Information And Communication Technology Processes Research Articles

Operational Technology resilience in the 2023 draft delegated act on cybersecurity for the power sector—An EU policy process analysis

The EU’s 2020 Cybersecurity Strategy promotes cybersecurity as essential for building a resilient, green, and digital Europe. Cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar are more volatile and thus need digital integration with Industrial Control Systems (ICS) for grid balancing. However, the digitization and the properties of cyberspace provide the ability to coordinate disruptive cyberattacks against power grid infrastructures. Digital weapons may be launched against ICS to start multiple cascading outages with a keystroke, causing large-scale blackouts we have never seen before. To reduce risk, the EU’s Strategy describes three objectives for ICS: Secure-by-design, resilient, and timely patched. In the strategy, the European Commission suggests a ”network code,” i.e. a delegated act for the electric power sector, setting rules for cybersecurity in cross-border electricity flows. The draft delegated act of November 2023 presents security requirements for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Network and Information Systems (NIS). Although ICS systems are used directly to manage electricity flows, ICS is only mentioned in one of the delegated act’s recitals as a subcategory of ICT products. Suppose Information Technology (IT) rather than Operational Technology (OT) is the focus of the delegated act. In that case, policymakers may not fulfill the EU cybersecurity strategy’s ICS objectives, thus failing to improve the resilience of power grid infrastructures and cross-border electricity flows. This study is a policy process analysis, and its contribution is threefold. First, a literature review is conducted to understand the extent to which the delegated act covers OT. Second, a framework condition analysis is applied to understand why the delegated act lacks OT-specific security requirements. Third, the analysis is extended to understand whether OT is sufficiently covered to achieve the EU strategy’s ICS objectives. In conclusion, our analysis shows a strong intention to include OT-specific security in the preparatory work of the delegated act, but that a stronger position of the IT communities forced OT onto the sideline. Further, the study shows weak fulfillment of general secure-by-design principles and security patch management. These results indicate that OT coverage in the delegated act is not in line with the expectations of the EU’s cybersecurity strategy and the delegated act’s early preparatory work. Therefore, we have suggested three measures to increase OT resilience focus in the act: (a) Define the expressions NIS, ICT services, ICT processes, and ICT in general as umbrella terms that include OT, (b) The foreseen minimum and advanced cybersecurity controls should require OT-specific measures, including holistic secure-by-design principles and patch management covering all patching phases, (c) Develop an OT implementation guide for the delegated act. Our work can be used by policymakers to optimize cybersecurity policy processes and by researchers studying socio-technical gaps in the cybersecurity domain.

Demystifying the Role of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in Smart City Applications: Background, Motivation, Recent Advances, and Future Research Directions.

Smart cities provide an efficient infrastructure for the enhancement of the quality of life of the people by aiding in fast urbanization and resource management through sustainable and scalable innovative solutions. The penetration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in smart cities has been a major contributor to keeping up with the agility and pace of their development. In this paper, we have explored Natural Language Processing (NLP) which is one such technical discipline that has great potential in optimizing ICT processes and has so far been kept away from the limelight. Through this study, we have established the various roles that NLP plays in building smart cities after thoroughly analyzing its architecture, background, and scope. Subsequently, we present a detailed description of NLP's recent applications in the domain of smart healthcare, smart business, and industry, smart community, smart media, smart research, and development as well as smart education accompanied by NLP's open challenges at the very end. This work aims to throw light on the potential of NLP as one of the pillars in assisting the technical advancement and realization of smart cities.

Smart City for Sustainable Development: Applied Processes from SUMP to MaaS at European Level

Urban areas constitute one of the main issues of sustainability as defined by the United Nations with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The recent smart city concept represents a way for achieving the urban sustainability goals. The European Commission (EC) bases the smart city concept on three pillars: energy, transport and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The main objective of the paper is to investigate the European smart city process, by focusing on urban mobility and their interconnections with the other two pillars. The methodological approach of territorial planning is used by identifying the plan dimensions and then analyzing the processes at master and sectorial level. The applied processes are verified with a review of the European documents that constitute the rules for defining and implementing the smart city concept. European guidelines indicate the SUMP as the integrated master plan that contributes to reach the convergence among energy, transport and ICT processes. By focusing on people mobility sector, European cities are implementing the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) plan at the sectorial level. This implies the necessity to enhance the knowledge of mobility phenomenon, in relation to emerging ICT and their impact on energy consumptions. The contribution of the work is given by the identification of a planning and implementation path focused on smart city, in urban areas, which connects the general goals of Agenda 2030 with the daily implications for citizens and therefore with the specific results. The paper results are useful: from one side, for researchers that work on advancements of theories, and from another side, for planners and decision makers to explore the European attempts towards urban sustainability and the real implementations on urban mobility systems.

