TFT-LCD industries in Taiwan nowadays have confronted the condition of market¡¦s fast change. The trade shall have to substantially shorten the research and development span of products and also have to inseparably integrate the production system among upper, middle and lower reaches industries so as to advance the enterprise¡¦s competitiveness in the global markets. Therefore, the enterprises have implemented PLM and PDM system in droves to assist in effectively integrating the control and working of all the related information of products and the related operation of the products information during the life cycle of the products. The activity of engineering change is regarded as an essential part to the enterprise¡¦s improving the quality of products and reducing production cost and satisfying the customers¡¦ requirements. There are always possible engineering changes while carried out in each stage of the whole life cycle of products development. Consequently, a rationalized and standardized engineering change management system has then become obviously important to the existence competitiveness of the industries. By ways of case discussion, the study is to research a practical case through PLM system methodology and to confer the design methods of information access subsystem mode applied to the engineering change management module when TFT-LCD industries have implemented PLM system so as to test and verify if the effectiveness of implement is able to satisfy the operation management requirement of the engineering change. Through the analysis of implement process, the study also expects to obtain some rules of experiences as references when the future industry implements the Product life cycle management system.

The South African (SA) export fruit industry is vital to the SA economy, contributing about 20% (or 4 million tons) to agricultural production. As a one billion US dollar export industry in 2002, the country exports about 42% of its fresh fruit production (Shepherd 2003:2), contributing 75% of all farm income for fruit (Kriel 2002:4). The industry is well positioned with regard to its southern hemisphere competitors (Argentina, Australia, Chile and New Zealand) in terms of average growth in export volumes. However, the market requirements are constantly changing and competition is fierce due to the general oversupply of fruit in major markets. The limitations of the regulated environment eventually led to deregulation in August 1997 and to the phasing out of the statutory bodies. The new deregulated market structure radically changed the competitive profile of the industry by lifting the artificial barriers that existed for fruit exports. However, there was still a major barrier to performance – having the knowledge and ability to deal with export processes (S. Rigotti, personal communication, 13 June 2003 – Manager Information Systems, Capespan, P.O. Box 505, Bellville, South Africa, 7535). Exporters experienced a combination of problems. Few had proper systems, which meant that access to critical information was severely hampered. It was, for instance, difficult to record and verify the cost, quite often resulting in serious losses. Producer payments were inaccurate and late most of the time; sometimes payments only occurred during the harvesting of the next season. Data integrity on the supply chain was suspect, because of fragmented information channels and duplicated capturing at various points in the chain. The internal challenges were compounded by a difficult time in the markets. Strong competition, globalization and the effects of world-wide overproduction, caused prices to drop dramatically. Consequently many farmers and exporters incurred enormous debts and went bankrupt (Van der Ham, Becker and Guis 2002a; 2002b). In 2000, the third year after deregulation, the fruit export industry as a whole lost an estimated one billion rand in export earnings and declared itself in crisis (Mather 2003). SA's international image slipped because of all the negative consequences of deregulation (Symington 2003:5).

No description available.

Under the promotion of the E-government¡¦s policy, and people generally enhance the quality of information, the E-society organizations have been hit the mainstream. Therefore, how to digitize the social organizations, and solve the obstacles of eletronization, will become every society organizations have to face the problem. As a result, the goal of this study is try to understand that social organizations electronization of the current situation, and difficult process. This study adopts the interview law. First of all, observation the use of the website of welfare organizations in Kaohsiung , as the body electronization of the preliminary understanding of the situation, and then through face-to-face interviews with eight members of social organizations, understanding the status of electronization, process and the difficulties. Study found that the current social organizations in the past used the information has been gradually disappearing, but some community organizations obtain equipment faster, some slower. And the earliest projects of electronization is the most common and most effective use of the word processing .Currently, the management of information, most of them are staffs, still luck of full-time IT staffs. At present the E-society organizations, mainly due to outside influence, particularly the E line with the Government's policy. Impact on society organizations electronization of the main difficulties are: 1. The lack of understanding of information technology, 2. Hardware and software for equipment, 3. The staff are not operating smoothly.

