the suitability of particular parameter discriminants and the constitution of a related knowledge base is described. The derivation of decisions by a computer, and on what engine condition a particular measurement data set corresponds, are then described.

Abstract
The distortions of the pressure field around rotating blades of turbomachinery components due to alterations of their shape can be utilized for the identification of faults related to the blading. Measurement of the unsteady pressure field near the wall provides information on such flow and pressure distortions and can thus be used for diagnostic purposes. An experimental investigation of the compressor rotating blade pressure field of an industrial gas turbine has been undertaken, in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the abovementioned principle. Various realistic gas turbine blade faults have been examined. Application of the appropriate processing techniques demonstrates that unsteady pressure measurements can be used to identify the occurrence of minor blade faults (not traceable by standard techniques) as well as the kind of fault. The proposed methodology has the potential for being incorporated in a computerized engine health monitoring system.

Abstract
The results from an experimental investigation of the compressor casing vibration of an industrial gas turbine are presented. It is demonstrated that statistical properties of acceleration signals can be linked with engine operating conditions. The power content of such signals is dominated by contributions originating from the stages of the compressor, while the contribution of the shaft excitation is secondary. Using nonparametric identification methods, accelerometer outputs are correlated to unsteady pressure measurements taken by fast response transducers at the inner surface of the compressor casing. The transfer functions allow reconstruction of unsteady pressure signal features from the accelerometer readings. A possibility is thus provided for “seeing” the unsteady pressure field of the rotor blades without actually penetrating through the casing, but by simply observing its external surface vibrations.

Abstract
As a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) application, ChatGPT holds pertinence not only for the academic, medicine, law, computing or other sectors, but also for the public sector-case in point being the Open Government Data (OGD) initiative. However, though there has been some limited (as this topic is quite new) research concerning the capabilities ChatGPT in these sectors, there has been no research about the capabilities it can provide to government concerning its wide range of functions and activities. This paper contributes to filling this gap by investigating the capabilities that the ChatGPT can provide concerning one of most recently ini-tiated and novel, and at the same time most promising, activities of government that aims to fuel the emerging data economy and society: the opening of large amounts of government data; furthermore, we investigate the public values that can be promoted through the use of ChatGPT in the area of OGD by both the da-ta publishers as well as their users. At the same time, we investigate the issues that the use of ChatGPT in the area of OGD can pose, which can reduce the ca-pabilities identified as aforesaid as well as the benefits and public values that can be generated from them. For these purposes interviews with 12 experts have been conducted and their responses have been analyzed. Finally, based on our findings we have developed a research agenda concerning the exploitation of ChatGPT application in the OGD domain.

Abstract
One of the most serious problems of the market-based economies are the in-stabilities of economic activity (business cycles), which are sometimes large and lead to recessionary economic crises of different intensities, geographical scopes and durations, which have quite negative consequences for firms. Most firms experience decrease of their sales and their liquidity, increase of their debts, and reductions of investment as well as personnel employment, while some firms go bankrupt. Governments, in order to reduce these negative consequences of economic crises, which can lead to high levels of unemployment and poverty, as well social unrest and political extremism, undertake various interventions, such as large-scale economic stimulus programs. These interventions, and especially the large-scale economic stimulus programs, are more effective if they are focused on the most vulnerable firms to the economic crisis. This paper makes a contribution in this direction: it describes a methodology for predicting multi-dimensional patterns of firms' vulnerability to economic crisis with respect to the main aspects of their financial situation; for this purpose, we are using Machine Learning algorithms, in combination with the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE), in order to increase their performance, which are trained using open government data from Statistical Authorities. Furthermore, a first application/validation of the proposed methodology is presented, using open data from the Greek Statistical Authority about 363 firms for the severe Greek economic crisis period 2009-2014, which gave satisfactory results. Our methodology can be useful for government agencies responsible for designing and implementing interventions, and especially large-scale economic stimulus programs, in order to reduce the negative impacts of economic crises, or other kinds of firms’ support programs; and also, for banks and in-vestment firms, as well as for firms of all sectors that rely largely on big supply chains

Abstract
Extant research on Open Government Data (OGD) has remained confined to the grappling of issues linked with its conceptual, theoretical and empirical dimensions, however focusing on the supply of OGD physical capital (ODG portals, datasets, etc.), and to a lesser degree on the demand for it (e.g., needs of potential users), but not dealing with relevant OGD human capital (human knowledge and skills concerning OGD). Furthermore, research on meta-analysis or literature reviews has not expanded its scope to unravel the formation of OGD human capital, and especially how the OGD theme is being showcased across universities’ curriculum. The present research aims to contribute to filling this research gap, through an analysis of the OGD-related programs and courses offered at the graduate and post-graduate levels across the top-notch universities identified as per the indicators of the QS World University rankings, 2023. Our theoretical foundation is the widely recognized ‘Human Capital Theory’ from the economic science, which gives prominence to the importance of the human capital (human knowledge and skills) as an important complement of the classical physical capital (e.g., production equipment, ICT capital, etc.). Our findings indicate that there are only small number of courses concerning OGD in these top-notch universities; furthermore, a very small share of them have OGD an main topic, while most of them include only a part concerning OGD. Most of them focus on the exploitation of OGD of a specific thematic domain (mainly urban studies and health), and only a few deal with OGD in general. Furthermore, there is a prevalence of postgraduate courses, offered as part of MSC programs, followed by undergraduate courses, offered as part of BSC study programs, and to a much lesser degree short courses. Also, with respect to the objective of these OGD-related programs and courses, most of them aim at the generation of scientific value from OGD, while a smaller number aim at the generation of social-political value, and only a much smaller number at the development of economic value. Therefore, it can be concluded that the formation of OGD human capital by the examined universities is limited.

Abstract
Economic crises of different durations, intensities and geographic scopes are often appearing in market-based economies, while at the same time the economic stability periods become shorter. They have several negative impacts on firms, which include a decrease of their technological investments in various technological resources (e.g., production equipment, ICT, etc.). This can result in firms’ technological backwardness and obsolescence, and finally lower competitiveness and growth, or even threaten the survival of many firms. At the same time, economic crises can have some positive impacts on firms as well, as they put pressure on them to exploit more efficiently their resources by rationalizing and improving the relevant processes and practices they follow for using and exploiting their resources, including the technological ones, which can have positive impacts on their competitiveness and growth. Therefore, institutions that provide financial support to firms, such as government agencies (through various government firms’ financial support programs), banks (through the provision of various kinds of loans), and institutional investors, in their relevant decision-making should take into account not only criteria concerning firms’ economic performance during normal economically stable periods but also criteria concerning their ‘technological resilience’ (with respect to their main production technologies, ICT, etc.) during economic crises periods as well. This is important because low technological resilience in economic crisis periods can result in severe technological backwardness and obsolescence, and finally lower future competitiveness and growth, and even threaten their survival. This paper proposes a methodology for enhancing government agencies’, banks’ and, institutional investors’ decision-making concerning the financial support of firms by adding to pre-existing relevant criteria predictions of firms’ technological resilience to economic crises. Having as theoretical foundation the resources and capabilities theory from the strategic management domain, we view technological resilience as a two-dimensional concept, which consists of a) the extent of reduction of technological investments during economic crises, and b) the extent of rationalization and improvement of their technological resources’ exploitation processes and practices during economic crises. These predictions are based on existing data from government agencies (Statistical Authorities) which are used to construct relevant prediction models through artificial intelligence techniques from the area of machine learning. Also, an application of this methodology is described, which gives satisfactory results.

Abstract
As the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media increasingly change our lives, all the extensive capabilities they offer are exploited by firms, using them to promote and advertise their products, to improve and strengthen their external communication with their customers, as well as the internal communication among firm’s employees, and even to improve their absorptive capacity, which is of critical importance for their innovativeness. Several different forms of social media use by firms, starting from simpler and advancing to more sophisticated ones, have been developed and are increasingly used by firms. The objective of this study is to understand the extent and the forms of social media usage by firms of the Greek food and beverage sector, which is one of the most important sectors of the Greek economy; and especially to examine to what extent are used the more sophisticated forms of social media use that can contribute to the improvement of firm’s absorptive capacity. Our research methodology is based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques. We conduct semi-structured interviews with seven firms from the Greek food & beverage sector, which include questionnaire filling. From the analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data collected it has been concluded that these firms are unter-utilizing the potential of social media, using mainly the simpler forms of social media use, but not the more sophisticated ones, especially the ones that can improve their absorptive capacity.

Abstract
The enterprise systems (ES), such as ERP, CRM, and SCM ones, represent the highest and most mature form of electronic support of firms’ internal activities and co-operation with suppliers and customers. They can offer great benefits, however their implementation is costly and has significant difficulties and risks, which hinder their adoption. Therefore, research has been conducted concerning the factors that affect positively or negatively their adoption, however further research is required on this topic examining a wider range of factors. This paper contributes to filling this research gap by investigating the effect of a highly significant factor, which has not been examined in previous relevant literature, on the extent of ES adoption: the recessionary economic crises, which constitute the most critical disruptions that repeatedly occur in firms’ external environment with quite negative consequences. Furthermore, we compare this effect with the ones of several other factors, which according to previous literature affect firms’ innovation activity. Our study has been based on data collected from 363 Greek firms concerning the economic crisis period 2009-2014. Using these data, a comprehensive ES adoption model, based on the Technology, Organization, Environment (TOE) theory of technological innovation adoption, has been estimated, which includes as independent variables: a) three crisis-related factors that concern the main manifestations of economic crises, and b) some additional factors that have been identified by previous innovation research as promoting firms’ innovation activities, especially concerning technological innovations (ICT use, size, human capital, use of organic forms of organization, competition and sector). It has been concluded that none of the examined crisis-related factors affected the extent of ES adoption; on the contrary, we have found that it was some firm’s characteristics that affected it: size, ICT use, human capital and use of organic forms of organization, as well as the non-price competition.

Abstract
Legal information is of paramount importance for social, economic and political activities. Sophisticated legal information retrieval (LIR) systems are designed and built to facilitate user access to accurate and current legal information. The advent of new types of capabilities in the legal information systems domain has necessitated a closer look at the performance and usability of such advanced computer systems, and brought into sharp focus the requirement for an effective evaluation of the available functionalities and quality of the software. The purpose of this research paper is to develop a framework for the effective monitoring and evaluation of an advanced legal information system from differing salient perspectives, and to critically examine the basic set of attributes that characterize the important dimensions of platform functionality. Through the application of the developed evaluation model to a novel legal data platform, we propose both a rigorous validation of the framework itself, together with the identification of the strengths and shortcomings associated with the use of the system under consideration.

Abstract
Traditionally public decision-makers have been given discretion in many of the decisions they have to make in how to comply with legislation and policies. In this way, the context and specific circumstances can be taken into account when making decisions. This enables more acceptable solutions, but at the same time, discretion might result in treating individuals differently. With the advance of AI-based decisions, the role of the decision-makers is changing. The automation might result in fully automated decisions, humans in-the-loop or AI might only be used as recommender systems in which humans have the discretion to deviate from the suggested decision. The predictability of and the accountability of the decisions might vary in these circumstances, although humans always remain accountable. Hence, there is a need for human-control and the decision-makers should be given sufficient authority to control the system and deal with undesired outcomes. In this direction this paper analyzes the degree of discretion and human control needed in AI-driven decision-making in government. Our analysis is based on the legal requirements set/posed to the administration, by the extensive legal frameworks that have been created for its operation, concerning the rule of law, the fairness – non-discrimination, the justifiability and accountability, and the certainty/ predictability.

Abstract
Business Analytics (BA) has attracted great interest among firms of most sectors worldwide, as it enables a more advanced and valuable exploitation of firms’ data assets, beyond operations, for the supporting of decision-making. However, though numerous firms take some first steps in this area, most of them make limited use of BA in some of their activities, and cannot advance to a more extensive adoption of BA throughout their activities, so they do not exploit the full potential of it. For this reason, some first research has been conducted on BA adoption and factors affecting it, however more research is required on this topic. Our study makes a contribution to this research stream, by investigating empirically the effect of the extent of enterprise systems (such as ERP, CRM and SCM ones) adoption, as well as the degree of development of firm’s ICT capabilities, distinguishing between technological and management ones, on the extent of BA adoption. It has been based on the Technology, Organization and Environment (TOE) framework. We have used data collected from 363 Greek firms from both manufacturing and services sectors through a questionnaire, from which ordinal regression models are estimated. It has been concluded that both the adoption of enterprise systems, as well as the development of firm’s ICT capabilities, and especially the ICT management capabilities, affect positively the extent of BA adoption.

Abstract
The digital transformation of public services has been traditionally one of the main targets of digital government research and practice; however, it has focused mainly on the digital transformation of complex public services, based on the development of highly sophisticated and costly information sys-tems (IS) for this purpose. Nevertheless, considerable public value can be gen-erated through the digital transformation of widely used simpler public services as well, as it can result in huge savings of both public servants’ and citizens’ time, as well as improvements in the quality of these services. Furthermore, due to the financial resource constraints that governments of most countries face, it is important that this is implemented at a low cost, adopting a ‘frugal innova-tion’ approach. In this direction this paper: a) describes the ‘frugal’ low-cost digital transformation of a widely used simple public service in Greece, the ‘certification of authenticity of signature’, which is applied in two special forms, the ‘formal declaration’ and the ‘authorization’; b) evaluates these novel e-services, based on an extension of ‘Diffusion of Innovation’ theory with an additional trust-related dimension, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques, and finally drawing interesting conclusions of wider interest and ap-plicability.

Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to lead to a severe recessionary economic crisis with quite negative consequences for large numbers of firms and citizens; however, this is an ‘old story’: recessionary economic crises appear re-peatedly in the last 100 years in the market-based economies, and they are rec-ognized as one of the most severe and threatening weaknesses of them. They can result in closure of numerous firms, and decrease of activities of many more, as well as poverty and social exclusion for large parts of the population, and finally lead to political upheaval and instability; so they constitute one of the most threatening and difficult problems that governments often face. For the above reasons it is imperative that governments develop effective public policies and make drastic interventions for addressing these economic crises. Quite useful for these interventions can be the prediction of the vulnerability of individual firms to recessionary economic crisis, so that government can focus its attention as well as its scarce economic resources on the most vulnerable ones. In this direction our pa-per presents a methodology for using existing government data in order to predict the vulnerability of individual firms to economic crisis, based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. Furthermore, a first application of the proposed methodology is presented, based on existing data from the Greek Ministry of Finance and Statistical Authority concerning 363 firms for the economic crisis period 2009-2014, which gives encouraging results.

Abstract
Most of the research that has been conducted in the area of legal infor-matics concerns its ‘supply side’, dealing with the development of effective sys-tems for legal information provision. However, limited research has been con-ducted on the ‘demand side’ of legal information provision, though it is abso-lutely necessary to gain a good understanding of it, in order to design effective and useful systems for the provision of legal information; furthermore, this lim-ited research is dealing with the legal information needs of the lawyers, and ne-glects the ones of other important groups. This paper contributes to filling this research gap. It analyses legal information requirements of a highly important for the society group: the designers of public policies. Initially we investigate current legal information sources and systems used by public policy makers, as well as their relevant search practices. Then we investigate their business needs for ad-ditional capabilities/functionalities for a better support of their policymaking ac-tivities using advanced legal analytics tools and services. Finally, we discuss the information, processing and technical requirements for the development of a le-gal information system providing the above advanced functionalities and ser-vices. For the above purposes, we have collected data through semi-structured interviews form 13 Greek and 7 Austrian public administrators dealing with the design of public policies, which lead to interesting and useful insights, as well as a novel set of additional advanced capabilities and functionalities that can give rise to a new generation of legal informatics.

Abstract
The public sector in many countries is initially experimenting with and then adopting various forms of Cloud Computing (CC) services, in order to take advantage of the important benefits it can offer over the traditional ‘on-premises’ model concerning the electronic support of their operations. This study empirically investigates the extent of use of the simplest form of CC services, the Cloud Storage (CS), by the Greek Municipalities, as well as the factors that affect it. Our theoretical background is Rogers’ 'Diffusion of Innovation Theory'. The study is based on data collected through a questionnaire from 121 Greek Municipalities. The results of this study paint an encouraging picture: some important steps have been taken concerning the utilization of this technology by the Greek Municipalities, and also there are positive future trends. But at the same time, they indicate a rather defensive and conservative approach of the Greek Municipalities towards the adoption of CS. We have found that its adoption is mainly affected by the perceptions of the Municipalities about the level of threats that this technology poses (mainly the risks of loss, destruction or improper modification of their data), its compatibility with existing procedures, needs and culture, as well as its application complexity and difficulty. However, CS adoption does not seem to be affected by Municipalities’ perceptions about the extent of comparative advantages (in comparison with the traditional ‘on-premises’ model) it offers.

