The Paradigm Shift in EIS
Instructor
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Jan Dietz
Computer Science, Delft University of Technology
Netherlands
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Brief Bio
Jan Dietz is emeritus professor at Delft University of Technology, and visiting professor at the University of Lisbon and the Czech Technical University in Prague. He has always combined academic work with applying research outcomes in practice. He has supervised over 300 M.Sc.’s and 16 Ph.D.’s and he has published over 250 scientific and professional papers as well as several books. Jan Dietz is the spiritual father of DEMO (Design & Engineering Methodology for Organisations), founder of the Enterprise Engineering Institute (www.ee-institute.com), and founder of the Ciao! Enterprise Engineering Network (www.ciaonetwork.org). He is founding editor of The Enterprise Engineering Series, published by Springer. For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Dietz
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Abstract
In the early 16th century, a major paradigm shift took place in astronomy. The ancient, geocentric view on the universe, of Ptolemy and others, had become untenable in the light of the increasing precision of astronomic observations. The heliocentric view of Copernicus solved all of these problems and was therefore embraced by scientists as the new paradigm. But there was a huge societal resistance, particularly by the Catholic Church. Many vested interests had to be put aside first.
A similar paradigm shift is currently taking place in the field of Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). There has been another one around in the 70s. Because of the high failure rate of the early attempts to develop ICT-applications, commonly called EDP (Electronic Data Processing), a better understanding was needed than the one adopted by the PL/I and Cobol programmers. The major scientific support came from semiotics: the clear distinction between the meaning or content of information (semantics and pragmatics) and the form (syntactics and empirics) in which it was expressed. The pioneer of the new content/form paradigm is undoubtedly Börje Langefors, but it is better known through the products in which it has been embodied, like the ANSI/Sparc conceptual metamodel, the Relational Database Model, Structured Programming, and Structured Systems Design. In hindsight, one could call this paradigm properly the application-centric paradigm1. The basic view of the professionals is that they have to build applications (ICT-systems) that support (or take over) the work of people in organisations. The paradigm includes this basic life cycle: requirements determination, system design, implementation. Already in the 80s, it became clear that the application-centric paradigm was untenable, because of the too high failure rate of ICT-projects, but there was no alternative yet. Also the ‘ready-to-wear’ solutions, like ERP-systems, do not perform much better, because they actually force organisations to wear an armour. The major problem is the requirements determination phase. Apparently, investigating information needs by asking people about it, doesn’t work. All in all, the quality level of the EIS profession is by far not able to compare with the traditional engineering disciplines.
An alternative view, that has the potential to effectively address the identified problems of the application-centric paradigm, arose in the 90s. The major scientific support comes from language philosophy and social action theory. The name organisation-centric paradigm is coined for it. The basic view conveyed by this paradigm is that an ICT-application is not an artefact that is developed ‘on the side’ and eventually ‘implanted’ in the organisation, but rather a specific implementation of (a part of) the organisation, using ICT. Consequently, the focus is on the organisation itself, primarily conceived as a social system. ICT is just one of the possible implementation technologies. The nasty problem of requirements determination is resolved, it has ‘evaporated’. The source for understanding the information needs is not the people anymore, but the deep understanding of the construction and the operation of the organisation, based on a proper theoretical foundation. Consequently, the field of EIS gets absorbed in the broader discipline of Enterprise Engineering2. However, as was the case for the geocentric world view once, the application-centric paradigm appears to have many vested interests.
1At the time, the term “application” was in fact not common. Instead the term “system” was used, like in Systems Development Methodology (SDM), but this term has become too confusing.
2In particular, as conceived and propagated by the Ciao! Network (www.ciaonetwork.org).
MEASUR - Methods of Analysis and Theory of Information Systems Based on
the Concepts of Signs and Social Norms
Instructor
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Ronald Stamper
Independent Researcher
United Kingdom
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Brief Bio
Ronald Stamper read mathematics at Oxford, worked in hospital administration mainly on organisational problems, then in the steel industry, for which in 1964, he developed courses in systems analysis focusing on developing organisational information systems that, optionally, employed computers. These became the basis of the UK national programme of systems analysis courses. In 1969 he joined the London School of Economics and initiated research on organisations as information systems, funded by IBM, UK Research Councils EPSRC and ESRC. In 1973 he published his book Information that introduced the study of organisational semiotics. The research moved with him to the University of Twente, funded by the Netherlands Research Council and Digital. On retiring in 1999, EPSRC asked him to re-establish the programme in the UK. He is currently writing a book on semantics, which provides the foundation for these key research results. His research programme LEGOL/MEASUR has produced new methods for designing and specifying organisations in the LEGally Orientated Language, LEGOL, based on social norms, especially statute law, a logical formalism with unusual features. It incorportes a semantic schema with a stable canonical form, which incorporates blockchain technology and the explicit recognition of all responcible authorities. Essentially, one designs the human organisation /institution as the information field (of norms) that determines the essential activities to conduct the business effectively. The orthodox "information flow" specification is a logical consequence of the business specification. LEGOL-based prototypes are used to improve the business design before the orthodox flow design is generated and "tuned" to reach the desired level of efficiency. The relevant IT may be anything from cuneiform on wet clay to quantum computing: the focus is on business, not on IT. It has been thoroughly tested "on the bench" and over an aggregated 50+years of successful operation in a few early adopting organisations, where they achieved huge cost savings and systems highly adaptable to changing business requirement.