The study of embodied communication requires access to multiple data sources such as multistream video and audio, various derived and meta-data such as gesture, head, posture, facial expression and gaze information. This thesis presents the data collection, annotation, and analysis for multiple participants engaged in planning meetings. In support of the analysis tasks, this thesis presents the multimedia Visualization for Situated Temporal Analysis for Macintosh (MacVisSTA) system. It supports the analysis of multimodal human communication through the use of video, audio, speech transcriptions, and gesture and head orientation data. The system uses a multiple linked representation strategy in which different representations are linked by the current time focus. MacVisSTA supports analysis of the synchronized data at varying timescales for coarse-to-fine observational studies. The hybrid architecture may be extended through plugins. Finally, this effort has resulted in encoding of behavioral and language data, enabling collaborative research and embodying it with the aid of, and interface to, a database management system. / Master of Science

Just like in other national legislatures in recent years, women have increased in numbers in Uganda, owing mostly to the introduction of affirmative action policies. These measures are regarded as fast track approaches to counter previous historical injustices and imbalances. However, these developments, which also reflect transposition in the social positioning of women from a marginal and probably limited outlook, to a broader, public and visible status in the public sphere, come with various challenges. The constraints are attributed to lack of adjustments within the organizational norms and procedures. Thus the main questions addressed by the study are: What happens when this previously less represented group becomes part of the mainstream? What are the implications in information access, information communication and information use? How can this inform us about the overall process of integration and social transformation? What information possibilities can women exploit to gain a more central place in mainstream politics? One of the assumptions is that access to and use of information is essential to full integration and in occupying a dominant position in the political environment which would consequently transform governance. The thesis is based on qualitative in-depth interviews and observations of legislators and non legislators with strong connections to Parliamentarians’ tasks. The findings reveal that a legislator’s versatility, world outlook and social positioning within the Parliamentary structures greatly improves ability to acquire and use information and possibly a legislator’s capability to influence national policy making. Women face challenges at two levels; the social and political context. There are possibilities of change through their own network. / Akademisk avhandling som med tillstånd av samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet för vinnande av doktorsexamen framläggs till offentlig granskning kl. 13.00 tisdagen den 29 september 2009 i sal E310, Högskolan i Borås.

This thesis describes a study carried out with the aim of discovering user preferences as to the design of 3-dimensional virtual worlds for accessing information. No literature was found which dealt with this topic, and it was therefore thought that, rather than ask users to make a selection from arbitrarily-chosen designs, it would be informative to consult the users from the beginning of the design process. To this end, a Grounded Theory methodology was adopted, and users were selected from postgraduate students and staff from Information Management courses at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Three “rounds” of interviews were conducted. The first round was concerned with finding out what ideas for a world design people would have, the second with testing four worlds derived from the first round, and the third with exploring further ideas that users had, based on their experience of the test worlds. At each stage of the process, emergent theories were constructed, and modified according to subsequent findings. It was established that the factors which influenced this group of users in their preferences for the design of worlds were not structural, as might have been assumed, but instead were related to properties such as familiarity, organisation, assistance, and quality of information and presentation. When the results were examined in the context of developments in the use of virtual environments, it was found that they provide a theoretical underpinning for practices such as the provision of “conventional” library structures in the popular online environment Second Life. This is not a statistical exercise, but it would appear that there are no significant differences based on the criteria of age, gender, or whether a user was staff or student. More thorough studies would be required to determine this absolutely, but for the moment it appears more useful to draw a broad set of conclusions. ii Issues were identified which indicate potentially rewarding areas for further research and design. Specifically, it would be of interest to discover whether the affective responses of these groups are also common to other groups, and to experiment further with worlds designed in the light of the current findings. Further investigation of the small number of cases in which users do not respond to the worlds would also be desirable, to determine whether this response is characteristic of a group of people who will not react positively to any world, or whether these users simply reacted negatively to the examples presented.

