Formal Performance Evaluation Research Articles

Verifiable Multikeyword Search Encryption Scheme With Anonymous Key Generation for Medical Internet of Things

The development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has given birth to new applications and services. Accordingly, because the IoT application system collects a large amount of data containing sensitive information, there are also new challenges in data security and privacy preservation. To locate the medical IoT (mIoT), this article proposes a multikeyword searchable encryption scheme based on attributes supporting the data privacy preservation and integrity verification of the electronic health files stored on the IoT cloud platform on the basis of ensuring the application business functions of mIoT: 1) to ensure data confidentiality and fine-grained search authorization, the attribute-based encryption mechanism is introduced to encrypt the symmetric key. Moreover, anonymous key generation tampers semitrusted center authority’s (CA) decryption of all ciphertexts of users and access policy is hidden to prevent access policy from leaking; 2) the convergence key is adopted to encrypt electronic health records (EHRs), thereby providing double verification of the correctness of the search results and partial decryption results; 3) a time-division mechanism is also established to provide the access validity of shared EHRs; and 4) fixed length ciphertext and outsourcing decryption mechanisms are used to reduce the calculation on the user side, in which the majority of the decryption calculations are done by the cloud server. Formal proofs and performance evaluation show that the proposed scheme can achieve data security, keyword security, integrity verification, hidden policy, and collusion resistance, and has high computational efficiency and search efficiency.

QShield: Protecting Outsourced Cloud Data Queries With Multi-User Access Control Based on SGX

Due to the concern on cloud security, digital encryption is applied before outsourcing data to the cloud for utilization. This introduces a challenge about how to efficiently perform queries over ciphertexts. Crypto-based solutions currently suffer from limited operation support, high computational complexity, weak generality, and poor verifiability. An alternative method that utilizes hardware-assisted Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), i.e., Intel SGX, has emerged to offer high computational efficiency, generality and flexibility. However, SGX-based solutions lack support on multi-user query control and suffer from security compromises caused by untrustworthy TEE function invocation, e.g., key revocation failure, incorrect query results, and sensitive information leakage. In this article, we leverage SGX and propose a secure and efficient SQL-style query framework named QShield. Notably, we propose a novel lightweight secret sharing scheme in QShield to enable multi-user query control; it effectively circumvents key revocation and avoids cumbersome remote attestation for authentication. We further embed a trust-proof mechanism into QShield to guarantee the trustworthiness of TEE function invocation; it ensures the correctness of query results and alleviates side-channel attacks. Through formal security analysis, proof-of-concept implementation and performance evaluation, we show that QShield can securely query over outsourced data with high efficiency and scalable multi-user support.

Toward Formal Safety and Performance Evaluation of GNSS-based Railway Localisation Function

European Train Control System (ETCS) is the signalling and control component of the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS). This system is essential to guarantee the safe and interoperable operation of trains. To enhance the competitiveness of rail transport services, the introduction of innovative solutions are under study in view of the evolution of ETCS. In this context, the adoption of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for train localization is investigated as a technology which can ensure an undeniable added value for railways. Yet, a main challenge is to provide safety evidence permitting the certification of these new systems. In particular, the classical safety analysis approaches show limitations in dealing with the complexity of such systems. Therefore, more adapted safety and performance analysis techniques have to be elaborated. In this paper, a model-based approach, adapted for the evaluation of GNSS-based localisation systems in railway, is presented. Considering the safety-critical aspect of the localisation function in railways, formal methods which are based on rigorous mathematical foundations are adopted in the present work. Concretely, a set of formal models are elaborated to ensure a modular representation of trains dynamics in the context of GNSS-based localization. Namely, probabilistic timed automata formalisms are adopted to this aim. Such notations allow for considering stochastic and dynamic aspects, so as to reflect reality in a trustworthy way. The safety and performance properties to be checked can then be formulated by means of temporal logics. Finally, the analysis of such features can be achieved by means of model-checking and simulation techniques. This evaluation phase yields both qualitative and quantitative results and allows for assessing the impact of various parameters and functional choices on both safety and performance. UPPAAL-SMC engine was used to set the tooling chain of our approach, and an illustration considering specific operational test cases is provided.

Philippine Performance Evaluation and Assessment Scheme (PPEAS): Experiences in Newborn Screening System Quality Improvement.

