Contents
Editorial Board V I-I
Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė 1-31
Detecting Suspicion Information on the Web Using Crime Data Mining Techniques Javad Hosseinkhani, Mohammad Koochakzaei, Solmaz Keikhaee, Yahya Hamedi Amin 32-41
Develop a New Method for People Identification Using Hand Appearance Mahdi Nasrollah Barati, Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad 42-49
Model and Solve the Bi-Criteria Multi Source Flexible Multistage Logistics Network Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad, Mohammad Ishak Desa, Sara Delfan Azari 50-69
Impact of Strategic Management Element in Enhancing Firm’s Sustainable Competitive Advantage. An Empirical Study of Nigeria’s Manufacturing Sector Yahaya Sani, Abdel-Hafiez Ali Hassaballah 70-82
A Co-modal Transport Information System in a Distributed Environment Zhanjun Wang, Khaled Mesghouni, Slim Hammadi 83-99
Online Brand Experience Creation Process Model: Theoretical Insights Tadas Limba, Mindaugas Kiskis, Virginija Jurkute 100-118
Color Image Segmentation Using a Modified Fuzzy C-means Method and Data Fusion Techniques Rafika Harrabi, Ezzedine Ben Braiek 119-134 Model of Brand Building and Enhancement by Electronic Marketing Tools: Practical Implication Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė, Virginija Jurkutė 135-155
A Constraint Programming Approach for Scheduling in a Multi-Project Environment Marcin Relich 156-171
Anti-Crisis Management Tools for Capitalist Economy Alexander A. Antonov 172-190
E-Business Qualitative Criteria Application Model: Perspectives of Practical Implementation Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė 191-213
A UML Profile for use cases Multi-interpretation Mira Abboud, Hala Naja, Mohamad Dbouk, Bilal El Haj Ali 214-226
A Grid-enabled Application for the Simulation of Plant Tissue Culture Experiments Florence I. Akaneme, Collins N. Udanor, Jane Nwachukwu, Chibuike Ugwuoke, Carl .E.A Okezie, Benjamin Ogwo 227-242
Clustering Evolutionary Computation for Solving Travelling Salesman Problems Tanasanee Phienthrakul 243-262
An Agent Driven M-learning Application Collins N. Udanor, O.U. Oparaku 263-272
Evolution of Utilizing Multiple Similarity Criteria in Web Service Discovery Hassan Azizi Darounkolaei, Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad 273-281
Multi-Aspect Tasks in Software Education: A Case of a Recursive Parser Evgeny Pyshkin 282-305
Structured Stream Data Mining Using SVM Method as Basic Classifier Hadi Barani Baravati, Javad Hosseinkhani, Solmaz Keikhaee, Abbas Shahsavari 306-316
Models for Integrating Social Networking in Higher Education Andreas Veglis 317-326
Wireless Sensor System According to the Concept of IoT -Internet of Things- Juan Felipe Corso Arias, Yeison Julian Camargo Barajas, Juan Leonardo Ramirez Lopez 327-343
Analysis of Multiple String Pattern Matching Algorithms Akinul Islam Jony 344-353
Nonlinearity Compensation for High Power Amplifiers Based on Look-Up Table Method for OFDM Transmitters Maryam Sajedin, Ayaz Ghorbani, Hamid Reza Amin Davar 354-367
E-Portfolio Assessment for Learning: Ten Years Later – an Experience from an Outcome-Based University Abdallah Tubaishat 368-378
How Programmer Plans Training? Jakub Novotný, Martina Winklerová 379-389
Editorial Board
Dr. Tanveer A Zia • Associate Head of School of Computing and Mathematics Charles Sturt University, Australia
Prof. Dr. Sun-Yuan Hsieh • Head of Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
Prof. Dr. Loet Leydesdorff • Professor of Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dr. Smain Femmam • Associate professor of Strasbourg University of Haute Alsace Associate member in the Laboratory of Signals and Safety Systems of Polytechnic School of Engineering, France
Prof. Dr. Milena M. Head • Professor Information Systems, Acting Director MBA Programs DeGroote School of Business McMaster University, Canada
Prof. Dr. DV Ashoka • Head and Professor of Department of Information Science and Engineering Visveswaraya Technological University, India
Prof. Dr. Li-Der Chou • Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering National Central University, Taiwan
I Dr. Khaled Hassanein • Professor of Information Systems Chair, Information Systems Area Director, McMaster eBusiness Research Centre (MeRC) DeGroote School of Business McMaster University, Canada
Dr. Ching-Hsien Hsu • Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering Chung Hua University, Taiwan
Prof. Valentina Emilia Balas • Faculty of Engineering Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, Romania
Dr. Hamed Taherdoost • CEO of Ahoora Ltd | Management Consultation Group Head of R&D Department, AsanWare Sdn Bhd, Malaysia
Dr. Fu-Hau Hsu • Computer Science and Information Engineering Department National Central University, Taiwan
Prof. Dr. P.Raviraj • Head and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Department Kalaignar Karunanidhi Institute of Technology, India
Dr. Yung-Pin Cheng • Associate Professor of Computer Science and Information Engineering Department National Central University, Taiwan
Dr. Ahmed Nabih Zaki Rashed • Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering Department, Faculty of Electronic Engineering Menoufia University, Egypt
Dr. Weiling Ke • School of Business Clarkson University, USA
II
Dr. Vusa Sreenivasarao • Faculty of Electrical and Computer engineering Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia
Prof. Dr. Anil Kumar • Department of Mathematics Greater Noida College of Technology, India
Dr. Ebtesam Najim Abdullah AlShemmary • Head and Professor of Informatics Center for Research and Development University of Kufa, Iraq
Dr. Ashu Gupta • School of Information Technology Apeejay Institute of Management Technical Campus, India
Dr. Chung-Cheng Chiu • Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Chung Cheng Institute of Technology National Defense University, Taiwan
Dr. MV Raghavendra • Associate Professor of Electronic and Communication Department Adama Science and Technology University, Ethiopia
Dr. Kalpana Chauhan • Head of Department of EEE Srida Group of Institutions, India
Dr. Prasant Singh Yadav • Dean and Associate Professor of Vedant Institute of Management and Technology, India
Dr. Rajender Bathla • Department of Computer Science and Engineering Haryana Institute of Engineering and Technology Kurukshetra University, India
Dr. Rajesh Timane • MBA Department
III
Panjabrao Deshmukh Institute of Management Technology and Research Management Department of Dhanwate National College NagpurRashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University, India
Dr. Cheng-Hsiang Liu • Head of Academic Department Industrial Management National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Prof. Dr.Pan Quan-Ke • State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries, Northeastern University, China
Prof. Dr. Mohd Nazri Ismail • National Defence University of Malaysia, Malaysia
Prof. Dr. Haider M. AlSabbagh • Department of Electrical Engineering College of Engineering University of Basra, Iraq
Prof. Dr. Muzhir Shaban Al-Ani • College of Computer University of, Iraq
Dr. Ricardo Rodriguez • Department of Mechatronics Technological University of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Prof. Dr. Vida Davidavičienė • Head of Department of Business Technologies Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania
Dr. Wanqing Tu • Associate Professor Department of Computing Science and Digital Media The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK
IV
International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Information Technology (IJACSIT) Vol. 3, No. 1, 2014, Page: 1-31, ISSN: 2296-1739 © Helvetic Editions LTD, Switzerland www.elvedit.com
Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice
Authors
Tadas Limba [email protected] Institute of Digital Technologies, Faculty of Social Technologies, Vilnius, LT-0100, Lithuania Mykolas Romeris University
Gintarė Gulevičiūtė [email protected] Institute of Digital Technologies, Faculty of Social Technologies, Vilnius, LT-0100, Lithuania Mykolas Romeris University Abstract
The systematic, comparative analysis of the models of electronic government services carried out in the scientific work and the assessment of opportunities of their application in the self-government level makes the topic a novelty. With the help of the method of comparative analysis the models of electronic government services have been assessed and there has been distinguished the total of six. Two of them being the main common models of electronic government services have the features that enable the development of new models of electronic government services that are more targeted at changes taking place in public needs and inside organizational processes signifying the originality. The aim of this work is to develop a Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model which could ensure the efficient integration of electronic government services in the local self-government level. The scientific work analyzes the improvement opportunities of the models of electronic government services and their application alternatives in Lithuanian municipalities. In order to evaluate implementation of “Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model”, four empirical studies have been conducted, which show the possibility of this model application. The newly developed model of electronic government services that has been designed basing on the principle of integrating online expert consultation is primarily targeted at improvement of inside processes’ changes of an organization. Practicing the application of that model in the local self-government level starting with improvement of inside processes of an organization should help adapt more accurately and efficiently to the changing needs of the society while providing electronic government services, thus establishing a higher public value. The practical novelty of work is reflected not only through the integration opportunities’ assessment of the principle of online expert consultation services into the theoretical models of electronic government services that have already been developed by the scientists, but also on the basis of this principle there has been created a “Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model” in accordance with “E-Diamond” model basis and its practical application realization with the design of “The project of implementing the principle of online expert consultation on the model of electronic government services” for the future investigations. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Information Technology Volume 3, Issue 1, 2014, ISSN: 2296-1739
Key Words
E-government, electronic government services, Stage model of electronic government services, “E- Diamond” model of electronic government services, Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model, local authorities, public administration.
I. INTRODUCTION Electronic government is being implemented worldwide and in all levels of governance. Local authorities play a particularly important role, since they can identify the changing customers’ needs best of all [1]. Although the governance functions of those institutions in different countries slightly differ, their common goal remains the same, that is not only to make the governance itself more efficient, but also to make it more accessible for the public [17, 18]. Municipalities, that are able to provide public service for the consumers in more effective and modern ways can also meet other public needs, in this way implementing directly one of the principles of European local self-government charter, which is the one of ensuring a tighter link between local self- government and the public. Basing on that it can be claimed, that the role of electronic government is of quite an important manner while making an impact on a suitable choice of different models for the implementation of the above mentioned and other principles of local authorities.
Scientific issue. Issues and their solutions concerning the efficient electronic government services provision occur worldwide. In some countries, Lithuania is one of them, the models that are identified only hardly coordinate with the models of electronic government services covered in this work or separate fragments of such models being applied in local self-government levels. In order to solve those problems it would be expedient to find new, improved and more effective models of electronic government services that can meet the needs of customers better while providing electronic government services.
Object of the research. The application of the models of electronic government services for public administration.
Purpose – the aim of work is to develop a Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model which could ensure the efficient integration of electronic government services in the local self-government level.
There have been set the following objectives for the above mentioned purpose to be achieved: 1. To carry out the comparative analysis of Stage models of electronic government services; 2. To analyze in detail “E-Diamond” electronic government services model; 3. Having analyzed the Stage models and “E-Diamond” model of electronic government services and having carried out their comparative analysis, to establish the main features of those models for their improvement;
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
4. To reveal the conceptual-holistic prospects for improving electronic governance services models; 5. To offer a new model of electronic government services for the local authorities; 6. To conduct research of application a new model of electronic government services in Lithuanian municipalities.
Practical significance. The development alternatives of the suggested Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model and its principle of online expert consultation services for municipalities provide the conditions to carry out the experiment thus pointing out the practical value of the scientific work.
Models of electronic government services, that are created and being analyzed by worldwide scientists, aim at seeking solutions and their alternatives for more efficient public services provision. The years of establishment of the models reflecting the recent development trends of models of electronic government services show that the subject matter of the models of electronic government services is relevant and fairly new worldwide as well as in Lithuania.
II. ANALYSIS OF STAGES MODELS OF ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE SERVICES An easy way to comply with the paper formatting requirements is to use this document as a template and simply type your text into it. All Stages Models – „ANAO“, “SAFAD”, „Lee & Layne“, Public sector processes completing („PSP completing) and „Hiller & Belanger“, which are already analyzed by G. Goldkuhl and A. Persson, have a common feature, namely the first stage has poor functionality and the last one has low level of integration involving all management levels (local and other authorities, legal and natural persons). Another common feature comes with the level of integration, i.e. the higher it is the higher requirements for technologies [23]. Given the common features there are some clear differences as well. In order to compare the models in a more convenient manner the similarities and differences have been put in a table. The features of the models are presented in the columns and the rows list the features of the stages (see Table 1).
TABLE I: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE STAGES MODELS „PSP „ANAO“ “SAFAD” „Lee & Layne“ „Hiller & Belanger“ completing“ Publishing Information Catalogue Cultivation Information I information Interaction Interaction Transaction Extention Two-way II Communication Transaction of Transaction Vertical Maturity Transaction III secure integration information Sharing Integration Horizontal Revolution Integration IV information with integration other agencies V (Does‘nt exist) (Does‘nt exist) (Does‘nt exist) (Does‘nt exist) Political participation Source: Limba, T., 2009.