Abstract
Blockchain Technologies, known as BCT have been praised by most people as a new and evolutionary means of ensuring secure and transparent data sharing and record keeping with potential uses in a number of sectors. The government sector is one of them. The potentials of DLTs are among the motivating reasons why most government agencies are looking to this technology to help make them become more efficient, accountable, cost-effective, and transparent. Some, on the other hand, are looking for ways in which the DLTs can help increase the trust in government agencies as well as various governmental institutions. Despite the endless potentials of the DLTs , they are still in infant stage and at the same time having a number of risks that may deter its future integration and use. This paper proposes a framework towards the integration of DLTs into government organizations of various levels like municipalities and public services that will help in introduction of them in governmental tasks such as digital ID management, secure document handling and voting while keeping them simple for administrators to use and apply in every organization and domain.

Abstract
Most of smart city research focuses on the ‘supply-side’, and only limited research has been conducted about the ‘demand-side’ of smart cities: the smart city actions that are perceived by citizens as having higher usefulness, value and therefore priority; also limited research has been conducted for the comparison between the supply-side and the demand-side of smart cities. This paper contributes to filling these important research gaps. It investigates and compares smart city actions’ priorities of the municipalities with the ones of the citizens, in order to identify points of convergence as well as of divergence. A novel methodology has been constructed for this purpose, which includes as a first step the development of a detailed taxonomy of possible smart city actions, based on previous relevant literature. This taxonomy is then used for collecting assessment data from municipalities as well as from citizens concerning these possible smart city actions. Furthermore, our methodology includes three layers of processing of the above assessment data, which identify: a) the priorities of these two important stakeholders concerning smart city actions; and b) points of convergence as well as points of divergence between them. This methodology has been applied in the context of the Greek local government. Assessment data concerning the importance of the smart city actions of the above taxonomy were collected from 144 Greek municipalities and 500 citizens; their processing has revealed an important divergence between these two important smart city stakeholders.

Abstract
Digital Governance (initially ‘Electronic Government’, and later ‘Electronic Governance’ incorporating also ICT-based innovations and transformation) has emerged as a research and practice domain aiming at the exploitation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in government, in order to support, transform and enhance its activities, both the internal ones, as well as the ‘extrovert’ ones concerning communication with the external environment (dialogue and consultation with citizens and firms, and also transaction with them), in order to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. During the last decades, Digital Governance has been recognized as a well-established domain with a highly ambitious objective, which is quite beneficial for the society and the economy: to study and advance the exploitation of ICT for addressing problems and needs of public sector organizations, and develop novel methods and frameworks for enhancing their internal efficiency, service quality and policy-making effectiveness through the use of ICT. Though substantial progress has been made through government funded as well private sector research in a number of areas of it, yet the lack of a science base of the Digital Governance domain seems to hinder unlocking the real transformative value of ICT in the public sector, as well as the full contribution and creativity potential of all its stakeholders, from researchers to industry and SMEs. Such a scientific background would enable a better documentation, organization, structuring of the existing knowledge in this area, as well as its dissemination through training, and also provide systematic directions for high priority future research, in order to develop a portfolio of systematic solutions to specific problems concerning the exploitation of ICT in government organizations (methods for assessment and identification of problems, as well as methods for providing solutions, which can be applied (possibly with some adaptations) in a wide range of organizational, cultural and legal contexts, as it happens in ‘mature’ sciences, such as the engineering ones).This paper provides some research directions concerning the development of the science base of the Digital Governance domain as well as its evolution, and proposes specific relevant research questions that have to be addressed.

Abstract
An important trend in the area of digital government is its expansion beyond the support of internal processes and operations, as well as transactions and consultations with citizens and firms, which were the main objectives of its first generations, towards the support of higher-level functions of government agencies, with main emphasis on public policy making. This gives rise to the gradual development of policy analytics. Another important trend in the area of digital government is the increasing exploitation of artificial intelligence techniques by government agencies, mainly for the automation, support and enhancement of operational tasks and lower-level decision making, but only to a very limited extent for the support of higher-level functions, and especially policy making. Our paper contributes towards the advancement and the combination of these two important trends: it proposes a policy analytics methodology for the exploitation of existing public and private sector data, using a big data oriented artificial intelligence technique, feature selection, in order to support policy making concerning one of the most serious problems that governments face, the economic crises. In particular, we present a methodology for exploiting existing data of taxation authorities, statistical agencies, and also of private sector business information and consulting firms, in order to identify characteristics of a firm (e.g. with respect to strategic directions, resources, capabilities, practices, etc.) as well as its external environment (e.g. with respect to competition, dynamism, etc.) that affect (positively or negatively) its resilience to the crisis with respect to sales revenue; for this purpose an advanced artificial intelligence feature selection algorithm, the Boruta ‘all-relevant’ variables identification one, is used. Furthermore, an application of the proposed economic crisis policy analytics methodology is presented, which provides a first validation of the usefulness of our methodology.

Abstract
For long time research and practice in the area of Electronic Government (e-government) has been focusing on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for improving the efficiency government agencies’ internal operations, as well as transactions with citizens and firms. However, the increased needs and expectations of citizens, and the proliferation of ‘participatory democracy’ ideas, gave rise to a new generation of ICT exploitation by government for increasing and enhancing citizens’ participation. Furthermore, the increasing social problems and challenges that had to be addressed by government through appropriate public policies, such as the increasing inequalities and poverty, the aging society, the environmental degradation, and the rising number of ‘unpredictable’ events, such as the financial and economic crisis, give rise to the development of a new wave of egovernment focusing on policy analytics for supporting the design of effective responses - public policies for these challenges. Therefore, evolutions in the needs of modern societies, in combination with technological evolutions, give rise to evolutions in e-government, and the emergence of new generations of it. This paper aims at the identification and better understanding of the main characteristics of the different e-Government generations, using an analytical framework based on two rounds of literature review. The results of the study provide insights on the main features of the three main e-government generations, regarding their main goals, obstacles, key methods and tools, and reveal the new emerging generation of e-Government 3.0 and its basic characteristics. Furthermore, within the first and to some extent the second e-Government generation there have been substantial advancements, which have created distinct sub-generations of them, revealed and analysed through extensive relevant growth/maturity stages research.

Abstract
Firms are implementing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems not for reducing their operational costs and increasing their efficiency, as it happens with other kinds of infor-mation systems, but in order to offer better services to their customers and build better relation-ships with them. This fact stems from CRM’s customer facing nature, which is there to improve the relationship a firm has with its most valuable asset: the customers. However, there is limited research about the factors that lead firms to adopt CRM systems. This paper aims to contribute to filling this research gap, by investigating the effects of a wide range of factors on CRM adop-tion by firms; these factors include firm’s ICT resources and capabilities, and also the effects of a major disruption in the environment: economic crisis leading to recession. Our main theoreti-cal foundation is the Technology, Organization, Environment (TOE) theory of technological in-novation adoption. Based on data from 363 Greek firms CRM adoption models have been esti-mated, which indicate that the sophistication of firm’s ICT technological resources has a strong positive effect on CRM adoption, alongside two ICT capabilities: ICT strategic planning, and the rapid internal implementation of various interconnections/integrations of existing applications to achieve interoperability. Human capital, innovativeness and use of ‘organic’ forms of work organization (such as horizontal teamwork) are also important factors that affect positively CRM adoption. On the contrary, the effects of the economic crisis (decrease of domestic demand for products/services from businesses, individual customers and the public sector, reduction of credit limits by banks and non-payment or late payment by customers) do not have impact on CRM systems adoption.

Abstract
Government agencies are increasingly making use of cloud computing (CC) services, initially simpler infrastructure and platform as a service (IaaS and PaaS) ones, and later more sophisti-cated software as a service (SaaS) ones. However, with respect to the latter the electronic sup-port of the high complexity government processes is a difficult task and requires highly sophisti-cated and complex government-specific SaaS offering extensive functionalities for fulfilling the extensive requirements posed by relevant legislation. It is therefore imperative to conduct com-prehensive evaluations of such complex government-specific SaaS, in order to assess to what extent they support the targeted government processes and fulfil their extensive and complex requirements, and also identify and prioritize necessary improvements. This paper presents an advanced methodology for evaluating complex government-specific SaaS, which enables com-prehensive multi-dimensional evaluation of a wide range of aspects of them that are highly im-portant in the government context, and detailed evaluation of the provided complex and exten-sive functionality with respect to the requirements defined by relevant legislation; furthermore, it enables a rational identification and prioritization of necessary improvements. It is based on the estimation of multi-layer ‘value flow models’ of these SaaS from evaluation data collected from users. The proposed methodology has been applied for the evaluation of a complex SaaS aiming to support the wide range of activities of the Greek ‘Local School Committees’, which are re-sponsible for managing all government funding provided for the operation of all the schools in a specific geographical area, as well as all other income of them, and for covering all kinds of their operating expenses as well as purchases. The research presented in this paper can con-tribute to a more rational, efficient and effective exploitation of an emerging ‘disruptive technol-ogy’, the CC, and especially its most sophisticated form, the SaaS, in the public sector.

Abstract
Public administration and information technology university departments worldwide have responded to the explosion in e-Government by offering related programs or courses. In this study, the authors investigated education programs in e-Government by reviewing the curriculum and course descriptions of 70 programs that had web listings of their programs. Findings suggest that 64 institutions, from 32 countries worldwide, offer e-Government related programs. The programs are classified into four types based on their education level. Offered courses have been classified in 15 clusters. The majority of the proposed courses belong to the areas of Information Systems (20,7%), e-Governance (17,8%), Management (12,9%) and Public Administration (8,4%) clusters.

Abstract
Data science and business analytics have been initially developed in the private sector, and their success gives rise to the development of data science in the public sector as well, and the emergence of the ‘policy analytics’. A new generation of the e-government domain is gradually emerging, referred to as ‘e-government 3.0’, which aims at the exploitation of the large quantities of data possessed by government agencies, possibly in combination with data from the private sector, using advanced modelling and analysis techniques, in order to support and improve policy making, and promote ‘evidence-based policy’ making. This paper makes a contribution towards the development of public sector data science and policy analytics, focusing on a highly important problem: the economic crises, which occur repeatedly in market-based economies. It presents a methodology for the exploitation of government data from Taxation Authorities and Statistical Agencies, in combination with data from the private sector (from business information and consulting firms), for the identification of firm’s characteristics that affect behavior in the economic crisis, focusing on their investment related behavior (the extent of reduction of their investment). Our methodology aims to support the design of public policies for reducing the negative impact of economic crises on firms’ investment, and improving firms’ investment behavior during economic crises. An application of this methodology is presented, using data from Greek firms for the crisis period 2009 – 2014, which leads to interesting insights; four firms’ characteristics have been identified that reduce the negative effects of the crisis on Greek firms’ investment.

Abstract
The development and success of the ‘business analytics’ in the private sector, in combination with the growing availability of large quantities of useful data in government agencies, gives rise to the emergence of the ‘policy analytics’ in the public sector. However, though some knowledge has already been developed in this area, extensive research is required in order to increase our knowledge base concerning the exploitation of these exponentially increasing quantities of data available in government, in combination with data from private sector firms as well, using advanced analytical techniques (from various areas, such as machine learning, sta-tistics, simulation, etc.), in order to provide substantial support for all stages of public policies in various important policy domains. This paper makes a contribution in this direction, by de-scribing a methodology for policy analytics in the economic policy domain, concerning a highly important problem: the economic crises, which repeatedly occur in market-based economies being an inevitable trait of them. Our methodology aims at the identification of firm’s character-istics that affect positively or negatively their sensitivity to the economic crisis, which enables a deeper understanding of the kinds of firms that exhibit higher sensitivity to economic crisis (i.e. have more negative consequences) and provides a basis for the design of public policies for supporting such firms. It exploits existing data from various public sources (e.g. Ministries of Finance, Statistical Authorities), in combination with data from private sources (e.g. business information firms, consulting firms), from which firm-level crisis sensitivity models are estimated. Furthermore, an application of the proposed methodology is presented, using data from Greek firms for the crisis period 2009 – 2014, which provides interesting insights.

Abstract
For long time research and practice in the area of Electronic Government has been focusing on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the internal operations of government agencies, as well as for providing elec-tronic transaction services to citizens and firms. The increased needs and expectations of citi-zens, and the proliferation of ‘participatory democracy’ ideas, result in an increase of their di-rect participation in policy making processes, and the use of ICT seems to be an important fa-cilitator of this. At the same time the multiple social problems and challenges to be addressed through policy-making, such as the increasing inequalities and poverty, the aging society, the environmental degradation, and the rising number of ‘unpredictable’ events, such as the finan-cial and economic crises, necessitate the development of a new generation of eGovernment fo-cusing on the design of effective responses - public policies for these challenges. Therefore evo-lutions in the needs of modern societies, in combination with technological evolutions in the ICTs, give rise to evolutions in e-Government, and the emergence of new generations of it. This paper aims at the identification and better understanding of the main characteristics of the dif-ferent e-government generations, using an analytic framework based on two rounds of literature review. The results of the study provide insights on the main features of the three main e-Government generations, regarding their main goals, obstacles, key methods and tools, placing special emphasis on the new emerging generation of e-Government 3.0 and its basic character-istics.

Abstract
In order to address the complexity of the modern social problems and needs through effective public policies, government agencies have started experimenting with policy informatics methods, adopting various approaches that increase citi-zens’ and stakeholders’ participation in the public policy formulation processes. Such approaches allow the exploitation of their opinions, which incorporate valu-able perceptions of them, as well as knowledge, proposals and ideas. This paper outlines three advanced methods of social media (SM) exploitation in public poli-cy making processes for citizen-sourcing, which are based on the concepts of ac-tive citizen-sourcing, passive citizen-sourcing and passive expert-sourcing respec-tively, as well as the conclusions from some first applications of them. Based on them a comparison of these methods is conducted, and then a maturity model is developed concerning the use of SM for citizen-sourcing in order to support policy making.

Abstract
Cloud Computing (CC) has high potential to offer to firms important benefits, concerning both costs reduction, and in general efficiency improvements, as well as innovation facilitation and support. However, these benefits are not straightforward and auto-matically generated; their realization as well as their magnitude will depend on a variety of factors. Nevertheless, limited empirical research has been conducted in order to identify CC benefits’ determinants. This paper contributes to filling this research gap. It empirically investigates the effects of a) the contractual and relational governance of firm’s relationships with its CC services providers, and b) the adaptations of the skills of firm’s ICT personnel, as well as its internal ICT organization, to this new CC paradigm, on the magnitude of CC bene-fits. Our study uses data collected through a questionnaire from 115 Greek firms using CC services. It has been concluded that all the above four examined factors impact positively the benefits firms obtain from CC; the effect of the adaptation of the skills of firm’s ICT personnel is the strongest, followed by the effect of the relational governance.

Abstract
Social Media have been initially used by government agencies for general public oriented ‘citizen-sourcing’. Though this enabled the collection of useful policy relevant information and knowledge from the general public, and provided valuable insights into their relevant perceptions, it would be quite useful if this could be combined with the collection of policy relevant information and knowledge from experts as well (‘expert-sourcing’). In this paper, a passive expert-sourcing method based on social media, which has been developed in a European research project, is evaluated from a fundamental perspective: the wicked problems theory perspective. In particular, we investigate to what extent this method enables government agencies to collect high quality information concerning the main elements of important social problems to be addressed through public policies: particular issues posed, alternative interventions/ actions, and advantages/disadvantages of them; as well as to what extent there is consensus about these elements among different stakeholder groups. For this purpose data are collected through interviews with Members of the Greek Parliament. From their analysis interesting conclusions have been drawn about the strengths and weaknesses of this expert-sourcing method, as well as required impro-vements of it.

Abstract
The growing adoption of the open innovation paradigm in the public sector poses a set of research challenges related to the particularities of the domain and the technologies required to manage the associated knowledge flows among diverse types of stakeholders. This paper aims to shed light on how the proper combina-tion of existing ICT tools can support and advance the implementation of open innovation practices in the public sector. Towards this aim, it first presents a non-exhaustive taxonomy of these tools, which is also associated with the open inno-vation phase they primarily support. Paying particular attention to the issues of collaboration support and sophisticated data collection and analysis, the paper al-so proposes an open, inclusive and sustainable web-based platform that builds on the synergy between human and machine intelligence to address the important challenges of public sector open innovation. An indicative application scenario, concerning a contemporary societal problem, showcases the potential of the pro-posed solution.