Newborn Bloodspot Screening (NBS) has existed for over 60 years, having been initiated by Guthrie in the U.S. In the Philippines, NBS was introduced in 1996 and later was supported by legislation. The NBS program now includes 29 conditions, covering 91.6% of the newborn population in 2019. Program growth and expansion necessitated development of a formal performance evaluation and assessment scheme (PEAS) for monitoring performance and for continuously improving quality. This study’s objective was to present the development, implementation, and results to date of the Philippine Performance PEAS (PPEAS). Using the comprehensive listing of laboratory and non-laboratory elements in the model PEAS system in the U.S., PPEAS tools were developed for critical Philippine NBS system components: regional Department of Health (national health agency, Philippines) (DOH) offices (CHDs), NBS laboratories (NSCs), NBS specimen submitters (NSFs), and long-term case management centers (NBSCCs). Data generated from the various PPEAS have been periodically reviewed and analyzed for NBS system impact. PPEAS were developed to facilitate quality improvement at various levels of the Philippine NBS system. PPEAS identified successes, gaps, and challenges to be addressed by NSCs, NSFs, CHDs, and NBSCCs with the assistance of the Newborn Screening Reference Center and the Department of Health.

Optimising harvest strategies over multiple objectives and stakeholder preferences

Natural resource management has long recognised that the multi-objective nature of management is important, but has struggled to operationalise this into quantitative, measurable objectives for functional use in management. Operationalising broader ecological and social objectives has been particularly problematic. In fisheries management, the focus has mainly been on target species sustainability and, in the past few decades, on profitability. However, multi-objective management is now essential as fisheries have become recognised as complex social-ecological-systems.Policy and legislation demand a move towards quantitative approaches for reconciling multiple objectives and operationalising these within harvest strategies. We present a quantitative, non-commensurable-unit approach, via a multi-indicator value function with explicit objective preference weights. We use a simulation to set Total Allowable Catches (TACs) for three main species groups in a reef line fishery in Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Our method enables stakeholders to consider a richer range of tradeoffs than is possible with bio-economic models. Moreover, it allows the formal evaluation of performance across alternative stakeholder group preferences, providing an impartial way to obtain an overall optimum TAC. The simulation requires extensive fishery data and requires the performance indicators associated with each objective to be quantitatively and defensibly defined. Thus, our approach provides a pathway forward that forces managers and stakeholders to confront the associated data requirements.

Document Review: Journal Articles, Performance Evaluations, and Organizational Citizenship Terminology

The purpose of conducting the document analysis was to visually compare various performance review documents with topical literature noting the exclusion of language that identifies and measures organizational citizenship behaviors among employees informal performance evaluation processes. A document analysis consisted of reviewing 56 publicly accessible, recent, and random performance review documents and 30 peer-reviewed journal articles identifying terms related to organizational citizenship behaviors. The expectation was to support the argument that most publicly accessible organizational performance evaluation documents exclude any significant terms related to organizational citizenship behaviors exhibited by employees. Findings from the document review supported the research inquiry of exclusion of terms listed in historical literature generally related to organizational citizenship behaviors in current performance evaluations. The inclusion of terms related to organizational citizenship behaviors in literature was extremely high. Emerson’s social exchange theory provided the theoretical foundation for the research. Podsakoff’s organizational citizenship behavior research was the principal impetus for comparison of performance evaluations and current literature, focusing on related terms for organizational citizenship behaviors in the workplace. Implications are that the belief and feeling of employee value, as based on formal performance evaluations, requires organizational leaders to provide a document worthy of measuring all aspects of expected and unexpected work behaviors. This paper addresses a need for organizational leaders to revise formal performance evaluation documents to ensure altruistically and above and beyond citizenship behavior terms from the literature are also part of the reward and recognition process. Changes in the formal performance evaluation process are necessary for future organizational success. Keywords: Altruism; Organizational Citizenship Behaviors; Performance Evaluations; Recognition and Rewards; Social Exchange Theory.

Examining performance change and its drivers in Irish ports 2000-2016

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine performance change in the Irish state-owned port sector over the 2000-2016 period using a case study approach. Design/methodology/approach For analysis, qualitative sources are used to construct an explanatory account for the quantitative measures of productivity, profitability and traffic shift-share change across the major ports within the system. Findings The results show that overall change in performance largely follows that of the macro-economic performance of the region, characterised by pre-recession growth, decline during the recession and post-recession recovery. Across the ports, however, there was a notable divergence in performance post-recession. Identified factors affecting performance change across the period include demand-side structural change, labour rationalisation and degree of private sector participation. Originality/value This study addresses a gap in the formal evaluation of port performance in Ireland. The study further demonstrates the potential of in-depth case study analysis for uncovering insights into the drivers of performance across a number of dimensions, thus allowing for the contextualisation of results. The study of a small number of cases enables the use of rich qualitative sources to create strong narratives, which combined with quantitative measures of performance, can lead to new insights.

