Efthimios Tambouris

• PhD
• Professor at University of Macedonia

Deploying chatbots in public administration (PA) can offer numerous benefits, enhancing public service delivery and efficiency. However, their deployment comes with various legal and ethical considerations. In the European Union (EU), the AI Act and the GDPR constitute the basic legal framework for using chatbots in PA. This paper aims to map the c...

eGovernment's primary strategic priority is to offer electronic services to citizens. However, the complex structure of public organizations often makes it difficult for citizens to find the services they need. In response, governments have adopted web portals as a single point of contact. This research paper evaluates the usability of the Greek go...

The provision of public services is one of the main goals of public authorities worldwide. In this frame the availability of structured public service descriptions openly is very important since it can improve transparency and trust. The CPSV-AP specification has been proposed as a standard model to publish public service descriptions as Linked Ope...

Electronic Participation (eParticipation) enables citizens to engage in political and decision-making processes using information and communication technologies. As in many other fields, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has recently started to dictate some of the realities of eParticipation. As a result, an increasing number of studies are investigatin...

Public service provision is divided into two phases: the information phase and the execution phase. In the information phase, the citizen obtains information related to the public service he is interested in, then proceeds to the execution phase and receives its output (if any). However, the information phase of public services is often informal, a...

Modeling of Public Services (PSs) is used by a large number of public authorities worldwide to improve their quality. The resulting diagrams are useful in the case of simple PSs however they can become very complex in the case of complex PSs. To address process complexity, the integration of Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and Decision M...

Over the years, various software quality measurement models have been proposed and used in academia and the software industry to assess the quality of produced code and to obtain guidelines for its improvement. In this article, we describe the design and functionality of SQMetrics, a tool for calculating object-oriented quality metrics for projects...

Citizens during different stages of their lives seek information about Public Services (PS) related to life events. To accommodate this need, the public sector provides PS information around life events, such as getting married or travelling abroad. This information is often provided through structured web pages and web-based dialogue systems. Howe...

The provision of public services (PS) is at the heart of public authority operations as it directly affects citizens’ lives and the prosperity of society. Part of PS provision is publishing PS descriptions in online catalogues to inform citizens and promote transparency. The European Union has developed the Core Public Service Vocabulary Applicatio...

Teaching programming and computational thinking to young students has gained increasing attention in recent years. This great attention is attributed partially to the emergence of easy-to-use visual programming environments. These environments help students focus on the logic and concepts of programming and at the same time enhance their engagement...

Teaching and learning Computational Thinking (CT) is at the forefront of educational interest. In the process of teaching and learning CT, learning strategies and tools play an important role. Efforts have been made to apply several learning strategies for teaching Computational Thinking. Among them, game-based learning and scaffolding are widely a...

The digital era includes the rapid generation of data, knowledge, and technologies. This demands changes in education and the way that people learn in general. Problem-Based Learning PBL enables active participation in the learning process and supports the development of transversal and lifelong learning skills. This paper presents a LA process to...

Public authorities worldwide provide a large number of Public Services (PS) to citizens, businesses and other authorities. In this context, they publish PS catalogues containing descriptions of these services, e.g. about cost, required documents, contact details, etc. Two main challenges in the design of PS catalogues are standardisation and intero...

With Open Data becoming more popular and more public bodies publishing their datasets, the need for educating prospective graduates on how they can use them has become prominent. This study examines the use of the Problem Based Learning (PBL) method and educational technologies to support the development of Open Data skills in university students....

The provision of public services (PS) is at the heart of public authority operations as it directly affects citizens’ lives and the prosperity of society. Part of PS provision is publishing PS descriptions in an online catalogue to inform citizens and promote transparency. The European Commission has developed Core Public Service Vocabulary Applica...

An important goal of electronic government initiatives worldwide is to provide citizens with personalized information about public services. Chatbots and knowledge graphs are emerging technologies that are potentially suitable for that purpose however, their use is not thoroughly researched. The aim of this paper is to investigate the integration o...

Opening Government Data is a political priority in many countries. A large part of open data is numerical and concerns statistics thus can be easily processed and visualized. At the technical level, statistical data can be represented using linked open technologies. The resulting Linked Open Statistical Data (LOSD) enables developing data-driven se...

Interoperability is key to overcome complex issues such as climate change, health, and urban mobility. However, interoperability implementation faces various challenges, including integration of services and data at the local level, historical legacies, changing technology, interest of stakeholders to work towards common approaches, and privacy and...