Abstract
The financial and economic crisis of 2008 affected negatively investment in general, and investment in ICT was not left unchanged, with negative consequences for firms’ future performance and competitiveness. So this paper aims at investigating factors explaining firms’ crisis behavior with respect to ICT investment and ICT operational expenditures, i.e. their crisis vulnerability of ICT expenditures, for the crisis period 2009-2014. To this end, we examine the effects of six groups of factors on firms’ ICT investment and expenditure behavior during the crisis 2009-2014: three groups of internal factors and three groups of external factors. We focus our analysis on the internal ICT-related factors; we need all other factors in order to be able to appropriately specify two econometric models, one for ICT investment expenditures and a second one for ICT operational expenditures, and avoid omitted variable bias. The analysis of the factors that may influence the likelihood of a reduction of ICT investment and operating expenditure as a consequence of the crisis is primarily explorative, thus driven by available data and economic intuition. Our study is based on Greek firm data from the manufacturing, construction and services sector that have been collected in 2015/2016. We find that all six groups of variables contribute significantly to the explanation of both ICT investment and ICT operational expenditures during the crisis period 2009-2014, even if not to the same extent and not for each of the two dependent variables.

Abstract
The Cloud Computing (CC) is a new innovative model of sourcing the information and commu-nication technologies (ICT) services required by firms for supporting their activities, so it is nec-essary to investigate the level of benefits that CC offers to firms, as well as their determinants. However, limited empirical research has been conducted in this direction. Our paper contrib-utes to filling this research gap. It formulates a set of research hypotheses concerning the effects of firm’s ‘hard ICT capital’, and also some types of firm’s ‘soft ICT capital’, on the benefits of-fered by CC, having as theoretical foundation the ‘resource-based view’ theory. These research hypotheses are tested using data collected through a survey from 115 Greek firms, from which CC benefits regression models are estimated. It has been concluded that the sophistication of firm’s ICT infrastructure (an overall measure of firm’s hard ICT capital) has a positive impact on CC benefits. Furthermore, three of the examined types of soft ICT capital have been found to impact positively CC benefits: the information systems (IS) interconnection/integration capabil-ity, the ICT strategic planning and alignment capability, and the internal relationship between firm’s ICT unit and business units. Our findings reveal some aspects of firm’s ICT capital that affect the generation of value from this new innovative CC paradigm, which can be useful to CC service providers, and also management and ICT firms’ practitioners and consultants.

Abstract
There are high expectations that cloud computing (CC) can generate sizeable business value (BV) for firms, which includes important benefits, associated with costs reduction, agility enhancement and innovation facilitation and support. However, limited empirical research has been conducted in this direction, in order to investigate to what extent these high expectations are fulfilled, as well as the level of business value that firms realize from CC, the magnitudes of the specific benefits that firms really obtain from it, and their determinants. Our paper contributes to filling this research gap. It investigates the effects of a set of human factors, which concern firm’s general human capital, ICT specific human capital, as well relevant relational capital, i.e. the relationship and co-operation between the personnel of the ICT unit and the personnel of the business units, on the BV generated by CC. our study has as theoretical foundation the ‘resource-based view’ of the firm theory. We have used data collected through a survey from 115 firms from technologically developed sectors of the Greek economy, from which a CC BV regression model has been estimated. It has been concluded that neither firm’s general human capital (quantified by the share of firm’s employees having tertiary-level formal education), nor its ICT human capital (quantified by the share of ICT employees), per se impact the BV generated by CC. On the contrary the relationship and co-operation between the ICT unit personnel and the business units’ personnel have a positive effect on the BV from CC usage. Our findings indicate that it is not the mere acquisition of human resources (highly educated business and ICT employees), but their utilization for the development of a capability for productive and effective co-operation and relation-ship among the ICT and business personnel, that can lead to higher levels of BV from CC usage.

Abstract
Information Systems (IS) are nowadays considered the most important leverage for organizations to operate and gain a competitive advantage. Investments in IS technology, in the recruitment of high qualified IT personnel and the establishment of internal and external robust IT related partnerships are considered determinant factors for business success and continuity. As organizations increasingly rely on IS resources, they face more advanced IS security challenges. This paper explores the relationship between the development of IS resources and security resources; are organizations willing to invest more in IS security resources as they invest more on IS resources? The authors conduct an empirical investigation in organizations located in five Mediterranean countries. The sample includes responses from 61 CEOs, information security managers and IS managers. The results reveal that IS resources positively affect the IS security resources. The human capital plays the most important role for the adoption of IS security.

Abstract
The first attempts of government agencies to apply crowdsourcing ideas aimed at the collection of policy-related information, knowledge and ideas from the general public (‘citizen-sourcing’), concerning various social problems and needs, in order to support the development of effective public policies for addressing them. However, it was soon realized that, due to the high complexity of modern social problems and needs, it would be quite beneficial if the above could be complemented by the collection of relevant information, knowledge and ideas from experts; this leads to the gradual emergence of ‘expert-sourcing’, as an important foundation of public policy making. Such practices constitute important innovations in the policy development processes, so it is necessary to analyze them from this perspective; the most fundamental question to be investigated is to what extent these innovative expert-sourcing practices have the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion. Our paper makes a contribution in this direction, evaluating an ICT-based passive expert-sourcing method for supporting policy making from this perspective, using as theoretical foundation the Diffusion of Innovation Theory.

Abstract
Cloud Computing (CC) offers a new mode for companies to gain access to information and communication technologies (ICT) services, which can offer important benefits. However, limited research has been conducted about how firms will be able to accomplish the benefits of CC in order to improve their firm performance. This paper contributes to filling these research gaps by investigating empirically: 1) the effects of firm’s adaptation and absorptive capacity (ACAP) on the benefits gained from CC; and 2) the impact of these CC benefits on firm performance. Data for our study have been collected through a questionnaire from 102 Dutch firms using SaaS services, which have been used for the estimation of a structural equation model (SEM). The findings show that CC adaptation has a very strong positive effect, ACAP has a medium to strong effect on benefits gained from CC, which have a strong positive effect on firm performance.

Abstract
As the external environment of most organizations becomes increasingly dynamic and complex, the exploitation and management of external knowledge becomes of critical importance for their success. This has led to a growing interest of both researchers and practitioners in the study of their absorptive capacity (ACAP). However, the research that has been conducted in this area has focused on the private sector, while there is a lack of similar research for the public sector. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, by investigating the use of social media (SM) in the public sector from the ACAP perspective, examining to what extent SM are used by Greek government agencies for the enhancement of their ACAP. It has been based on interviews with the SM managers of ten Greek government agencies from the central, regional and municipal government. It is concluded that in the examined government agencies SM are used only to a small extent for enhancing their ACAP, making limited exploitation of the potential that SM have for this purpose. In particular, SM are used to some extent for enhancing one of the components of ACAP, the ability for external exploratory learning, but not at all for enhancing the other two critical components of it: the abilities for transformative and exploitative learning.

Abstract
Cloud computing (CC) can offer significant benefits to enterprises. However, it can pose some risks as well, and this has led to a lower adoption than the initial expectations. For this reason, it would be very useful to predict which enterprises will exhibit a propensity for CC adoption. In this direction, we investigate the use of six well-established classifiers (fast large margin Support Vector Machine, Naive Bayes, Decision Tree, Random Forest, k-Nearest Neighbor, and Linear Regression) for the prediction of enterprise level propensity for CC adoption. Having as our theoretical foundation the Technology – Organization – Environment (TOE) framework, we are using for this purpose of set of technological (concerning enterprise information systems), organizational and environmental characteristics. Our first results, using a dataset of 676 manufacturing firms of the glass, ceramic and cement sectors from six European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, and UK), collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission, are encouraging. It is concluded that among the examined characteristics the technological ones, concerning enterprise systems, seem to be the most important predictors.

Abstract
The absorptive capacity (ACAP), defined as firm’s ability to identify useful knowledge in its external environment, assimilate it, transform it and finally apply it for achieving firm’s objectives, has become quite important for the survival and the achievement of high financial performance of firms, in the rapidly changing, competitive and ‘knowledge intensive’ modern economy. It has been recognized that information and communication technologies (ICT) can be quite useful for the enhancement of firm’s ACAP. However, there has been no empirical investigation of the effects of the various types of information systems (IS) currently used by firms, mainly for efficiency improvement purposes, on their ACAP. This paper makes a contribution towards filling this research gap, by empirically investigating and comparing the effects of the use of three important types of IS, the ERP and e-commerce ones, and also a recently emerged one, the social media (SM), on the ACAP of Greek firms. Our study is based on data collected through a survey from 122 Greek firms from both manufacturing and services sectors. It has been concluded that the use of ERP systems affects positively firms’ ACAP, while this does not hold for the e-commerce ones. Furthermore, the use of external and internal SM both affect positively the ACAP, with the effect of the former being the strongest among the three examined IS types.

Abstract
The public sector gradually starts exploiting the crowdsourcing ideas initially developed in the private sector. However, there is much less knowledge on efficient and effective methods and practices for public sector citizen-sourcing in comparison with private sector crowd-sourcing, so extensive research is required in this area. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, by presenting an ICT-based method for ‘pssive expert-sourcing’, with the latter term denoting the collection of policy relevant information, knowledge and ideas from experts, which aims at supporting policy making by the European Union (EU) by leveraging its large policy community. Its theoretical foundation is previous theoretical work on the relationships between democracy and technocracy, and also on policy networks. The main technological pillars of the proposed method are: EU policy experts’ profiling and reputation management, relevant documents’ opinion mining and relevance rating, and finally advanced visualized presentation of them. Finally, a first evaluation of the proposed method is presented, leading to encouraging results.

Abstract
In the highly dynamic, competitive, complex and ‘knowledge intensive’ modern economy the exploita- tion and management of external knowledge has become of critical importance for the success of firms, and this has led to increasing interest of both researchers and practitioners in the concept of firm’s absorptive capacity (ACAP). It has been recognized that information and communication tech- nologies (ICT) can be quite useful for the improvement of firms’ ACAP. Some empirical research has been conducted in this direction, which however has not examined the role from this perspective of the most important ICT investments of firms: the different types of enterprise systems (ES) implemented by firms increasingly, which become critical infrastructures of their operation. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, by presenting an empirical investigation of the effects of the five most im- portant and widely used types of enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, SCM, business intelligence/business analytics and collaboration support systems) on the ACAP of Greek firms. It is based on data collect- ed through a survey from 122 Greek firms from both manufacturing and services sectors, which are used for the estimation of regression models of firm’s ACAP. It has been concluded that the use of three of the above types of ES, the ERP, the CRM and the business intelligence/business analytics ones, have positive effects on firm’s ACAP, which concern mainly two of its dimensions: the internal diffusion and analysis of external knowledge, and also the assimilation/integration in the knowledge base of the firm.

Abstract
The public sector, motivated by the multiple ‘success stories’ of the ‘open innovation’ paradigm, and especially the crowdsourcing, in the private sector, and also by the increasing complexity of social problems and needs, has started moving in this direction as well, and this gives rise to the gradual development of the ‘citizen-sourcing’. However, there has been much less research and practice in the area of public sector citizen-sourcing in comparison with the area of private sector crowd-sourcing, so there is much less knowledge and maturity in the former area than in the latter. This paper makes a contribution towards filling this gap. In provides an overview of the research that has been conducted in this area by the research group of the author in the last decade as part of several European projects, concerning the application in the public sector of the crowdsourcing ideas, and the development of ICT-based methods for this purpose. In particular, we present four such ICT-based methods for public sector citizen-sourcing we have developed, for both ‘active’ and ‘passive’ citizen-sourcing, initially aiming at the general public and latter focusing on the knowledgeable experts. Furthermore, we propose directions for future research in this area.

Abstract
Information and communication technologies (ICT) have been initially used mainly for supporting or automating firms’ pre-existing business processes, in order to improve their efficiency. Subsequently it was realised that much more value can be generated from ICT if we exploit their great potential to drive innovations in firms’ products/services and processes. However, limited empirical research has been conducted concerning the effects of the many different types of enterprise systems (ES) that firms use on their innovation performance. This paper contributes in this direction. It investigates empirically and compares the effects of six important and widely used types of ES (ERP , CRM, e-sales, telework and collaboration support systems) on firms’ product/service and process innovation. Our study is based on a large dataset collected from 14.065 European firms through the e- Business Watch Survey of the European Commission, which has been used for estimating innovation models. We have been found that all examined types of ES have some positive effect on both product/service and process innovation; however, these effects differ in magnitude. Our results indicate that the e-sales are the strongest drivers of product/service innovation, followed by the CRM and external collaboration support systems; with respect to the process innovation the e-sales the strongest drivers of it as well, followed by the telework systems.

Abstract
In this paper we investigate, first, the characteristics of the firms that reduced their ICT investment due to the 2008 crisis, focusing on the firms’ ICT characteristics in terms of the ICT, budget, skills and applications used. The analysis of the ICT characteristics that may influence the likelihood of having reduced ICT investment as a consequence of the crisis is primarily explorative, thus driven by available data and economic intuition. The second research question we examine empirically refers to the possibility that an economic crisis could affect innovation performance through the ICT investment channel. In connection with this, it is also interesting to analyze the ICT characteristics that are associated with ICT-enabled innovation performance; this is the third research question of this paper. Our study is based on firm data from the glass/ceramics/cement industry in six European countries, which have been collected through the ‘e-Business Survey’ of the European Union. We find that ICT-related crisis vulnerability correlates positively with decreasing ICT budgets (pro-cyclical investment behaviour), the existence of skill deficits in ICT, the awareness of and interest in new ICT applications that presumably request much additional ICT investment, the exposure to strong price competition and the strong presence in international markets, in which activities have significantly decreased due to the crisis. Further, statistically significant negative relationship between ICT-enabled product innovation and crisis vulnerability (pro-cyclical behaviour) is found only for new products or services that contain ICT components, and are therefore directly affected by crisis-related decreasing product demand.

Abstract
The European North-South divide has been one of the most important and widely debated problems of Europe for long time. The countries of the European South have for decades lower levels of economic and technological development and performance than the countries of the European North; though there has been a convergence between the European North and South for some time, recently, due to the economic crisis, this trend has stopped, and on the contrary a divergence is observed. It is widely recognized that in order to overcome this negative situation, and achieve a gradual convergence be- tween these two regions, it is important not only to cut wages and public expenditure in the European South (which has been the dominant approach so far), but also to make wider and better use of new technologies and boost innovation. This paper contributes in this direction, comparing empirically the European North and South with respect to one of the most important, innovative and disruptive new information and communication technologies (ICT): the cloud computing (CC). CC is emerging as a new paradigm of providing ICT support of firms’ and activities, which can not only reduce costs (es- pecially investments), but also enable the rapid and low cost experimentation with and exploitation of new emerging technologies, and also support and facilitate innovation and external collaboration. In particular, we empirically investigate and compare Northern and Southern European firms with re- spect not to the ‘quantity’ of CC use, but to its ‘quality’: their CC adoption motivations and orienta- tions. Our study has been based on a dataset collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission from 556 European firms from the glass, ceramic and cement sectors. It has been concluded that Southern European firms of the above sectors view CC as a means of reducing ICT investment, while Northern European ones view it as a means of supporting and facilitating prod- uct/service innovation, and also of reducing cost and increasing capabilities of their existing external electronic collaboration (with business partners and experts) for the development of innovations. Fur- thermore, both Northern and Southern European firms of the above sectors view CC as a means of experimentation with and exploitation of new emerging technologies.

Abstract
Social media monitoring has been initially adopted by private sector firms in order to collect opinions, complaints and questions concerning their products and services, to be used for mak-ing appropriate changes and improvements of them and also for designing communication strategies. Recently government agencies have started adopting SMM, as a form of ‘passive citi-zen-sourcing’, in order to collect useful information from citizens concerning their needs, prob-lems, opinions and suggestions, to be used for public policy formulation. It is therefore im-portant to evaluate these first initiatives, so that the potential of SMM with respect to public pol-icy making can be exploited, and at the same time appropriate adaptations and improvements of relevant ICT platforms and practices can be made, in order to reach higher levels of maturity. This paper makes a two-fold contribution in this direction. Initially it develops a framework for evaluating the use of SMM for supporting policy making, initially from the ‘classical’ ease of use perspective, and then from a public policy perspective, based on the wicked social problems theory. This framework is then used for the evaluation of three pilot applications of a novel method of SMM by government agencies and other policy stakeholders, which has been devel-oped as part of a European research project.