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Information Technology Volume 3, Issue 1, 2014, ISSN: 2296-1739
The comparative analysis of the models that has been carried out shows the fact that electronic governance stage models have advantages and disadvantages although it is worth remembering that in both theoretical and practical works, where the issues of electronic governance are being analyzed, we would not possibly find absolutely perfect models that would be able to fit any public administration systems. A common spread of stage models in different worldwide public sector systems shows that this type of models are easily implemented in public administration, although it is necessary to emphasize that the spread of their application does not completely illustrate the usefulness and quality of the models while providing public service for users. Having evaluated the weaknesses and threats of the models the essential issues must be pointed out. Firstly, integration of stages is rather complicated process, e.g. a higher stage cannot be integrated without firstly integrating a lower stage. However, this is mainly the issue of technological solutions. Another more important problem might arise while implementing stage models at the moment, namely the rapid change in public sector organizational processes and increasing aiming at individual and complex needs of users, which are related to multiple social phenomena. In conclusion, it can be stated that having assessed the advantages and disadvantages of the above mentioned models’ application in public sector, there could be explored not only those but also more developed alternatives for implementing electronic governance models in public administration institutions.
III. ANALYSIS OF “E-DIAMOND” ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE SERVICES MODEL All paragraphs must be indented. All paragraphs must be justified, i.e. both left-justified and right-justified. Electronic governance service model “E-Diamond” is based on a different attitude to public service in comparison with the analyzed stage model group, although it is not completely distant from stage models. This model has been designed as an opposition to stage models. On the other hand, the authors themselves believe that the development of the “E-Diamond” model is restructuring the stage models into poles [16]. The analysis of the “E-Diamond” model and efforts to find connections with stages can be based on the Swedish “SAFAD” stage model [15].
The analysis of stage models shows the predominance of aiming to collect informative services into one pool around one particular subject, in other words, coordinated, individualized and informative electronic governance services (further on – services). The following opposition for this classification is provided in the E- Diamond model: separation, generalizing and performativeness. This kind of division composes three electronic governance services poles [15]. The poles with subdivisions are illustrated in the picture below (see Figure 1).
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
FIGURE I: “E-DIAMOND” MODEL. SOURCE: GOLDKUHL, G., PERSSON, A., STURGART, 2006, P. 72
The first opposition in the poles is separate and coordinated services. Separate meaning the ones that require only one institution to provide service, their opposition being coordinated services that correspond stage model integration levels [15] and in a way the partial services layer of the interinstitutional multiple interaction model structure [18]. Coordinated services have two more subdivisions: aligned and fused services.
The second opposition includes general and individualized services. General services are provided for everyone without requiring personal identification in the database, whereas individualized services are provided only having identified a person in the electronic space. The latter are divided into non-secured and secured services. Non-secured services in this model can be related with electronic mail requests in stage models (the second stage of “SAFAD”) where you need the basic personal identification (basic presentation indicating the name, surname, occupation, etc.), but the information provided for the applicant is not personal, thus a secured personal identification is not necessary, which would be extremely important for secured services subdivision under the fourth stage of “SAFAD”.
The last poles of the opposition provide informative and performative services. Informative services are targeted only at the information available for reading, e.g. information provided in the website of municipality, whereas the performative services allow the user pursue interaction with an institution on the integrational level [15,16]. For instance, the following information is available on the website of municipality after submitting application for it: information on the vision, mission, objectives and activity. Further systemized information and valid public services are provided after having clarified the request if it is required or carrying out different interinstitutional procedures on the computerized databases. It is worth mentioning that informative services can be subdivided into pre-arranged knowledge and selected information. Pre-arranged information (or knowledge) is received when a customer is surfing the website of an
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Information Technology Volume 3, Issue 1, 2014, ISSN: 2296-1739
institution, and selected information is the one that is filtered through the browsing system on the site [16].
The founders of the “E-Diamond” model criticize the negative application of the stages principle [16]. The stage models aim at including all the previous stages to the last stage and they set it as the objective, although it is not always possible and necessary to transmit services from the first level to the highest, e.g. there is no point in seeking to transmit the publicity of municipality documents to the highest level. Here the advantages of the “E-Diamond” model come up. This model does not aim at transmitting everything to the highest level, because there is no such level. There are three incomparable areas that are all of equal importance and necessary, and the complexity of services fluctuates in different poles of the areas [16].
Assessing this model according to the analysis that has been carried out firstly it is necessary to point out that the practice of applying the “E-Diamond” model is not very common. As it was mentioned above, the model has been developed by Swedish scientists, so it has been tried to be applied in Sweden. Having assessed the theoretical analysis of the “E-Diamond” model, its application should be easier implemented in practice from the technologial point of view than the stage models, because in that case the barriers are created due to the pursue of the higher stage. However, from the organizational processes development point of view, the implementation of the “E-Diamond” model might be a little bit more complicated for a few reasons. Firstly, the lack of experience of implementing such a model might create certain obstacles for implementation and proper sorting out of public services to particular poles. As it was analyzed describing the threats for model implementation, it might occur that at the same time one or a few services should be attributed to different opposite poles.
However, it is more likely that the main problem is related to the lack of expertise of public administration institutions civil servants in the area of electronic governance project impplementation field. The “E-Diamond” model structure in itself is slightly more complicated than that of stage models, therefore it could be harder taken in and brought into awareness by the civil servants, responsible for implementing projects of this kind in the public sector.
IV. COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE STAGES AND “E-DIAMOND” ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE SERVICES MODELS: AN IMPACT FOR THEIR IMPROVEMENT All electronic governance models that have been analysed in this paper have their own distinguishing features in comparison with other models. The stages and „E-Diamond“ models are considered universal. Stage Models, e.g., „SAFAD“, „ANAO“, are considered to be founding models, others basing on the origin or their paradigm are complementing the founding ones or emphasize other features of the models – “E-Diamond” Model. What is also necessary to point out is that electronic governance Stage Models that have been developed and applied for a longer period of time, have been useful for a while, although further application prospects cast certain scientific doubts. On the other hand, what is also arguable is the usefulness of later developed theoretical electronic governance models (the case of „E-Diamond Model).
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
In order to assess the usefulness and more suitable application of electronic governance models in public sector in a more accurate and efficient manner, one of the proposed alternatives is to define the common features of electronic governance Stages Model and “E-Diamond” Model, which could be the following:
Possible levels of implementation The main features of different level, or in case they are not available, different stages or steps; The level of targeting at the client; The level of targeting at organizational inner processes; Feedback (self-assessment opportunity); Technological background for the implementation of the selected model [23].
The comparative analysis according to the features mentioned above will also help distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of the model (see Table 2).
TABLE II: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF COMMON FEATURES OF THE STAGES AND “E-DIAMOND” ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE SERVICES MODELS. SOURCE: LIMBA 2011.
Model Stages Models “E-Diamond” Model Features
1. Possible levels of There are 4 most common levels of The level of implementation is defined implementation implementation1. according to three different features – poling2.
1) Every higher level includes all features of the lower level (stage) and 1) The sevices are defined as a combination 2. Description of complements them. being individualized, general and performative features for 2) The first level deals with of a certain level. different levels information publicity, whereas the 2) Every pole distributes the services from highest level has a complete simple to more complicated ones. organizational integration.
Every higher stage integrates the One of the poles is the relation between 2. Targeting at the clients even more, but the model is not individualized and general. client suitable for every day life situations. The attention is paid. The model 3. Targeting at The fourth stage most commonly is partly distinguishes targeting at inner inner processes devoted to interorganizational processes. processes.
The model does not envisage such an The model does not envisage such an 4. Feedback opportunity. opportunity.
5. Possibility for It is available. It is assessed according It is available. It can be assessed according to service assessment to the level the service belongs to. the place the service is in the “E-Diamond”.
Every higher stage requires more The more complicated the services of each pole 6. Technological modern technologies and better are, the more complicated technological background integration. solutions they require in order to provide them.
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Information Technology Volume 3, Issue 1, 2014, ISSN: 2296-1739
1. An exception is „Hiller & Belanger“ model which has 5 levels of implementation. 2. Service poles: separate coordinated; general individualized; informative performative.
In evaluation of these general features designed for the models exceptionally from the point of traditional public administration conceptions, the most important of them are to be considered two of them – orientation towards the client and orientation towards internal organizational processes. However, the science of public administration, having assessed the information technology actively penetrating into all public administration system reform processes and public life, in this context becomes interdisciplinary; therefore, importance of other aforementioned general features of electronic government services models does not lose significance and value. After carrying out the comparative analysis of models, it is possible to make a presumption that both electronic government services stages’ model and the “E-Diamond” model are sufficiently proportionally oriented by the features of the orientation towards a client and orientation towards internal organizational processes.
Having carried out a comparative analysis of the models, it would be purposeful to analyze some similarities and differences among the models, identifying the causes and essentials of them.
The most simple comparison to carry out would be of the Stages Model and the “E-Diamond”. The “E-Diamond” model is made up of regrouping and complementing the stages of “SAFAD” Model into certain opposition. As the authors of the model claim [16], the first two stages of the “SAFAD” Model, namely the opportunities for information provision and ensurance of interaction in the electronic space, might be treated as the oppositin of informative and performative services, with regards to the services being used by the customer (see Picture 9). The third stage of the “SAFAD” Model implements the transactional services – receiving and transmitting information or electronic governance services. Services of a transactional nature are different from the other services in the level of individualization, thus in the authors’ opinion [16], the emergence of the opposition of individual and general electronic governance services would be purposeful. The fourth stage of the Stages Model, i.e. the Integration becomes an opposition to individualized and integrated services of the “E-Diamond” Model (Figure 2).
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
Transactions Separate Coordinated Interaction
Interaction General Individualized Transactions
Permormative Informative Information Integration
FIGURE II: TRANSFORMATION OF THE STAGES MODEL INTO THE “E-DIAMOND” MODEL. SOURCE: LIMBA, 2011 It is worth paying attention to the fact that only the Stages Model provides the opportunity to assess the implementation of electronic governance services according to the levels set in advance. However, with the help of other models it can be identified what is the status of the electronic governance services provision. For instance, if the municipality provides only individualized, informative and general services, it might be assumed that either there is no technological basis or the integration of services having more complicated implementation (individualized, merged, implemented on the web) is avoided.
It is also possible to state that the designed “E-Diamond” model as it liberates the stages from their technological dependence, thus, it is simpler and more universal from the application aspect and in conceptual approach its implementation should be simpler. However, it is more likely that the main problem is not technological dependence of the stages’ models or issues of stages liberalisation while transforming them into the “E-Diamond” model, but the lack of competence by the officials of public administration institutions in the area of electronic government services project implementation [26]. The structure of the “E-Diamond” model itself is more complex than that of the stages’ models; thus, it could be more difficult to be understood and comprehended by civil servants responsible for the implementation of the projects of such nature in public sector. Consequently, the appearance of new models unambiguously requires also the changes in qualification and competence of civil servants.
V. CONCEPTUAL-HOLISTIC PROSPECTS OF IMPROVING ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE SERVICES MODELS
It is difficult to distinguish one model that would be dominating or the best. Each model has its advantages and disadvantages. However, it is necessary to emphasize that these models are developed not only basing on theoretical paradigms, but also on practice of integrating electronic governance service into public sector in foreign countries. A great number of theoretical models,
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Information Technology Volume 3, Issue 1, 2014, ISSN: 2296-1739
such as ANAO, SAFAD, Lee & Layne are developed basing on experience of electronic governance service implementation in public administration institutions in Australia, Sweden and the USA. It should not be forgotten that all these models have been implemented and applied considering the peculiarities of public administration in every country, especially the specific system of local authorities and the national users needs. At this point it should be mentioned that the needs of local authorities systems and national users in different countries around the world vary, therefore claiming that one of the analyzed and compared models would suit perfectly to other countries, e.g. Lithuania, would be wrong [25]. Thus, we can draw a conclusion, that basing on the background of the above analyzed models, it would be purposeful to develop more universal electronic governance service models that would include holistic-social, competence and technological aspects, suitable for most countries public sector systems.
Some worldwide and European Union public administration institutions, especially municipalities, have a relatively low connection with local community while carrying out interactions. It is seen while poviding information, especially public services to the public. Having designed websites for the municipalities [1], it was thought that putting public information to electronic space would lead to more favourable conditions for the customers to use them, which would eventually solve the problem of the flow of residents applying directly to municipalities. However, some scientists [2, 6, 8, 9] tend to have doubts concerning that being the only solution. In such a case quite an important issue is identified and a question is asked directly relating to it – how could it be possible to provide services more efficiently and increase the flow of residents applying directly for public information and services while applying and developing the electronic governance service models. What is more, how can the activity and the importance of municipalities be fostered in the context of modernization.
