Technological amplification has expended the involvement of information and communication technology in public sectors and enhanced governmental dependence on information systems which restrains the management attention towards improving the effectiveness of e-government services. Based on the analytical review of literature, it was found that most of the e-government evaluation models address the e-service dimensions that assess the quality of e-government websites. This gives a very constrict perspective to e-government and ignores the key dimensions. It becomes important to understand how citizens perceive and evaluate e-government services. This involves defining what e-government service is, identifying its underlying dimensions, and determining how it can be measured. Therefore, periodical evaluation of the effectiveness of e-government services becomes essential. Foregoing discussion clearly indicates the necessity of developing a well founded e-government e-service effectiveness evaluation framework which not only evaluates the e-government service effectiveness but also evaluates the e-government service quality criteria and the citizens‟ perception in the form of citizens‟ trust in offered e-services. Thus, the objective of this study was to develop a framework (E-GEEF) "e-government service effectiveness evaluation framework" that assesses e-government service effectiveness from the citizens‟ (G2C) perspective. A systematic study of the existing e-government service assessment frameworks has been carried out to establish the basis for conceptualizing a theoretical framework called e-government service effectiveness evaluation framework (E-GEEF). In this research, the author attempts to explore the underlying dimensions and factors of e-government services, and has proposed an effectiveness evaluation framework (E-GEEF). Present empirical research adapted DeLone and McLean, (2003) IS success model as base model which is upgradable and extendable, hence additional dimensions were incorporated to develop a novel framework (E-GEEF) for evaluating the effectiveness of e-government service. The suggested framework has identified number of measuring dimensions and associated items within each dimension for (E-GEEF). System quality, information quality, and service quality dimensions were adopted from DeLone and McLean (2003) IS success model and “intention to use and user satisfaction” dimensions were re-specified in proposed framework (E-GEEF) as “citizens‟ use / usefulness” and “citizens‟ satisfaction”. Further, "citizens" trust, perceived e-government service quality, and perceived effectiveness” were incorporated as new dimensions in the proposed framework (E-GEEF). Three new dimensions were identified and two existing dimensions were re-specified for evaluating the effectiveness of e-government service. Sixteen hypotheses were formulated from literature on existing e-government assessment frameworks to test the proposed framework (E-GEEF). In order to test the proposed framework and their associated dimensions, Indian e-tax service was considered, because e-tax service of Indian e-government is utilized by several Indian citizens for filing their taxes. Preliminary qualitative study was carried out carefully to ensure whether all important dimensions and measurement items were included in the proposed framework E-GEEF in the right research context or not. Empirical research has used quantitative analysis for validating the proposed framework (E-GEEF). Data collection was done using survey which was conducted among citizens of India who have been utilizing e-tax service as users. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed to ensure the data normality by using SPSS 20. Structural equation modeling statistical technique was applied using AMOS 21 on the collected data for testing the hypotheses. The empirical research findings have confirmed most of the hypothesized relationships within the validated framework (E-GEEF). Consequently, in terms of the theoretical implications, this study emphasizes the significance of such hypothesized relationships when performing empirical research in e-government context. Key findings demonstrated the strong relationships of perceived e-government service quality with system quality, information quality, service quality, and citizens‟ satisfaction. Further, citizens‟ trust exhibited direct relationships with perceived e-government service quality and perceived effectiveness of e-government service. Thus, as a major contribution to the proposed research, the identified new dimensions “perceived e-government service quality, citizens‟ trust, perceived effectiveness” and re-specified dimensions “citizens‟ use/usefulness and citizens‟ satisfaction” have shown great significance in evaluating effectiveness of e-government e-tax service in Indian G2C context. The developed and validated framework (E-GEEF) provides government agencies with an appropriate approach and dimensions in order to evaluate the effectiveness of e-government services.

The main purpose of this project is to investigate the state of the art of the Algerian National Archives (ANA) so as to design an automated system that responds to the needs of this institution. The concept of archives is defined. The effects of computerisation on archives are investigated. Some automated archives systems, around the world, are examined. The various obstacles impeding the development of a technology capable of processing Arabic script are reviewed. Some solutions are also discussed. The case of Algeria in the context of the Arab world is taken as en example. A number of problems hampering the transfer of technology are identified. The study is concentrated on the state of the art of the ANA. It is carried out using a variety of data collection techniques; including questionnaires, interviews, observation and the author's own experience of the ANA. Severel problem areas are identified; including: the lack of resource sharing between the various institutions and the access speed to documents, to name just a few. The objectives of the system to be designed and implemented ere identified. A prototype user-friendly system, using the Query language, dBASE III PLUS and Clipper, is developed to simulate some of the various tasks carried out within records management institutions. An explanation of how can the system be operated is provided. An evaluation of the prototype system is carried out. A number of recommendations to improve the system are presented. Amongst these, is the necessity to provide a much faster system. The prototype system is thus redeveloped using, this time, Turbo Pascal. Apart from speed, no alterations or additions are introduced to the one developed using dBASE. Because the project has not been taken to the last stages of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), a number of recommendations are made regarding the steps that the ANA should observe to ensure a smooth system implementation and maintenance.