Abstract
In the last decade there is extensive and continuously growing creation of political content in the Internet, and especially in the Web 2.0 social media, which can be quite useful for government agencies in order to understand the needs and problems of societies and formulate effective public policies for addressing them. So a variety of ICT-based methods have been developed for the exploitation of this political content by governments (‘citizensourcing’), initially simpler and later more sophisticated ones. These ICT-based methods are increasingly based on the use of opinion mining (OM) and sentiment analysis (SA) techniques, in order to process the extensive political content collected from numerous sources. This paper describes a novel approach to OM and SA use, created as part of an advanced ICT-based method of exploiting political content created in the Internet, and especially in social media, by experts (‘expertsourcing’), aiming to leverage the extensive policy community of the European Union, which is developed in the European EU-Community project. Furthermore, some first experimental results of it are presented.

Abstract
Governments initially used social media mainly in order to disseminate information to the public about their activities, services, policies and plans. Then they started using social media also in order to collect from citizens useful information, knowledge, opinions and ideas concerning the problems and needs of modern societies and more recently in order to apply crowdsourcing ideas in the public sector context and promote ‘citizensourcing’. In this direction governments first used their own accounts in various social media, in which they provide information about specific problems and policies, and solicit citizens’ feedback on them (active citizensourcing). Recently, they attempt to take advantage of the extensive public policy related content developed beyond their own social media accounts, in various political forums, blogs, news websites, and SM accounts, by the citizens, without any stimulation (passive citizensourcing). These constitute significant innovations in policy formulation– citizens communication processes and practices of government. Therefore it is important to evaluate them from various perspectives, in order to learn from them as much as possible, identify and address their weaknesses, make the required improvements, and in general achieve higher levels of effectiveness and maturity of these highly innovative practices. This paper makes a two-fold contribution in this direction: initially it develops a framework for evaluating such citizensourcing innovations based on the passive social media monitoring; and then it uses this framework for the evaluation of three pilot applications of a novel method of government passive citizensourcing through social media monitoring, which has been developed as part of an international research project.

Abstract
Cloud Computing (CC) is emerging as a new paradigm of providing IT support of firms’ processes and activities, which has a great potential to offer important benefits, but at the same time firms perceive that it poses some risks as well. Its adoption by firms has been lower than the initial expectations. So it is quite important to conduct research on its adoption by firms and identify factors that affect it positively or negatively. Our study makes a contribution in this direction by empirically investigating and comparing the effects of a wide range of firm characteristics, which concern firm’s strategy, processes, technology, personnel on the propensity to adopt CC. Its theoretical foundation the Leavitt’s Diamond framework. It has been based on a dataset collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission from 676 European firms from the glass, ceramic, cement and sectors. Our findings provide interesting insights as to the kind of firms for which the CC is perceived as more appropriate and beneficial.

Abstract
A major trend in the modern economy is the increasing collaboration among firms having complementary resources, both at the operational and at the product/service and process innovation level. At the same time another major trend in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT) is the emergence of cloud computing (CC), which changes radically the way firms access and use ICT for supporting their activities. It has been argued that there is an association between these two trends: that CC can significantly support and facilitate business collaboration at a low cost. However, there has been no empirical investigation of this association based on large datasets. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, by presenting an empirical investigation of the effects of firm’s operational and innovation collaboration with other firms, and also the use of ICT for supporting it, on firm’s propensity to adopt CC. It is based on a dataset collected in the e-Business Survey of the European Commission from 676 European firms from the glass, ceramics and cement industries. It has been concluded that innovation collaboration with other firms, and also the use of ICT for supporting it, have positive effects on the propensity to adopt CC; positive effects has also, mainly in the smaller firms, the use of ICT for supporting some forms of operational collaboration with other firms.

Abstract
Cloud computing (CC) is emerging as a new paradigm of ICT resources acquisition and management by firms. This paper empirically investigates and compares the effects of a set of organizational factors on the propensity to adopt CC, based on data from 676 European firms from the glass, ceramics and cement industries, collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. Our results do not confirm the initial expectations that CC would be adopted primarily by the SMEs, as they indicate that the size has a positive effect on the propensity to adopt CC. Furthermore, we have found that the latter is associated with ICT investment reduction strategy (quite usual today due to the existing economic crisis), and only to a lower extent with innovation oriented strategy. Our results also indicate that previous experience of ICT outsourcing and employment of ICT specialized personnel have positive effects on the propensity to adopt CC. Finally, we have found that firms with higher ICT infrastructure sophistication have higher CC adoption propensity.

Abstract
In the last decade there is extensive and continuously growing creation of political content in the Internet, and especially in the Web 2.0 social media, which can be quite useful for government agencies in order to understand the needs and problems of societies and formulate effective public policies for addressing them. So a variety of ICT-based methods have been developed for the exploitation of this political content by governments (‘citizensourcing’), initially simpler and later more sophisticated ones. These ICT-based methods are increasingly based on the use of opinion mining (OM) and sentiment analysis (SA) techniques, in order to process the extensive political content collected from numerous sources. This paper describes a novel approach to OM and SA use, created as part of an advanced ICT-based method of exploiting political content created in the Internet, and especially in social media, by experts (‘expertsourcing’), aiming to leverage the extensive policy community of the European Union, which is developed in the European EU-Community project. Furthermore, some first experimental results of it are presented.

Abstract
Policy networks are highly important for the formulation and implementation of public policies, so it is quite valuable to exploit modern ICT in order to support them. This paper presents a novel method of supporting the large policy network of the European Union (EU), which consists of numerous actors geographically dispersed all over Europe, through advanced social media exploitation, in order to improve the quantity and quality of their interaction, and increase efficiency and effectiveness. Based on a series of workshops, in which a large number of individuals involved in EU policy network participated, initially its structure has been analyzed, and then the proposed method has been formulated. Furthermore, the architecture of the ICT infrastructure required for the application of this method has been designed. The main pillars of the proposed method (corresponding also to the main modules of its ICT infrastructure) are: profiling of important EU policy actors’ and reputation management, relevant documents’ storage and relevance rating, and finally advanced visualized presentation of them.

Abstract
Cloud computing (CC) is expected to lead to new highly beneficial models of information and communication technologies (ICT) acquisition and management in firms. According to relevant literature CC enables firms having weak ICT support to create sophisticated ICT infrastructures rapidly and at a low cost. However, the adoption of CC has been below expectations. Therefore, it is important to conduct further research on factors affecting CC adoption positively or negatively. In this paper is presented an empirical investigation of the effects of two important firm’s ICT infrastructure characteristics, its sophistication and electronic interconnection with suppliers and customers, on firm’s propensity to adopt CC. It is based on a large dataset collected from 676 European firms from the glass, ceramics and cement industries through the e-Business Survey of the European Commission. It has been concluded that in these industries both the sophistication and the electronic interconnection of firm’s ICT infrastructure have a positive effect on its propensity to adopt CC. This finding is not in agreement with the high expectations from and promises of CC: in this context it is not the firms lacking a highly sophisticated and interconnected ICT infrastructure that have more interest and propensity to use CC services in order to obtain it, but on the contrary the firms having such a strong infrastructure in order to reduce its cost.

Abstract
Most of the research that has been conducted on the business value of information systems (IS) interoperability focuses mainly on the efficiency related benefits it can generate, but deals much less with its potential to drive innovations in firms’ products/services and processes. Our study contributes to filling this research gap by empirically investigating the effect of interoperability of firm’s IS (meant as compliance with various types of relevant standards) on firm’s innovation performance. It is based on a large dataset from 14.065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors), which has been collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission, and is used for estimating product/service and process innovation models. It has been concluded that IS interoperability has strong positive effects both on product/service and process innovation, which are weaker than the corresponding effects of the degree of development of firms’ IS, but stronger than the effects of the degree of functional development of firm’s e-Sales IS; also they are stronger than the corresponding effects of R&D and competition (regarded as important innovation drivers according to previous literature). Finally, a comparison among different types of IS interoperability standards shows that their positive effects on firms’ innovation activity differ, with the industry-specific and the XML-horizontal standards having stronger effects of similar magnitudes, while the proprietary standards have weaker ones.

Abstract
Government agencieshave started usingthe social media for increasing communication with citizens, and involvement of themin public policy making processes. However, most of the research in this area has technological orientation, but limited research on the use of social media in government from management and political sciences’ perspectives has been conducted. This paper contributes to filling this gap, presenting a study of an advanced form ofcentrally managed combined use of multiple social media in the European Parliament from an innovationperspective. Our main theoretical foundation has beenRogers’Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory. It has been concluded that the above approach, viewed as an innovation, has to a good extent the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion proposed by DOI theory: relative advantage (though some possible ‘relative disadvantages’ have been identified as well), low complexity (though some considerable initial effort is required), compatibility with existing values and practices(at least to some extent), trialability and observability. Furthermore, recommendations have been provided for improving the diffusion potential of the above innovation, through interventions in the above attributes.

Abstract
The first generations of social media exploitation by government were oriented towards the general public. Evaluations of them have shown that they can provide some insights into the perceptions of the general public, however in order to achieve the required higher levels of quality, depth and elaboration it is necessary to target specific communities having strong interest and good knowledge on the particular topic under discussion. The research presented in this paper makes a contribution in this direction. It develops a novel approach to social media exploitation by the European Union (EU), which aims at leveraging its policy community, which consists of a big network of individuals/ policy stakeholders having various policy related roles and capacities, geographically dispersed all over Europe. Its theoretical foundation is policy networks theory. Based on a series of workshops, in which a large number of such individuals participated, the structure of the EU policy community is initially analysed, then the proposed approach is formulated and elaborated, and finally the fuctional architecture of an ICT platform for supporting it is designed. Theirb main pillars are: important policy stakeholders’ profiles and reputation management, relevant documents’ repository and relevance rating, and finally advanced visualized presentation of them.

Abstract
Two important trends in government emerging in the recent years have been on one hand the exploitation of the Web 2.0 social media supporting a more extensive interaction and collaboration, and on the other hand the opening of government data to the citizens through the Internet in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes. However, there has been limited attempt of integrating them. Using a design science approach a second generation of open government data (OGD) platforms is developed, which offer to the users both the „classical‟ first generation functionalities, and also a comprehensive set of additional Web 2.0 features. The latter enables social and collaboration, which enable users to generate value from ODG. In this way users become „prosumers‟, both producing and consumingdata. Capabilities forperforming various types of processing,information and knowledge exchange, and collaboration were found to be useful and valuable in a user test.

Abstract
Government institutions of various levels have started experimenting with the use of social media for increasing citizens‟ involvement in their public policy making processes. It is necessary to evaluate systematically these initiatives from various perspectives, in order to develop new knowledge in this recently emerged area, concerning methods of social media exploitation in government, the value they can generate, and also the challenges they pose and their limitations. This paper contributes in this direction, by analysing three centrally managed multiple social media consulations conducted by Members of the European Parliament, from a public policy perspective, based on the wicked problems theory. It has been concluded that the above method of social media exploitation has a good potential for disseminating highly informative multimedia content on a policy under formulation to a much wider audience than the usual participants in the „traditional‟ European Parliament consultations, and also involving and stimulating them to think about the policy, leading to the collection of useful relevant ideas, knowledge and opinions, in a cost efficient manner. However, in order to go into more discussion depth it will be necessary to conduct further consultations, more focused on particular sub-topics and participants. Furthermore,their outcomes should be combined and integrated with the ones of the „traditional‟ consultations and experts‟ studies. Finally, a critical success factor is to build wide, knowledgeable, diverse and pluralistic communities for these social media consultations, including various social actors with strong interest and good knowledge of the particular problem, and extending beyond the networks of the initiator.

Abstract
Hospitals have been making significant investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) for long time. Therefore it is important to investigate their effects on various dimensions of hospitals’ performance, such as their innovation performance. However, there is a lack of empirical investigations of the impact of ICT on innovation in this important industry using large datasets. This paper makes a twofold contribution in this direction. First, it investigates empirically the impact of ICT on product and process innovation in European hospitals, based on data for 743 hospitals from 18 European countries collected in the course of the e-Business Survey of the European Union. Second it uses multiple independent ICT-related variables, associated with ICT investment, budget and personnel, and also with the use of specific ICT applications and standards, both healthcare-specific and general ones, investigating their effects on product and process innovation. Our results provide evidence of positive impact of ICT on hospitals’ innovation, which is however not homogeneous across all types of ICT applications: it is mainly applications enabling the exchange of data and knowledge between different functions/departments of the hospital, and with external environment, that impact positively innovation.

Abstract
Numerous open data infrastructures are currently under development aiming to stimulate the potential advantages of the publication and use of open government data. In particular the development of open data infrastructures in the form of marketplaces, where open data providers and open data users trade and share data and data services, can stimulate the realisation of these advantages. Yet, only little research has been conducted on the development directions of open data infastructures to realise such marketplaces. This study aims to identify elements for the development of future electronic open data marketplaces. This aim is attained by using a literature review and expert discussions, which resulted in the following elements: 1) bring stakeholders together, 2) provide rich metadata, 3) enable data quality assessment, 4) ensure trust, security and critical mass, 5) have an appropriate revenue model, 6) provide use cases, training and support, 7) provide technical support: open data tools, 8) provide a full API for machine-to-machine operation and 9) target multiple nationalities. The results of this study can be used to develop and improve open data marketplaces to stimulate the realisation of open data advantages.

Abstract
Recently, a second generation of advanced open government data (OGD) infrastructures has emerged, influenced by the principles of the Web 2.0 paradigm, and oriented towards the elimination of the clear distinction between providers and consumers of such data, and the support of data ‘pro-sumers’. This paper presents and validates a methodology for evaluating these advanced second generation of ODG infrastructures, which is based on the estimation of value models of them from users’ ratings. This value model includes assessments of the various types of value generated by such an infrastructure, and also of the relations among them as well. This enables a deeper understanding of the whole value generation mechanism and a rational definition of improvement priorities.The proposed methodology has been used for the evaluation of an advanced second generation ODG e-Infrastructure developed in the European project ENGAGE.

Abstract
The Web 2.0 social media have been initially exploited by private sector firms, in order to support mainly their marketing and customer relations functions, and there has been considerable research for developing frameworks and practices for the effective utilization of these new communication media in the private sector. Government started exploiting the high capabilities and popularity of the social media much later, so there has been much less research concerning their effective utilization by government agencies. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, presenting a novel framework for the effective utilization of the Web 2.0 social media by government agencies for promoting participative governance and applying crowdsourcing ideas. It is based on the centralised automated publishing of content and micro-applications to multiple Web 2.0 social media, and then collection of citizens’ interactions (e.g. comments, ratings) with them, based on central platform that uses efficiently the application programming interfaces (APIs) of these social media. Finally, citizens’ interactions are processed in this central platform using a variety of techniques (web analytics, opinion mining, simulation modelling) in order to provide finally useful analytics that offer substantial support to government decision and policy makers. Furthermore, an application and an evaluation model for the proposed framework are described, as well as an extension of it that combines active/moderated and passive/non-moderated crowdsourcing.

Abstract
Extensive investments are made for the development of various types of information systems (IS) interoperability technologies, and also for their implementation at firm level. This necessitates the systematic study of the business value that IS interoperability technologies generate. However, quite limited empirical research has been conducted on this. Our study contributes to filling this research gap by presenting an empirical study of the effect of the adoption of three types of IS interoperability standards (industry-specific, XML-horizontal and proprietary ones) on the business benefits firms gain from their information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructures. It is based on a large dataset from 14.065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors) collected through the e-Business W@tch Survey of the European Commission. For all these three types of IS interoperability standards it has been concluded that their adoption for establishing IS interoperability with cooperating firms (suppliers, business partners, customers) increases the business benefits gained from firm’s ICT infrastructure, both the cost reduction and the sales growth related ones. A comparison among these three types of IS interoperability standards shows that their positive effects on the ICT business benefits differ, with the industry-specific standards having the strongest effects, which are of similar magnitude with the ones of the degree of development of firm’s internal IS (widely recognized as the main determinants of these benefits). Furthermore, we have found that the adoption of industry-specific standards is particularly important for realizing sales growth related benefits from firm’s ICT infrastructure.