Data Protection and Cybersecurity Certification Activities and Schemes in the Energy Sector

Cybersecurity concerns have been at the forefront of regulatory reform in the European Union (EU) recently. One of the outcomes of these reforms is the introduction of certification schemes for information and communication technology (ICT) products, services and processes, as well as for data processing operations concerning personal data. These schemes aim to provide an avenue for consumers to assess the compliance posture of organisations concerning the privacy and security of ICT products, services and processes. They also present manufacturers, providers and data controllers with the opportunity to demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements through a verifiable third-party assessment. As these certification schemes are being developed, various sectors, including the electrical power and energy sector, will need to access the impact on their operations and plan towards successful implementation. Relying on a doctrinal method, this paper identifies relevant EU legal instruments on data protection and cybersecurity certification and their interpretation in order to examine their potential impact when applying certification schemes within the Electrical Power and Energy System (EPES) domain. The result suggests that the EPES domain employs different technologies and services from diverse areas, which can result in the application of several certification schemes within its environment, including horizontal, technological and sector-specific schemes. This has the potential for creating a complex constellation of implementation models and would require careful design to avoid proliferation and disincentivising of stakeholders.

Information & Communication Technology(ICT) Adoption in Nigerian Ports Terminal Operations

Most ports around the globe have adopted ICT in a bid to improve their operational performance and remain competitive in the industry. However, ports in developing economies still grapple with challenges associated with manual terminal operation. This paper evaluated the level of application and integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and factors limiting their use in terminal operations in Nigerian seaports. The data for the study were obtained from copies of structured Likert scaled questionnaire administered to a random sample of terminal operators, stevedores, shipping companies’ agents, Customs licensed Clearing and Forwarding agents (C&F) operating in Apapa and Tincan Island ports in Nigeria. Specifically, opinion of these respondents was sought on extent of ICT application, integration and perceived constraints to ICT use in port terminal operations. Based on our findings using statistical model tests of proportion, the respondents stated that significant level of ICT procedures and processes have been adopted in port terminal operations. In terms of ICT applications, we found that electronic data and communication exchange applications were available in the terminals for use by the respondents. There are also in place ICT applications for warehouses and storage facilities management and e-payment systems. However, significant constraining factors were found to be: low ICT investment budgetary allocation, lack of e-skilled manpower and poor equipment maintenance culture. Other limiting factors were lack of integrated ICT facilities operated by other port stakeholders and absence of Port Community Systems network (PCS) linking all other relevant interests connected to terminal operations. Policy implications of our findings were discussed.

Mitigating the cost impact of ICT system failures in tax agencies: lessons from Uganda

Tax administrations that have adopted information and communication technology (ICT) face the challenge of system failures. Exhaustive literature exists on the causes and nature of such downtime or failures. This study investigated the cost of downtime in a tax administration, taking the case of the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) as a case study, and reviewing and analysing system performance reports and interviews with staff on downtime. The study found that while automation enabled tax compliance, it was vulnerable to system downtime, which affected process efficiencies, reduced revenue yield, lowered staff productivity and raised ICT maintenance costs. Existing systems must therefore be continuously monitored with clear system performance levels in light of any future ICT hiccups. The study concluded by recommending alternative manual processes when ICT processes suffer downtime while prioritising compliance support systems uptime ( for example, payment systems) to other systems during downtime. Overall, the tax administrations must have a business continuity strategy with tested downtime safeguards.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Governance Processes: A Case Study

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Governance is increasingly necessary and present in organizations aiming to improve the maturity of their ICT processes. This paper presents an analysis of the ICT Governance processes of a Brazilian Federal Public Administration agency. To assess the maturity of the ICT Governance processes, we surveyed and diagnosed the processes performed by the agency and organized a series of meetings/discussions to assist in the improvement and modeling of the processes related to the ICT Contract Planning process. As a result, we proposed improvements and identified the maturity level of the existing ICT processes, also assessing the awareness of employees of the General Coordination of Information Technology regarding these processes. Our findings reveal that the agency still needs to implement the following processes: (1) ICT People Management; (2) Business Process Modeling (Automated/to Automate); (3) Change Management; (4) Execution Monitoring of the ICT Projects and Services Portfolio; and (5) ICT Service Continuity Management. We also identified several artifacts that need to be implemented by the agency in different processes and collected survey participants’ suggestions about new processes to improve the maturity in ICT Governance.

