BACKGROUND. The need for public sector agencies to work together to deal with complex issues which overlap agencies spheres of work has been well established. Cases such as the Soham murders in 2002 (BBC News, 2003), the Climbie child abuse case in 2003 (Health Committee, 2003) and the Pilkington Anti-social Behaviour case in 2007 (Telegraph, 2009) each highlighted the need for public sector agencies to work more closely and share information with each other to more effectively serve their public. METHODOLOGY. A three year period of participant observation in the implementation of a real time information sharing system used by multiple agencies to jointly manage anti-social behaviour was undertaken. An information sharing framework was produced detailing the factors which impact an information sharing project, classified into six categories; External Environment, Organisation, Process, Project, Technology and Individual. FINDINGS. Firstly bureaucracy is not always a barrier to information sharing. At times bureaucracy was found to enable information sharing by providing documentary evidence to decisions made throughout the system implementation. Secondly an agency's level of buy in and involvement with the information sharing project was shown to be a key indicator of their motivation to share information, correlating with the level of case recording on the system. Thirdly whilst technology enables the process of information sharing the research showed people had a much greater impact on whether information sharing took place. Finally whilst the UK public sector encourages public sector agencies to share information a wide scale review and approach to IT infrastructure would better enable future information sharing projects. CONCLUSIONS. The research identified there are many factors which impact an agency's ability/motivation to share information. It is the level of motivation an agency has minus the cost of sharing which ultimately determines whether information sharing occurs. In order to further encourage information sharing there is a recommendation that the UK government look at ways to make integrating the disparate data sources easier to decrease the cost of sharing and thus improve the likelihood information sharing will occur.

The teachers at Linköpings University are currently using an emailclient to handle the sharing of information between teachers involved ina course. This is inefficient due to the difficulty of sharing existinginformation with new course memebers, sharing new information with existingcourse members and finding specific information is an issue because of thelack of course separation. Some features, such as handing over a courseto a new leading teacher, are also lacking which makes course managementdifficult. To solve this issue, we have developed a web application whichfocuses on its usability and efficiency to make it easier for coursestaff to share course information. By performing usability and efficiencytests where test subjects used the new application as well as the oldemail system we established that the newly developed application with itsadditional features became an improvement over the old email system.

In this paper, we describe two experiments that show the powerful influence of interface complexity and entropy on online information sharing behaviour. 134 participants were asked to do a creativity test and answer six open questions against three different screen backgrounds of increasing complexity. Our data shows that, as an interface becomes more complex and has more entropy users refer less to themselves and show less information sharing breadth. However, their verbal creativity and information sharing depth do not suffer in the same way. Instead, an inverse U shaped relationship between Interface complexity and creativity as well as information sharing depth can be observed: Users become more creative and thoughtful until a certain tipping point of interface complexity is reached. At that point, creativity and th inking suffer, leading to significantly less disclosure. This result challenges the general HCI assumption that simplicity is always best for computers interface design , as users'creativity and information sharing depth initially increases with more interface complexity. Our results suggest that the Yerkes Dodson Law may be a key theory underlying online creativity and depth of online disclosures.

Just as the Internet of Things is set to change how devices are being used and connected in society in general, the Industrial Internet of Things will change the industries. In an industrial production line there are often many heterogeneous devices, and the requirements on the real-time properties of the communication between them are often strict. Creating a communication solution for the different devices, that also meet such requirements, is difficult. The traditional way for industrial devices to communicate is directly with each other or via a central point, but this communication solution is inflexible and difficult to scale up. One possible way to make communication and information sharing between devices easier is to use a dedicated middleware to handle the communication. One middleware standard is the Data Distribution Service (DDS) defined by the Object Management Group. In this thesis a DDS middleware from a specific vendor (vendor name is removed due to company confidentiality) is implemented and evaluated. The middleware is evaluated based on (1) an implementation in a prototype which shows how the middleware performs in a real-life industrial context, and (2) a simulation that showcases the potential of the technology. The DDS middleware was shown to function with a specific set of existing industrial hardware and software. The real-time properties of the communication system were studied and found to be around 3.5 times slower, when using the prototype setup, than those of the replaced communication solution. However, the round trip latency was still only 2 ms on average and 4.1 ms maximum when using the preferred settings. The simulation showed that there is potential for the DDS technology to be used in more advanced scenarios and that it should be investigated further.

In the robotics domain today there are many uncertainties. Sensors fail to provide complete and reliable information of the world, a world that is dynamic with objects moving in and out of a robot’s perception. One way to mitigate these uncertainties is to share and merge information between robots. However, information sharing itself brings uncertainties and questions that must be addressed. What information is useful to share? How reliable is it? How often should it be shared? How should this information be integrated with the information already present at the receiver? This thesis is intended to deal with the merging of shared information from several distributed robots; information that is mainly useful for determining the real world positions of objects. We have identified some techniques for merging shared information and tested these in various different situations in an effort to determine the most appropriate one. Our tests show that sharing information can be very beneficial when objects are occluded from the view of one or more robots. The tests also show that information sharing is useful for decreasing object position uncertainty.