During the last decades various approaches have been put forward to systematize Business Process Redesign (BPR) based on continuous process monitoring and analysis. The effectiveness of BPR was also facilitated by recent advances in process mining and analytics, given the influence of Big Data to the way organizations discover, monitor and improve...

Computational Thinking (CT) through programming in higher education is considered an important skill for students to become problem solvers and thrive in the new digital workplace. Despite the wide interest, a systematic map of CT through programming in higher education is still missing. The aim of this study is twofold. First, we aim to provide a...

In recent years, game-based learning and gamification have increasingly been used within flipped classroom approaches. Many research showed that both approaches were efficient in conjunction in an active learning perspective. However, we observe that few games have been designed with use in the flipped classroom in mind, and there is therefore pote...

Computational Thinking (CT) through programming attracts increased attention as it is considered an ideal medium for the development of 21st century skills. This intense attention leads to K-12 initiatives around the world and a rapid increase in relevant research studies. However, studies show challenges in CT research and educational practice. In...

In recent years, a new form of journalism has developed a strong dynamic: journalism based on data. The success of the move is so great that technologies and applications that support it have begun to emerge. Although technologies are in a period of mature productivity, their evaluation is an area lagging in development. It is a fact that lack of e...

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Participation, ePart 2021, held in Granada, Spain, in September 2021, in conjunction with IFIP WG 8.5 Electronic Government (EGOV 2021), the Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government Conference (CeDEM 2021). The 16 full papers presented were c...

An important part of electronic Government is the provision of high quality Public Services (PS) to citizens. Towards this goal, the European Commission has proposed the Core Public Service Vocabulary (CPSV), as a PS data model to be used across the public sector. CPSV is adequate for use in the case of simple PS however its effectiveness is questi...

Problem based learning (PBL) supports the development of transversal skills and could underpin the training of a workforce competent to withstand the constant generation of new information. However, the application of PBL is still facing challenges, as educators are usually unsure how to structure student-centred courses, how to monitor students’ p...

The latest version of European Union’s European Interoperability Framework (EIF 2017) introduced the concept of ‘interoperability governance’ as a key enabler of interoperability. The paper examines this concept in an information system for the judiciary. It particularly explores how the governance structure of the Integrated Administrative Court C...

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Participation, ePart 2019, held in Linköping, Sweden, in August/September 2020, in conjunction with the 19th IFIP WG 8.5 IFIP International Conference on Electronic Government (EGOV 2020) and the International Conference for E-Democracy and Open Gov...

The Once-Only Principle states that citizens and businesses provide data only once in contact with public administrations. So far, many European countries have started to implement the Once-Only Principle at national level, but its cross-border implementation is still fragmented and limited. This paper presents the development of a Reference Archit...

During the last decades, public authorities worldwide have invested heavily in electronic public services (PSs). This includes efforts for publishing information about PSs and for providing online PSs. Each of these efforts is based on an underlying PS Model, i.e. a data model developed for describing and/or developing PSs. Although many PS models...

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Government, EGOV 2019, held in San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy, in September 2019, in conjunction with the IFIP WG 8.5 IFIP International Conference on Electronic Participation (ePart 2019) and the International Conference for E-Democracy and Open G...

This paper investigates the factors influencing user acceptance of eParticipation systems drawing experience not only from previous eParticipation research but also from the Information Systems domain. Subsequently, a model for eParticipation acceptance is constructed by integrating the concepts from TAM literature and eParticipation evaluation lit...

Open Data initiatives worldwide are boosting with an aim to increase transparency and contribute to economic growth. With a global annual economic potential value estimated to $3 trillion, this boost seems justified. Current progress however is not satisfactory. We believe a main reason is the lack of relevant skills and competencies. Current educa...

A large number of public authorities worldwide publish descriptions of their administrative procedures (public services) in public service catalogues. These public services descriptions are often based on a national or an ad hoc description template (also referred to as model). Moreover, usually they are not provided in a machine-readable format. A...

The number of Open Statistical Data available for reuse is rapidly increasing. Linked open data technology enables easy reuse and linking of data residing in different locations in a simple and straightforward manner. Yet, many people are not familiar with the technology standards and tools for making use of open statistical data. In this tutorial,...

Producing new generation of digital public services from open data is of major interest to policymakers, practitioners and academia in the digital government community. Recent efforts in the area of Linked Statistical Data suggest that the associated multidimensional data cubes are excellent resources that could underpin data-driven digital public...

The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is influencing the way we learn. 3D multi-user virtual environments (3D MUVEs) are emerging technology that is increasingly used in computer assisted language learning (CALL). Virtual environments are immersive, virtual worlds that could enhance second language learning (SLL...