In order to solve this problem, it is suggested to base on statements by Swiss scientists N. Thom and A. Ritz who state management of public institutions as well as municipalities demand new strategies, administrative and technological solutions from the fast changing environment [31]. However, existing legal conditions cast doubt on the reality of such a prospect.
What especially needs to be placed some emphasis on is the fact that those changes are resisted by administrative staff who are accustomed to the existing stable systems and are not inclined to innovations. The fact how public institutions are able to accept changes in the system and its environment and realize the factors that influence them has a considerable importance on public sector management.
Discretion of management differs in making influence on outside environment, human factors and conditions for institutions. The management’s role in influencing the conditions for political level is much lower than conditions for institutional level and human factors. The law on public organizations and public service still restricts flexibility, which is of extreme importance for the development of the modern reforms [31].
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
It should not be forgotten, that public sector conditions are divided into: Outside conditions; Inside conditions.
The public sector outside conditions include only general results and results of specific influence on outside environment, e.g. when there is provided final integrated and prepared public service for the user and additional consultancy service of how to use the implemented public service. The outside conditions provide the opportunity for the user to judge, e.g. if the public service is provided in a sufficiently qualified and effective manner [31]. Whereas inside conditions, that are affecting the management of public institutions, fall into the following: Institutional conditions; Human factors.
Institutional conditions are targeted at selecting proper administrative structure and the required number of employees, as well as the process of the executed reform. Usually the conditions of institutions are obvious and they set a clearly defined operation area for the management. Thus, while modernizing the administration, the pursue to reform and change those aspects is usually more reasonable than the pursue to change human aspect. However, the human aspects influence even more important organizational decisions, that are crucial to the proximity of outside factors as well, namely the directiveness of the public sector functions, depth and quality, the civil servants overcoming the barriers of social experience, knowledge and skills [31].
While confirming the above stated, we can base upon the presumption which is still relevant nowadays that was made by the USA scientist Kenneth L. Kraemer who has been exploring the peculiarities of the innovative tools implementation in the public sector. The author claims that one of the more important factors that limits the use of information technologies and the implementation of similar innovations in public sector is the lack of computer literacy and training among employees of public administration institutions. The use of information technologies provides more flexibility for such public sector organizations as municipality and its divisions [10, 19].
Having assessed the above mentioned scientific statements, it can be established that while implementing innovative means in local authorities institutions a great deal of attention must first of all be paid to the law reform, which is related to administrative changes due to the influence of innovations that are being implemented, and to the civil servants expertise development in the area of electronic governance service implementation. The emphasis must be placed on the fact that project implementation of electronic governance service and management in the local authorities level depend on the expertise and computer literacy of employees in municipalities. Electronic governance services first of all are implemented into the information- technological system of local authorities institutions and only then they can be provided to users. Thus, it can be stated that the quality and efficiency of providing electronic governance service
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depend on the level of knowledge and abilities of civil servants to use information technologies, as well as the outside and new instruments of public consultancy in the area of electronic governance services. Therefore, a great amount of attention must be drawn to changes in competence while designing and developing the new model of integrating electronic governance service, which would include holistic-social, competence and technological aspects.
VI. DESIGNING AND APPLICATION OF HOLISTIC ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES INTEGRATION MODEL FOR LOCAL AUTHORITIES In discussing the aforementioned problem solving methods, various proposals are possible; however, one of them would be, particularly taking into account the problem of interaction between the institutions of district self-government and residents as well as business, – to create a model based on the principle of expert consultation application. External framework of the model would include the “Virtual Union of Local Authorities”. That is to say, it would be possible to merge local authorities into the single virtual unit on the cyberspace leaving their former usual structural functioning and the possibility to use the websites of these local authorities. The “Virtual Union of Local Authorities” model would be characterized by the implementation of the expert advisory function, e.g. for district municipalities, and this in its own turn would contribute to solving the issues of active use of electronic government services and their provision quality. To put it simply, the example could be a special model grounded by online expert consultations individually applied by one or several smaller district municipalities of Lithuania characteristic of the lowest activeness among residents addressing them as well as the larger city municipalities.
It is important to note that functioning of the “Virtual Union of Local Authorities” might be exceptionally virtual, on the contrary to other associations or public sector institutions. The “Virtual Union of Local Authorities” would function solely on the cyberspace or, more precisely, would exceptionally be characteristic of just the advisory function striving for improvement of interaction between local authorities and the public. Of course, attempting to consolidate such novelties in practice, though the advisory functioning of the proposed model, it would be worth to regulate it by legal acts of the Republic of Lithuania.
In considering the possibilities to apply the “E-Diamond” model in local authorities of Lithuania and having assessed the current situation of electronic government services integration, the development of the “lower edge of the diamond” fragments is possible. The lower edge of the “E- Diamond” model includes provision of services of more informative nature; however, this edge is integrated not gradually (one following another), but individually. In other words, all the edges of the model are independent of each other, in contrast to the models of electronic government stages. As in Lithuania the principles of stage models are known and applied, it is possible to state that in Lithuania practical application of the “E-Diamond” model has not been identified [24].
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
In successful improvement of electronic government services introduction in local authorities, in future it would possible to discuss the development of the “E-Diamond” model in the upper “edge” fragments or the entire “E-Diamond” model integration.
However, having assessed quite poor experience of Lithuania in improving electronic government services, relevant electronic government service integration at self-government level problems, absence of alternative contemporary electronic government service models, the proposal would be to introduce the principle of “online expert consultation services” at the levels of “front-office” and “back-office” moving from the current electronic government stages’ model to the “E-Diamond” model, in this way designing a new and one of the most appropriate alternatives of Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model (see Figure 3).
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MORE QUALITATIVE AND EFFECTIVE PROVISION OF ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES
Stage model changing into “E-Diamond” (Goldkuhl, Influence of computer G., Persson, A., 2006) literacy of citizens, model (clients, users) Permormative services
Individualized Coordinated Knowledge sharing with services services (Aligned other officials inside the and Fused) local authority
„Front
Online Local authority consulting officials online Competitive services for consulting
changes of local - office“ Local office“ services for authority’s - authority citizens and officials officials business (NGO) More effective effective More
„Back
More effective effective More High competence Low competence Low government services government the sphere of electronic electronic of the sphere government services government in citizens of consulting
Knowledge sharing with electronic integration of other officials outside organization with other Separate General services municipalities services Informative Influence of computer services literacy of local Saving of organization’s authority’s officials time and funds, More efficient use of workload reduction of private and NGO local authority’s officials organizations time and funds
MORE QUALITATIVE AND EFFECTIVE PROVISION OF ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES
Source: Compiled by the author FIGURE III: HOLISTIC ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES INTEGRATION MODEL Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
The first aspect “Low Competence” of this model structure is taken as a starting point showing the low organizational competence of a municipality in the area of electronic government services. What is more, it is important to point out that the implementation of the principle of online expert consultation services is closely related to and is dependent on the computer literacy skills of municipalities’ officials. Obviously, the higher the level of computer literacy of local authorities’ officials, the more effectively the online expert consultation services can be integrated in an organization, and vice versa. Thus, it is important to point out that the officials’ ability to participate in providing them with online expert consultation services is directly related to their own level of computer literacy, which is an important structural component of the aforementioned model.
At the “back-office” of the municipality a structural element “Qualification changes of municipalities’ officials” is created after the provision of the online expert consultation services. This element has two branches:
• Sharing the gained knowledge in the area of electronic government services within the organization, passing this knowledge on to all main structural levels of the organization;
• Sharing the gained knowledge in the area of electronic government services among organizations, spread of this knowledge among all local authorities (and other public administration institutions of the state) and their different structural levels.
As far as the holistic model of integrating electronic government services is concerned, the outcome aspect of the organizational inner structure of the municipality, which outlines the obtained result while implementing the principle of the online expert consultation, is a high organizational competence in the area of electronic government services. However, the main structural element of the outcome of this model that helps to withdraw inefficient stage model and move on to the three alternate poles (six elements) implementation of the “E-Diamond” model is the more efficient integration of electronic government services, which ensures saving the costs of the municipality budget and time as well as the reduction of the workload of municipalities’ officials more effectively.
At the “back-office” level the online expert consultation services, as it has already been mentioned, would firstly be provided for the officials of municipalities. While at the “front- office” level of an organization having become qualified specialists of this area the officials of municipalities providing online expert consultation services for the public could inform residents and businesspeople about the electronic government services and their advantages. It has to be mentioned that at the “front-office” level the online expert consultation services in the area of electronic government services would be provided for residents and business entities on the principle of online consultation. Of course, here other, quite important problems of the public motivation to participate in seminars of such nature and computer literacy arise, on which consultation effectiveness, saving finances and time of the interested, and finally, key expected result – a more high-quality and efficient electronic government service provision – depend.
The “online expert consultation service level” principle is characteristic of universality, therefore, it can be quite easily integrated into the aforementioned and on this basis designed
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model. “Online expert consultation service level” principle can be easily implemented also in practice.
Based on the proportion of electronic government service model comparison by orientation into municipal internal processes and orientation towards satisfaction of client needs, currently the most appropriate to Lithuania and forming the conditions for the occurrence of the new research possibilities would be suggested and created the Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model on “E-Diamond” model basis. This Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model was also designed using the basis of the survey of the electronic government services provision situation in Lithuania (Limba, T, 2009, B).
It is presumable that after application and implementation of the proposed Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model, more favourable mutual conditions would be formed: to municipalities – to more effectively integrate electronic government services, and to the public – to more effectively and in a more high-quality manner make use of electronic government services provided by both larger (city) and smaller (of district) municipalities.
The practical application realization of Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model with the design of “The project of implementing the principle of online expert consultation on the model of electronic government services” could be created and analyzed in detail for the future investigations.
VII. RESEARCH OF APPLICATION HOLISTIC ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES INTEGRATION MODEL IN LITHUANIAN MUNICIPALITIES
A. Experts‘ evaluation methodology and data analysis
Qualitative research method had been applied by questioning various Lithuanian authorities and institutions experts, whose work relates to the implementation of electronic government services. The aim of experts’ evaluation – to identify the importance and relevance of instrumentation of Lithuanian residents’ and municipalities’ officials research. Lithuanian residents’ research was carried out using 27 questions questionnaire. Municipalities’ officials were asked to answer 28 questions. All were asked to indicate their gender, age, place of residence, education, employment, office, computer literacy, to provide answers to questions related to an evaluation of electronic government services. The questionnaire consists of the questions in accordance with the principles of the questionnaire formation. Before submitting the questionnaire for respondents, they were aware of the purpose, relevance of problem. There has been shown that the form is anonymous and the data will be used generally. Questionnaire identifying the key explanations and instructions on how to fill it.
Experts evaluated questionnaires for Lithuanian residents and municipalities’ officials and ranked the questions according to the importance. Based on the foregoing method, nine Lithuanian experts were interviewed. Lithuanian experts were interviewed about two questionnaires to residents and municipalities’ officials without the socio-demographic characteristics of reflective questions, only those issues that have a close link to electronic
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė government services were evaluated. After evaluation, the least important questions were taken away from the questionnaires.
B. Residents‘ research methodology
Based on quantitative research methods the questionnaire survey method was used in order to obtain the opinion of the residents of Lithuania about Lithuanian municipalities offered electronic government services and their adaptation capabilities.
The purpose of residents‘ research – to investigate the population favor evaluating electronic government services adaptation capabilities in Lithuanian municipalities.
There have been introduced 2 hypotheses:
1. Respondents’ quality evaluation of electronic government services in municipalities depends on their own ability to use electronic government services; 2. Respondents’ ability to access electronic government services depends on the competence of civil servants to advice in this area. The dependence between the two variables to identify and test hypotheses to confirm or deny, the calculation of Spearman's correlation coefficient used by “STATISTICA” data processing program.
Sampling Method - by giving questionnaires for residents, respondents were selected through probability samples nested sampling method. Questionnaires were proportional to the number of total population of the municipality [29]. Required sample calculated using http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm website. Calculation of the sample indicated that the confidence level is 95 percent, 5 percent confidence interval, population – 2,7 million. The estimated sample – 384. There had been surveyed 420 respondents. Distributed 458 questionnaires. Distributed questionnaires have 81 percent return rate.