Abstract
Many government agencies worldwide have started making considerable investments for developing information systems that enable opening important data they possess to the society, in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes. In order to rationalise and support future decisions concerning the development, upgrade, improvement and management of this new type of information systems it is important to understand better what value they create and how, and at the same time to identify the main improvements they require. This paper contributes in this direction presenting a methodology for determining the value generation mechanism of open government data (OGD) systems and also priorities for their improvement. It is based on the estimation of a ‘value model’ of the OGD system under evaluation from users’ ratings. It consists of several value dimensions and their corresponding value measures, organized in three ‘value layers’, and also the relations among them. These three value layers concern value related to the efficiency of the OGD (= quality of the various capabilities it provides to the users), its effectiveness (= degree of supporting users for achieving their objectives) and also users’ future behavior intentions respectively. The proposed methodology has been applied successfully to an advanced OGD system developed as part of the European project ENGAGE (‘An Infrastructure for Open, Linked Governmental Data Provision towards Research Communities and Citizens’), providing to interesting insights and improvement priorities. This first application provides evidence that our methodology can be a useful decision support tool for important ODG systems development, upgrade, improvement and management decisions.

Abstract
Governments have started increasingly using web 2.0 social media as a new channel of interaction with citizens in various phases of public policies lifecycle. In this direction they have started moving from simpler forms of expoitation of these strong bi-directional communication channels to more complex and sophisticated ones. These attempts constitute important innovations for government agencies, so it is necessary to analyse them from this perspective as well. This paper analyzes an advanced form of centralised use of multiple social media by government agencies from this perspective, using the well established Diffusion of Innovation Theory of Rogers. It is based on a pilot application of the above approach for conducting a consultation campaign concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program of the Piedmont Regional Government, Italy. It has been concluded that this approach has the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion (relative advantage, compatibility with existing values and processes, reasonable complexity, trialability and observability), at least in government organizations having a tradition of bi-directional communication with citizens in all phases of policy making, and also some experience in using social media for this purpose.

Abstract
While the first generation of e-participation has been based on official e-participation spaces owned and operated by government, the second one is oriented towards exploiting the highly popular web 2.0 social media for performing ‘crowd-sourcing’ of policy-related knowledge, opinions and ideas from citizens, through posting relevant policy-related content to some social media and then retrieving and processing citizens’ interactions with it. Recently, the idea of a third generation of e-participation has been proposed, which is based on a more ‘passive’ form of crowd-sourcing in social media, through automated passive search by government agencies for content on a public policy under discussion, that has been created in a large number of predefined relevant web 2.0 sources (e.g. political blogs, news websites, facebookand twitter accounts) by citizens freely, without any direct stimulation by government, retrieval and sophisticated processing of this content. In this paper we analyze and elaborate this idea, based on cooperation with potential users experienced in the design of public policies, through a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Initially, the main roles required for the practical application of this concept are identified, and then the functional requirements of each of them are determined. Finally, based on these functional requirements the architecture of a central platform supporting the application of this concept is designed.

Abstract
Government agencies gradually start moving from simpler to more advanced and sophisticated forms of social media use, which are characterized by higher technological and political complexity. It is quite important to evaluate systematically these efforts based on sound theoretical foundations. In this direction this paper outlines and evaluates an advanced form of automated and centrally managed combined use of multiple social media by government agencies for promoting participative public policy making. For this purpose an evaluation framework has been developed, which includes both technological evaluation based on the software platforms and ecosystems theory, and political evaluation based on wicked problems theory, and focuses on the fundamental complexities and challenges of these advanced forms of social media exploitation. It has been used for the evaluation of a pilot application of the above approach for conducting a consultation campaign concerning the large scale application of a telemedicine program in Piedmont, Italy, revealing both its important potential and strengths, but also at the same time some notable problems and weaknesses as well.

Abstract
This paper examined the relationship between indicators for the intensity of use of ICT, several forms of workplace organization, and human capital and several measures of innovation performance at firm level in an innovation equation framework, in which was also controlled for standard innovation determinants such as demand, competition and firm size. The empirical part is based on data of Swiss and Greek firms. based on the same questionnaire for both countries and took place in 2005. This paper contributes to literature in three ways: first, it analyzes the three most important factors, i.e. information technology, organization, human capita, that are considered to be drivers of innovation performance in the last fifteen to twenty years in the same setting, it uses several innovation indicators that cover both the input and the output side of the innovation process and, third, it does the analysis in a comparative setting for two countries, Greece and Switzerland, with quite different levels of technological and economic development.

Abstract
The establishment of interoperability of enterprise IS with the ones of trading partners (e.g. customers, suppliers, business allies) is regarded, based on a variety of theoretical arguments, as an important source of business value associated with efficiency gains and innovation. However, there is a lack of empirical investigation of this business value. This paper presents an empirical study of the effect of adopting two types of IS interoperability standards for exchanging electronic data with trading partners, the industry-specific and the proprietary ones, on the benefits firms obtain from their ICT infrastructures, and finally on their business performance. Furthermore, it examines what part of these effects is through increasing effectiveness of existing business process for producing existing products and services, and what part of them is through driving innovation. It is concluded that the adoption of both these types of IS interoperability standards for exchanging electronic data with trading partners has positive effect on the benefits gained from ICT infrastructures, with the effect of the industry-specific standards being much higher than the effect of the proprietary ones. Also, it has been found that a large part of these effects (46% for the industry-specific standards and 62% for the proprietary ones) is through driving innovation.

Abstract
Considerable investments are made to develop numerous e-infrastructures for the reuse of open government data for scientific, commercial and political purposes. This necessitates a deeper understanding and assessment of the value these infrastructures generate. For this purpose, our paper presents a framework for evaluating open government data infrastructures, both ‘traditional’ ones following the web 1.0 paradigm and also advanced ones influenced by the web 2.0 paradigm. The evaluation framework is based on findings of previous research on the evaluation of public projects, information systems and e-services, and also on technology acceptance and IS success models. The proposed evaluation framework consists of an evaluation model with measurable evaluation dimensions and criteria, as well as a comprehensive evaluation procedure for using this evaluation model, which enables both higher level and detailed evaluation. It includes quantitative as well as qualitative methods in order to provide comprehensive and deep insights. Finally, we describe an application of the proposed framework (both the model and the procedure) for the evaluation of a European e-infrastructure for opening government data. This first application has provided some first evidence concerning the applicability and usefulness of the proposed evaluation framework, and at the same time useful directions and ideas for the improvement of the above-mentioned e-infrastructure.

Abstract
Firms have been making big investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) in the last twenty years. Therefore the investigation of their effect on various aspects of business performance is necessary. This paper presents an empirical investigation and comparison of the effects of hard and soft ICT investment, and also of four ‘traditional’ innovation drivers (demand expectation, price and non-price competition, market concentration), on the innovation performance of Greek firms. In particular, we examine from this perspective four different types of soft ICT investment in ICT structures, personnel, skills and processes. Our results indicate that while in the innovation averse Greek national context none of the examined traditional innovation drivers have a statistically significant impact on the innovation performance of Greek firms, both hard ICT investment, and three of the examined types of soft ICT investment, have such positive impacts. Our results provide empirical evidence that both hard and soft ICT investment can be strong drivers of innovation, even in such innovation averse contexts, in which the classical innovation drivers do not affect innovation performance.

Abstract
The emergence of web 2.0 social media enables the gradual emergence of a second generation of e-participation characterized by more citizens’ control, in which government agencies post content (e.g. short or longer text, images, video) to various social media and then analyze citizens’ interactions with it (e.g. views, likes/dislikes, comments, etc.). In this paper we propose an even more citizens controlled third generation of e-participation exploiting web 2.0 social media as well, but in a different manner. It is based on the search by government agencies for content on a public policy under formulation, which has been created in a large set of web 2.0 sources (e.g. blogs and microblogs, news sharing sites, online forums) by citizens freely, without any initiation, stimulation or moderation through government postings. This content undergoes advanced processing in order to extract from it arguments, opinions, issues and proposals on the particular policy, identify their sentiments (positive or negative), and finally summarize and visualize them. This approach allows the exploitation of the vast amount of user-generated content created in numerous web 2.0 social media for supporting governments to understand better the needs, wishes and beliefs of citizens, and create better and more socially rooted policies.

Abstract
In order to achieve e-governance, we are in need of new and more advanced tools, specifically designed towardssupporting the policy making procedure. The purpose of thispaper is to investigate the perspectives, provided by thedevelopment of decision support tools, to confront complex e-government phenomena. The analysis is performed using aSystemDynamics simulation model that enables policymakers to investigate the estimated impact of plannedgovernment initiatives. Simulation applies on the diffusion of Internet and Communication Technology. The developmentof the model, made in collaboration with the Observatory forthe Greek Information Society, addresses the digital divide inGreece. Data fromthe i2010 initiative indicators have beenused for the simulation. The results, arising fromtheexecution of alternative scenarios, indicate the parameters tobe changed through the implementation of actions to have thebest impact on society.

Abstract
The limited number of previous empirical investigations of the effect of information and communication technologies (ICT) on innovation focus mainly on the ‘hard’ dimensions of ICT (i.e. firm’s ICT equipment). This paper presents an empirical investigation of the effect of five important ‘soft’ dimensions of ICT at firm level (ICT structure, personnel, skills, strategy, processes) on firm’s innovation performance (concerning both products/services and processes innovation). It is based on firm-level data collected through a survey of 271 Greek firms, which have been used for estimating regressions of product/service innovation and process innovation on measures of the hard ICT, the above five soft dimensions of ICT, and also four important ‘traditional’ innovation determinants identified from the long previous research in this area (demand expectation, price and non-price competition, market concentration). It is concluded that four of the examined soft dimensions of ICT (ICT personnel, skills, strategy and processes) have positive effects on firm’s innovation performance. Our results indicate that the soft dimensions of ICT at firm level are strong drivers of innovation, which increase considerably the positive contribution of ICT to firms’ innovation performance.

Abstract
Several off-line mechanisms have been developed and applied for the participation of citizens in government policy making and services design. The increasing adoption of ICT, and especially the Internet, by individuals allows the development of a new generation of digital mechanisms for public participation (e-participation). The dominant digital mechanism has been in the last ten years the development of official e-participation websites by government agencies, which provide to the citizens information on government activities and also policies and services under formulation, and allow them to participate in relevant consultations in electronic fora. However, the effectiveness of this mechanism has been much lower than expectations. In this paper are presented three different digital mechanisms for public participation, which have been developed by the authors as part of European research projects. The first of them is based on the use of structured e-forum, in which citizens can enter only annotated postings according to a predefined discussion ontology. The second is based on the use of a central platform which can publish policy-related content and micro-applications to multiple social media simultaneously, and also collect and process data on citizens’ interaction with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.). While the previous mechanisms were moderated by government, the third one – still under development as part of the European research project NOMAD - is non-moderated. It is based on the search by government agencies for content on a public policy under formulation, which has been created in numerous social media and other sources (e.g. blogs and micro-blogs, news sharing sites, online forums, etc.) by citizens freely, without any government initiation, stimulation or moderation, and the advanced processing of this content.

Abstract
It is widely believed that the establishment of interoperability of firm’s IS with the ones of other cooperating firms (e.g. customers, suppliers, business partners) can generate significant business value. However, this has been only to a very limited extent empirically investigated. This paper contributes to filling this research gap by presenting an empirical study of the effect of IS interoperability on the four business performance dimensions/ perspectives proposed by the Balanced Scorecard approach (financial, internal business processes, customers, learning and innovation). In particular, we examine the effects of adopting three different fundamental types of IS interoperability standards differing in the level of detail and applicability: XML, industry-specific standards and proprietary standards. Our study is based on a large dataset from 14065 European firms (from 25 countries and 10 sectors) collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. It is concluded that all these three examined types of IS interoperability standards increase considerably the positive impact of firm’s IS on the above four business performance perspectives/dimensions; however, their effects differ significantly. The adoption of industry-specific interoperability standards has the highest positive impact, while proprietary and XML standards have similar lower impacts. These conclusions provide valuable empirical evidence of the multidimensional business value generated by IS interoperability and its strong dependence on the type of IS interoperability standards adopted.

Abstract
The value of business simulations as pedagogic tools in education has been debated for over twenty years. This paper proposes a methodology for analyzing and understanding in-depth the educational validity of business simulations. It is based on Principal Component Analysis and Structural Equation Modelling, which are used for estimating models of educational value generation. The proposed methodology has been used for analyzing the educational validity of a business game conducted among students using the well established marketing strategy simulation package MARKSTRAT. It was found that such a simulation does indeed create value for participants and helps them to develop strategic marketing skills. We identified three types of educational value generated: capability for experimentation with strategic marketing, understanding of relevant concepts and creation of professional skills applicable and useful in future real life job situations. Also, the relations among these types of educational value have been examined. It was found that the experimentation has a very strong impact on the understanding of concepts, and both of them have medium to high direct impacts (of similar magnitudes) on professional skills development. Finally, it is the perception of the participants about the professional skills applicable in their future jobs they acquired in the business simulation game that determines their overall impression and level of satisfaction.

Abstract
In Parliaments there are huge amounts of knowledge concerning public policies for addressing social problems and needs, which is however contained in numerous long textual documents (e.g. drafts, laws, justification reports, discussions’ minutes, experts’ reports), and it cannot be exploited to a good extent. Its full exploitation necessitates an appropriate structured representation of it. In this paper, initially we analysed the legislation formulation process of the Greek Parliament and its main documents from a public policy perspective, focusing on the knowledge they contain on social problems and needs, and on public interventions (e.g. regulations, programmes, services provision, infrastructure building) for addressing them. Based on the conclusions drawn from this analysis we developed a methodology for the codification, representation and management of the policy related knowledge of Parliaments, which is founded on a well established product of CSAV research, the Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) framework. A first application of this methodology has been made for the whole set of documents produced for the Law on the ‘Contracts of Voluntary Cohabitation’ passed by the Greek Parliament. It was then evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative techniques based on the ‘Technology Acceptance Model’ (TAM). The evaluation concluded that the above representation/codification includes to a good extent the substantial elements of the policy related knowledge contained in the Parliamentary documents, and it is understandable by the users. At the same time it revealed weaknesses that lead us to the development of an extension of the IBIS framework in order to achieve a better representation of this knowledge.

Abstract
This paper aims at analyzing (a) the factors determining the firms’ propensity to outsource various processes (b) the impact of outsourcing on firms’ innovation performance as well as labour productivity. The integral investigation of the determining factors as well as the impact of outsourcing on innovation and productivity based on the same data in a comparative setting is the new element this study adds to existing empirical literature. Relocation to external providers is related to (parts of) the production process of final products and intermediate products as well as Research and Development (R&D) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services.

Abstract
There has been extensive theoretical work on the potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) to drive significant innovations, which can dramatically enhance firms’ performance. However, this potential has not been sufficiently investigated empirically. This paper investigates empirically and compares i) the effects of the two most widely used types of information systems (IS), the ERP and the e-business ones, on innovation, and also ii) to what extent their effects on business performance are through (i.e. mediated by) the innovation they drive. It is concluded that both ERP and e-business IS have positive impact on innovation, with the former being a stronger driver of innovation than the latter. However, most of their positive impact on business performance is mainly through automation and support of existing processes, and only a smaller part of it (20% for the ERP and 30% for the e-business IS) is through innovation.

Abstract
The trend of opening government data, in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes, has resulted in the development of numerous e-infrastructures providing public sector information (PSI). The big investments that have been made in this direction necessitate a deeper understanding and assessment of the value they produce. This paper presents a methodology for evaluating PSI einfrastructures, which is based on the estimation of multiple value models corresponding to their main stakeholder groups: data users and data providers. Each value model consists of several value dimensions and their corresponding value measures, organized in three levels (associated with efficiency, effectiveness and future behaviour), and also the relations among them. The proposed methodology allows a comprehensive assessment of the various types of value generated by a PSI e-infrastructure for each stakeholder group, and also the interconnections among them. This enables a better understanding of the whole value generation mechanism and a rational definition of improvements priorities.

Abstract
There has been an extensive theoretical literature during the last 20 years supporting that information and communication technologies (ICT) have a huge potential to drive significant innovations in firms’ processes, products and services, which can result in big performance improvements. However, limited empirical investigation of this innovation potential of ICT has been conducted. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the impact of two widely used types of information systems (IS) (internal and e-sales ones), and also of four important ‘traditional’ innovation determinants (demand expectation, price and non-price competition, market concentration) for comparison purposes, on innovation in Greek firms. It has been concluded that in the ‘innovation averse’ Greek national context both these IS types have a strong positive impact on innovation, whilst this does not hold for any of the examined ‘traditional’ innovation determinants.