The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States resulted in the introduction of the National Fusion Center Network. This effort seeks to empower National Security by effectively sharing information between various law enforcement organizations. Since the establishment of the Network, information that addresses the Networks' standard operating procedures and existing barriers to share information effectively has been lacking. This caused many criticisms as to whether the network is in fact effective in fulfilling its mandate to effectively share information between the various law enforcement agencies. Utilizing Bandura's cognitive theory of behavioral change, this phenomenological study identifies the strategies utilized by the Fusion center Network to share information while addressing the barriers that arise during the process. Qualitative data consists of interviews conducted with a purposive sample of N=8 employees at two Fusion Centers in the Network. Data were inductively coded, analyzed, and summarized to answer the research questions and illustrate relevance to the framework. Findings made it clear that staff respondents believe that the Fusion Center Network has a tangible impact on Information Sharing between law enforcement, government, and non-government agencies. This expanded the field of knowledge regarding the Fusion Center Network and made room for future researchers to expound on. Recommendations offered by this study are geared towards assisting policy makers, partner organizations and the public at large to make better decisions toward protecting the Homeland from future acts of terror. This study carries implications for creating positive social change by providing recommendations to assist legislators develop effective policies and to increase national security measures of the United States.

Event-based mediated participatory archives, in which communities of ordinary people contribute their records to archives during collection day events represent a paradigm shift within the archival field. Applying a qualitative approach, this study investigates event-based mediated participatory archives using Bastian's communities of records and memory as a guiding framework. Using the Mass. Memories Road Show as a case study, data collection and analysis took place over three phases. In Phase I, archive supporting documents were collected and analyzed using "against the grain" historical analysis methods. In Phase II, data from the Mass. Memories Road Show digital collections were collected and analyzed using grounded theory analysis methods. In Phase III, ethnographic research data, including a direct observation and semi-structured interviews, was collected and analyzed using ethnographic analysis methods. The results of this study suggest that community participants' motivations to contribute to participatory archives are rooted in self-fulfillment while institutional archives personnel members' intentions are based in inclusive community-building. Furthermore, the contribution of records to the archives allows community participants to share personal stories that serve as evidence of their historical legacies and as affirmation of their roles in their communities. Throughout the findings, moments of connection which enable the sharing of stories are highlighted—speaking to the importance of the collection day event.

Background: The maintenance process is crucial for production activities to supply continuity and productivity. With Industry 4.0 advent, opportunities to create a huge amount of data and use this data to improve production and maintenance performance indicators became a topic that is necessary to make decisions. Most importantly, before applying these technologies, there is a need to integrate all systems to create a common language. Purpose: The first aim is to explore the influence of system integration within production and maintenance in measuring machine availability. Secondly, to review in detail the procedure of calculating machine availability among several production units in a manufacturing company. Research Question 1 (RQ1): What are the values of system integration among maintenance and production decisions in measuring machine availability? Research Question 2 (RQ2): Which parameters or indicators can be taken into consideration to calculate machine availability among several production units in a manufacturing company? Methodology: The study is based on a case study that primarily relies on qualitative data from interviews, survey, and observations, as well as quantitative calculation of availability data. An exploratory research design was used in the beginning of the study, followed by an abductive approach which means both inductive and deductive approach were used. The total process can be broken down into two parts: theoretical background/literature review and Scania empirical research. Conclusions: With the integration of different systems, it is shown that the real availability numbers differ compared with assumed numbers. The manufacturing industry is undergoing paradigm shifts, and many manufacturing companies worldwide are currently updating their maintenance strategies aligned with smart maintenance. With the aim of securing productive, robust, and sustainable production systems through the implementation of the smart maintenance concept. Therefore, it can be suggested that before implementings mart maintenance technologies, starting to create collaboration within a common database in association with production units about production data sharing matter is crucial step for the case company.

<p>  </p> <p>Among the factors influencing consumer innovation acceptance in the context of health, interpersonal communication is highly understudied. This project focuses on one dimension of interpersonal communication by exploring how attitudinal differences between communicators influence information sharing. Two studies are reported using a diffusion chain framework to explore the effects of attitude strength on the amount and type of information shared about an innovation. Study 1 identified a tendency for those with greater certainty to share more than those without certain attitudes. There was also a tendency for those with unfavorable attitudes and those with extreme attitudes to share a greater proportion of attitudinally consistent information. These findings were not found to be significant. Study 2 failed to support the hypotheses that the first chain member’s attitude or message influences the amount or type of information shared by the second chain member. Results suggest that the relationship between attitudes and information sharing may be more complex than suggested by previous research. </p>

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