Accompanying organizational innovation by research: The case for performance evaluation of Italian school principals

In 2015, the Italian parliament approved the law no. 107, named “La Buona Scuola” (“The Good School”), in order to boost the quality of organizational processes in schools. Among these, one of the most innovative was introducing a performance evaluation procedure for the nearly 7000 school principals of Italian public schools, from primary to college.From 2000 on, the legal status of schools principals in the public system have been set to the managerial level. However, no formal performance evaluation had been really performed before. In 2016, the INVALSI (the governmental agency for the evaluation of the national education system - http://www.invalsi.it/invalsi/index.php) was instructed to formulate a project aimed to: i) translate into concrete organizational procedures the goals dictated by the law; ii) train the evaluation teams needed; iii) monitor by an appropriate research design the outcomes of the new performance evaluation.The paper describes and discusses the training programme for assessors, the research design and some preliminary results.

Context-aware negotiation, reputation and priority traffic light management protocols for VANET-based smart cities

The traditional transportation system is based on a fixed-timed strategy to control the traffic congestion on urban roads. However, the increase of vehicle density in a smart city implies the variation and the conflict on the demand pattern of the drivers. The smart city development requires to create an efficient control plan for an intelligent traffic management system. In this paper, we aim to reduce the congestion at signalized intersections, and satisfy the needs of drivers according to their degree of displacement urgency. We use two optimization methods, namely the synchronization and the genetic algorithm ($$\hbox {GA}$$), where we develop three scheduling protocols. The first is the intelligent context-aware negotiation protocol ($$\hbox {ICANP}$$). This protocol allows the negotiating vehicles to cross the intersection. It enables each traffic light at the signalized intersection to negotiate the green time assigned to its phase. $$\hbox {ICANP}$$ uses $$\hbox {GA}$$ to optimize the crossing time in order to minimize the total waiting time of negotiating vehicles. Moreover, we introduce a negotiation protocol based on reputation, which minimises the congestion effect from incoming dishonest drivers. Finally, we propose an intelligent context-aware priority protocol ($$\hbox {ICAPP}$$), that considers the existence of priority vehicles. Upon arrival of at least one priority vehicle at the signalized intersection, $$\hbox {ICAPP}$$ interrupts the green time of negotiating vehicles. A series of simulation showed that the proposed protocols reduce the total waiting time and the emissions of $$\hbox {CO}_{2}$$ of vehicles at signalized intersection, in comparison with circular, $$\hbox {ITLC}$$ and $$\hbox {CATLS}$$ scheduling algorithms. Furthermore, formal complexity analysis and performance evaluation show the effectivity of our protocols.

Restructuring Process Analysis of the Organization of Regional Devices in Dharmasraya District

Government Regulation No. 18 of 2016 has explained that the organizational restructuring process of regional apparatus is a process that has gone through the stages and roles that apply. Then, regional readiness in conducting institutional arrangements, so that the downsizing and fattening of the organization has an impact on the renewal of the organizational structure and renewal of field affairs which ultimately the organization can increase/decrease. The object of the research used was organizational restructuring in Dharmasraya Regency. This study uses the theory of Robbins (1994) which describes the related work, departmentalization, chain of command, range of control, centralization and decentralization and formalization. To find out the factors that influence organizational restructuring, researchers use indicators of formal rule approaches, performance evaluations, political processes, and human resources and apparatus. This study uses descriptive qualitative methods. Data collection techniques are carried out by direct interviews, indirect interviews and interpretation analysis of document documentation, reports, and other supporting documents. The results of this study are that the restructuring process of regional apparatus organizations in the Dharmasraya Regency is still largely supported by financial and budgetary factors, human resource factors or regional government apparatus, legislation factors, and political factors. In this study it can be concluded that the Dharmasraya District Government is still weak in the level of delegation of authority, the organization is still very poor in structure, and fattening is too large. Therefore, the factors that greatly influence the process of restructuring the regional apparatus organization in the Dharmasraya District Government are political interests and their implementation is political in nature.