C. Residents‘ research data analysis
Residents were asked to evaluate municipalities' officials ability to consult in electronic government services area. 8 percent of surveyed respondents municipalities’ officials ability to consult in electronic government services area evaluated 5 points out of ten. Equal parts – 5 percent of respondents municipalities’ officials ability to consult in electronic government services area evaluated 6 and 7 points. 4 percent of respondents municipalities’ officials ability to consult in electronic government services area evaluated 8 points out of ten. Only 2 percent of respondents evaluated municipalities’ officials ability to consult in electronic government services area with the highest scores - 9, 10. The rest of the respondents ability to consult in electronic government services area evaluated below 2 percent or did not answer to this question (71 percent) (see Figure 4).
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FIGURE IV: EVALUATION OF MUNICIPALITIES’ OFFICIALS ABILITY TO CONSULT IN ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES AREA
Also, respondents expressed their opinion about expert consultation necessity for municipalities’ officials in electronic government services area. Almost half of surveyed respondents - 42 percent believes, that municipalities’ officials need expert advice in electronic government services area, so that they could later be precisely introduced and significantly encourage residents and business to use electronic government services. 30 percent of respondents answered that municipalities’ officials need expert advice in electronic government services area, but it would have a slight impact on the population using electronic government services. 5 percent of respondents think that it has absolutely no influence on more active citizens and businesses using electronic government services. 7 percent of respondents believe that municipalities’ officials do not need expert consultations about electronic government services, because more active people and businesses using electronic government services do not depend on them. 12 percent of respondents have no opinion on this issue (see Figure 5).
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FIGURE V: RESPONDENTS’ OPINION ABOUT EXPERT CONSULTATION NESCESSITY FOR MUNICIPALITIES’ OFFICIALS IN ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES AREA
After analyzing the data, it was important to approve or to deny hypothesis.
1 hypothesis. Respondents’ quality evaluation of electronic government services in municipalities depends on their own ability to use electronic government services:
Spearman R - Spearman ordinal correlation coefficient is 0,624282 - medium positive correlation: we can assume that when the respondent evaluates the quality of electronic government services better, then he evaluates his ability to use electronic government services better. Formulating H0 and the alternative hypothesis Ha: H0 - the correlation coefficient is equal to zero, or the relationship between the variables is not available, the Ha - the correlation coefficient is not zero, then the relationship between the variables exists. Selecting the significance level α = 0,05 (five percent error), in social studies, it is recommended choose this error. p-level - observational significance level (p-level = 0,00 <α = 0,05) refers to prove alternative hypothesis Ha and Spearman correlation coefficient is significantly different from zero. Hence, respondents electronic government service quality depends on their own ability to use electronic government services.
2 hypothesis. Respondents’ ability to access electronic government services depends on the competence of civil servants to advice in this area: Spearman R - Spearman ordinal correlation coefficient is 0,434538 - a weak positive correlation close to the average: we can assume that when the respondent evaluate the competence of civil servants better, then he evaluates his ability to use electronic government services better.
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Formulating H0 and the alternative hypothesis Ha: H0 - the correlation coefficient is equal to zero, or the relationship between the variables is not available, the Ha - the correlation coefficient is not zero, then the relationship between the variables exists. Selecting the significance level α = 0,05 (five percent error), in social studies, it is recommended choose this error. p-level - observational significance level (p-level = 0,00000 <α = 0,05) refers to prove alternative hypothesis Ha and Spearman correlation coefficient is significantly different from zero. Respondents’ ability to access electronic government services depends on the competence of civil servants to advice in this area.
The results of residents’ research show that the interest in using electronic government services is large enough, but the level of computer literacy, affecting the ability to use the same services is quite low. Another very important reason to sway public skills and competence in the use of electronic government services - a poor Lithuanian municipal public awareness and familiarization with modern facilities, saving time and money to get public services. Research results showed, that according to the majority of respondents, the use of public services activity would increase, it would save time and financial costs, if Lithuanian municipalities use more electronic government services.
Based on the research results, it can be stated that the municipalities’ officials lack of competence in the field of electronic government services is one of the major reasons causing the lack of electronic government services prevalence and use among the public. Research results revealed problems of electronic government services integration in municipalities and demonstrate the need of implementing Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model. However, only residents’ survey to approve the above mentioned model implementation in Lithuanian municipalities system is not enough. In this case, it is also important to carry out a research of municipalities’ officials, which data analysis would help to evaluate the need of this model on both sides.
D. Municipalities’ officials research methodology
Based on qualitative research methods questionnaire survey method was also applied in order to obtain Lithuanian municipalities’ officials opinion about Lithuanian municipalities offered electronic government services and their adaptation capabilities.
The purpose of municipalities’ officials research – to determine, how Lithuanian municipalities’ officials evaluate their institutions provided electronic government services adaptation options.
There have been introduced 4 hypotheses: 1. The municipal budget savings depend on direct appeal flow to the municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public. 2. Municipalities’ officials work load changes depend on direct appeal flow to the municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public.
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3. Municipalities’ officials time costs change depends on direct appeal flow to the municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public. 4. Municipality provided electronic government services quality evaluation depends on the respondents' knowledge evaluation in the area of electronic government services. Submitting questionnaires to municipalities’ officials, the respondents were selected through probability sampling, random sampling method. Required sample calculated using http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm website. Calculation of the sample indicated that the confidence level is 95 percent, confidence interval is 3 percent, population – 7500. The estimated sample – 934. There had been surveyed 1301 respondents. Distributed questionnaires have 85 percent return rate.
E. Municipalities’ officials research data analysis
It was important to find out municipalities' officials familiarity with public services transfering to internet maturity levels according to the Lithuanian E-government concept. 62 percent of respondents said, that they heard nothing about public services transfering to internet maturity levels according to the Lithuanian E-government concept. 25 percent of respondents accidentally found out about public services transfering to internet maturity levels according to the Lithuanian E-government concept from other sources of information. 9 percent of respondents noted that they are personally interesting in public services transfering to internet maturity levels according to the Lithuanian E-government concept. 4 percent of respondents indicated that they learned about public services transfering to internet maturity levels according to the Lithuanian E-government concept in special consultative lecture-seminars (see Figure 6).
FIGURE VI: MUNICIPALITIES' OFFICIALS FAMILIARITY WITH PUBLIC SERVICES TRANSFERING TO INTERNET MATURITY LEVELS ACCORDING TO THE LITHUANIAN E-GOVERNMENT CONCEPT
Also, municipalities’ officials were asked to evaluate their own knowledge associated with consulting in electronic government services area. Equal parts - 9 percent of surveyed respondents rated their ability to advise in electronic government services area 5, 7, and 8
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points out of ten. 7 percent of respondents rated their ability to advice in electronic government services area 6 points out of ten. Equal parts - the 4 percent of surveyed respondents rated their ability to advice in electronic government services area 3, 4 and 9 points. Only 2 percent of respondents rated their ability to consult in electronic government services area with the highest grade – 10. 49% of respondents had never consulted in electronic government services area (see Figure 7).
FIGURE VII: EVALUATION OF MUNICIPALITIES’ OFFICIALS THEIR OWN KNOWLEDGE ASSOCIATED WITH CONSULTING IN ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT SERVICES AREA
After analyzing the data, it was important to approve or evaluate their own knowledge associated with consulting in electronic government services area to deny hypothesis.
1 hypothesis. The municipal budget savings depends on direct appeal flow to the municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public: Spearman R - Spearman ordinal correlation coefficient is 0,434538 - a weak positive correlation close to the average: we can assume that the more decrease direct referral flow to the municipality associated with electronic government services rendering to the public, the more the municipality saves budget. Formulating H0 and the alternative hypothesis Ha: H0 - the correlation coefficient is equal to zero, or the relationship between the variables is not available, the Ha - the correlation coefficient is not zero, then the relationship between the variables exists. Selecting the significance level α = 0,05 (five percent error), in social studies, it is recommended choose this error. p-level - observational significance level (p-level = 0,00 <α = 0,05) refers to prove alternative hypothesis Ha and Spearman correlation coefficient is significantly different from zero. The municipal budget savings depend on direct appeal flow to the
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public.
2 hypothesis. Municipalities’ officials work load changes depend on direct appeal flow to the municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public: Spearman R - Spearman ordinal correlation coefficient is 0,406339 - a weak positive correlation: we can assume that the more decrease direct referral flow to the municipality associated with electronic government services rendering to the public, the more reduces the municipalities’ officials workload. Formulating H0 and the alternative hypothesis Ha: H0 - the correlation coefficient is equal to zero, or the relationship between the variables is not available, the Ha - the correlation coefficient is not zero, then the relationship between the variables exists. Selecting the significance level α = 0,05 (five percent error), in social studies, it is recommended choose this error. p-level - observational significance level (p-level = 0,00000 <α = 0,05) refers to prove alternative hypothesis Ha and Spearman correlation coefficient is significantly different from zero. Municipalities’ officials workload changes depend on direct appeal flow to the municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public.
3 hypothesis. Municipalities’ officials time costs change depends on direct appeal flow to the municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public: Spearman R - Spearman ordinal correlation coefficient is 0,339406 - a weak positive correlation: we can assume that the more decrease direct referral flow to the municipality associated with electronic government services rendering to the public, the more reduce the municipalities’ officials time costs. Formulating H0 and the alternative hypothesis Ha: H0 - the correlation coefficient is equal to zero, or the relationship between the variables is not available, the Ha - the correlation coefficient is not zero, then the relationship between the variables exists. Selecting the significance level α = 0,05 (five percent error), in social studies, it is recommended choose this error. p-level - observational significance level (p-level = 0,00000 <α = 0,05) refers to prove alternative hypothesis Ha and Spearman correlation coefficient is significantly different from zero. Thus, municipalities’ officials time costs change depends on direct appeal flow to the municipality associated with the electronic government services rendering to the public.
4 hypothesis. Municipality provided electronic government services quality evaluation depends on the respondents' knowledge evaluation in the area of electronic government services: Spearman R - Spearman ordinal correlation coefficient is 0,350651 - a weak positive correlation: we can assume that when the respondent evaluates his knowledge in the field of electronic government services better, then he evaluates the quality of municipality provided electronic government services better.
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Formulating H0 and the alternative hypothesis Ha: H0 - the correlation coefficient is equal to zero, or the relationship between the variables is not available, the Ha - the correlation coefficient is not zero, then the relationship between the variables exists. Selecting the significance level α = 0,05 (five percent error), in social studies, it is recommended choose this error. p-level - observational significance level (p-level = 0,00 <α = 0,05) refers to prove alternative hypothesis Ha and Spearman correlation coefficient is significantly different from zero. Consequently, municipality provided electronic government services quality evaluation depends on the respondents' knowledge evaluation in the area of electronic government services.
Research results showed that according to the majority of respondents, the use of public service activity would increase, it would save time and financial costs, if Lithuanian municipalities use more electronic government services. It has been determined that the majority of municipalities’ officials are not familiar with the models of electronic government services. It is important to note that the majority of municipalities’ officials are not familiar with current and identified electronic government services stage model in Lithuania.
Based on the results of the research, it could be said that municipalities’ officials experience in advising via Internet (together - by e-mail, and "online" system) about the availability of municipality services offered by electronic government services, are sufficiently low. That notes and the data that only 1,45 percent of municipalities’ officials advised to residents or private entities about using electronic government services online. It can be said that the municipalities’ officials qualification on consulting online about electronic government services should be improved.
Municipalities’ officials research results revealed problems of electronic government services integration in municipalities and demonstrate the need of implementing Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model. It stimulate to conduct the experiment of implementing this model in Lithuanian municipalities.
F. Experiment methodology
Created Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model performance based on an experiment involving Lithuania municipalities’ officials. Experiment was treated in accordance with the quantitative research methods.
The purpose of the experiment - to determine the implementation and action possibilities of created electronic government services model in Lithuanian municipalities. There have been set the following objectives for the above mentioned purpose to be achieved: 1. To hold networked (online) expert consultation seminars for municipalities’ officials; 2. To familiarize municipalities’ officials with electronic government services problems and performance contexts, electronic government services models through online expert consultation seminars, presented scientific material. The hypothesis – quality of Lithuanian municipalities’ officials in expert “online” seminars given tasks depends on duration of tasks.
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
Sampling Method - in the experiment, the respondents were selected through non- probability sampling, occasional sampling (when the sample included most conveniently analyzed elements). The study involved two respondents from each of the municipalities. Respondents from Šiauliai, Pakruojis, Anykščiai, Molėtai, Švenčionys and Druskininkai municipalities analyzing 4 subjects performed the 4 tasks in each theme, responded to a question in the first theme and two questions on rest topic (total - 3 themes). Respondents were analyzed scientific material related to electronic government services development aspects and features, models and application of these models, also coordination opportunities in Lithuanian local level. At the end of the research respondents answered two control questions intended to acquire the knowledge and skills inspection.