In many democratic countries, including the European Union Member States, it is increasingly important that policy makers are aware of young people’s opinion. In this respect, the European Union prioritizes the discovery of new forms of participation in democratic processes and access to political decision-making through online and offline tools. T...

Governments are creating and maintaining increasing amounts of data, and, recently, releasing data as open government data. As the amount of data available increases, so too should the exploitation of this data. However, this potential currently seems to be unexploited. Since exploiting open government data has the potential to create new public va...

Open data have tremendous potential which however remains unexploited. A large part of open data is numerical and highly structured. We concentrate on those data and capitalize on linked open data (LOD) as the underlying technology. In this paper, we present a number of tools to facilitate publishing and reusing of linked open statistical data. We...

The Once-Once Principle (OOP) suggests that citizens and businesses should have the right to supply information only once to a public administration. It would then be the responsibility of public administration offices to take all necessary actions in order to internally share this data by respecting the relevant data protection rules. The overall...

This paper presents a large-scale project aiming at the implementation of the once-only principle in Europe. The project aims to explore and demonstrate the once-only principle in practice through multiple sustainable pilots. For this purpose, a federated architecture will be developed on a cross-border European scale to connect sixty information s...

The number of open data available for reuse is rapidly increasing. A large number of these data are numerical thus can be easily visualized. Linked open data technology enables easy reuse and linking of data residing in different locations. In this workshop, we will present a number of technologies and tools that are currently under development for...

The analysis of Social Media data enables eliciting public behaviour and opinion. In this context, a number of studies have recently explored Social Media’s capability to predict the outcome of real-world phenomena. The results of these studies are controversial with elections being the most disputable phenomenon. The objective of this paper is to...

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 9th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Participation, ePart 2017, held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September 2017. The 11 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 submissions. The papers reflect completed multi-disciplinary research ranging...

A large amount of open government data concerns official and unofficial statistics. These data can be represented as multidimensional data. In this paper, we commence by presenting data fragmentation, an important challenge when exploiting open data. We thereafter introduce multidimensional data as a possible solution to overcome data fragmentation...

A major part of Open Data concerns statistics such as financial and social indicators. Accurate and reliable statistics provide the solid ground for performing analyses that support businesses and governments in understanding the world and making better decisions. More importantly, the combination of statistical figures coming from disparate source...

A large part of open data concerns statistics, such as demographic, economic and social data (henceforth referred to as Open Statistical Data, OSD). In this paper we start by introducing open data fragmentation as a major obstacle for OSD reuse. We proceed by outlining data cube as a logical model for structuring OSD. We then introduce Open Statist...

Linked Open Cube Analytics (LOCA) systems enable the performance of analytics on top of multiple open statistical data (OSD) that reside in disparate portals. We present OSD's potential and highlight the problems hampering its integration and reuse. To overcome these problems, we introduce an approach for OSD integration. The proposed approach capi...

During the last years a growing body of literature studied Linked Data Cubes. The objective of this paper is to accumulate this body of knowledge and provide a preliminary analysis of the research results in the area so far. Towards this end, we systematically reviewed the scientific literature to identify relevant studies. These studies were analy...

Electronic Government (eGovernment) is currently facing significant challenges particularly due to the economic crisis which suggests governments should provide more with fewer resources. During the last few years, cloud computing emerged as a new computing paradigm with significant potential. The use of cloud computing in eGovernment has inevitabl...

Billions of people everyday use Social Media (SM), such as Facebook and Twitter, to express their opinions and experiences with brands. Companies are highly interested in understanding such SM brand-related content. Consequently, many studies have been conducted and many applications have been developed to analyse this content. For analysis purpose...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Government, EGOV 2016, held in Guimaraes, Portugal, in September 2016, in conjunction with the 8th International Conference on eParticipation, ePart 2016. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 87 sub...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Participation, ePart 2016, held in Guimarães, Portugal, in September 5-8, 2016. The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 31 submissions. The papers reflect completed multi-disciplinary research ranging f...

Opening up data is a political priority worldwide. Linked open data is considered as the most mature technology for publishing and reusing open data. A large number of open data is numerical and actually concerns statistics. In the literature, statistical data have been heavily studied using the data cube model. Recently, ICT tools have emerged aim...

A major part of open data provided by international and governmental organizations include facts and figures that are described in a multi-dimensional manner (aka data cubes). The real value, however, of these open data cubes will unveil from combining and exploiting them in analytics across the Web. Linked data paradigm promises to facilitate the...