Abstract
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is an established technology that has been around for more than fifteen years. However, its adoption follows a very slow pace. Previous research, based either on a theoretical analysis of PKI or on specific cases of PKI implementation, has indicated several possible reasons for PKI non-adoption. In this paper we examine the effect of specific organizational factors on PKI adoption using empirical data from 14065 European firms collected through the e-Business Watch Survey of the European Commission. We have shown that it is still addressed as innovative technology that requires an innovation culture. Moreover, small and medium –sized firms are rather reluctant to adopt it and it is mostly implemented in firms with a large number of employees and tele-workers. Also, the extensive use of IS for supporting internal functions and cooperation with the external environment (e.g. customers and prospects), and the high dependence on them, are drivers of PKI adoption.

Abstract
Electronic Participation (eParticipation), both in its traditional form and in its emerging Web 2.0 based form, results in the production of large quantities of textual contributions of citizens concerning government policies and decisions under formation, which contain valuable relevant opinions and knowledge of the society, however are exploited to a limited only extent. It is of critical importance to analyze these contributions in order to extract the opinions and knowledge they contain in a cost-efficient way. This paper reviews a wide range of opinion mining methods, which have been developed for analyzing commercial product opinions and reviews posted on the Web, as to the capabilities they can offer for meeting the above challenges. The review has revealed the great potential of these methods for the analysis of textual citizens’ contributions in public policy debates, both for assessing contributors’ general attitudes-sentiments (positive, negative or neutral) towards the policy/decision under discussion, and also for extracting the main issues they raise (e.g. negative and positive aspects and effects, implementation barriers, improvement suggestions) and the corresponding attitudes-sentiments. Based on the conclusions of this review a basic framework for the use of opinion mining methods in eParticipation has been formulated.

Abstract
The article proposes the concept of Policy Gadget (Padget) as an innovative tool for leveraging the group knowledge produced over Social Media platforms inside policy making processes. The concept has been developed within an international research project named PADGETS financed in the context of the “ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling” call of the FP7. In addition, the article highlights the value proposition of Padgets within the policy cycle as well as their novelty with respect to existing practices in the use of ICT for participatory purposes.

Abstract
Government agencies are making considerable investments for exploiting the capabilities offered by ICT, and especially the Internet, to increase citizens’ engagement in their decision and policy making processes. However, this first generation of e-participation has been characterised by limited usage of the ‘official’ e-consultation spaces of government agencies by the citizens. The emergence of Web 2.0 social media offers big opportunities for overcoming this problem, and proceeding to a second generation of broader, deeper and more advanced e-participation. This paper presents a methodology for the efficient exploitation of Web 2.0 social media by government agencies in order to broaden and enhance e-participation. It is based on a central platform which enables posting content and deploying micro web applications (‘Policy Gadgets’-Padgets) to multiple popular Web 2.0 social media, and also collecting users’ interactions with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings) in an efficient manner using their application programming interfaces (API). These interactions’ data undergo various levels of processing, such as calculation of useful analytics, opinion mining and simulation modelling, in order to provide effective support to public decision and policy makers. The proposed methodology allows government agencies to adopt advanced and highly effective ‘hybrid’ e-participation approaches.

Abstract
It is widely recognised that innovation is of critical importance for the competitiveness and growth of firms, sectors and countries, so understanding its determinants is a critical research question. Beyond the ‘traditional’ innovation determinants identified by previous relevant research, there has been extensive theoretical literature on the potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) to drive innovation; however limited empirical investigation of it has been conducted. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the impact of three different ICT (internal information systems (IS), e-sales and e-procurements), and also - for comparison purposes – of four important ‘traditional’ innovation determinants (demand expectation, price and non-price competition, market concentration), on the innovation performance of Greek firms. It is based on firm-level data collected through a survey of 271 Greek firms. The results show that in the Greek ‘innovation averse’ national context (characterised by low level of innovation and uncertainly avoidance culture), though none of the examined ‘traditional’ innovation determinants has an impact on product and process innovation of firms, the internal IS have a strong positive impact on both product and process innovation, and the e-sales only on process innovation; on the contrary, e-procurement is not a driver of innovation. Our results indicate the high potential of ICT as innovation driver even in innovation averse contexts, which however varies between different types of ICT.

Abstract
While previously public policy making was predominantly technocratic, based mainly on ‘first generation’ approaches employing mathematical optimization algorithms, in the last thirty years it has become much more participative, adopting ‘second generation’ approaches which involve the affected citizens to a continuously increasing extent. This trend has been reinforced by the explosive growth of the information and communication technologies (ICT) and especially the Internet, resulting to the development of e-participation. Public participation provides to the competent government organizations useful information on citizens’ interest in and acceptance of public policies under formation or application, and also numerous proposals for changes, improvements and enhancements of them. It is therefore necessary to support and enhance participative policy making with technocratic mechanisms and tools for screening these proposals and analysing them as to their outcomes, and also for forecasting the future evolution of citizens’ interest in and acceptance of them. The use of simulation can be a very useful tool for these purposes. In this paper we present a state of the art review of existing modelling and simulation approaches from the above perspective. In particular, we examine Discrete Event Modelling and Simulation, Monte Carlo Simulation, System Dynamics, Dynamic Systems, Cellular Automata and Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation. From this investigation it is concluded that System Dynamics seems to be the most promising for the above purposes, followed by Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation, and that both can contribute significantly to the technocratic enhancement of participative policy making.

Abstract
The high penetration of the Internet/WWW has led to the development of various types of e-services, such as e-business, e-banking, e-government and e-learning; however, their usage and quality have been lower than expected. Since this is a relatively new area, there is a need for intensive learning and improvement, and this can be achieved through deep and sophisticated evaluation of existing e-services that will produce extensive knowledge on their value generation mechanism and provide guidance for improvement interventions. In this direction this paper describes and validates a methodology for structuring and enhancing e-services evaluation based on the estimation of multi-level value flow models, which enable a better understanding of their value generation mechanisms and provides improvement decisions support. It is founded on well established theoretical frameworks from previous research in the areas of IS evaluation, technology acceptance models (TAM), IS success models and e-services evaluation. The proposed methodology has been validated for an e-learning service provided by the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) to ICT professionals.

Abstract
The large scale application of ICT-based assistive environment technologies for the home care of elderly and disabled people is going to generate huge numbers of signals transmitted from homes to local health centers or hospitals in order to be monitored by medical personnel. This task is going to be of critical importance and at the same time - if manually performed - quite demanding for specialized human resources and costly. In order to perform it in a cost-efficient manner it is necessary to develop mechanisms and methods for automated screening of these signals in order to identify abnormal ones that require some action to be taken. This paper proposes a method for automatic screening of heart sound signals, which are the most widely acquired signals from the human body for diagnostic purposes in both the „traditional‟ medicine and the emerging ICT-based assistive environments. It is based on a novel Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Bayesian Inference approach, which estimates conditional probability distributions in structures obtained from a Tree-Augmented Naïve Bayes (TAN) algorithm. The proposed approach has been applied and validated in a difficult heterogeneous dataset of 198 heart sound signals, which comes from both healthy medical cases and unhealthy ones having Aortic Stenosis, Mitral Regurgitation, Aortic Regurgitation or Mitral Stenosis. The proposed approach achieved a good performance in this difficult screening problem, which is higher than other widely used alternative classifiers, showing great potential for contributing to a cost-effective large scale application of ICT-based assistive environment technologies.

Abstract
The paper presents a policy analysis framework developed through a process of interdisciplinary integration as well as through a process of endusers needs elicitation. The proposed framework constitutes the theoretical foundation for the decision support component of a technological platform bringing together Social Media and System Dynamics simulation developed withinthe PADGETS project. The main novelties introduced have to do with the possibility to provide decision makers with a set of synthetic, fresh and relevant data in a cost effective and easily understandable way.

Abstract
Firms all over the world have to make important investment decisions concerning the development of costly World Wide Web (WWW) infrastructures aiming to benefit from the extensive connectivity, transaction and collaboration capabilities provided by the Internet, and to conduct various types of e-business activities. Therefore it is quite important to understand whether and how such web-related infrastructures create business value for firms. Aiming to contribute to the investigation of whether and how Internet/WWW technologies create business value for firms, this paper develops a conceptual model which analyzes Web infrastructure and Internet-based innovation as sources of business value. The methodology involved a large data source collected by the European e-Business Market Watch. The results show that, as hypothesized, Web infrastructure is not significantly related to business value, while on the contrary Internet-based innovation has a positive significant impact on business value. In addition, the results show no significant complementarity between Web infrastructure and Internet-based innovation. The above conclusions indicate that firms should be very careful when they decide to make this kind of investments, since they have to combine ‘hard’ investments in web infrastructure with ‘soft’ investments for the development of new products, services and processes exploiting the capabilities of this infrastructure.

Abstract
The development of ‘intelligent’ medical equipment, which can not only acquire various signals from the human body, but also process them and provide recommendations as to probable pathological conditions, will be highly beneficial for both the medical personnel and the patients. However, this necessitates the development and exploitation of advanced highly efficient classification techniques. In this direction this paper presents a novel ensemble classification technique, combining Random Forests with the ‘Markov Blanket’ notion, which is used for the automated diagnosis of aortic and mitral heart valves diseases from low-cost and easily acquired heart sound signals. It has been tested in a highly ‘difficult’ global and heterogeneous dataset of 198 heart sound signals, which been acquired from both healthy and pathological medical cases. The proposed ensemble classification technique exhibited a higher classification performance in comparison with the classical Random Forest algorithms, and also other widely used classification algorithms.

Abstract
Governments of many countries attempt to increase public participation by exploiting the capabilities and high penetration of the Internet. In this direction they make considerable investments for constructing and operating e-participation websites; however, the use of them has been in general limited and below expectations. For this reason governments, in order to widen e-participation, should investigate the exploitation of the numerous users-driven Web 2.0 social media as well, which seem to be quite successful in attracting huge numbers of users. This paper describes a methodology for the exploitation of the Web 2.0 social media by government organizations in the processes of public policies formulation, through a central platform-toolset providing interoperability with many different social media, and enabling posting and retrieving content from them in a systematic centrally managed and machinesupported automated manner (through their application programming interfaces (APIs)). The proposed methodology includes the use of ‘Policy Gadgets’ (Padgets), which are defined as micro web applications presenting policy messages in various popular Web 2.0 social media (e.g. social networks, blogs, forums, news sites, etc) and collecting users’ interactions with them (e.g. views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.). Interaction data can be used as input in policy simulation models estimating the impact of various policy options. Encouraging have been the conclusions from the analysis of the APIs of 10 highly popular social media, which provide extensive capabilities for publishing content on them (e.g. data, images, video, links, etc.) and also for retrieving relevant user activity and content (e.g. views, comments, ratings, votes, etc.), though their continuous evolution might pose significant difficulties and challenges.

Abstract
The limited use of the ‘official’ e-participation websites by the citizens, their high heterogeneity in terms of political interests, educational level and technological skills and at the same time the emergence of the new web 2.0 social media necessitate central and local administration to exploit the numerous usersdriven virtual spaces, which have been launched through citizens initiatives with dramatic success in terms of adoption and usage, in order to widen and enhance e-participation. This paper describes a methodology for the systematic exploitation of the emerging Web 2.0 social media, in combination with established simulation modelling techniques and tools, by governmental organizations in the processes of public policies formulation. It is based on the concept of ‘Policy Gadget’ (Padget), which is defined as a micro web application combining a policy message with underlying group knowledge in social media and interacting with citizens in popular web 2.0 locations (such as social networks, blogs, forums, news sites, etc) in order to get and convey their input to policy makers. Such ‘Padgets’ will be created by a central platform-toolset and then deployed in many different Web 2.0 media. Citizens input gathered through ‘Padgets’ will be used in various simulation modelling techniques and tools, such as the Systems Dynamics methodology), which are going to simulate different policy options and estimate their outcomes and effectiveness. Finally, a use case scenario of the proposed methodology is presented, which outlines how it can be used in ‘real life’ public policy design problems.

Abstract
In this paper a systematic evaluation is presented of an e-participation platform based on GIS tools, which has been developed as part of the FFED project co-financed by the European Commission. The evaluation methodology has been based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), which has been elaborated and adapted to this particular type of IS, taking into account the particular objectives and capabilities of this platform. Our main evaluation dimensions were usage, ease of use, functional usefulness, political usefulness and importance of discussion topic; each of them has been analysed into a number of sub-dimensions. Using this methodology five pilot applications of this platform in „real-life‟ situations and problems have been evaluated with both quantitative and qualitative techniques. Finally it has been concluded that the use of GIS tools can provide significant value in the area of e–participation, which however depends on a number of context factors, such as citizens‟ computer literacy and familiarization, trust to the political system, interest of the sponsoring public authorities, appropriate promotion, importance of the topic under discussion and quantity and quality of reference information appended on the digital maps by public authorities.

Abstract
The aging population in many countries, in combination with high government deficits and financial resources limitations, necessitates new methods for the home care of the elderly at reasonable costs based on the exploitation of modern information and communication technologies (ICT). This requires the installation of assistive environments at the homes of elderly people, which include various types of sensors, generating biosignals of other types of signals, which are transferred through networks to local health centers or hospitals in order to be monitored. However, scaling up the application of such ICTbased methods of elderly home care is going to increase tremendously the workload of the medical staff of local health centers or hospitals. Therefore it is of critical importance to develop capabilities for an automated first screening of these signals and identification of abnormal elements and diseases. In this direction the present paper proposes a system for the automatic identification of murmurs in heart sound signals, and also for the classification of them as systolic or diastolic, using a new generation of advanced Random Forests classification algorithms, which are aggregating the prediction of multiple classifiers (ensemble classification). The proposed system has been applied and validated in a representative global dataset of 198 heart sound signals, which come both from healthy medical cases and from cases having systolic and diastolic murmurs. Also, some alternative classifiers have been applied to the same data for comparison purposes. It has been concluded that the proposed systems shows a good performance, which is higher than the examined alternative classifiers.

Abstract
Electronic consultation through the Internet has become an important means of e-participation in order to enable interaction and discussion among government agencies and citizens on public policies and decisions. Tools that enhance the quality of electronic consultations need therefore to be designed in a way that better opinions and arguments are produced. Well designed ICT tools can contribute to better, more informed and socially rooted public policies and decisions. This paper analyses two different models of structured electronic consultation in the area of formation of legislation, a highly complex and controversial category of government decisions. The first model is a highly structured e-consultation model based on the Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) framework, having as basic elements issues, alternatives, pro-arguments, contra-arguments and comments. The second model is simpler and less structured, having as basic elements questions, answers and comments. Our analysis was based on two pilot cases concerning legislation under formation in Greece and Austria. Evaluation took place using discussion tree analysis and quantitative and qualitative methods.

Abstract
The study on the links between strategy, structure and performance has been for long time a fundamental and highly important research topic for the management researchers and practitioners. In this direction this paper presents a ‘holistic’ empirical investigation of the whole network of relations between business strategy (at a first level), information and communication technologies (ICT) investment, non-ICT investment and BPR (at a second level), and finally business performance (at a third level). It is based on firm-level data from 271 Greek firms, which are used for the estimation of structural equation models (SEM) connecting the above variables, theoretically based on the Cobb- Douglas Production Function. It is concluded that none of the three generic business strategies defined by M. Porter (cost leadership, differentiation and focus) has a significant effect on ICT and non-ICT investment; on the contrary, particular strategic choices (differentiation and focus strategy) have been found to drive process change. Also, it has been found that all the investigated internal factors, ICT investment, non-ICT investment and BPR, have a positive impact on business performance. Concerning their interrelations, ICT investment affects positively BPR, which indicates that BPR is a partial mediator in the relationship between ICT and performance; on the contrary, this does not happen with non-ICT investment, indicating an important difference between these two types of capital investment as to their relation with process change.