Tam Ka Wing Matthew. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-89). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgement --- p.i / Abstract --- p.i / Table of Contents --- p.iii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- eGovernment Requirements --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- Efficient Operation --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2 --- Citizen-centric Government --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3 --- Security --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Confidentiality --- p.10 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Integrity --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Availability --- p.12 / Chapter 2.4 --- Support of eBusiness --- p.13 / Chapter 3 --- Webservices for e-Government - A Marriage for Interoperability --- p.15 / Chapter 4 --- A Webservices Based eGovernment Framework --- p.17 / Chapter 4.1 --- System Component Model --- p.17 / Chapter 4.2 --- System Access Model --- p.18 / Chapter 4.3 --- Security Model --- p.20 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Access Right Model --- p.20 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Authentication Model --- p.22 / Chapter 4.4 --- Transaction Model --- p.23 / Chapter 5 --- eGovernment WebServices Access Control --- p.25 / Chapter 5.1 --- eGovernment WebService --- p.25 / Chapter 5.2 --- Request of Access --- p.27 / Chapter 5.3 --- eGovernment Access Policy --- p.30 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Administration Based Policy --- p.32 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Legislation Based Policy --- p.33 / Chapter 6 --- Research in Access Control --- p.38 / Chapter 6.1 --- Traditional Model --- p.38 / Chapter 6.2 --- More Advanced Models --- p.39 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Role-Based Access Control Model --- p.39 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Task-Based Authorisation Control Models --- p.41 / Chapter 6.2.3 --- Digital Library Authorisation Model --- p.42 / Chapter 6.3 --- Recent Works --- p.44 / Chapter 6.4 --- Limitations of the Models --- p.45 / Chapter 7 --- Proposed Approach --- p.47 / Chapter 7.1 --- WebService Specific Access Control --- p.48 / Chapter 7.1.1 --- WebService Access Rules --- p.48 / Chapter 7.1.2 --- Authorisation Conflict Resolution --- p.50 / Chapter 7.2 --- Subject Based Access Control --- p.52 / Chapter 7.2.1 --- Subject Category --- p.52 / Chapter 7.2.2 --- Subject Access Rules --- p.53 / Chapter 7.2.3 --- WebService Registration --- p.55 / Chapter 7.2.4 --- Authorisation Conflict Resolution --- p.56 / Chapter 7.3 --- The WebServices --- p.57 / Chapter 7.4 --- Combining Two Level Access Control --- p.57 / Chapter 7.5 --- Application to Chained WebService Request --- p.58 / Chapter 7.6 --- Comparison with the Existing Access Control Models --- p.59 / Chapter 8 --- An Implementation Reference Model --- p.60 / Chapter 8.1 --- Some Practical Issues --- p.60 / Chapter 8.1.1 --- Citizen Privacy --- p.60 / Chapter 8.1.2 --- Trust between eGovernment Systems --- p.61 / Chapter 8.1.3 --- Authentication --- p.62 / Chapter 8.2 --- System Architecture --- p.64 / Chapter 8.2.1 --- eGovernment WebServices Gateway --- p.65 / Chapter 8.2.2 --- Authentication Engine --- p.66 / Chapter 8.2.3 --- Access Control Database --- p.66 / Chapter 8.2.4 --- Access Control Decision Engine --- p.67 / Chapter 8.2.5 --- A Working Scenario --- p.67 / Chapter 8.3 --- Implementation --- p.69 / Chapter 9 --- Evaluation of the Proposed Mechanism --- p.74 / Chapter 9.1 --- Application Scenarios --- p.75 / Chapter 9.1.1 --- Citizen Level Access Right --- p.75 / Chapter 9.1.2 --- Access Means Based Authorisation --- p.76 / Chapter 9.1.3 --- Access Right Based on Combination of User and Consumer Identity --- p.77 / Chapter 9.1.4 --- Legislation Based Access Right --- p.78 / Chapter 9.1.5 --- Joined-up Government --- p.79 / Chapter 10 --- Conclusion and Future Directions --- p.81 / References --- p.84