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Abstract
Part I: Problem Articulation - Soft Systems Tools with a Sharp Edge
Problem Articulation Methods support a team (mainly) of users working on a shared business problem, Starting, perhaps, with only a rough outline of what is needed, PAM helps them to reach a well-articulated briefing for the design of a system to solve it. While other soft system tools help with exploring aspects of the problem, they seldom lead directly into the detailed, logical work of systems analysis, which has to begin almost from scratch. PAM causes no such discontinuity. It outputs feed directly into the work of Semantic Analysis (the subject of tutorial MEASUR-II) on which to base the design of an organisation-plus-computer application. It is assumed that the problem is one requiring both organisational and technical innovation.
Part II: Semantic Normal Form - A Stable Foundation for Robust, Highly-adaptable information Systems
Nothing is more basic to an information system than a common understanding of the concepts that must be shared for people to be able to collaborate effectively. Too often this is taken for granted and people are shocked when it turns out not to be the case. We start from a shared perception of the relevant aspects of the activity domain and the ways in which each thing’s existence depends on the existence of others, this provides the stable Semantic Normal Form that supports the rest of the information system.
Ontology and Knowledge Sharing in E-Health
Instructor
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Mourcous Massoud
Cairo University
Egypt
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Brief Bio
Dr. Marcos Massoud Yassa received his Master degree in Computer Science from Faculty of Computers and Information, Cairo University in 2008 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the same faculty in 2014. He has served as an invited member of the technical program committee of several international conferences. He has been on the technical program committee of different IEEE conferences. He acts as a reviewer for the international conferences and journals. His research has been published in various international journals and conferences. He has published numerous scientific articles in an Arabic language magazine,"Al-Ahram". He has conducted tutorial sessions in prominent conferences such as IEEE BIBM 2014 - UK, IEEE COMPSAC 2014 - Sweden, IEEE Healcare2013 - Portugal, and IEEE "JEC-ECC 2013 - Cairo.Dr. Morcous main research interests lie with the knowledge modeling, sharing and reuse, intelligent information retrieval, Software Engineering, Software requirements engineering, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Virtual Organizations, Grid & Cloud Computing and Green Computing.
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Abstract
By combining virtual communities with internet portal and content management technologies, Collaborative Network Organizations (CNOs) share, access and extend the tacit and explicit knowledge within and across organizations. CNOs are special kinds of web-enabled communities of practice, where likeminded people collaborate and work together towards a common goal, sharing the same vision and values. Tutorial Knowledge Networks for e-health aims to provide a comprehensive and multidisciplinary system of e-health, and to evaluate its implications in terms of the bioethical and legal aspects of the relationship between patient, physician and health care facilities. This will occur as a result of an intensive collaboration and sharing of knowledge among the Collaborative Network Organizations (CNOs).
This tutorial will be focused on:
- Study of the state of the art: o medical ontologies and techniques for managing health data.
- Study the techniques for extracting Meta data with reference to clinical data, patient summary, electronic health record.
- Study of techniques to perform integration and searching on e-health data: o Includes dealing with bioethics and privacy issues.
Keywords
Ontology
Knowledge Sharing
eHealth
Collaborative Network Organization
virtual communities
bioethical
Aims and Learning Objectives
This tutorial will be focused on:
Study of the state of the art:
o medical ontologies and techniques for managing health data
Study the techniques for extracting Meta data with reference to clinical data,
patient summary, electronic health record.
Study of techniques to perform integration and searching on e-health data:
o Includes dealing with bioethics and privacy issues.
Target Audience
beginning and intermediate
Prerequisite Knowledge of Audience
Ontology
Knowledge Sharing
E-Health
Detailed Outline
This tutorial will be focused on:
Study of the state of the art:
o medical ontologies and techniques for managing health data
Study the techniques for extracting Meta data with reference to clinical data,
patient summary, electronic health record.
Study of techniques to perform integration and searching on e-health data:
o Includes dealing with bioethics and privacy issues.