Towards Interoperability amongst European Public Administrations

In this paper we present the technical approach followed in the InfoCitizen project. Its novel approximation to Public Administration necessities lies in the combination of Web Services as providers and Intelligent Agents as consumers of public services. The distributed nature of a Web Service network requires a similarly distributed architecture, that in turn requires an assurance of availability and transparency achieved with the use of Intelligent Agents.KeywordsLegacy SystemPersonal AgentIntelligent AgentService NodeSimple Object Access ProtocolThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Purpose The objective of this article is to make an exploratory study about European public administrations (public administration, public agencies, public law entities, entities dependent on the public administration and public universities) in relation to workplace health promotion interventions. The sample was extracted from the ESENER-3 (Third European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks) (EU-OSHA, 2019) and consists of 7,981 public entities from the EU-27 countries. Four WHPI have been studied: healthy nutrition interventions, sports activities after working hours, back exercises at work and prevention of addictions. Design/methodology/approach This is an exploratory study. The sample was extracted from the ESENER-3 (Third European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks) (EU-OSHA, 2019) and consists of 7,981 public entities from the EU-27 Public Administration. In total, 45,420 establishments were interviewed. Findings Different patterns have been observed when implementing workplace health promotion interventions in the EU-27 public administration. The promotion of sports activities outside working hours is the one with the highest level of implementation in European public administration. On the other hand, the measure with the least implementation level is the promotion of healthy nutrition. Research limitations/implications The limitations of the study are that the studied items are nominal and comprise more than two categories, so it has not been possible to develop a correlation analysis. Practical implications The EU-27 public administrations can see which workplace health promotion interventions need to be improved. Originality/value Differences that may exist in the adopted workplace health promotion interventions by European public administrations have not yet been addressed in depth by the literature.

The growing use of intelligent agents in virtual realities calls for agents that can interact with users in a fluent and believable way. Intelligent agents are expected to react in an increasingly human like manner, showing distinct characteristics and to express emotion. Which calls for increasingly larger datasets for the agents to make informed and plausible decisions. Intelligent agents need to be able to process large knowledge bases and make decisions based on a wide range of relevant factors in real-time in order for the user to find them believable. This is very important for autonomous agents in emergent interactive drama because they need to respond fluently to user interactions in a manner that resembles that of a real actor. Bayesian networks (BNs) are particularly suitable to implement intelligent agents decision mechanism because they support transient emotions and decision making and accommodate for conflicts between the virtual agents goals. In their basic form, BN reasoning algorithms do not scale well, since the cost of updating values in a BN is NP-hard in the worst case. We propose efficient and scalable BN techniques using relevance reasoning, that are suitable for the needs of our autonomous agents in directed emergent drama and allow for real-time decision making.

This study examined the effect of artificial intelligence on the quality of audit practice in Nigeria. Specifically, examined how expert systems, machine learning, and intelligent agents affect audit quality in Nigeria. The study employed a survey research design. The population of this study comprised 178 practicing accounting firms in Nigeria with the application of artificial intelligence. A sample size of 125 was selected using the purposive sampling technique. Data was obtained from primary sources using a well-structured questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and OLS regression analysis. The result of the study indicated that expert systems, machine learning, and intelligent agents exhibited a significant positive relationship to audit quality in Nigeria. Thus, the study concluded that the application of artificial intelligence positively influences the quality of auditors’ reports. With the positive impact made by artificial intelligence, in the coming decades, intelligent systems will take over more and more decision-making tasks from humans. The study recommended constant training of accountants and audit personnel on the use of AI techniques for the improvement of audit quality. Audit firms in Nigeria should invest in machine learning tools to further improve audit quality in the country. Also, the use of intelligent agents that assist in the classification of detecting objects into different categories should be increased among audit firms in Nigeria. Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, Machine Learning, Intelligent Agents, Audit Quality. JEL Classification: M42, M49, C451. Journal Reference Format: Dagunduro, M.E., Falana, G.A., Adewara, Y.M. & Busayo, T.O. (2023): Application of Artificial Intelligence and Audit Quality in Nigeria. Humanities, Management, Arts, Education & the Social Sciences Journal. Vol. 11. No. 1, Pp 39-56. www.isteams.net/humanitiesjournal . dx.doi.org/10.22624/AIMS/HUMANITIES/V11N1P4