This study investigates the conceptions of information literacy held by student nurses on a BSc Nursing Studies course and asks whether the information skills sessions taught are successful from the students’ viewpoint. Additionally, it compares attitudes to, and use of information literacy within the artificial environment of the university and the ‘real world’ of the nurse as perceived by participants on their clinical and community placements. The inquiry introduces the concept of information literacy and charts its development before discussing it in relation to the changing context of nurse education and evidence-based practice. The research adopts the interpretive paradigm with phenomenography as its methodology. It uses focus groups and twenty-one individual interviews to obtain rich data from a purposive sample of students across the three years of the course. Such data were analysed to produce categories of description representing the collective experience of information literacy across the sample. The thesis questions whether learning to nurse effectively is best achieved through training along traditional lines, education, or a combination of both. For the latter it is imperative to find an appropriate balance between academic and clinical skills. The findings reveal a tension between the academic and clinical aspects of learning to be a nurse which some students struggle to resolve. The study concludes that while information literacy is perceived as part of a nurse’s professional role in supporting evidence-based practice, participant observations suggest that its use is context dependent and variable. The thesis recognizes that the adoption of evidence-based practice may depend on the presence or absence of particular personal and organisational barriers. Suggestions for further research include the relationship between academic and clinical learning, the importance and influence of informal learning, and the nature of the transition from student nurse to autonomous practitioner.

The rapid growth of touchscreen mobile devices has opened up many new opportunities for exploring Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR) techniques, e.g., it has enabled the development of intuitive and natural user interfaces to facilitate the Query-by-Drawing (QbD) image search paradigm. Although ubiquitous mobile computing holds the promise of drastically changing the ways users search for images from large image repositories, there is yet no comprehensive and systematic study that examines the factors that influence the usability, user behaviours and task performance of a QbD image search mobile application (App). No guidelines and principles exist for designing fundamental user interface components such as the colour picker and little is known how its different designs affect system usability and task performance. Little research exists that examines how different user interface designs affect the ways users draw the queries and how users go about the search process for different types of tasks. The questions of whether or not it is possible or how well users can perform QbD image search by drawing from memory of previously-seen images are unexplored. An understanding of these questions is very important and useful in the development of effective and user-friendly systems for a QbD image search App on touchscreen mobile devices. This PhD project attempts to answer these questions and more by examining the factors that influence the usability and task performance of a QbD painting search mobile application. Starting with a comprehensive literature review and current mobile App review of various related fields, we first designed and implemented a Client-Server painting search mobile App based on an existing CBIR algorithm as the research platform for collecting empirical data; we then conducted a focus group study from whose findings we re-designed the user interfaces of our QbD App. An online survey about art preference was carried out, and we designed four comprehensive user studies and recruited a total of 123 participants to take part in the experiments. Both qualitative and quantitative measures are collected and analysed to discover the various factors that influence the usability and task performance of the interface designs of a QbD image search mobile App and the memory drawing over time. Finally, we made recommendations and suggestions on the design and implementation of various interface components of the QbD image search mobile App based on our findings. This thesis presents the following contributions summarised as: 1) We build a flexible platform that can be used for research in drawing-related fields, such as a new QbD technique or interface tests and psychological study. 2)We present a comprehensive and systematic review of the methods and techniques related to the investigation of QbD image search mobile App. 3) We propose a new way of categorising colour picker: ‘1D-1D-1D’, ‘1D-2D’, and ‘3D’ colour picker. 4) The rationales of choosing stimuli are proposed and a real-world painting database is built. 5) We also develop a variety of novel methodologies for experimental design, data collection and data analysis, and we formulated a new protocol for assessing drawing accuracy and search result. 6) We propose some colour picker design guidelines through a series of experiments and the analysis of comprehensive experimental data. 7) Although indeed memory decays over time, we found the participants are able to draw from the memory of a painting with simple compositional structure (6-7 colour blobs), even for the paintings viewed a month ago. And finally, 8) the experiments also provide valuable insights into how general users draw and modify a query, and judge the result relevance for different tasks on mobile phones, as well as search pattern and memorisation strategy, which also extend a scientific understanding of using current Query-by-Drawing techniques for real world image search.