G. Experiment data analysis
It was important to compare, how much time respondents spent for the online expert consultation workshop tasks. Minimum time spent for the online expert consultation workshop tasks was 65 minutes, maximum – 413 minutes. Usually respondents spent from 150 to 250 minutes for the online expert consultation workshop tasks (see Figure 8).
FIGURE VIII: COMPARISON OF SPENT TIME FOR THE ONLINE EXPERT CONSULTATION WORKSHOP TASKS
Also, it was important to define quality criterias total evaluation assessment comparison of respondents’ given tasks. There were nine tasks (questions) and for every task respondent could get 1 point. Maximum he could get 9 points for all tasks. Every task was evaluated according to these criterias: Criterion 1: “Respondent understood the problem exactly” - evaluation of 1 point; Criterion 2: “Respondent realized the problem approximately” - evaluation of 0,75 points; Criterion 3: “Respondent partially realized the problem” - evaluation of 0,5 points; Criterion 4: “Respondent had difficulty in understanding the problem” - evaluation of 0,25 points; Criterion 5: “Respondent did not understand the problem” - evaluation of 0 points.
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The lowest evaluation was 7,5 points, one respondent got maximum of evaluation – 9 point.Most of respondents were evaluated 8, 7,5 or 7,75 points (see Figure 9).
FIGURE IX: QUALITY CRITERIAS TOTAL EVALUATION ASSESSMENT COMPARISON OF RESPONDENTS’ GIVEN TASKS
After the Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model application in Lithuanian municipalities experiment, it was important to approve or to deny hypothesis. In order to determine a single variable (X - tasks quality) dependence on another variable (Y - task completion time), the linear regression equation need to be calculated. Calculated using the following equation derived value of the coefficient of determination R2 = 0,8816. In order to determine the dependence of one variable on another variable strength, it is necessary to calculate the Pearson correlation value. Pearson correlation coefficient value can be calculated using the coefficient of determination and is expressed in the following formula:
r =√ R2
The estimated correlation coefficient value obtained r = 0,9389 indicates that the variable interdependence relationship is strong. The hypothesis can be approved – quality of Lithuanian municipalities’ officials in expert “online” seminars given tasks depends on duration of tasks. In other words, it can be said that the longer a respondent takes to perform this task, the higher the quality of tasks and vice versa - the less time the respondent spends, the worse the quality of task performance.
Respondents of experiment noted that they gained additional knowledge of electronic government services development opportunities for municipalities, especially they gained knowledge about implementation of electronic government services models at the municipal level.
Respondents at the end of the control questions indicated that knowledge are going to be used in practice, for example, designing and developing project of e-Šiauliai region. Respondents on their own initiative also noted that they will recommend for others
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė municipalities’ officials and professionals to participate in this "online" consultation seminar intended for municipalities’ officials to improve qualification of electronic government services and strive to raise public awareness of electronic government services more effective integration and use.
In summary, it can be stated that the current situation of electronic government services, residents and municipalities’ officials assessment analysis and the results of the experiment carried out, confirm that the Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model is appropriate, can be effectively integrated and applied in Lithuanian local authorities.
VIII. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Having carried out comparative analysis of stage and “E-Diamond” models of electronic government services, there are distinguished six key features of the models, such as possible levels of implementation, attributes of different levels, targeting at the customer, targeting at the inside processes, feedback, possibility to evaluate services, technological background. However, out of six features the main ones are considered to be the feature of targeting at the inside organizational processes of self-government and the feature of targeting at the customer. The latter is emphasized most of all due to the fact that it represents customers interests best.
2. The implementation of the above mentioned features is identified in the models of “Stages” and “E-Diamond”. Both of them are quite equally targeted at restructuring inside processes and meeting the needs of customers. Assessing the models of “Stages” and “E- Diamond” according to this rather neutral targeting, they can be applied in economically developing as well as highly developed countries, thus can be considered to be universal.
3. Aiming at a greater universality and practical applicability of models, the perspective of model improvement should be oriented towards improvement of conceptual-holistic processes under the external and internal conditions of the public sector system. The significance of internal conditions of public sector, first of all, is to be linked with human resources management peculiarities, upgrading of their competence and qualification skills. Of course, here a great role is played also by computer technology. Thus, in this case it is essential to emphasize that application and management of specific electronic government service models at local self-government level depend on the overall holistic processes – competence of municipal officials in innovation management area, their conceptual abilities in electronic government knowledge, application and proper formation of technology skills and computer literacy. Thus, it is possible to formulate a conclusion that quality and effectiveness of electronic government services provision to consumers depend on the knowledge of civil servants, level of their ability to use information technology, external and new public consultation in electronic government service area instruments.
4. Despite the fact that in the old member states of the European Union – Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany the principles of the electronic government administration are becoming a norm, having stepped through the threshold of the twentieth century, in the central and local authorities of the other European states, for example Lithuania, there is still widely applied the Max Weber’s model of hierarchical bureaucracy, which impedes the success o innovations as well as the implementations of principles and models of electronic
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government services. Therefore, to enable the establishment of the suggested Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model in Lithuanian municipalities, it is not sufficient to solve its application and implementation problems causing only competitive, managerial organizational changes. Practical implementation of the models of electronic government services in Lithuania should also be regulated by legal acts.
5. Provision of public services for the society is one of the realized and regularly developing functions of municipalities worldwide. The range of the services for residents and business is rather big, thus awareness of electronic government services provided by municipalities would be critical for nearly all levels of municipalities’ officials. Consultations provided by experts during online consultation services based on the suggested Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model, that was created in accordance with “E- Diamond” model, could help municipalities’ officials get accustomed with features of providing electronic government services to residents and business entities, as well as could provide an opportunity to become more competitive and efficient specialists in this area. What is more, the principle of online expert consultation of municipalities’ officials of the suggested model could be implemented in the “back office” or/and “front office” of the public sector in Lithuania. Finally, it can be claimed that having implemented and widely applied the suggested Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model, more efficient integration of electronic government services in the local self-government level and more accurate implementation of public expectations might be anticipated.
6. Research of application Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model in Lithuanian municipalities have been conducted. Methodological research applied expert survey method, various Lithuanian authorities and institutions experts, whose work relates to the implementation of electronic government services were interviewed. The questionnaire survey method was used in order to obtain the opinion of the residents of Lithuania about Lithuanian municipalities offered electronic government services and their adaptation capabilities. Questionnaire survey method was also applied in order to obtain Lithuanian municipalities’ officials opinion about Lithuanian municipalities offered electronic government services and their adaptation capabilities. Created Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model performance based on an experiment involving Lithuanian municipalities’ officials. It can be stated that the current situation of electronic government services, residents and municipalities’ officials assessment analysis and the results of the experiment carried out, confirm that the Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model is appropriate, can be effectively integrated and applied in Lithuanian local authorities.
REFERENCES [1] Ancarini, A. (2005). Towards quality e-service in the public sector: The evolution of web sites in the local public service sector, Managing Service Quality, Vol. 15, 6-23.
[2] Andersen, K.V.; Henriksen, H.Z. (2003). E-government maturity models: extension of the Layne and Lee model. Government information Quaterly. No. 26, 236–248.
[3] Andersen, K. V. (2004). E-government and public sector process rebuilding. Amsterdam: Kluwer.
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
[4] Becker, J., Algermissen, L., Niehaves, B. (2005). Processes in E-Government focus: A procedure model for process oriented reorganisation in public administration on the local level. Accepted to the First International Pragmatic Web Conference, September, 87–103.
[5] Becker, J., Algermissen, L., Niehaves, B. (2006). A procedure model for process oriented E-Government projects. Accepted to the First International Pragmatic Web Conference, September, 150–183.
[6] Bretschneider, S. (2003). Information technology, e-government, and institutional change. Public Administration Review, 63(6), 738–744.
[7] Buckley, J. (2003). E-service quality and the public sector, Managing Service Quality. Vol 13, 453- 462.
[8] Burn, J., Robins, G. (2003). Moving towards e-government: A case study of organisational change processes. Logistics Information Management, 25–35.
[9] Coe, A., Paquet, G., Roy, J. (2001). E-Governance and Smart Communities – A Social Learning Challenge, Social Science Computer Review, 80-93.
[10] Davenport, T.H. (1999). Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 246-267.
[11] Domarkas, V., Lukoševičienė, V. (2006). Electronic government by the aspect of providing information for the society. Public policy and administration, No. 16, 73–86.
[12] Fountain, J. (2001). Building the virtual state: Information technology and institutional change. Washington, DC, Brookings Institution, 64-78.
[13] Goldkuhl, G. (2005). Socio-Instrumental Pragmatism: A Theoretical Synthesis for Pragmatic Conceptualisation in Information Systems, in Proceedings of the 3rd Intl Conf on Action in Language, Organisations and Information Systems, Limerick, 115-132.
[14] Goldkuhl, G., Cronholm, S., Sjostrom, J. (2004). User Interfaces as Organisational Action Media, in Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Organisational Semiotics (pp. 124-140). Portugal.
[15] Goldkuhl, G.; Persson, A. (2006). Characteristics of Public E-services: Investigating the “E- Diamond” Model. Accepted to the First International Pragmatic Web Conference, September (pp. 54-79). Stuttgart, Germany.
[16] Goldkuhl, G., Persson, A. (2006). From e-ladder to “E-Diamond” – re-conceptualising models for public e-services. Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Information Systems (pp. 117- 132). Göteborg.
[17] Gronlund, A. (2002). Electronic Government - Design, Applications and Management. Hershey et al.: Idea Group Publishing, 61- 77.
[18] Gugliota, A., Cabral, L., Doingue, J., Roberto, V., Rowlatt, M., Davies, R. (2005). A semantic web service-based architecture for the interoperability of e-government services, 133–145.
[19] Kraemer, K. L., King, J. L. (1996). Information technology and administrative reform: Will the time after e-government be different? Irvine, CA7 CRITO, University of California, 580-582.
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[20] Layne, K.; Lee, J. (2001). Developing fully functional e-government: a four stage model. Government information Quarterly. No. 18, 122–136.
[21] Lenk, K., Traunmueller, R. (2001). Broadening the Concept of Electronic Government. In: Prins, J. E. J. (Ed.) Designing E-Government. Amsterdam: Kluwer, 63-74.
[22] Lind, M., Forsgren, O., Salomonson, N., Albinsson, L. (2004). The E-co model – citizens‘ driving e- services quality, 97–124.
[23] Limba, T. (2009) Electronic government services’ maturity models: their comparative analysis. Information Sciences, 30-40.
[24] Limba, T. (2009). Models of electronic government services: opportunities of their application in Lithuanian municipalities. (Doctoral disertation, Mykolas Romeris University)
[25] Limba, T. (2011). Comparative analysis of Stages models and “E-Diamond” model of electronic government services, the conceptual features of their improvement. Information Sciences, 8-23.
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[28] Persson A., Goldkuhl G. (2005). Stage-models for public e-services – investigating conceptual foundations. 2nd Scandinavian Workshop on e-government, February, Copenhagen, 151–188.
[29] Rudzkienė, V. (2005) Social Statistics. Vilnius, MRU publishing center.
[30] Signore, O.; Chesi, F.; Pallotti, M. (2003). E-government: challenges and opportunities. CMG Italy – XIX Annual Conference, Florence, Italy, 231–265.
[31] Thom, N., Ritz A. (2004). Public management. Monography. Vilnius: LTU.
AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHY
Tadas Limba was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1976. He got B. Sc. in Politics from Vilnius University, 1999 and B. Sc. in Law from Mykolas Romeris University, 2010. He got M. Sc. in Public Administration from Mykolas Romeris University, 2001 and M. Sc. in Business Law from Mykolas Romeris University, 2012. Also, Tadas Limba got his Ph. D. in Management and Administration from Mykolas Romeris University, 2009. Tadas Limba is an Associate Professor from 2010. Since 2012 he also is a head of Institute of Digital Technologies. He has published about 20 articles in several areas of information science, monography, handbook, especially in areas of e-government and e-business. Tadas Limba is a member of Lithuanian Computer Society since 2007. Since 2013 he is Asia Center Board Member, South Korea's representative at Mykolas Romeris University. He plays an active role in international communication and development of joint double degree studies program with South Korea Dongseo University. Also, Tadas Limba made presentations at international and national conferences.