Abstract
The relation between information systems, innovation and business performance is a critical question for both researchers and practitioners. This paper provides an empirical investigation of this issue in the tourism sector by conducting an analysis of the relations between: I) the exploitation level of two widely adopted types of IS, namely internal and e-sales systems (first level); II) the extent of business innovation and benefits from ICT (second level); and III) business performance (third level). This study has been based on firm-level data from 2665 European tourism firms, which have been used for constructing a structural equation model (SEM) and estimating the interrelationship amongst these constructs. The model provided evidence of a positive impact of the exploitation level of both IS (internal and e-sales) on innovation, with the former being a stronger driver of innovation than the latter. The exploitation levels of the internal and e-sales IS were also found to have both a positive impact on the business benefits that the tourism firms achieve from their ICT infrastructures, which impact is also mediated by innovation; internal IS were found to have a higher impact on ICT business benefits than the e-sales IS. Furthermore, these ICT benefits and innovation (both directly and indirectly through the ICT benefits) were found to have an ultimate positive impact on business performance. Consequently, the findings suggest that tourism firms should combine the development of internal ICT and e-sales IS with innovation if they wish to get more IS driven business benefits and ultimately increase their business performance.

Abstract
Many public policy problems are ‘wicked’, being characterised by high complexity, many heterogeneous views and conflicts among various stakeholders, and also lack of mathematically ‘optimal’ solutions and pre-defined algorithms for calculating them. The best approach for addressing such problems is through consultation and argumentation among stakeholders. The e-participation research has investigated and suggested several ICT tools for this purpose, such as e-forum, e-petition and e-community tools. This paper investigates the use of an advanced ICT tool, the structured e-forum, for addressing such wicked problems associated with the legislation formation. For this purpose we designed, implemented and evaluated two pilot e-consultations on legislation under formation in the Parliaments of Austria and Greece using a structured e-forum tool based on the Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS) framework. The conclusions drawn reveal the advantages offered by the structured e-forum, but also its difficulties as well

Abstract
Most of the information systems (IS) interoperability research and practice in the e-government area has been focused on the operational level, aiming mainly at enabling the delivery of integrated electronic services involving several government agencies to citizens and enterprises based on the ‘one-stop shop’ model, and the support of co-operation among government agencies from the same or even different countries at the operational level. This paper is dealing with knowledge-level interoperability, which aims at the support of higher knowledge-intensive tasks of government, such as the formulation of legislation. In particular, it presents an ontology-based methodology for achieving knowledge-level interoperability among IS of Parliaments. It is based on the common use by Parliaments of the ontology of the ‘Issue-Based Information Systems’ (IBIS) framework for codifying the public policy related knowledge produced in the various stages of legislation formulation. Also, an application of the proposed methodology is presented for the case of the Law concerning ‘Contracts of Voluntary Cohabitation’ that has been recently passed by the Greek Parliament; its evaluation resulted in a proposal for a refinement of the above ontology that can be used for achieving a better codification of the knowledge that the main content (articles) of Laws contains.

Abstract
Most public policy problems are ‘wicked’, being characterised by high complexity, many heterogeneous views and conflicts among various stakeholders. Therefore citizens interested to participate in such debates in order to be sufficiently informed should study large amounts of relevant material, such as reports, laws, committees’ minutes, etc., which are in legalistic or in other specialist languages, or very often their substance is hidden in political rhetoric, putting barriers to a meaningful participation. In this paper we present the results of the research we have conducted for addressing this problem through the use of ‘Computer Supported Argument Visualization’ (CSAV) methods for supporting and enhancing e-participation in the legislation formation process. This approach has been implemented in a pilot e-participation project and then evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative methods based on the ‘Technology Acceptance Model’ (TAM), with positive results. Based on the conclusions of this evaluation an enrichment of the IBIS framework has been developed for improving the visualization of legal documents.

Abstract
The problems of formulation and application of various kinds of public policy concerning energy and environment are wicked’ and highly complex ones, with multiple and conflicting objectives and many stakeholders with different views, values and concerns. For this reason a deliberation among stakeholders and argumentation approach using advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) is the best way for addressing such problems. The use of e-participation technologies and methods can be very useful for this purpose. This paper describes an advanced ICT platform that has been developed for supporting and facilitating such deliberation and argumentation approaches, as part of the FEED (Federated e-Participation Systems for Cross-Societal Deliberation on Environmental and Energy Issues) project. This platform aims to support and enhance deliberation among all stakeholders and argumentation for the formulation and application of public policy concerning environment and energy, by providing i) federated content from various sources, ii) efficient mechanisms for accessing it based on ontologies and maps, and ii) stakeholders’ interaction capabilities through forum and petition functionalities. Also, a usage scenario of this platform is described.

Abstract
The analysis of the relationships among strategy, structure and performance is a major research topic of particular interest to both researchers and management practitioners. This paper develops a research model for investigating these relationships for the case of e-business strategy adoption. A model is developed consisting of several hypotheses concerning the relationships among e-business strategy adoption, information and communication technology (ICT) investment, non-ICT investment, business process reengineering (BPR) and business performance. In order to test the hypotheses, data from a sample comprising 271 Greek firms are used to estimate a structural equation model. The results show that e-business strategy adoption is positively associated with BPR, while it is not related however to ICT and non-ICT investment. Furthermore, BPR, ICT investment and non-ICT investment have significant positive paths leading to the dependent construct (business performance), while e-business strategy adoption has a statistically insignificant coefficient. Therefore, our results show an indirect positive effect of e-business strategy adoption on business performance through BPR.

Abstract
The high potential of modern ICT for supporting citizens’ and administrations’ interaction for the formulation of public policies has been extensively recognized by academics and practitioners, resulting in a rapid development of the e-participation domain in the last decade. Extensive research is required for developing appropriate advanced information and communication technologies (ICT) platforms that exploit and realize this potential to the highest possible extent. In this direction this paper describes an advanced ICT e-participation platform that has been developed having as main objective to improve the quantity and quality of interaction among citizens, and also with public administrations, concerning the formulation of public policies and decisions on environmental and energy issues, as part of the FEED (Federated e-Participation Systems for Cross-Societal Deliberation on Environmental and Energy Issues) project of the European Commission. It enables citizens and administrations to upload geographically referenced multimedia content (e.g. pictures, videos, etc.) on an electronic map of the area which the public policy or decision under discussion concerns, so that other interested citizens or administrations can easily access and download them. The proposed e-participation platform provides: i) federated relevant content from various sources, ii) efficient mechanisms for accessing this content based on maps, semantic annotation and ontologies, iii) additional stakeholders’ interaction capabilities through forum and petition functionalities. Finally, a pilot application of this platform for supporting e-participation/e-deliberation concerning important environmental and zoning public policies and decisions in the Flevoland region, Netherlands, which has been designed by the project consortium and is going to be implemented in the near future, is described.

Abstract
This paper aims at investigating empirically at the firm level the effect of the use of modern information and communication technologies (ICT), and also of two other factors, the adoption of new forms of workplace organization (which is regarded as a ‘complement’ of ICT), and trade (export) activities (a major characteristic of modern economy), on the demand for employees’ (vocational) education and skills. The study is based on firm-level data collected through a common questionnaire from firms’ samples of similar composition (concerning firm sizes and industries) in Greece and Switzerland; from these data econometric models of similar specification have been constructed for both countries. The results of multivariate analysis show that the intensive use of ICT correlates positively with the employment shares of high-educated personnel and negatively with the ones of the low-educated personnel. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis of ‘skill-biased technical change’. Further, the intensive use of “employee voice”-oriented organizational practices correlates positively with the employment shares of high-educated employees in both countries, and also negatively with the employment share of low-educated ones only for the Swiss firms. The results for the “work design” organizational practices are more ambiguous. Thus, there is only partial confirmation of the hypothesis of skilled-biased organizational change. Finally, we found some evidence in favour of the trade effect (export activities) only for the Swiss firms. Our results show both similarities and differences in the above aspects between Greece and Switzerland, and indicate that national context characteristics affect the relationship of the demand for employees’ (vocational) education and skills with ICT use, adoption of new forms of workplace organization and trade.

Abstract
Although many countries today exploit the potential of ICT for supporting citizens’ engagement in the democratic processes and invest significant amounts of money in eparticipation, have do not pay corresponding attention in evaluating these efforts. In this direction, this paper describes a framework that has been developed for evaluating eparticipation pilots in the legislation development processes of parliaments. The proposed framework is based on a) the objectives and basic characteristics of the ‘traditional’ public participation, the e-participation and the legislation development processes, and b) the existing frameworks for the evaluation of information systems, e-participation and traditional public participation. It includes four evaluation perspectives: process, system, context and outcomes evaluation, each of them being analysed into a number of evaluation criteria/variables; also, it includes the assessment of associations between the assessed values of outcomes evaluation factors on one hand and the assessed values of the context, process and system evaluation factors on the other, in order to identify the reasons of positive of negative outcomes.

Abstract
In the modern economy firms, in addition to the ‘traditional’ production factors - traditional physical capital and labour - increasingly tend to form and use some ‘new’ types of production factors: information and communication technologies (ICT) capital, human capital and organizational capital. It is therefore necessary to investigate the effect of these new production factors on firm performance in various contexts and also to compare it with the effect of the traditional production factors in various contexts. In this paper is described a comparative empirical study of the effect of the ICT capital, the human capital, the organizational capital (new organizational practices associated with ‘employee voice’ and new forms of ‘work design’) and their combination on labour productivity in Greece and Switzerland. This study has been based on firm-level data from both countries, which have been collected through a common questionnaire, from samples of similar composition (concerning firm sizes and sectors). Based on these data econometric models of similar specification have been estimated for both countries based on the framework of firm-level production function. From these models it is concluded that in both countries physical capital, ICT capital, human capital and new “employee voice”-oriented organizational practices have a statistically significant positive effect on labour productivity. Also, some considerable differences between the two countries have been identified: Swiss firms are more efficient and mature in creating, using and combining these ‘new’ production factors (ICT capital, human capital, organizational capital and knowledge capital) than the Greek ones. These conclusions have interesting policy implications both at the firm and government level.

Abstract
Even though many countries invest significant amounts of money in engaging citizens in public decision-making using information and communication technologies (ICT), they do not pay corresponding attention in evaluating these efforts. Since e-participation is a relatively new approach it is necessary to evaluate it carefully, in order to understand it better and identify both the benefits and advantages it offers, and also at the same time its disadvantages and problems. In this direction in this paper initially are reviewed existing frameworks which can be useful for structuring the evaluation of e-participation. Then a framework is developed for evaluating a number of e-participation pilots in the legislation development process that will be implemented as part of the LEX-IS project (‘Enabling Participation of the Youth in the Public Debate of Legislation among Parliaments, Citizens and Businesses in the European Union) of the ‘eParticipation’ Preparatory Action of the European Commission.

Abstract
The paper presents project needs of new solution in eParticipation initiative area focusing main environmental and energy issues that the new European energy policy has to deal with. The project FEED (Federated eParticipation Sys-tems for Cross-Societal Deliberation on Environmental and Energy Issues) is introduced as one possible solution. There will be discussed its main goals, platform architecture and project work plan.

Abstract
As electronic participation systems are becoming widely available, promoting the public debate on a variety of issues, a new challenge is emerging: how to organize, access and present multi-format supportive documentation from various sources. The more wide-spread eParticipation systems become, the more difficult is for the participants in electronic debates to find and relate documents, legal information or policy statements, on the issues discussed. In this world of multiple sources of unstructured and diverse information elements, the presented approach proposes the concept of federated eParticipation systems, able to dynamically locate and channel information from existing, diverse sources. The proposed architecture includes multimedia content management tools, syndication mechanisms and ontologically supported mechanisms, in an effort to provide the users with the proper information for supporting opinions and decisions. As a first application, energy and environmental issues are considered, which constitute an important subject of the European Union policy agenda, as well as a common issue for discussion at local and municipal level.

Abstract
The business value generated by information and communication technologies (ICT) has been for long time a major research topic of high interest to both researchers and practitioners. Recently there is a growing research interest in the business value generated by particular types of information systems (IS). One of them is the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, which are increasingly adopted by organizations for supporting and integrating key business and management processes within and beyond their boundaries. The current paper initially presents a critical review of the existing empirical literature concerning the business value of the ERP systems, which investigates the impact of ERP systems adoption on various measures of organizational performance. Then is critically reviewed the literature concerning the related topic of critical success factors (CSFs) in ERP systems implementation, which aims at identifying and investigating factors that result in more successful ERP systems implementation that generate higher levels of value for organizations. Finally, based on the conclusions of the above literature reviews, future directions of research concerning ERP systems business value are proposed.

Abstract
The critical importance of information and communication technologies (ICT) for the firms nowadays, and the big ICT investments they make, necessitate a deeper understanding of ‘how’ ICT affects business performance, through identification of the intervening mechanisms and variables in the relationship between ICT and business performance. This paper describes an empirical investigation of whether and to what extent Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has an intervening role in the relationship between ICT investment and business performance, based on firm-level data from 271 Greek firms. Using this data a Structural Equation Model (SEM), founded on the Cobb-Douglas production function, is constructed, which includes a multi-item construct for measuring the extent of BPR with high level of reliability. From this model it is concluded that BPR mediates partially the relationship between ICT investment and business performance. On the contrary, it is concluded that BPR does not have such an intervening role in the relationship between the non-ICT investment (in ‘traditional’ assets) and business performance.

Abstract
This paper empirically investigates and compares the moderating role of the two basic business process change paradigms, Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Total Quality Management (TQM), on the business value generated for firms by their ICT investment, using data from 271 Greek firms. Initially multi-item BPR and TQM constructs have been developed based on the relevant literature and their validity and reliability has been tested with positive results. Then based on them moderated regression models with objective measures of business performance (as dependent variable) and ICT (as one of the independent variables) have been constructed, founded on the Cobb-Douglas production function and including all the fundamental independent variables. From these models it is concluded that both BPR and TQM have considerable moderating effects of similar magnitude on the relationship between ICT and firm value added. Therefore the contribution of ICT investment to firm value added can increase considerably if it is combined with BPR or TQM.

Abstract
The development of a theory concerning the value generated by information and communication technologies (ICT) has been for long time a major research topic of high importance to both researchers and practitioners. Basic research objectives have been the assessment and deeper understanding of the multiple dimensions of ICT business value at the firm, sector and national economy level and also its main determinants. Recently there is a growing research interest in the value generated by particular types of information systems (IS), such as the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Thιs paper reviews critically the existing empirical literature on the firm level business value of the ERP systems, which investigates the impact of ERP systems adoption on various measures of organizational performance. Then it critically reviews the literature concerning the related topic of critical success factors (CSFs) of ERP systems implementation, which aims to identify factors that result in more successful ERP systems implementation that generate higher levels of value for organizations. Based on the conclusions of this literature review on one hand, and on the experience gained from the ICT business value research on the other, are identified the necessary directions of the future research required in order to develop a theory of ERP systems firm level business value and gain a complete body of knowledge, which can help organizations maximize the value they get from their ERP systems investments.

Abstract
In the present paper, Random Forests are used in a critical and at the same time non trivial problem concerning the diagnosis of Gas Turbine blading faults, portraying promising results. Random forestsbased fault diagnosis is treated as a Pattern Recognition problem, based on measurements and feature selection. Two different types of inserting randomness to the trees are studied, based on different theoretical assumptions. The classifier is compared against other Machine Learning algorithms such as )eural )etworks, Classification and Regression Trees, )aive Bayes and K-)earest )eighbor. The performance of the prediction model reaches a level of 97% in terms of precision and recall, improving the existing state-of-the-art levels achieved by )eural )etworks by a factor of 1.5%-2%. Furthermore, emphasis is given on the pre-processing phase, where feature selection and outliers identification is carried out, in order to provide the basis of a high performance automated diagnostic system. The conclusions derived are of more general interest and applicability.

Abstract
In the present paper, Random Forests are used in a critical and at the same time non trivial problem concerning the diagnosis of Gas Turbine blading faults, portraying promising results. Random forests-based fault diagnosis is treated as a Pattern Recognition problem, based on measurements and feature selection. Two different types of inserting randomness to the trees are studied, based on different theoretical assumptions. The classifier is compared against other Machine Learning algorithms such as Neural Networks, Classification and Regression Trees, Naive Bayes and K-Nearest Neighbor. The performance of the prediction model reaches a level of 97% in terms of precision and recall, improving the existing state-of-the-art levels achieved by Neural Networks by a factor of 1.5%-2%.

Abstract
The LEX-IS project (its full title being ‘Enabling Participation of the Youth in the Public Debate of Legislation’ among Parliaments, Citizens and Businesses in the European Union) is part of the ‘eParticipation’ Preparatory Action of the European Commission (Commission of the European Communities, 2006) aims for contributing to these issues. Its main objective is to improve the legislative process and output in the National Parliaments by enhancing public participation in the preparatory stages (legislation proposal formation stage and public debate of draft legislation), with special emphasis on the youth, using advanced ICT-based tools and methodologies, such as ontologies, metadata, argumentation support, facilitation and visualization methods, process management approaches.