This thesis assesses and explains the effectiveness of the legal regime for government transparency in China, with a focus on the legislative and judicial protection of citizens’ right of access to information (ATI), through a combination of normative doctrinal analysis and empirical investigation. In 2007, China promulgated the Regulation on Open Government Information (ROGI),which implicitly created a general and legally enforceable ATI right, thereby establishing a regime akin to the freedom of information (FOI) regimes that prevail in many countries worldwide. However, this nascent regime appears to have had mixed, and rather confusing, effects. Existent assessments of the regime’s effectiveness have concentrated either on the ROGI text or on data concerning bureaucratic performance and the extra-legal factors affecting that performance, but have failed to consider sufficiently the perplexities and peculiarities of the Chinese legal system that bear heavily on the ROGI’s operation. This thesis constitutes an attempt to make both substantive and methodological contributions to research in this field. The thesis is organized into three main areas. First, it analyses the relation between the ruling Communist Party’s policies and the making of local and national transparency legislation. It finds that the legislative endorsement of an ATI right resulted from several of the Party’s reform goals, which include not only the facilitation of economic prosperity and social progress but also the fostering of government accountability and public participation. These goals, although with respective limitations, overlap with the values underlying FOI law. Second, it examines the labyrinth of Chinese laws, regulations and other legal norms that regulate the disclosure of government information, particularly the ROGI and Law on Guarding State Secrets, and evaluates them against international best practice standards on FOI law. It finds that the overall legislative framework lags behind international standards, largely because it fails to stipulate a presumption of disclosure and contains multi-layered restrictions on access, thereby leaving administrative organs with an enormous degree of discretion. Third, it reviews 169 judicial decisions collected through methods specially designed to ensure their representativeness. It distils the major trends in the interpretations made and rules set by the courts and finds that, by placing restrictions on access to court, imposing a need test, failing to scrutinize state secret claims, deferring to administrative discretion in applying exemptions and avoiding injunctive relief, the courts have further reduced the normative scope of the ATI right. It argues that this inadequate judicial protection is caused not by limitations on judicial power with respect to that right, but primarily by the abandonment of duty on the part of most courts, which have either misapplied the law or deviated from the guiding cases and legal doctrine that maintain the coherence of laws and judicial autonomy. Owing to the combined effect of a weak legislative framework and largely impotent judicial protection, the ATI right has been virtually deprived of its function to enable the citizenry to monitor and check the government. It has also failed to fulfil its potential in protecting citizens’ personal and property rights. In this regard, China’s ATI right falls far short of a genuine right to freedom of information. These findings provide a necessary basis for a more accurate assessment of China’s open government information regime and a more perceptive comparison of this peculiarly Chinese regime with the FOI regimes of other countries. They also shed new light on the operation of judicial review in China. Furthermore, they indicate the barriers that must be overcome in future reforms to achieve a genuine FOI environment and highlight the interconnectedness of any such reform measures. / published_or_final_version / Law / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Information Technology in the Faculty of Informatics and Design, at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology / Transitioning from childhood to adulthood is typically coupled with many puberty related challenges, and such challenges are heightened by access deficiency to reproductive health information. The situation is worsened in under-resourced communities in Southern Africa as the youth’s socio-economic status is hampered by a lack of timely informed education. Such youth groups are referred to as youth-at-risk. The youth are the most affected in recent days as they are exposed to various health disturbances. The youth need to be aware of critical life information, particularly reproductive health information, in order to make better choices. With mobile technology being an integral part of everyday life and more appealing to the youth, opportunities are opened up for the use of mobile functionalities or an extension thereof to provide relevant mobile-based services for information access. Recently, health information is shared and is accessible on different mobile platforms. This research project focuses on mobile-based services to promote reproductive health information for youth-at-risk groups, aged 18 to 24 from the Grabouw community in the Western Cape of South Africa. Most of mobile technology’s solutions and proposed mobile-based services come from elsewhere with little or no consideration of the communities and people who will use these services. The youth was engaged in different activities as participants to design a mobile-based service to promote reproductive health information, putting them at the center of the design process as design partners. Service design methods and tools were used as the methodology in a systematic manner. A Double Diamond framework consisting of four phases (Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver) was followed in order to collect the data. The phases guided the design process from ideation to co-designing of the service prototyped herein. Different ways of accessing information especially reproductive health information by youth-at-risk were identified. The available technology and existing practices to access reproductive health information were also identified. Results clearly indicate that the youth are motivated to use mobile phones to share and receive health information. The youth currently have access to reproductive health information and services, however some services require the youth to travel long distances by vehicle or by walking. The youth walk as a result of lack of transport in some locations because there is no infrastructure in place to support vehicles. Furthermore, the information available to the youth currently is not contextualised, therefore making it irrelevant with consideration to resources available in this particular community. The research project recommends that when a solution is being designed for any community, all the relevant stakeholders have to be involved in the design and development process to allow for a co-design interaction that allows for a usable and relevant solution design with and for the intended users. Involving the user in the design process accelerates adoption if an innovation and easy technology appropriation in the user’s environment. The users add the value needed as they are sharing knowledge, experiences and way of doing things which have a positive effect on the solution. The study recommends service to be developed in the future according to the findings herein. The implementation, testing and use of the mobile-based service (RHIAY) prototyped in this thesis are for future work.