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Holistic Electronic Government Services Integration Model: from Theory to Practice Tadas Limba, Gintarė Gulevičiūtė
Gintarė Gulevičiūtė was born in Panevėžys, Lithuania in 1989. She got B. Sc. in Public Administration from Mykolas Romeris University in 2008. She got M. Sc. in Electronic Business Management from Mykolas Romeris University. Now she is an assistant in Institute of Digital Technologies at Mykolas Romeris University. In 2013 she published an article about Peculiarities of Electronic Government Services Implementation in European Union. Her areas of interest is e-government and e-business. Gintarė Gulevičiūtė is the coordinator of Digital Content Academy at Mykolas Romeris University. During her study years she has organized conference “Future business 2013“ at Mykolas Romeris University.
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Information Technology (IJACSIT) Vol. 3, No. 1, 2014, Page: 32-41, ISSN: 2296-1739 © Helvetic Editions LTD, Switzerland www.elvedit.com
Detecting Suspicion Information on the Web Using Crime Data Mining Techniques
Authors
Javad Hosseinkhani [email protected] Department of Computer Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Zahedan Zahedan, Iran Branch, Iran
Mohammad Koochakzaei [email protected] Department of Computer, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad Zahedan, Iran University, Zahedan, Iran
Solmaz Keikhaee [email protected] Department of Electrical Engineering/ Islamic Azad University, Science and Zahedan, Iran Research Branch, Iran
Yahya Hamedi Amin [email protected] Qeshm, Iran Department of Computer Engineering, Qeshm International Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran
Abstract Along with the rapid popularity of the Internet, crime information on the web is becoming increasingly rampant, and the majority of them are in the form of text. Because a lot of crime information in documents is described through events, event-based semantic technology can be used to study the patterns and trends of web-oriented crimes. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review to mining useful information by means of Data Mining. The procedure of extracting knowledge and information from large set of data is data mining that applying artificial intelligence method to find unseen relationships of data. There is more study on data mining applications that attracted more researcher attention and one of the crucial field is criminology that applying in data mining which is utilized for identifying crime characteristics. Detecting and exploring crimes and investigating their relationship with criminals are involved in the analyzing crime process. Criminology is a suitable field for using data mining techniques that shows the high volume and the complexity of relationships between crime datasets. Therefore, for further analysis development, the identifying crime characteristic will be the first step and obtained knowledge from data mining approaches is a very useful tool to help and support police forces. This research aims to provide a review to extract Detecting Suspicion Information on the Web using Crime Data Mining Techniques Javad Hosseinkhani, Mohammad Koochakzaei, Solmaz keikhaee, and Javid Hosseinkhani Naniz
useful information by means of Data Mining, in order to find crime hot spots out and predict crime trends for them using crime data mining techniques. Key Words
Cyber Crime, Web Crime Mining, Crime Data Mining Techniques, Forensics Analysis, Web Mining
I. INTRODUCTION Cyber crimes mean that the illegal activities are committed through the use of computers and the Internet. Cyber crimes can be basically divided into two major categories. One is those take the network as criminal objects such as trespassing, destructing the network system, etc. The others are those using the network to commit crime such as fraud, eroticism, illegal trade, etc.
The Internet has created fertile ground for cyber crimes. Information of violence, pornography, fraud can be seen everywhere on the Internet. According to a statistics report conducted by researchers from Taiwan area and Japan, the most common proportion of illegal network usage cases in sequence are: Internet pornography, Internet fraud, trafficking in illicit goods, intimidation and extortion, illegal intrusion, insult and slander.
A lot of facts have proved that it is not enough to manage the information on the Internet simply through traditional administrative models. In this concern, Web mining is a novel research direction for the information gathering and analyzing on the Internet, which is explosive and unstructured. The focuses of Web mining research are to develop new web mining techniques and to extract the features of texts to represent them.
Criminal web data always offer valuable and appropriate information for Law administration. The evaluation of the different capacities of widespread criminal web data is very difficult all the time so it is one of the most noteworthy tasks for law administration. Crimes may be as extreme as murder and rape where advanced analytical methods are required to extract useful information from the data Web mining comes in as a solution [1, 3].
Definitely, one of influential factors that encounter a crime phenomenon is the humans’ social life circumstances so the crime analysis knowledge is needed as an efficient combating tool. It also comprises of leveraging a systematic approach for discovering, identifying and predicting crime incidents and its input is contained assigned information and data in crime variables and the output contains the answer to knowledge extraction, analytical and investigative questions and the visualization of the results. Due to the criminality-related data and crime complexity and also the existence of intangible relations between them, data mining a rapidly made in growing field among criminologists. In the police departments, large volumes of crime-related data are existed. Due to the crime-related complexity relationships, the traditional methods of crime analysis are out-of-date that consume many time and human resources. Moreover, these methods are not able to obtain all influential parameters because of their high amount of human interference, therefore, using an intelligent and systematic approach for crime analysis more
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than ever. However, the data mining techniques can be the key solution [4].
Areas of concentrated crime are often referred to as hot spots. Researchers and police use the term in many different ways. Like researchers, crime analysts look for concentrations of individual events that might indicate a series of related crimes. They also look at small areas that have a great deal of crime or disorder, even though there may be no common offender. Analysts also observe neighborhoods and neighborhood clusters with high crime and disorder levels and try to link these to underlying social conditions[28].
Nowadays, the accessible data sources are provided by the rapid growth of the Web that has many specific characteristics. In fact, these characteristics make the mining useful knowledge and information a challenging task. It is necessary to know data mining in order to discover information mining on the Web that is exist in many Web mining tasks. Though, Web mining is not completely the application of data mining [2].
Data mining is defined as the process of discovering, extracting and analyzing meaningful patterns, structure, models, and rules from large quantities of data. Data mining is emerging as one of the tools for crime detection, clustering of crime location for finding crime hot spots, criminal profiling, predictions of crime trends and many other related applications [28].
The aim of web mining is to extract appropriate information from the page content, Web hyperlink structure and usage data. Although Web mining uses many data mining techniques, it is not purely an application of traditional data mining due to the heterogeneity and semi- structured or unstructured nature of the Web data [2].
The user is interested to identify crime hot spots of a particular region on certain crime types for a specific period. In order to fulfill such a requirement, a user interactive query interface is needed. Kumar et al [6], has presented an interactive media system with capability to adapt to various conditions from user preferences and terminal capabilities to network constraints. Newsome et al. [7] has proposed HyperSQL as a web-based query interfaces for biological databases. The design of query interfaces to biological database has also been presented by Che. et al. [8]. However, no online adaptive query interface has been designed for mining crime data. The purpose of the research is to design an adaptive query interface for mining crime data or similar kind of problems. The proposed query interface provides a tool for making an online query and helps in identifying crime hot spots, predict crime trends for the crime hot spots based on the query.
Criminal web data provide unknown and valuable information for Law enforcement agencies continuously. The analysis of vast capacities of comprehensive criminal web data is very complicated in an area over periods of time and that is one of the most significant tasks for law enforcement. Crime database consists of various relational tables which contains the information about crime details in a region under various crime heads such as murder, rape etc. at different
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Detecting Suspicion Information on the Web using Crime Data Mining Techniques Javad Hosseinkhani, Mohammad Koochakzaei, Solmaz keikhaee, and Javid Hosseinkhani Naniz
time points. Advanced analytical methods are required to extract useful information from large amount of crime data. Data mining is looked as a solution to such problems [2].
Many scientific researchers have been done on the importance of crime data mining and their results are revealed in the new software applications to analysis and detecting the crime data.
A framework has been developed by Hosseinkhani, et al. [2] for crime web mining consists of two parts. In the first part, some pages which are concerned with the targeted crime are fetched. In the second part, the content of pages are parsed and mined. In fact, a crawler fetches some pages which are associated with the crimes. Previously, pages were fetched by crawler at a time, which was inefficient since the resource was wasted. The proposed model intends to promote efficiency by taking advantage of multiple processes, threads, and asynchronous access to resources.
According to research by Hosseinkhani et al. [5] the aim was suggesting a framework by using concurrent crawler to show the process of exploring the criminal accused of legal data evaluation which insures the reliability gap.
II. WEB CRIME MINING All intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement organizations major challenge is facing to the efficient and correct evaluating of the crime data growing volumes. One of the examples of this can be complex conspiracies that are often hard to undo since the knowledge of suspects can be geographically span and diffuse in the long time. Detecting cybercrime can be very hard as well, because of frequent online transactions and busy network traffic which create huge amounts of data and just a portion of which relates to illegal activities [2].
In the last decade, through the rapid growth of the Web and through the many unique characteristics, in the following some of them are shown that causes of attracting and challenging for mining the useful information and knowledge [9].
1. Facing to the huge amount of information on the Web that is very wide and diverse so any user can find information on almost anything on the Web. 2. Huge amount of data from all types are exist in unstructured texts, semi- structured Web pages structured tables, and multimedia files. 3. The diversity of the information on the. Multiple pages show similar information in different words or formats based on the diverse authorship of Web pages that make the integration of information from multiple pages as a challenging problem. 4. An association is exist on the significant amount of information of the Web. Hyperlinks are in Web pages across different sites and within a site. Hyperlinks are implicit conveyance of authority to the target pages in across different sites. And hyperlinks serve as information organization mechanisms within a site.
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5. The information on the Web is noisy that is comes from two main sources. The first one is that a typical Web page involves many pieces of information for instance the navigation links, main content of the page, copyright notices, advertisements, and privacy policies. Only part of the information is useful for a particular application but the rest is considered noise. For performing a fine-grain, the data mining and Web information analysis, the noise should be removed. The second one is due to the fact that the Web does not have quality control of information, for example, a large amount of information on the Web is of low quality because any one can write everything. 6. The Web is about services for example most commercial Web sites allow the users to perform useful operations at their sites such as paying bills, purchasing products, and filling the forms. 7. The Web pages are dynamic that is the information is changes constantly. Copping the changes and monitoring them is an important issue for many applications. 8. The Web is a virtual society that is not only information, data and services; it also is the organizations, the interactions of people, and automated systems. Any user can communicate with people anywhere in the world easily and express his/her views on anything in Internet blogs, forums and review sites [10].
All these characteristics present both challenges and opportunities for mining and discovery of information and knowledge from the Web. This research only focuses on mining textual data. For mining of images, videos and audios please refer to Djeraba, et al. [11], Perner [12]. To explore information mining on the Web, it is necessary to know data mining, which has been applied in many Web mining tasks. However, Web mining is not entirely an application of data mining. Due to the richness and diversity of information and other Web specific characteristics discussed above, Web mining has developed many of its own algorithms [10].
The Web mining process and the data mining process are very similar to each other and their difference is just in their data collection. In traditional method of data mining, the data is gathered and stored in a data warehouse and the other hand, in Web mining, the data gathered is a substantial task that includes crawl of the large number of target Web pages [13]
Web pages are also quite different from conventional text documents used in traditional IR systems. First, Web pages have hyperlinks and anchor texts, which do not exist in traditional documents (except citations in research publications). Hyperlinks are extremely important for search and play a central role in search ranking algorithms. Anchor texts associated with hyperlinks too are crucial because a piece of anchor text is often a more accurate description of the page that its hyperlink points to. Second, Web pages are semi-structured. A Web page is not simply a few paragraphs of text like in a traditional document. A Web page has different fields, e.g., title, metadata, body, etc. The information contained in certain fields (e.g., the title field) is more important than in others. Furthermore, the content in a page is typically organized and
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Detecting Suspicion Information on the Web using Crime Data Mining Techniques Javad Hosseinkhani, Mohammad Koochakzaei, Solmaz keikhaee, and Javid Hosseinkhani Naniz
presented in several structured blocks (of rectangular shapes). Some blocks are important and some are not (e.g., advertisements, privacy policy, copyright notices, etc). Effectively detecting the main content block(s) of a Web page is useful to Web search because terms appearing in such blocks are more important [3].
A criminal might either give a deceptive identity or falsely use an innocent person’s identity. There are currently two ways law enforcement officers can determine false identities. First, police officers can sometimes detect a deceptive identity during interrogation and investigation by repeated and detailed questioning, such as asking a suspect the same question (“What is your Social Security number?”) over and over again. The suspect might forget his or her false answer and eventually reply differently. Detailed questioning may be effective in detecting lies, such as when a suspect forgets detailed information about the person whose identity he or she is impersonating. However, lies are difficult to detect if the suspect is a good liar. Consequently, there are still many deceptive records existing in law enforcement data. Sometimes a police officer must interrogate an innocent person whose identity was stolen, until the person’s innocence is proven [3]. Second, crime analysts can detect some deceptive identities through crime analysis techniques, of which link analysis is often used to construct criminal networks from database records or textual documents. Besides focusing on criminal identity information, link analysis also examines associations among criminals, organizations, and vehicles, among others. However, in real life crime analysis usually is a time consuming investigative activity involving great amounts of manual information processing [3].
