On Designing Smart Agents for Service Provisioning in Blockchain-Powered Systems

Service provisioning systems assign users to service providers according to allocation criteria that strike an optimal trade-off between users' Quality of Experience (QoE) and the operation cost endured by providers. These systems have been leveraging Smart Contracts (SCs) to add trust and transparency to their criteria. However, deploying...

Frugal Innovations in Technological and Institutional Infrastructure: Impact of Mobile Phone Technology on Productivity, Public Service Provision and Inclusiveness

This paper examines frugal innovations as processes, products and systems that affect the resource constraints that are typical for many developing countries. The focus is on the impacts of mobile phone technology-induced frugal innovations’ on the resource constraints and how these influence productivity, public services provision and...

Using System Dynamics to Explore the Water Supply and Demand Dilemmas of a Small South African Municipality

This paper explores the challenges faced by small municipalities in providing water services in a developing-world context of increasing urban demand. The paper uses a case study of the Sundays River Valley Municipality (SRVM) in South Africa. The municipality faces multiple dilemmas in reconciling its available water supply with growing demand...

Flexible and Adaptable Service Provisioning for Federated Personal Networks

Personal network and their federations (called Fednet) are considered as one of the promising future concepts regarding the personal communication. In this thesis, we first studies the state of the art of Fednet, from which we know there are two approaches for providing the services in Fednet, one is overlay and the other is proxy-based. Each of...

Realizing joined-up government: Dynamic capabilities and stage models for transformation

Joining up remains a high priority on the e-government agenda and requires extensive transformation. Stage models are predictable patterns which exist in the growth of organizations and unfold as discrete time periods that result in discontinuity and can help e-government development towards joined-up government. Although stage models may be...

Improving Government service delivery with private sector intermediaries

Government organizations operate a variety of channels to interact with citizens and businesses. Advances in information and communication technology enabled an online presence and more direct interactions. A focus on efficiency makes organizations encourage the use of electronic channels over traditional channels. Also, intermediaries in the...