Improving the ‘manager-clinician’ collaboration for effective healthcare ICT and telemedicine adoption processes – a cohered emergent perspective

ABSTRACT Existing research shows that the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for healthcare development in developing countries is largely dominated by donor and international agencies, but the actual organizational-level decisions are often driven by corporate healthcare managers. The consequences of the strategic-driven healthcare ICT adoption practices are that they fail to match clinician users’ requirements and cause them to disuse ICTs for clinical practices and healthcare development. Prior attempts to bring local and globally-distributed actors together to implement ICTs innovatively for healthcare development have emphasized less on synthesizing the diverse information system approaches that inform our understanding of how to narrow the ‘manager-clinician’ tensions in ICT adoption for development in emergent situations. To fill this gap, this article explains the process of shifting healthcare ICT adoption from top-down planning to collective user involvement to enhance clinicians’ acceptance of ICTs for clinical practices and development in a Ghanaian teaching hospital, using the cohered emergent transformation model. Action research was used to engage the hospital’s corporate managers, clinician managers and clinicians, and elicit their views and experiences of the hospital’s ICT adoption for healthcare delivery improvement. Together with observations and document analysis, the data was analyzed to understand the hospital’s information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) adoption issues and identify ways of managing them. The outcomes provide alternative theoretical and practical ways of adopting healthcare technology systems that shift the excessive use of managers’ powers in ICT adoption towards clinicians’ involvement, to enable technology acceptance for clinical practices and healthcare development.

Interfacing Power System and ICT Simulators: Challenges, State-of-the-Art, and Case Studies

With the transition toward a smart grid, the power system has become strongly intertwined with the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure. The interdependency of both domains requires a combined analysis of physical and ICT processes, but simulating these together is a major challenge due to the fundamentally different modeling and simulation concepts. After outlining these challenges, such as time synchronization and event handling, this paper presents an overview of state-of-the-art solutions to interface power system and ICT simulators. Due to their prominence in recent research, a special focus is set on co-simulation approaches and their challenges and potentials. Further, two case studies analyzing the impact of ICT on applications in power system operation illustrate the necessity of a holistic approach and show the capabilities of state-of-the-art co-simulation platforms.

Implementing Information and Communication Technology to Support Community Aged Care Service Integration: Lessons from an Australian Aged Care Provider

Introduction:There is limited evidence of the benefits of information and communication technology (ICT) to support integrated aged care services.Objectives:We undertook a case study to describe carelink+, a centralised client service management ICT system implemented by a large aged and community care service provider, Uniting. We sought to explicate the care-related information exchange processes associated with carelink+ and identify lessons for organisations attempting to use ICT to support service integration.Methods:Our case study included seventeen interviews and eleven observation sessions with a purposive sample of staff within the organisation. Inductive analysis was used to develop a model of ICT-supported information exchange.Results:Management staff described the integrated care model designed to underpin carelink+. Frontline staff described complex information exchange processes supporting coordination of client services. Mismatches between the data quality and the functions carelink+ was designed to support necessitated the evolution of new work processes associated with the system.Conclusions:There is value in explicitly modelling the work processes that emerge as a consequence of ICT. Continuous evaluation of the match between ICT and work processes will help aged care organisations to achieve higher levels of ICT maturity that support their efforts to provide integrated care to clients.

A Governança de Tic no Processo de Modernização das Serventias Extrajudiciais do Brasil

As serventias extrajudiciais do Brasil, responsáveis pelos serviços públicos delegados, incluindo os notariais e de registro, estão envolvidos em um processo coletivo de modernização, de escopo nacional, cujos principais objetivos incluem a prestação dos seus serviços de forma digital ou eletrônica. O processo está fortemente alicerçado na utilização de tecnologias da informação e comunicação (TIC) e este artigo, portanto, busca compreender e avaliar a gestão e governança de TIC do processo de modernização em curso. Para isso, foi realizada uma pesquisa semiestruturada, baseada nos frameworks de melhores práticas de governança e gestão de TIC ITIL e COBIT, junto às entidades representativas das serventias extrajudiciais envolvidas no processo de modernização. Dentre os principais resultados encontrados pode-se citar o baixo nível de maturidade da gestão de TIC envolvida no processo e a identificação de processos chave de TIC, essenciais ao sucesso do processo de modernização. Palavras-chave: E-gov; Serviços públicos delegados; Serventias extrajudiciais; Governança de TIC; Serviços compartilhados; Assimetria jurídica.

Why was Japan left behind in the ICT revolution?