Supervision during social work education and training in Francophone West Africa: Conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence from Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire

ABSTRACTThis article presents research exploring the conceptualization and practice of supervision during social worker training in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, Francophone West African countries whose social work education frameworks and processes are nearly absent in the academic literature. Drawing upon discursive analyses of training curricula as well as interviews and group discussions undertaken in 2014 with professors, administrators, and students, this study notes the centrality of fieldwork to training and heavy reliance upon faculty–field liaisons in both countries. Conceptually, supervision policy in these contexts emphasizes compliance: systematized visits by institute administrators to fieldwork sites (in Burkina Faso), regimented simulation exercises, and formal performance evaluations to gauge student progress. In practice, however, respondents were likely to highlight the importance of modelling and coaching, indicating the hybridization of ‘harder’ regulatory supervision with ‘softer’ mentoring approaches. This study contributes to global learning about the role of supervision in social work training by analyzing its theory and practice in two understudied countries, highlighting the emergence of new norms of practice within outmoded regulatory frameworks. The research shines light upon the creative ways that social work administrators are improving supervision of social work students’ fieldwork in low-income countries with limited public resources.

Global robustness for max-plus linear systems

ABSTRACTRobustness analysis is a fundamental problem in the area of formal method, systems theory and performance evaluation. This paper investigates the global robustness of max-plus linear systems, which requires all state variables are entirely unaffected by the bounded parameter perturbations. The variable element is introduced to describe the global robustness. The relationship between solvable entries and solutions of systems of max-plus linear equations is further studied to find the variable elements of max-plus linear systems. It is pointed out that any non-solvable entry is a variable element. At the same time, the global robustness is used to analyse the stability of gene regulatory networks in biology systems and the time invariance of production processes in flexible manufacturing systems. Some numerical examples are given to illustrate the results.

National and Organizational Culture, Performance Evaluation and Trust: Evidence from Multinational Company Subsidiary in Indonesia

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of national and organizational culture on the relationship between accounting and trust in a subsidiary of a Western Multi-National Company (MNC) in Indonesia. This study use a qualitative field study of one French MNC subsidiary and interview four expatriate directors, nine Indonesian managers and 10 Indonesian employees. Key themes were identified with the assistance of NVivo software. In this study, accounting, through formal performance evaluation, contributes to trust building between supervisors and their subordinates. Formal performance evaluation through transparent and objective evaluation increases trust in the supervisor. On the other hand, informal performance evaluation tends to decrease trustful behaviour due to secrecy in the evaluation process. It appears that Indonesian national culture does influence organizational culture preference in the local staff. Individuals share national culture as a result of values developed from family, religion, education, and experience.DOI: 10.15408/sjie.v6i2.4733

An efficient improvement remote user mutual authentication and session key agreement scheme for E-health care systems

The E-health care systems allow patients to gain the health monitoring facility and access medical services remotely. A secure mechanism for mutual authentication and session key agreement is the most important requirements for E-Health Care Systems. Recently, Amin et al.’s proposed a mutual authentication and session key agreement protocol and claimed that their scheme is secure against all possible attacks. In this paper, we show that not only their scheme is vulnerable to privileged-insider attack, replay attack, session key disclosure attack, but also does not provide patient untraceability and backward secrecy. In order to withstand the mentioned security weaknesses, we propose an efficient remote mutual authentication scheme for the systems which are using ECC and Fuzzy Extractor. The proposed scheme not only resists against different security attacks, but it also provides an efficient registration, login, mutual authentication, session key agreement, and password and biometric update phases. During the experimentation, it has been observed that the proposed scheme is secure against various known attacks. Beside, our scheme is robust against privileged-insider attack that it rarely checked in security analysis. The informal analysis will ensure that our scheme provides well security protection against the different security attacks. Furthermore, we analyzed the security of the scheme using AVISPA software and Random Oracle Model. The formal analysis results and performance evaluation vouch that our scheme is also secure and efficient in computation and communication cost.

Perspectives from the Bar: Attorney Attitudes on the Implementation of a Federal Judicial Evaluation Program

The use of judicial performance evaluation is becoming more prevalent in the U.S. and in foreign jurisdictions. While such evaluations are indeed growing in prevalence, the federal judiciary has been largely resistant to such a program. The current study, through a survey of attorneys who have appeared before an Article III federal judge within the last three years, seeks to examine attitudes towards the implementation of a formal federal judicial performance evaluation program. Overall results indicate mixed attitudes towards implementing a federal performance evaluation program. Specific results for those for or against an evaluation program are discussed in detail.