Over the past years electronic participation (eParticipation) became a political priority worldwide. Consequently, research on the field has dramatically grown. However, eParticipation is still an unconsolidated research area that lacks generally agreed upon definitions, research disciplines, methods and boundaries. The aim of this paper is to cont...

A number of governments worldwide employ web-based e-consultation platforms to enable stakeholders commenting on draft legislation. Stakeholders’ input includes arguing in favour or against the proposed legislation as well as proposing alternative ideas. In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between the volume of contributions...

A significant part of open data provided by governments and international organizations concerns statistics such as demographics and economic indicators. The real value, however, of open statistical data will unveil from performing analytics on top of combined datasets from disparate sources. Linked data provide the most promising technological par...

Latest advancements in information and communication technologies offer great opportunities for modernising policy making, i.e. increasing its efficiency, bringing it closer to all relevant actors, and enhancing its transparency and acceptance levels. In this context, this chapter aims to present, analyse, and discuss emerging information and commu...

The unified modelling language (UML) is currently included in a large number of Information Systems tertiary curricula as part of systems analysis and design courses. However, existing literature suggests that learning UML poses significant challenges particularly for distance education learners. The aim of this paper is to investigate the use of l...

During the past few years, information and communication technologies and especially the internet are increasingly used in a vast range of human activities, including citizens' interaction with government. In this context, advanced technologies are also being used to more actively engage citizens in democratic processes, which are termed as electro...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference on Electronic Participation, ePart 2015, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, in August/September 2015. The 12 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 19 submissions. The papers have been organized in the following topical section...

A major part of Open Data concerns statistics that is structured as multi-dimensional data cubes. Linked Data technologies have the potential to realise the vision of combining and performing analytics on top of previously isolated cubes on the Web. Although a few recently launched tools focus on handling linked data cubes, they fall sort to suppor...

The "Rethinking Education" EC strategy highlights the importance of learning outcomes in education. The so-called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) is becoming an increasingly important part of education. In this paper, we present a novel approach and proof-of-concept application to enable automatically matching MOOCs learning outcomes with learne...

Electronic government (e-government) is high in the agenda of a large number of countries worldwide for more than a decade now. Recently, the concept of transformational government (t-Gov) was introduced to determine the stage of e-government evolution characterised by the radical restructuring of the public sector towards efficiency. The aim of th...

The adoption of the Linked Data principles and technologies has promised to enhance the analysis of statistics at a Web scale. Statistical data, however, is typically organized in data cubes where a numeric fact (aka measure) is categorized by dimensions. Both data cubes and linked data introduce complexity that raises the barrier for reusing the d...

A major part of Open Data concerns statistics such as population figures, economic and social indicators. The adoption of the Linked Data principles and technologies has promised to enhance the analysis of statistical data at a Web scale. Statistical data, however, is typically organized in data cubes where a numeric fact is categorized by dimensio...

Electronic participation (eParticipation) refers to the use of Information and Communication Technologies to enhance political participation and citizen engagement. During the last few years, eParticipation researchers have focused on analysing the field, investigating the main challenges, studying different initiatives, and proposing relevant eval...

The incorporation of established student-centred learning strategies such as Problem Based Learning (PBL) and the utilization of new technologies for fostering high level transversal cognitive skills often do not show the expected benefits. The main reasons include ad-hoc course design with no consideration of prior experiences and poor utilization...

The integration of medical data coming from multiple sources is important in clinical research. Amongst others, it enables the discovery of appropriate subjects in patient-oriented research and the identification of innovative results in epidemiological studies. At the same time, the integration of medical data faces significant ethical and legal c...

In the last years, a number of government led initiatives have been launched worldwide aiming at making government data freely available to everyone, without limiting restrictions. Linked Data has been employed by some of these as a paradigm that allows for the provision of structured, semantically enabled and linkable data on the Web. The objectiv...

Current economic conditions press governments worldwide to develop more efficient policies with significantly lower budgets. A possible way to achieve this is by exploiting online social networks. The tremendous impact of social networks in everyday life (e.g. obesity, financial situation, smoking etc.) is now well established in the literature. Ho...

Although the recently launched Open Government Data (OGD) movement promised to provide a number of benefits, recent studies have shown that its full potential has not yet realized. The difficulty in exploiting open data seems surprising if we consider the huge importance data have in modern societies. In this paper we claim that the real value of O...

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to consolidate existing knowledge and provide a deeper understanding of the use of Social Media (SM) data for predictions in various areas, such as disease outbreaks, product sales, stock market volatility, and elections outcome predictions. Design/methodology/approach: The scientific literature was systemati...