III. CRIME DATA MINING TECHNIQUES The traditional data mining techniques just classify the patterns in structured data for example, classification and prediction, association analysis, outlier analysis and cluster analysis. On the other hand, the newer techniques identify patterns from unstructured and structured data [14]. Crime data mining increases the privacy concerns like the other forms of data mining [15]. However, the researchers’ effort to promote the various automated data mining techniques for national security applications and local law enforcement. Particular patterns are identifies by Entity extraction from data such as images, text, or audio materials that has been utilized to automatically identify addresses, persons, vehicles, and personal characteristics from police narrative reports [16]. In computer forensics, the extraction of software metrics [17] which includes the data structure, program flow, organization and quantity of comments, and use of variable name scan facilitate further investigation by, for example, grouping similar programs written by hackers and tracing their behavior. Entity extraction provides basic information for crime analysis, but its performance depends greatly on the availability of extensive amounts of clean input data.
The main techniques of the crime data mining are clustering [18], association rule mining [19], classification [20] and sequential pattern mining [21]. Although all of these efforts, the crime Web mining still is a highly complex task.
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1. Clustering techniques group data objects into classes by similar characteristics to minimize or maximize interclass similarity for instance, to identify suspects that bearing the crimes in similar ways or discriminate among groups belonging to different gangs. These techniques do not have a set of predefined classes for assigning items. Some researchers use the statistics-based concept space algorithm to automatically associate different objects such as persons, organizations, and vehicles in crime records [22]. Using link analysis techniques to identify similar transactions, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network AI System [23] [23] exploits Bank Secrecy Act data to support the detection and analysis of money laundering and other financial crimes. Clustering crime incidents can automate a major part of crime analysis but is limited by the high computational intensity typically required. 2. Association rule mining determines frequently occurring item sets in a database and offerings some patterns as rules that been used in network intrusion detection to develop the connection rules from users’ interaction history. Investigators also can apply this technique to network intruders’ profiles to help detect potential future network attacks [24]. Similar to association rule mining, sequential pattern mining finds frequently occurring sequences of items over a set of transactions that occurred at different times. In network intrusion detection, this approach can identify intrusion patterns among time-stamped data. Showing hidden patterns benefits crime analysis, but to obtain meaningful results requires rich and highly structured data. 3. Deviation detection utilizes the particular measures to study data that differs noticeably from the rest of the data. Also called outlier detection, investigators can apply this technique to fraud detection, network intrusion detection, and other crime analyses. However, such activities can sometimes appear to be normal, making it difficult to identify outliers. 4. Classification finds mutual properties between various crime entities and arranges them into predefined classes that have been applied for identifying the source of e- mail spamming according to the sender’s structural features and linguistic patterns [25]. Often used to predict crime trends, classification can reduce the time required to identify crime entities. However, the technique requires a predefined classification scheme. Classification also requires reasonably complete training and testing data because a high degree of missing data would limit prediction accuracy. 5. String comparator techniques that show the relation the textual fields in pairs of database records and calculate the correspondence among the records that can detect deceptive information in criminal records for instance the name and address [26]. the researchers can utilize string comparators to evaluate textual data that often need intensive computation. String comparison is the interesting field for computer scientists that whether string matching or string distance measures. Levenshtein define a usual measure
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Detecting Suspicion Information on the Web using Crime Data Mining Techniques Javad Hosseinkhani, Mohammad Koochakzaei, Solmaz keikhaee, and Javid Hosseinkhani Naniz
of similarity between two strings as “edit distance” [27] so, the minimum number of, deletions, single character insertions, and substitutions need to transform one string into the other.
A description of the nodes role in a conceptual network is Social network analysis. Investigators can use this technique to construct a network that illustrates criminals’ roles, the flow of tangible and intangible goods and information, and associations among these entities. Further analysis can reveal critical roles and subgroups and vulnerabilities inside the network. This approach enables visualization of criminal networks, but investigators still might not be able to discover the network’s true leaders if they keep a low profile.
IV. CONCLUSION A web page involving a crime can be thought of as a chain of actions with a series of background attributes. Thus, we can analyze web information from the perspective of events and apply some research results related to events to solve the problem of web crime mining. An event is identified by event triggers, is associated with participants, time, location, et al., and is a larger semantic unit compared with a concept. There is an intrinsic link between events. It is a new attempt to apply the semantic analysis technology of events to mine web crime information on the web. The majority of digital evidence is collected from textual data such as blogs, as e-mails, web pages, text documents and chat logs. The researcher uses some search tools to explore and extract the useful information from the text because the nature of textual data is unstructured and then for further investigation, enter the appropriate pieces into a well-structured database manually which will be boring and error prone. Therefore, the investigators expertise and experience is very important in search and the quality of an analysis. If a criminal hide some essential information, it may be missed. In this review all preliminary concepts such as Web Mining, Criminal Identities and Crime Data Mining Techniques are described. The vision of the Web Mining is to provide a Web where all published material is understandable by software agents. Moreover, Data Mining defined as the process of discovering useful patterns or knowledge from data sources, e.g., databases, texts, images, the Web, etc. Web mining aims to discover useful information or knowledge from the Web hyperlink structure, page content, and usage data. Inspection of files involves searching content for information that can be used as evidence or that can lead to other sources of information that may assist the investigation process and analysis of the retrieved information. It is typically up to the investigator on what and how to search for evidence, depending on the case.
Therefore, we evaluated State-of-the-Art approaches for extracting useful information by means of Data Mining, in order to find crime hot spots out and predict crime trends for them using crime data mining techniques.
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Detecting Suspicion Information on the Web using Crime Data Mining Techniques Javad Hosseinkhani, Mohammad Koochakzaei, Solmaz keikhaee, and Javid Hosseinkhani Naniz
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Develop a New Method for People Identification Using Hand Appearance
Authors
Mahdi Nasrollah Barati [email protected] Department of Computer Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Babol Babol, Iran Branch, Iran
Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad Department of Computer Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Babol [email protected] Branch, Iran Babol, Iran
Abstract
In this paper a new method for people identification using hand appearance is presented. In this method, the contour information is used for matching. For this purpose, after applying pre- processing algorithms and edge detection, contour extraction, and to help the offices of concentric, hand’s information including the number of pixels is limited to offices, will be extracted. By using extracted information, Matching will be done in the database identity and person will be identified. Benefits of the proposed method can be its lack of sensitivity to rotating and zooming the image pointed out. Practical results will show the accuracy of this method for identification. The proposed method can be used in other fields such as curve matching in addition to hand geometry identification.
Key Words Identification, contour extraction, Matching, Hand appearance.
I. INTRODUCTION Nowadays identifying the people is the most important world security issues. Different methods are using for identification, such as passport, but there are some problems on using it. Also identifying using computer technology is the main objectives of governments. By these reason, scientists are searching for features in the human body that could be use to identify individuals. Develop a New Method for People Identification Using Hand Appearance Mahdi Nasrollah Barati and Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad
Examples of these features include iris [1], finger [2], face appearance [3], signature [4] and the appearance. In fact, the features of body can help in this way.
One feature of the human body that can identify its utilization is a hand’s human appearance. A variety of methods available in matching appearance are presented. Some of these methods in matching use hand geometry features such as fingers and fingertips [5]. In these Methods, fingertips and toes and also the junction of the hand fingers have been used as points of review in determining the characteristics. There are also other methods that use existing lines and patterns on hand to compare and extract the features required [6]. These lines include lines of finger and palm lines. In addition, some methods use combination of these two methods. In such ways the geometric characteristics of hands and lines in the palms and fingers are used.
Innovative approach in this article are provided with matching curves obtained from the edge detection images using drawing concentric series of offices and counting the number of points in between these offices as a characteristic image to match its looks. Please note that the former method to compare with this method was implemented [7] and doing some tests. It was found that this algorithm has better and more acceptable results that in practical results section I will show it. In addition, this method is not sensitive to zoom and rotation.
II. PROVIDING IMAGES DATABASE
To collect images of people, two methods have been used. First with the help of a scanner, hands placed on the scanner and it scans. In this way the background will be black, like Figure 1. In the second method, images are used from a digital camera. At first, the hand is placed in front of a white paper and then photos will be taken. In this way, the background image is white. Another important issue related to data collection should be noted is that in all images the distances between each finger must be equal. The fingers distance will set by eye in this paper.
Images obtained by cameras or scanning devices for edge detection are used in the preprocessing stage. Edge detection algorithm can be algorithms such as sable edge detection method [8].
Edge detected Image may have extra edges. For removing these extra edges, greater threshold amount in edge detection is used. However, it should be noted that the high threshold might not be remove extra edges completely. In edge detected image that is shown in figure 2, the thinning methods have been used.
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FIGURE 1: SCANNED HAND
FIGURE 2: EDGED IMAGE
Thinning results can be seen in Figure 4. In thinning phase, morphological methods have been used based on the review of each pixel's neighbors without rupturing in the thin curve [9]. In this method, a considered for each pixel of the edge is concerned. Then this pixel’s connectivity coefficient is calculated. If the connectivity coefficient obtained is equal to 1 and isn’t end point, it will be removed. Otherwise, without any changes could go to next pixel. This work should be done for all black pixels in the image.
As you can see in Figure 3, there is no tear in the picture. One advantage of this method is that the end points of curve can be detected and removing end points can prevent.
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Develop a New Method for People Identification Using Hand Appearance Mahdi Nasrollah Barati and Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad
FIGURE 3: THINNED IMAGE
III. EXTRACTING HANDS FEATURES Here, the hands features are extracted. These features should have enough information, In addition they should be stable in image rotation, zooming and moving. To eliminate rotation and zooming image, the suitable axis in the hand image is required that images rotation and zooming could be tolerated. For finding this axis, two appropriate points in hands image are selected. The first point that has been used for this purpose is the center of edges mass that its position is Unchanged in zooming and rotation. The purpose of the mass center is the point that X and Y coordinates is equal to average total black pixel in image. The center of mass can be calculated through the average of X and Y components of black pixels in the image with the help of equation (1).
xi xcenter (1) N
y ycenter i N
Here, another point for the axis is needed. Farthest point to the center of mass as the second axis point is chosen. Whereas point choosing is very important in the matching algorithm, all probabilities are considered for the farthest point. In other words, many points choose as possible for the farthest point. Selection algorithm for the farthest possible points is as follows:
Farthest point on the contour to the center of mass is calculated named the distance between that and the center of mass as‘d’. All points that the distance to the center is larger than 0.9d kept and the rest points are removed.
The continuous component extraction algorithm is applied to the remaining parts and continuous components have been extracted. In each continuous component the point that has the greatest distance is selected to the center of mass as possible point.
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After finding the farthest possible points, for each of these points, the features extracted and stored. Now features should be extracted for every possible point. For this, concentricity circles is drawn that the center is the possible point. Radius should be increased by a fixed step as u see in figure (4). Choosing distance between the radiuses is particularly important. This algorithm will be more accurate if the small distance is selected, but it makes the algorithm slower. In addition, decreasing the distance make the algorithm less Accurate. So selecting a good distance is one the important part of this algorithm. The appropriate distance experimentally should be obtained.
FIGURE 4: CONCENTRICITY CIRCLES
After drawing offices, black pixels are counted that are between the circles and store it in a one- dimensional array as hand’s features. However, due to the several possible points, there are several features array. So, these arrays could be used for hands matching.
Features that are extracted in the previous step are stable to the rotation but they are not stable to the zooming. To eliminate this problem, the numbers in the previous step in the d (distance between center of mass to the farthest point) is divided, so the features extracted are stable to zooming.
IV. MATCHING METHOD After preparing the database and extracting features for different people's hands, it can be used to identify individuals. For this purpose the matching algorithm is used. So, the input image data is compared to the information’s that stored in the database and if they matches the person’s identity information is extracted. Different stages of the matching algorithm are as follows:
Edge of Input image and the contour of hand should be extracted. Now all necessary steps such as thinning and waste edge removal can be applied.
The features of the hand can extract by using mass center and the farthest points.
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Develop a New Method for People Identification Using Hand Appearance Mahdi Nasrollah Barati and Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad
Similarity coefficient of input image characteristics and features in the database is calculated. A variety of methods exist to obtain the similarity coefficient that in this paper, SSD method is used for calculating the similarity coefficient. This method is formulated and is shown by Eq.(2).
( feature2[i] feature1[i]) ssd n (2)
The Number ‘n’ is the number of features that has been extracted. This division is for normalizing the number obtained to the number of features. Also feature1 [i] is the ith feature of first image and feature2 [i] is ith feature of second image. Note that all probability for farthest point is considered, for each image several feature groups is extracted. So all possible modes and the minimum ‘ssd’ is the similarity measure of two images is concerned.