In this paper, we investigate why information and communication technology (ICT) investment in Japan has stagnated since the 1990s. Given that a notable characteristic of Japan’s economy is that small as well as older firms play a much greater role than in other economies, particularly the United States, our analysis mainly focuses on firms’ size and age. As a first step of our investigation, using firm-level data, we examine whether larger and/or younger firms tend to have a higher ICT intensity. We find that larger firms indeed have a higher ICT intensity. In the case of firm age, there was no simple linear relationship between firm age and ICT intensity. As a next step, we estimate a Cobb–Douglas type production function and test whether the ICT input coefficient differs across different firm-size groups and firm-age groups. We find that larger firms and younger firms tend to have a higher ICT input coefficient. Another factor that may be responsible for differences in ICT intensity by firm size and firm age is constraints on ICT input. To check whether this is the case, we calculate the marginal product of ICT input by firm-size group and firm-age group using the production function estimates. We find that smaller firms and younger firms tend to have a higher marginal product of ICT input. These findings suggest that smaller firms and younger firms face constraints that prevent them from increasing ICT input.We also examine impediments to the full use of ICT by Japanese firms, based on our analysis as well as preceding studies. We find that to enhance ICT input, the government should develop the market for business process outsourcing, which includes outsourcing of ICT processes, and resolve the scarcity of ICT experts, by supporting the training of ICT experts at universities and making it easier for foreign ICT experts to work in Japan.

Backing environmental innovations through information technology adoption. Empirical analyses of innovation-related complementarity in firms

The paper tests empirically whether various types of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) adoption and other innovation practices (techno-organisational change and training courses) are complementary inputs with respect to the adoption of specific environmental innovations (EI). The analysis is based on original survey data for a large industrial Italian region (Emilia-Romagna), which offer various views on ICT and EI relationships. This survey contains information on the adoption of environmental innovations and some detailed information on ICT issues and other technological-organisational processes. Our main findings suggest that, overall, complementarity does not seem to characterize the relationship between ICT and other innova-tion processes as a force behind environmental innovation, but some important exceptions emerge. Complementarities exists, for instance, between technological innovation and both adoption of ICT management systems and ICT for cooperation with clients. Interestingly, restricting the analysis to a sub-sample of more polluting firm, both complementarity and substitutability emerge more evidently.

Razvoj skladišta podataka u pomorskom prometu

This paper analyzes the functioning and development of ICT (information and communication technology) processes in the Croatian maritime industry, mainly the Ministry of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure and Harbourmaster offices. Activities related to vessel arrivals and departures are closely examined, from hard copy to the development of relational database, with prospects of evolving to data warehouse. The necessity and importance of monitoring the arrival and departure of ships is emphasized through a detailed description of the related application (“DOB – Dolazak i Odlazak Broda”), which provides just the rudimentary functionalities of a data warehouse. The future of data warehousing in the field of maritime traffic and the analysis of a Single Window concept will be the topic of authors’ future research.

Integration of Information and Communication Technology in Enhancing Teaching and Learning

The incorporation of technology into teaching and research is one of the most important challenges for education today. It is time to move beyond the walls of our classrooms to join forces with other institutions and societies to revitalize education. The present paper focuses on the use of technology in teaching-learning process that will greatly contribute to meet student needs for learning anywhere, anytime. Integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into teaching and learning process is a growing field which has variety of definitions according to different points of view. A very common view asserts that the application of ICT processes should be presented in an integrated way as well as concrete model need to be developed for the teachers in order for the integration process to improve students’ learning. Based on the premise that “The integration process should strengthen learning of students”, there is a need to present an integrated point of view in the application of these processes and to develop some concrete examples for teachers. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to develop a model assessing the ICT integration process and helping to improve students’ learning.

Factores de éxito en la implementación de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en los sistemas de salud. El factor humano

In this work some of the fundamentals of change management techniques to ensure the introduction of information and communication technologies in health organizations are analized. Managing change is aimed at redirecting the impact of any transformation process in the organizations towards a positive attitude and enthusiasm of those involved. That is, this paper analyzes the most important of all factors that must be managed in any project for change: the human factor. If a proper change management is a critical success factor in implementing new processes and systems of information and communication technologies (ICT) in an organization, when we faced with the introduction of new processes and interoperability systems between different organizations, cooperation, leadership and motivation of individuals focused on a common goal is absolutely imperative. This is the case of the new ICT systems being introduced in the Catalan Health System. Indeed, by definition of the model itself, in Catalonia, continuity of care, increased efficiency and effectiveness and quality improvement of projects as the clinical history shared, electronic prescriptions, or scanning medical imaging, require necessarily the definition of processes in which a large number of different health organizations, different in their law status, and whose own interests should converge towards the ICT systems and processes of health care so that the contribution of all parties can make a whole. The success of these projects, a reality nowadays, is due largely to the management of the human factor conducted continuously since its inception.