With the exponential growth of data generated from enterprise systems, social networks, and the Internet of Things, traditional data mining techniques face major challenges in terms of scalability and efficiency. As a foundational unsupervised learning method for detecting patterns in transactional datasets, Association Rule Mining (ARM) is commonly encountered in distributed environments with performance bottlenecks due to excessive memory consumption, static resource provisioning, and costly data shuffle. The present paper presents DatApollo, a novel serverless orchestration framework that enables the execution of distributed ARM workflows in a scalable and efficient manner. DatApollo, based on the Apollo orchestration engine, offers stateless cloud functions, dynamic scheduling, intermediate state persistence, and fault-tolerant coordination in order to address the limitations of both traditional cluster-based architectures and existing Function-as-a-Service models. By decomposing ARM pipelines into orchestrated microfunctions, the framework enables elastic, cloud-native execution with minimal idle time. Using real-world healthcare and meteorological datasets, we describe the architectural design, algorithmic components, and computational complexity of DatApollo and perform a comprehensive experimental evaluation. DatApollo provides up to five times faster execution time compared to Apache Spark and lowers infrastructure costs by utilizing elastic scaling and event-driven function invocations. The results demonstrate that DatApollo is a robust, cost-effective and high-performance alternative to ARM in dynamic, large-scale data environments.

Countries are struggling to develop data exchange infrastructures needed to reap the benefits of e-government. Understanding the development of infrastructures can only be achieved by combining insights from institutional, technical and process perspectives. This paper contributes by analysing data exchange infrastructures in the Netherlands and Estonia from an integral perspective. The institutional design framework of Koppenjan and Groenewegen is used to analyse the developments in both countries. The analysis shows that the starting points, cultures, path dependencies and institutional structure result in different governance models for data exchange infrastructures. Estonia has a single – centrally governed – data-exchange infrastructure that is used by public and private parties for all kinds of data exchanges (including citizen-to-business and business-to-business). In contrast, the institutional structure in the Netherlands demands a strict demarcation between public and private infrastructures, resulting in several data exchange infrastructures. While there are examples of sharing infrastructure components across various levels of the Dutch government, public infrastructures cannot be used for business-to-business or citizen-to-business data exchange due to the potential for market distortion by government. Both the centrally governed Estonian model and the decentrally governed Dutch model have pros and cons on multiple levels.

Solid eID (electronic identification) infrastructures form the backbone of today’s digital transformation. In June 2014, the European Commission adopted the eIDAS regulation (electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market) as a major initiative towards EU-wide eID interoperability; which receives massive attention in all EU member states in recent years. As a joint effort of Estonia and the Netherlands, this study provides a comparative case study on eIDAS implementation practices of the two countries. The aim was to analyze eIDAS implementation challenges of the two countries and to propose a variety of possible solutions to overcome them. During an action learning workshop in November 2019, key experts from Estonia and the Netherlands identified eIDAS implementation challenges and proposed possible solutions to the problems from the policy maker, the service provider and the user perspective. As a result, we identified five themes of common challenges: compliance issues, interpretation problems, different practices in member states, cooperation and collaboration barriers, and representation of legal persons. Proposed solutions do not only involve changes in the eIDAS regulation, but different actions to develop an eIDAS framework and to improve cross-border service provision - which has recently become an important topic among member states. Eventually, the study provides practical input to the ongoing eIDAS review process and can help member states to overcome eIDAS implementation challenges.

The emergence of super-applications is a complete game changer in how future governments will deliver e-services and interact with their citizens. With respect to this, the scope of currently established e-government stage models is exhausted. Therefore, this article proposes a “provident stage” as an extension of the Layne and Lee stage model, that adequately addresses the rapid technological development and evolvement of mobile- and smart-government solutions. We argue that super-applications can drive the transformation of e-government towards a yet unforeseen quality level: smart government. This article discusses that transition process, the influence of mobile government solutions in this as well as emerging citizens’ expectations for modern government service delivery.