Using the coefficients obtained in the previous step, an image in database with the highest similarity (lowest ssd) with the input image should be selected. If ssd rate calculated for the selected image is less than a threshold, Input image with the database image are considered similar.
V. NUMERICAL RESULT For The results of this algorithm 120 samples from different people's hand images in experiments have been used. The implementation of this algorithm is in Visual studio 6 environment and by C++ language. PC which has been used in the testing is Intel ® Pentium ® 4-2.6GHz-256MB of RAM. To show lack of sensitivity of the algorithm to zooming and rotating, the zoomed and rotated images of different people in experiments have been used.
The value that radius should be increase can be obtained experimentally. This value equal to 30 pixels in the tests carried out. The size of images is 600 * 600 pixels and the file format is Bitmap. The proposed algorithm by two methods has been tested. In the first method, input image in the images collection was searched. In the second method, input image in collection which the input image isn’t on it was searched. In the fist way the objective is the understanding that if the method can know that this image is not in collection. Considering the selected parameters, the success rate is 100 percent. This means all images matched right. While in previous methods the success rate is 94 percent [7]. Percentage of success in the second way is equal to 97 percent. It should be noted however, many existing methods are sensitive to zooming and rotation.
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FIGURE 6: SUCCESS RATE OF PREVIOUS METHODS
VI. CONCLUSION In this paper a new method for identification using hand geometry is presented. In this method, the contour information is used for matching. To this end, by applying a pre-processing algorithms and edge detection contour of the hands image extracted and by circles obtained the feature of the hands. The features are the number of pixels between these circles. Extracted features should be matched to collected hands image and the inputs hands image could be identified. Benefits of the proposed method can be its lack of sensitivity to rotate and zoom the image. Due to experimental results and precision of this method, this method can be used for identification.
Suggestions in improving this algorithm are also provided. For example, other lines in the palm and fingers in matching could be used. Therefore, the result of this method could be improved by using other features even in the larger collections of images. In addition, a variety of applications for these methods is available. This method could be used in matching of signatures, geographic maps, ear and lip.
REFERENCES
[1] W.W. Boles and B. Boashah, “A Human Identification Technique Using Images of the Iris and Wavelet Transform”, IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, Vol.46, pp.1185-1188, 1998.
[2] A.Jain, Y.Chen and M.Demirkus, "Pores and Ridges: Fingerprint Matching Using Level 3 Features", Proc. Of IEEE ICPR conference, pp. 477-480, 2006.
[3] A.M. Martínez, "Recognizing Imprecisely Localized, Partially Occluded, and Expression Variant Faces from a Single Sample per Class", IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol.24 no.6, pp.748-763, June 2002 .
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Develop a New Method for People Identification Using Hand Appearance Mahdi Nasrollah Barati and Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad
[4] M.Kondo and D.Muramatsu and M.Sasaki and T.Matsumoto , "Bayesian MCMC for Biometric Person Authentication Incorporating On-line Signature Trajectories", International Conference in Biomechanics , 2007.
[5] L.N.Wong and P.Shi , "Peg-Free Hand Geometry Recognition Using Hierarchical Geometry and Shape Matching", online: www.ee.ust.hk/~eeship/Papers/MVA02.pdf
[6] X.Wang, H.Gong, H.Zhang, B.Li and Z.Zhuang,"Palmprint Identification using Boosting Local Binary Pattern", Proc. Of IEEE ICPR conference, pp.503-506, 2006.
[7] M.A.Khaiyat and F.Kamangar, “Planar Curve Representation and Matching,” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 76019, May 1990.
[8] R.C.Gonzalez and R.E.Woods, Digital Image Processing Prentice Hall, 2nd edition, 2002.
[9] J.R.Parker, Algorithms for Image Processing and Computer Vision. Wiley Pap/Cdr edition 1996.
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Model and Solve the Bi-Criteria Multi Source Flexible Multistage Logistics Network
Authors
Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad [email protected] Babol, Iran Department of Computer Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Babol Branch, Iran
Mohammad Ishak Desa [email protected] Department of Modeling and Industrial Computing, Faculty of Computer Johor, Malaysia Science & Information System. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
Sara Delfan Azari [email protected] Ayandegan Institute of Higher Education, Tonekabon, Iran Tonekabon, Iran
Abstract
Flexible Multistage Logistics Network (fMLN) is an extension of the traditional multistage logistics network whereby a customer can procure goods directly from plants or distribution centers needless of retailers. This research intends to formulate the bi-criteria multi source single product fMLN model and discover methods to solve it. Here, total logistics cost and total product delivery time should be minimized simultaneously. By far, fMLN problems have been dealt with in single source form, meaning each customer could only be served by only one source. Because this issue is NP-hard, meta-heuristic techniques such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) have been used to solve the problem. However, under realistic settings, fMNL is multi-source, meaning each customer may be served by a number of facilities simultaneously. Because a multi-source fMNL problem is more complex than the single source in terms of both options as well as constraints, GA will also require enhancement. The proposed solution of this research is representing the chromosome in a new state, capable of improvising the constraints of the problem by a considerable ratio and with the defined crossover and mutation to solve the general bi-criteria multi-source fMNL. The obtained result using enhanced GA will show that it is dramatically improved comparing with using standard GA in order to having lower cost and time. Key Words Bi-criteria multi source Flexible Multistage Logistics Network (fMLN), Genetic Algorithms, Multi–objective optimization, PARETO solution. Model and Solve the Bi-Criteria Multi Source Flexible Multistage Logistics Network Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad, Mohammad Ishak Desa, and Sara Delfan Azari
I. INTRODUCTION Gen et al. [11] claimed that although the traditional multistage logistics network model and its application had made a big success in theory and business practices, the traditional structure of logistics network is unable to fit very well with the fast changing competitive environments and meet the diversified customer demands. Therefore, Gen et al. [11] introduced three new delivery modes in which the goods can move from plants to retailer directly not via distribution centers, or sometimes the customer can get the goods from plant or from distribution center directly not via retailer. The authors called this new logistics network as the flexible Multistage Logistics Network (fMLN) as it is shown by Figure 1.
FIGURE 1: THE STRUCTURE OF FLEXIBLE MULTISTAGE LOGISTICS NETWORK (FMLN) MODELS [11]. Gen et al. [11] indicated that the bi-criteria linear logistics model (or bi-criteria transportation problem: bTP) is a special case of multi-objective logistics model since the feasible region can be depicted with a two dimensional criteria space. The following two objectives are considered:
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minimizing the total logistics cost and minimizing the total delivery time.
Rajabalipour et al, [16] considered two- stage logistic networks comprised of potential suppliers, distributing centers (DCs) and also actual consumers at the first level. Each consumer has pre-specified demand of single item product for a period of time (e.g. season, year and, etc.) and the network could be flexible with potential (probably expensive) direct shipments only from the supplier to the consumers.
Recently, GAs has been successfully applied to logistics network models. Michalewicz et al. [15] and Viagnaux and Michalewicz [19] are among the first who discussed the use of GA for solving linear and nonlinear transportation problems. In their study, while matrix representation was used to construct a chromosome, the matrix-based crossover and mutation had been developed. Another (GA) approach for solving solid TP was given by Li et al. [13]. They used the three dimensional matrix to represent the candidate solution to the problem. Syarif and Gen et al. [18] considered production/distribution problem modeled using tsTP and proposed a hybrid genetic algorithm. Gen et al. [10] developed a priority-based Genetic Algorithm (priGA) with new decoding and encoding procedures considering the characteristic of tsTP. Altiparmak et al. [3] extended priGA to solve a single-product multi-stage logistics design problem. The objectives are minimization of the total cost of supply chain, maximization of customer services that can be rendered to customers in terms of acceptable delivery time (coverage), and maximization of capacity utilization balance for DCs (i.e. equity on utilization ratios). Furthermore, Lin et al. [14] proposed a hybrid genetic algorithm to solve the location-allocation model’s problem of logistic network, and Altiparmak et al. [2] also apply the priGA to solve a single-source, multi-product multi-stage logistics design problem. As an extended multi-stage logistics network model, Lee et al. [12] apply the priGA to solve a multi-stage reverse logistics network problem (mrLNP), minimizing the total costs to reverse logistics shipping cost and fixed cost of opening the disassembly centers and processing centers. Gen and Syarif [18] proposed a new approach called spanning tree-based hybrid genetic algorithm (hst- GA) to solve the multi-time period production/distribution and inventory problem (mt-PDI). Costa et al. [5] presented an innovative encoding–decoding procedure embedded within a genetic algorithm (GA) to minimize the total logistic cost resulting from the transportation of goods and the location and opening of the facilities in a single product three-stage supply chain network.
For any optimization problem, there is an optimization criterion (i.e. evaluation function) to be minimized or maximized. The evaluation function represents a measure of the quality of the developed solution. Searching the space of all possible solution is a challenging task. An additional constraint on the domain of search for the parameters makes the problem quite difficult. The constraints might affect the performance of the evolutionary process since some of the produced solutions (i.e individuals) may be unfeasible. Unfeasible solution represents a waste of computation effort. In fact, it was reported that no general methodology to handle constraints exist although several methods were introduced. Rejecting unfeasible individuals, penalizing unfeasible individuals or moving these individuals to the feasible domain are among the many
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Model and Solve the Bi-Criteria Multi Source Flexible Multistage Logistics Network Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad, Mohammad Ishak Desa, and Sara Delfan Azari
methods proposed [17].
There are some approaches to handle the constraints optimization problems such as death penalty, static penalties, dynamic penalties, GENOCOP system, Behavioral memory and etceteras [21]. For some similar problems to fMLN with high constraints some researchers tried to add some heuristic rules to GA to satisfy the problem constraints and obtain a good solution. Yaohua and Chi [20] proposed a random search based on heuristic rules and a dynamic rule selection method based on GA to solve large size single-stage batch scheduling problem and Alim and Ivanov [1] proposed some heuristic rules embedded GA to solve In-Core Fuel Management Optimization Problem. Craenen et al. [6] compared three different heuristics based Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) on the same problems and suggested the best one to solve the constraints optimization problems.
The general objectives of this paper are to formulate the bi-criteria multi-source single product flexible Multistage Logistics Network (fMLN) problem and to discuss the algorithms that we have developed to solve it.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
Bi-Criteria Multi Source Single Product fMLN Model
In general, a bi-criteria multi source flexible multistage logistics network (fMLN) problem is to establish the optimum product amount shipped from plants to the customers and the best product delivery routes to fulfill the customer’s order with the optimum product delivery time in all network phase that reduce the total logistics network costs. The mathematical model of the bi-criteria (fMLN) is developed with the following assumptions:
1. Single product and single time period (week, month, season, year or etc) case of a logistics network optimization problem is considered.
2. There are a maximum of four levels: plants, DCs, retailers and customers.
3. There are three delivery modes: normal delivery, direct shipment and direct delivery
4. Every customer, retailer and distribution center (DC) can be served by multi facilities. There is no preference for retailers, DCs and customers to provide orders, consequently fulfilling orders through multi sources at once.
5. Customer demands are known in advance.
6. Customers will get products at the same price, no matter where he/she gets them; it means that the customers have no special preferences.
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The following notations are used to formulate the model:
Notation:
Indices:
i: index of plant ( = 1,2,3, ⋯ , ) j: index of DC ( = 1,2,3, ⋯ , ) k: index of retailer ( = 1,2,3, ⋯ , ) l: index of customer ( = 1,2,3, ⋯ , )
Parameters:
I number of plants J number of DCs K number of retailers L number of customers P Plant i DC DC R Retailer k C Customer l Output of plant i d Demand of customer l C Unit shipping cost of product from P to DC C Unit shipping cost of product from DC to R C Unit shipping cost of product from R to C C Unit shipping cost of product from P to C Unit shipping cost of product from DC to C Unit shipping cost of product from P to R T Shipping time per lot of product from P to T Shipping time per lot of product from to T Shipping time per lot of product from to T Shipping time per lot of product from to T Shipping time per lot of product from to T Shipping time per lot of product from to u Upper bound of the capacity of DC u Upper bound of the capacity of R f Fixed part of the open cost of DC C Variant part of the open cost (lease cost) of DC q Throughout of DC = ∑ , ∀ f Open cost of DC = + C ,∀j g Fixed part of the open cost of R C Variant part of the open cost (lease cost) of R
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Model and Solve the Bi-Criteria Multi Source Flexible Multistage Logistics Network Seyed Yaser Bozorgi Rad, Mohammad Ishak Desa, and Sara Delfan Azari