The ability to store large volumes of data is increasing faster than processing power. Some existing data management methods often result in data loss, inaccessibility or repetition of simulations. We propose a framework which promotes collaboration and simplifies data management. In particular we have demonstrated the proposed framework in the scenario of handling large scale data generated from biomolecular simulations in a multiinstitutional global collaboration. The framework has extended the ability of the Python problem solving environment to manage data files and metadata associated with simulations. We provide a transparent and seamless environment for user submitted code to analyse and post-process data stored in the framework. Based on this scenario we have further enhanced and extended the framework to deal with the more generic case of enabling any existing data file to be post processed from any .NET enabled programming language.

Schriftenreihe des Studiengangs Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft der Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur Leipzig

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Nous étudions les mots de poids minimal des codes correcteurs d'erreurs cycliques. Les fonctions symétriques élémentaires et les fonctions puissances des localisateurs de ces mots vérifient les identités de Newton. Dans le premier chapitre celles-ci sont étudiées comme un système d'équations algébriques, dont les solutions sont étudiées par transformation de Fourier. Dans le chapitre II, le lien est fait avec les codes correcteurs d'erreurs cycliques. Sur quelques exemples, il est montré comment étudier les mots de poids minimal sur la donnée d'une base standard de l'idéal engendré par les équations de Newton. Dans le chapitre III, les relations de Newton sont utilisées d'un point de vue théorique, et des résultats sur les mots de poids minimal de certains codes BCH sont obtenus. Ces calculs se placent dans le contexte de la théorie des corps finis. Dans le chapitre IV, un algorithme est développé pour calculer une base normale sur un corps fini. Un point de vue d'algèbre linéaire est choisi, et d'autres problèmes sont abordés (calcul du polynôme minimal, de la forme de Frobenius d'une matrice, lorsque la factorisation du polynôme caractéristique est connue).

Internet of Things (IoT) has been paving the way for a plethora of potential applications, which becomes more spatial and demanding. The goal of this work is to optimise the performance within the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) in the network layer. RPL still suffers from unbalanced load traffic among the candidate parents. Consequently, the overloaded parent node drains its energy much faster than other candidate parent nodes. This may lead to an early disconnection of a part of the network topology and affect the overall network reliability. To solve this problem, a new objective function (OF) has been proposed to usher better load balancing among the bottleneck candidate parents, and keep the overloaded nodes lifetime thriving to longer survival. Moreover, several IoT applications have antagonistic requirements but pertinent, which results in a greater risk of affecting the network reliability, especially within the emergency scenarios. With the presence of this challenging issue, the current standardised RPL OFs cannot sufficiently fulfil the antagonistic needs of Low-power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) applications. In response to the above issues, a context adaptive OF has been proposed to facilitate exchanging the synergy information between the application and network layers. Thus, the impact of the antagonistic requirements based on context parameters will be mitigated via rationalizing the selection decision of the routing path towards the root node. We implemented the proposed protocol and verified all our findings through excessive measurements via simulations and a realistic deployment using a real testbed of a multi-hop LLNs motes. The results proved the superiority of our solution over the existing ones with respect to end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and network lifetime. Our contribution has been accepted initially to be adopted within the standard body Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Ce mémoire de thèse porte sur la conception, la validation et l'application du codage canal en mode relais dans le cadre de système WiFi. A cette fin, le modèle de transmission coopératif est introduit dans le chapitre 1 et le chapitre 2 se consacre à l'étude du décodeur MIMO intégré dans le système coopératif. Le chapitre 3 se consacre à l'étude du protocole baptisé Relais-SISO et sa mise en œuvre dans le standard IEEE802.11a à 5 GHz. De nouvelles structures de trame sont proposées en ajoutant des préambules destinés à être exploités par le mode coopératif. Des résultats de simulation démontrent l'avantage de la technique coopérative. A notre connaissance, ces travaux sont les premiers à proposer une application du codage relais au WiFi. Le chapitre 4, une stratégie hybride basée sur la solution Relais-SISO est présentée car elle améliore les performances du système Relais-SISO. Le mode hybride proposé s'appuie sur l'évaluation de la qualité du lien coopératif pour activer ce mode. Dans le chapitre 5, l'optimisation du mode coopératif de la couche physique est réalisé en mettant en œuvre la chaîne de partitionnement du Golden Code. On met en évidence le fait qu'une simple combinaison de ce dernier et d'un code convolutif, fournit un gain de codage grâce au gain du déterminant du Golden code. Le travail serait incomplet sans tenir compte du nouveau standard WiFi IEEE802.11n ratifié en Octobre 2009. C'est l'objet du chapitre 6, qui propose un protocole coopératif, baptisé Relay-MIMO, qui exploite d'une manière conjointe la diversité MIMO et la diversité de coopération.