Abstract
Argumentation systems and ontologies have the potential to support and enhance the participation of citizens in the development of effective and acceptable legislation concerning the complex and multidimensional problems that modern societies face. However, this potential has only to a very small extent been explored and realized. In this direction this paper describes an investigation of this potential, which is performed as part of the EU funded project LEX-IS. The main objective of LEX-IS is to improve the legislation process in the National Parliaments through enhanced public participation in the preparatory stages (legislation proposal formation and public debate of draft legislation) with the use of state-of-the-art ICT-tools and methodologies. This paper introduces four scenarios of public participation in above mentioned preparatory legislation processes thereby exploring the support of argumentation systems and ontologies. Along the scenarios, peculiarities of these two preparatory and highly significant stages of a legislation process are discussed, and results of existing relevant research are reflected. The basic features, advantages and disadvantages of each scenario are shown, and the LEX-IS design is sketched.

Abstract
Information Systems (IS) evaluation has been one of the most important and widely researched topics for more than two decades. Τhe evaluation of e-Learning is of critical importance in order to maximize the benefits from the huge investments made in this area. In this paper is presented a method for e-learning multi-layer evaluation and value flow model estimation. It includes evaluation of e-learning using three layers of value measures (efficiency measures, effectiveness measures, and intended future behaviour measures), and also the estimation of the relations between them. In this way a model of value generation and flow is developed. This method generates rich and useful information concerning the different types of value that e-learning creates, the mechanisms of their creation and also possible interventions for increasing them. A first application of this method is presented for the evaluation of an e-learning service in the area of the European cultural heritage that has been developed in the project e-RMIONE of the eTEN Programme of the European Union. This first application gives interesting and useful conclusions concerning the various levels of value created by the above service, as well as the generation and flow of value between these levels, and also it enables the prioritization of the resources and capabilities of this service that should be improved. In this sense this application provides positive and encouraging evidence concerning the validity and the usefulness of the method.

Abstract
Open Collaboration (OC) is a tool being developed to support a variety of electronic collaboration needs. In OC, group and role information is propagated in a peer-to-peer fashion, and peers can share data resources with any peer who is a member of an appropriate group or role. In this paper, we introduce our current work on incorporating a recommendation component in OC. The objective of this component is to help users find the most reliable, valuable, important, and interesting information quickly and easily. Four implemented recommendation algorithms (User-based, Item-based, Singular Value Decomposition based, and Non-negative Matrix Factorization based algorithms) in our recommendation component are discussed.

Abstract
One of the most critical preconditions for the success of innovative services is to be based on sound business models. Especially today, in the networked economy, the concept of business model is not a theoretical tool but a prerequisite for success. Business model is one of the most common factors encountered for, when Internet firms succeed in business. Furthermore, the rapid introduction of innovative applications necessitates the rational design of their business model. However, despite the extensive use, and sometimes misuse, of the business model concept and design methodology, there exist very limited attempts in design methodology in scientific research. In the present paper, we propose a new framework for ‘digital’ business model design, by implementing it in a real - life business case, specifically in business models for location-based services.

Abstract
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can play an important role in facilitating the involvement of citizens and enterprises in the development of legislation and in managing the increasing complexity of the legislative processes. In this direction the main objective of the EU funded project LEX-IS is to improve the legislative process in National Parliaments through enhancing public participation in the preparatory stages (legislation proposal formation and public debate of draft legislation) with the use of state-of-the-art ICT-tools and methodologies. The main goals of the project are: a) development of tools for managing the complex legal frameworks and structures, b) development and use of ontologies and metadata schemas for the semantic annotation of legal elements (e.g. directives, laws, decrees, etc.), c) modelling of the draft formation and public consultation process using standard process management approaches such as BPMN to support direct integration in common workflow management systems and d) provision of tools for the active participation of citizens, businesses and non-governmental organizations in the above stages of the legislation process d) using argumentation support systems and web-based annotation facilities (ontology, semantic web services, Web 2.0, etc.) to the legal drafts. Using the above technologies the project aims to contribute to engaging citizens online, with special emphasis on the younger ones; bridging the growing gap between citizens and the state, represented by National Parliaments; improving the legislation process and its outcomes; and promoting e-Participation awareness.

Abstract
The contemporary network economy is built on powerful fixed and mobile network infrastructures. These infrastructures provide the solid ground for the continuous introduction of innovative both telecommunication services and business application services. Nevertheless, the exploitation and the profitability of these network infrastructures depend heavily on the commercial success of the services running on them. A critical precondition for the success of these services is to be based on sound business models, as business model is one of the most common factors encountered for, when Internet firms succeed in business. Especially today, in the networked economy, the concept of business model is not a theoretical tool but a prerequisite for success. Furthermore, the rapid introduction of innovative applications necessitates the rational design of their business model. However, despite the extensive use, and sometimes misuse, of the business model concept and design methodology, there exist very limited attempts in design methodology in scientific research. In the present paper, we propose a new framework for ‘digital’ business model design.

Abstract
In this paper is presented a methodology we have developed for the evaluation of an asynchronous e-learning service that will be created in the European cultural heritage domain as part of the project ERMIONE (E-Learning Resource Management Service for InterOperability Networks in the European Cultural Heritage Domain) project of the eTEN Program of the European Union. The theoretical foundations of the methodology are the basic constructs and conclusions of i) the traditional education evaluation research, ii) the e-learning evaluation and critical success factors research, iii) the information systems (IS) success research and iv) the technology acceptance models - related research. This methodology evaluates e-learning capabilities and resources (content, electronic support by the instructor, learning community, technical quality, customization capabilities and perceived ease of use), e-learning context (such as previous familiarity of the e-learners with the computers and the e-course subject), e-learning outcomes (extent of accomplishment of educational objectives and use), and the relations between them. It can be used for both formative and summative evaluation of asynchronous e-learning, while with some adaptations it can be used for the evaluation of other types of e-learning and in general of other electronic services as well.

Abstract
Organizations during the last decade tend to form more and more various types of inter-organizational networks in order to produce complex products and services by combining their resources and capabilities. In the public sector two basic types of inter-organizational collaboration networks are gradually formed: Government-to-Government (G2G) collaboration networks and Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). This paper analyses the basic objectives, research directions and methodologies of the ERMIONE (E-Learning Resource Management Service for InterOperability Networks in the European Cultural Heritage Domain) project; the basic objective of this project is to create (up to the level of pilots), study, evaluate and market validate an eRM (e-learning Resource Management) service, which offers an electronic environment that facilitates and supports both G2G collaborations and PPPs in the cultural heritage domain. In particular, it will support the collaborative development, promotion and delivery of composite digital content and e-courses concerning the European cultural heritage, through collaboration among many public and private cultural heritage institutions (e.g. museums, galleries, libraries, archives, etc.), educational institutions (e.g. Universities), commercial promotion companies, ICT companies, etc., from all over Europe. Furthermore, it will offer to learners, teachers and researchers, who are interested in digital content and e-courses concerning the European cultural heritage, an ‘electronic-one-stop-shop’ and an asynchronous e-learning environment. Special emphasis is laid on the description of the multi-stakeholder methodology we have developed for the evaluation of this service, which is based on an extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

Abstract
In this paper is presented an empirical study of the effect of two external environment factors: i) the ‘generalized’ competition the organization faces, which, according to M. Porter’s ‘Five Forces Model’ of competition, consists of the bargaining power of its suppliers, the bargaining power of its buyers, the competitive rivalry from its competitors, the threat of new entrants and the threat of substitute products or services, and ii) the strategy the organization follows for responding to pressures of its external environment, on the business value generated by ICT investment. The study is based on firm-level data from Greek companies, which have been collected through a survey using a structured questionnaire in cooperation with ICAP, one of the largest business information and consulting companies of Greece. Using these data are constructed econometric models of output, based on the microeconomic production theory, and in particular on the Cobb Douglas production function. From these models concerning the above generalized competition dimensions it is concluded that higher level of bargaining power of suppliers results in higher ICT business value. Also concerning strategy it is concluded that organizations following a strategy of frequent introduction of new innovative products and services enjoy higher ICT business value.

Abstract
Despite the high ambitions of the e-government programs, which are in progress in many countries, aiming at the development of highly complex information systems in public administration, the reality is quite different: many failures of information systems (IS) projects, and especially of the largest ones, are reported, which result in waste of huge financial resources, loss of opportunities, disappointment of the public and heavy criticism by the press. If these failures are not drastically reduced, the progress towards e-government, and in general towards the ‘information society’, will be significantly retarded. Appropriate evaluation of these IS projects can highly contribute to the reduction of these failures and to the increase of the benefits from the IS of public sector. However, although extensive theoretical research has been conducted in the area of IS evaluation, which has analyzed its inherent difficulty and complexity and has produced several IS evaluation directions and frameworks, only limited research has been conducted towards their practical application in large and complex ‘real-life’ projects. In the present paper is analyzed the experience gained from the evaluation of a complex inter-organizational G2G collaboration support environment, which has been developed in the ICTE-PAN project of the IST Program of the European Union. We present a user-driven evaluation methodology, which has been developed for this purpose, based on the ISO/IEC 14589 and ISO/IEC 9126 standards. Also we analyze the application of this methodology for the evaluation of the above large inter-organizational IS by the user-partners of this project, its results and also the conclusions drawn from the whole evaluation process.

Abstract
The new network economy is characterized by the continuous introduction of innovative both telecommunication services and business application services, which run on powerful fixed and mobile network infrastructures. The exploitation and the profitability of these network infrastructures depend heavily on the commercial success of the services running on them. One of the most critical preconditions for the success of these services is to be based on sound business models. For this reason, the concept of ‘business model’ has become quite popular among business consultants, managers and entrepreneurs, especially today, in the dawn of the new networked economy. However, despite the extensive use, and sometimes misuse, of the business model concept, only limited scientific research has been conducted in this area. Moreover, there is still some ambiguity concerning the exact meaning of this concept, which results in a diversity of definitions and a confusion in terminology. In the present paper, initially we present a literature review on the definitions, the components and the theoretical foundations of business model. Then we focus on emerging business models for telecommunication and business application services and their success factors. Finally, we review the limited research that has been conducted so far concerning methodologies for designing new business models, we identify its shortcomings and we propose a new framework for ‘digital’ business model design.

Abstract
The contemporary network economy is built on powerful fixed and mobile network infrastructures. These infrastructures provide the solid ground for the continuous and rapid introduction of innovative both telecommunication services and business application servicesOne of the most critical preconditions for the success of these services is to be based on sound business models. Especially today, in the dawn of the networked economy, the concept of business model is not a theoretical tool but a prerequisite for success. Business model is one of the most common factors encountered for, when Internet firms succeed in business. Furthermore, the rapid introduction of innovative applications necessitates the rational design of their business model. However, despite the extensive use, and sometimes misuse, of the business model concept, there is not extensive the scientific research that has been conducted in this area. Moreover, there is still some ambiguity concerning the exact meaning of this concept, which results in a diversity of definitions and a confusion in terminology. In the present paper, initially we present a literature review on the theoretical foundations of business model presenting its definitions- and its components. . Then we focus on the research that has been conducted so far concerning methodologies for designing new business models, we identify its shortcomings and we propose a new framework for ‘digital’ business model design, by implementing it in a real - life business case.

Abstract
The impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) investment on business performance has been a major research subject for long time. Until the mid 1990s there was little empirical evidence of a positive and statistically significant relation between ICT investment and business performance (ICT Productivity Paradox). Subsequent research, conducted mainly in a few highly developed countries, provided some empirical evidence of a statistically significant positive contribution of ICT investment to some measures of business performance, which increases if ICT investment is complemented by ’co-investments’ that create some complementary ‘intangible assets’, such as new work practices, business processes, organizational structures and skills. In this paper is presented the first study of the impact of information systems (IS) investments on business performance in Greece, based on firm-level data collected through a questionnaire-based survey in cooperation with the Federation of Greek Industries. In this study we also examine whether there is complementarity between IS investment and a set of IS management factors. It is concluded that in Greece IS spending by firms as a percentage of their sales revenue is lower than in the highly developed countries. Also, using econometric models based on the Cobb Douglas production function, we conclude that IS investments in Greece make a positive and statistically significant contribution to firm output and labour productivity, but not to the return on assets. Moreover it was found that the average marginal productivities of ICT capital and ICT labour expenses in Greece are higher than in the highly developed countries; also they are much higher than the average marginal productivities of the non-ICT capital and the non-ICT labour expenses respectively. Finally it was found that there is complementarity between IS investment and the examined set of IS management factors with respect to firm output and labour productivity; therefore the combination of IS investment with these IS management factors results in additional increase of firm output and labour productivity beyond the individual effect of IS investment.

Abstract
The development of effective public policies and programs concern-ing the big problems of modern societies is an increasingly complex task. The social problems today are multidimensional and their solution requires close collaboration among various Public Organizations from many regions or even countries. Each individual organization involved possesses pieces of informa-tion, experience, knowledge and competence about the problem. Their values, interests and expectations are often different, or even conflicting, and have to be taken into account. Similar hold for the ‘high level functions’ of the Public Administration, such as decision making towards the development of legisla-tion. This paper presents a web-based system that supports collaborative activi-ties in the above setting. Through a well-structured discourse graph, the system facilitates the wide participation and collaboration of the Public Organizations involved in the solution of social problem and provides a series of knowledge management and argumentative decision making features. The use of the sys-tem is described through a detailed example concerning a debate about state vs. non-state universities, which has recently started in Greece.

Abstract
International trade negotiations among national governments and organizations are usually arduous and complicated. We propose a framework that supports government to government negotiation. With this framework, governments can keep track of previous negotiations us- ing a database of negotiation records in an electronic platform. Moreover, the framework supports searching, sharing and learning past negotiation records as well as the ability to conduct negotiations on a variety of resources, products and services.

Abstract
In this study, Decision Tree algorithms are used with promising results in a crucial and at the same time complicated classification problem concerning differential diagnosis of heart sounds. Decision Tree structures are constructed, using data mining/distillation methods and then are used to classify heart sounds that were recorded from patients that have either Aortic Stenosis (AS) or Mitral Regurgitation (MR). Emphasis is given on the selection of the appropriate features that are adequately independent from the heart sound signal acquisition method. The differentiation capabilities and the classification performance of the fully expanded Decision Tree classifiers and the pruned Decision tree classifiers are studied for this problem. For each constructed Decision Tree classifier the partial classification accuracies for the AS and MR auscultation findings are also estimated.

Abstract
Electronic Government today focuses mainly on offering citizens and enterprises the capability to perform electronically their transactions with the Public Administration and also on the electronic delivery of the currently existing public services over the Internet. However, the huge potential of ICTs has only to a small extent been exploited in the higher level and most critical functions of Public Administration, such as the development, monitoring and evaluation of public policies and programmes, the decision-making for difficult and complex social problems, or for granting licenses and permissions with high social impact, etc. This paper is dealing with the exploitation of the meth-odologies and technologies of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) in these directions. A general functional and technological architecture of a Government to Government (G2G) collaborative environment is de-scribed, for supporting the above high level functions of Public Administration, which has been designed as part of the ICTE-PAN Project. It is based on an ex-tension of the classical Workflow Model, in order to include both ‘Single Per-son Activities’ and ‘Collaborative Activities’, and also on the use of modelling techniques and ontologies, in order to achieve a high level of adaptability to diverse requirements.

Abstract
In this study, Decision Trees Algorithms were used with promising results in various critical problems, concerning heart sound diagnosis. In general this diagnostic problem can be divided in many sub problems, each one dealing either with one morphological characteristic of the heart sound or with difficult to distinguish heart diseases. The sub problems of the discrimination of Aortic Stenosis from Mitral Regurgitation and the discrimination between the second heart sound split, opening snap and third heart sound, are used as case studies. Using signalprocessing methods, we extracted the heart sound feature vector. Relevance analysis was performed using the Uncertainty Coefficient. Then for each heart sound diagnosis sub problem, a Specific Decision Tree (DT) was constructed. Decision Tree pruning was also investigated. Finally, a General Decision Support System Architecture for the Heart Sound Diagnosis problem, is proposed. The partial diagnosis, given by these DT, can be combined using arbitration rules to give the final diagnosis. These rules can be implemented by another DT, or can be based on different methods, algorithms, or even on expert knowledge. All these can lead to an Integrated Decision Support System Architecture for Heart Sound Diagnosis.