In a Europe without internal borders that must compete in a global economy, in which there are constantly evolving the needs of an aging society and the labor market, it is essential to achieve a very high level of mobility. The percentage of workers mobility in the EU is relatively low: currently about 2% of working-age citizens, originating in one of the 27 EU Member States, lives and works in another Member State. Mobility in the labor market, covering the mobility from one job to another and mobility between Member States or regions, is a fundamental part of the Lisbon objectives, and an important component of Europe's response to demographic change and globalization. This study analyze the issues related to public employment, ie employment in the public administrations of EU Member States, subject to the free movement of persons under art. 45 paragraph 4 TEU by a clause of exception that will safeguard the public interest. The study has highlighted the Italian legislation, the different types of access to European and Italian Public Administration and its application.

In Pervasive Healthcare, novel information and communication technologies are applied to support the provision of health services anywhere, at anytime, and to anyone. Ubiquitous Computing technologies allow efficient and safe information exchange amongst caregivers and their patients in communities, homes and hospitals. Since health systems may offer their health records in various electronic formats, the openEHR foundation has proposed a dual model to achieve semantic interoperability between such systems. Intelligent Agents is a technology that has been applied to simulate human skills in healthcare procedures. In this paper, we propose an architecture for the exchange of context-aware messages in Pervasive Healthcare environments. This architecture is based on technologies from Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligent Agents, and complies with the openEHR dual model.

One approach to the optimization of building heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems involves the use of intelligent agents. These Agents can be used for minimizing energy consumption, maximizing occupant comfort, fault detection, performing diagnostics, and improving system commissioning. This paper lays the ground work for using intelligent agents for fault detection in HVAC applications involving air handling units (AHUs). Specifically, it looks at which faults in AHU mixing boxes and cooling coils can be detected and under what conditions. Such an understanding is necessary before intelligent agents can be developed, tested, and implemented in real building HVAC systems. A simple mixing box model (Tan 2006) and a simple cooling coil model Questions addressed include which variables should be used in the identification process, how many linear segments should be used for each variable, how large a fault must be in order to be detected given the inherent inaccuracies in the piece-wise linear approximation process, and over what range of external variables (e.g., environmental conditions) is fault detection possible.

The European Union Location Framework (EULF) is a set of good practices and actions to promote more effective and efficient use of location information in e-government services. The EULF is part of the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) Programme, which supports interoperability solutions, sharing and re-use among European Public Administrations. This report assesses the conditions for an EULF, based on a survey of Member States and an examination of EU policies and work programmes. Five focus areas are being considered initially: policy and strategy alignment, e-government integration, standardisation and interoperability, costs and benefits and committed partnerships. The assessment confirmed their importance in realising and maximising the benefits of location-related information and services. There are various good practices demonstrating that these issues can be addressed and that benefits for governments, citizens and businesses can be delivered. However these good pratices are not universally deployed and there are some significant gaps. The assessment also identified other important issues, including the need for effective leadership and governance, a user-driven approach, an open and balanced data policy, training and awareness raising and appropriately targeted funding. There is, therefore, a need for an EULF, to build on the good practices and interest from Member States and to develop a framework of guidance and actions that will foster interoperable cross-sector and cross-border sharing and use of location information.

Cloud computing is evolving towards federated ecosystems, where several Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) federate each other in order to achieve economy of scale and an efficient use of their resources. In line with the Digital Single Market (DSM) strategy promoted by the European Commission, the objective of the FP7 Cloud for Europe (C4E) project is to leverage the concept of Cloud federation in order to pave the way toward an improvement of European Public Administration (PA) ICT services. In particular, it aims, on one hand, at preserving national authorities and on the other hand, at promoting efficiency, collaboration and harmonization among the different PA offices spread over the European Union (EU).

Do aspects of quality of government, broadly defined, such as corruption, impartiality, and quality of public services, vary below the country level? The concept of quality of government (QoG) and various measures to assess it have become more ubiquitous in several social science disciplines. QoG is related with economic and social development, better environmental conditions, and better quality of life. Yet while governance indicators have proliferated in recent years, their focus remains almost universally on analysis at the country level. Moreover, the majority of indices rely on expert assessments, as opposed to the assessments of citizens, who are the on-the-ground consumers of public services. Building on a preliminary round of data collected in 2010, this study, for which data were collected in 2013, presents a novel and comprehensive index that captures the quality of governance for 206 regions in 24 European countries. The ‘European Quality of Government Index’, which will be published free for scholarly use, is built on the largest survey to date focusing on governance at the regional level; over 85,000 citizens were surveyed. The instrument proposed here builds on both perceptions and experiences of citizens in public service areas such as health care, education, and law enforcement. The paper presents final results of the survey, as well as a sensitivity analysis and checks for external and internal validity.