From sociability to creditability for academics

Social networking for academic exchanges, such as through sites like Researchgate.net, is gaining popularity among academics. This site offers many metrics (e.g. RG score and RG impact points) which have the potential to become universal research performance metrics. This paper presents an empirical survey of the top 150 researchers’ grants and their RG scores among 126 colleges of management in Taiwan. Our results show a strong correlation between the research grants and RG scores if the analysis is based on the college as a whole. However, the relationship becomes insignificant for individual researchers. In addition, colleges with the AACSB accreditation outperform AACSB member schools and non-member schools in terms of their research grants and sharing research outputs on ResearchGate. The authors conclude that metrics used on ResearchGate have the potential to become formal research performance evaluation tools. However, this time has not come yet, at least based on the experience of Taiwan.

Formal performance evaluation of the Map/Reduce framework within cloud computing

The recent appearance, evolution and massive expansion of social media-based technologies, in conjunction with what currently is known as Internet of Things, results in a vertiginous data production. One of the main contributions to address this matter has been the Hadoop framework (which implements the Map/Reduce paradigm), especially when used in conjunction with Cloud computing environments. In this paper, a comprehensive and rigourous study of the Map/Reduce framework using formal methods is presented. Specifically, the Timed Process Algebra BTC is used, and the resulting formal model is evaluated with a real social media data Hadoop-based application. Moreover, the formal model is validated by carrying out several experiments on a real private Cloud environment. Finally, the formal model outcomes are harnessed to determine the best performance---cost agreement in a real scenario. Results show that the proposed model enables to determine in advance both the performance of a Hadoop-based application within Cloud environments and the best performance---cost agreement.

PPDM: A Privacy-Preserving Protocol for Cloud-Assisted e-Healthcare Systems

E-healthcare systems have been increasingly facilitating health condition monitoring, disease modeling and early intervention, and evidence-based medical treatment by medical text mining and image feature extraction. Owing to the resource constraint of wearable mobile devices, it is required to outsource the frequently collected personal health information (PHI) into the cloud. Unfortunately, delegating both storage and computation to the untrusted entity would bring a series of security and privacy issues. The existing work mainly focused on fine-grained privacy-preserving static medical text access and analysis, which can hardly afford the dynamic health condition fluctuation and medical image analysis. In this paper, a secure and efficient privacy-preserving dynamic medical text mining and image feature extraction scheme PPDM in cloud-assisted e-healthcare systems is proposed. Firstly, an efficient privacy-preserving fully homomorphic data aggregation is proposed, which serves the basis for our proposed PPDM. Then, an outsourced disease modeling and early intervention is achieved, respectively by devising an efficient privacy-preserving function correlation matching PPDM1 from dynamic medical text mining and designing a privacy-preserving medical image feature extraction PPDM2. Finally, the formal security proof and extensive performance evaluation demonstrate our proposed PPDM achieves a higher security level (i.e., information-theoretic security for input privacy and adaptive chosen ciphertext attack (CCA2) security for output privacy) in the honest but curious model with optimized efficiency advantage over the state-of-the-art in terms of both computational and communication overhead.

Efficient privacy‐preserving temporal and spacial data aggregation for smart grid communications

SummarySmart grid is ever‐increasingly adopted by nations and governments for its grand development with the underlying technologies of power management and information communications. The real‐time electricity usage can be monitored and aggregated by the smart meters deployed in the household for further analysis, control, and pricing. However, the existing solutions mainly depend on Paillier's additive homomorphic encryptions taking high computational complexity, and the aggregation mainly focused on the time series data generated by one single user. In this paper, we propose an efficient privacy‐preserving temporal and spacial data aggregation from one‐way functions in smart grid communications, which also allows spacial data aggregation from multiple users. The proposed construction can guarantee the unconditional security of users' metering power data privacy from the community gateway and the operation center, and the Adaptive Chosen Ciphertext Attack (CCA2) security of the aggregation result that can only be accessed by the authorized operating center. Both temporal and spacial data aggregation only require computing the underlying one‐way function once. The formal security proof and performance evaluations demonstrate the efficiency and the practicability of our scheme. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evaluating hospital performance based on excess cause-specific incidence.

Formal evaluation of hospital performance in specific types of care is becoming an indispensable tool for quality assurance in the health care system. When the prime concern lies in reducing the risk of a cause-specific event, we propose to evaluate performance in terms of an average excess cumulative incidence, referring to the center's observed patient mix. Its intuitive interpretation helps give meaning to the evaluation results and facilitates the determination of important benchmarks for hospital performance. We apply it to the evaluation of cerebrovascular deaths after stroke in Swedish stroke centers, using data from Riksstroke, the Swedish stroke registry. © 2015 The Authors. Statistics in Medicine Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.