The theoretical and historical discussion undertaken so far indicates that political, economic and social shifts by 1997 had combined to give greater power and significance to the individual as the consumer of public services. However, the Conservatives had not consolidated a consumerist citizenship regime by 1997, and were resistant to some of the inflationary pressures of consumerism in public services. When New Labour came to power therefore it found a transitional citizenship regime, with new charter rights for users and some extension of choice, but little sign that services themselves were being reworked around their users. Policy actors therefore had the option of moving more resolutely in the direction of consumerism, or of pursuing an alternative citizenship regime.

Cyber-resilience, understood as the ability of systems to anticipate, respond, and recover from digital threats, can be significantly strengthened through the use of intelligent agents based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These agents, designed to operate autonomously and adaptively, improve early intrusion detection, dynamic risk mitigation, and the automated restoration of critical services. This article analyzes how the integration of predictive algorithms, behavioral analysis models, and distributed decision-making mechanisms helps to increase effectiveness against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. The proposal is validated using a virtual lab built with open-source tools, its configuration documented and exemplified in a collaborative GIT repository. It is concluded that while intelligent agents represent a key tool for making cyber-physical systems resilient, their implementation requires a careful balance between automation and human supervision in order to preserve reliability, adaptability, and trust in constantly evolving digital environments.

Diagnosis of cardiac disorders requires the combination of many different types of data, including family and patient histories, laboratory results, physical findings, genetic information, electrocardiogram analysis, and imaging results. Computer-assisted decision support systems must be able to combine these data types into a seamless system. Intelligent agents, an approach that has been used chiefly in business applications, provides a structure that can combine not only data types but also a variety of reasoning methodologies in the same decision support system. The user is included as an agent in the system and can interact directly with any of the components. The authors have used this approach to develop a decision aid for dementia evaluation. The adaptation of this methodology to the diagnosis of cardiac disorders is presented here.

As universities continue to expand their offering of online courses, it is imperative for researchers to identify pedagogy that supports student learning. At the same time, the application of artificial intelligence as a tool to support student learning is growing. For example, one recent trend in learning management systems is the integration of intelligent agents, which allow instructors to program automatic, targeted e-mails to students based on particular release conditions (i.e., a targeted congratulations e-mail when a student earns an A). Despite the growing popularity of intelligent agents and their potential to support students in asynchronous online courses, researchers have not yet investigated their influence on students. Using a quasi-experimental design, this study sought to examine the impact of intelligent agents on students’ academic engagement, sense of belonging, and academic performance. Two large (i.e., 150 students) asynchronous online courses were randomly assigned to either the intervention (intelligent agent messages; n = 113) or control (whole class announcements; n = 122). To compare the two groups, we administered a survey composed of Likert-scale and short-answer questions measuring academic engagement and sense of belonging at the beginning and end of the semester. Analyses revealed no significant differences between the groups’ engagement, belonging, or academic performance; however, all students reported a significant decrease in behavioral and emotional engagement across the semester. Qualitative analyses suggested that the intervention and control groups did seem to describe the sense of belonging differently, which may indicate that the use of intelligent agents influenced students’ perceptions of belonging.

This paper instigates a discourse on the unplanned effects of intelligent agents in the context of their use on the Internet. By utilizing a social informatics framework as a lens of analysis, the study identifies several unanticipated consequences of using intelligent agents for information- and commerce-based tasks on the Internet. The effects include those that transpire over time at the organizational level, such as e-commerce transformation, operational encumbrance and security overload, as well as those that emerge on a cultural level, such as trust affliction, skills erosion, privacy attrition and social detachment. Furthermore, three types of impacts are identified: economic, policy, and social. The discussion contends that economic impacts occur on the organizational level, social effects transpire on a cultural level, and policy impacts take place on both levels. These effects of the use of intelligent agents have seldom been predicted and discussed by visionaries, researchers, and practitioners in the field. The knowledge of these unplanned outcomes can improve our understanding of the overall impacts that innovative agent technologies may potentially have on organizations and individuals. Subsequently, this may help us develop better agent applications, facilitate the formulation of appropriate contingencies, and provide impetus for future research.