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Governments are employing modern information and communication technologies to serve society better. Raising the effectiveness and quality of government services is not only a matter of new technologies; it also involves clear vision and objectives as well as a sound business strategy. Information systems need to support internal work within a government’s boundaries, serve customers through digital interfaces and leverage digital relationships among social partners. To implement such systems, preparatory work is required in both organization and technology. A new public information management philosophy underlies this significant revamping of the value propositions made to customers. The ongoing enrichment of the Greek Ministry’s of Finance e‐services follows an ICDT‐like business logic. A key factor of all these advances is the re‐orientation of information systems for customer‐centric service.

This paper addresses the problem of using accuracy index values based on the squared difference between participant scores and true scores, the D² index, at the practical level. It clarifies ambiguity existing in the literature regarding the use of these index values to evaluate the scoring accuracy of human raters (evaluators). The paper critically investigates the effect of frame‐of‐reference (FOR) training on improving the accuracy of third‐party evaluators’ scores for organisations, such as those going through the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) self‐assessment exercise. It discusses a case study where 90 individual participants took part. The scores of these participants were recorded before training was given to them (no training) and after receiving FOR training. The study showed that providing FOR training has an effect on improving the elevation accuracy index (p < 0.05) in five of the seven categories used in this exercise. An observed leniency effect was also reduced. However, no improvement in the DA was observed. Thus, the evaluators’ ability to assign an accurate overall score was improved, while the ability to discriminate between relative strengths and weaknesses did not show improvement. This implies evaluator training, particularly for heterogeneous pools of volunteers like those of corporate and state and local quality awards, should include more content on the performance dimensions.

Organization development is focused on implementing a planned process of positive humanistic change in organizations through the use of social science theory, action research, and data-based feedback methods. The role of personality in that change process, however, has historically been ignored or relegated to a limited set of interventions. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a conceptual overview of the linkages between personality and OD, discuss the current state of personality in the field including key trends in talent management, and offer a new multi-level framework for conceptualizing applications of personality for different types of OD efforts. The chapter concludes with implications for research and practice.

The global shipping industry has been rocked by a wave of disruptive innovation driven by a thriving ecosystem of digital technology start-ups that have emerged in the last few years and set up offices in Greece. After the appearance of COVID-19, entrepreneurial leadership has grown in importance for guiding commercial shipping through times of exceptional circumstances. The problem is that there is a lack of understanding of the experiences of Greek digital entrepreneurs launching their tech start-ups within the maritime sector – from the initial vision to a real-world innovative business disruptor. We aim to answer the questions of who the Greek digital entrepreneur in the maritime sector is and how their entrepreneurial actions contribute to a growing knowledge base of digital entrepreneurship for future theoretical research and professional practice. This single-subject, archival case study demonstrates the social and commercial value of the “who” and “how” of digital entrepreneurship in the maritime sector through the case of Harbor Lab, an Athens-based start-up that disrupted the maritime industry through innovative use of emerging technologies to calculate disbursements (port expenses) and through the establishment of a horizontal, empathetic, open workplace culture. The outcomes of this study contributed a fresh perspective of scholarly knowledge on digital entrepreneurship for future theoretical research and professional practice.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of priority‐based incentives for collaborative hiding of confidential information in dynamic environments, such as self‐organized networks, peer‐to‐peer systems, pervasive and grid computing applications.

The paper documents the necessity of ISSON (Incentives for Secret‐sharing in Self‐Organised Networks); it provides functional and technical details on the proposed architecture; and, it assesses its feasibility in mobile ad‐hoc networks through real experiments. The paper elaborates on the availability of the hidden information through an analytical framework.

Through the real experiments, ISSON was found to be efficient in terms of communication and processing costs. Additionally, it avoids collusions for unauthorized revealing of the hidden information, and ensures the unlinkability and availability of the secret when it is divided and stored to peers.

The proposed, incentive‐based, privacy enforcement architecture is novel and applies to distributed, dynamic, and self‐configured computing environments.

Increased use of market mechanisms in the delivery of public services is one of the major attempts made by governments to achieve greater efficiency, higher quality and a clearer focus on customers. Information systems (ISs) can promote the adoption of market mechanisms, but they can also preserve a monopolistic and hierarchic model of service delivery. Hence, understanding the competitive implications of information technology (IT) is becoming relevant for managers in the public sector as well. Provides a brief overview of previous research on IT‐based competition and discusses its relevance for public sector management. Then continues to describe a project where six offices of one city co‐operated in developing a shared geographic information system (GIS). While this research is based on an in‐depth analysis of only one case, other researchers have reported similar experiences. It appears that effective use of market mechanisms in the public sector requires new orientation in IS planning and rethinking of the role of IS departments in public sector organisations.

With the rise of mobile devices like cellphones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) in the last years, the demand for specialized mobile solutions grows. Newly defined protocols like WAP or i‐Mode can be used to adapt Internet appearances to mobile devices. However, it is often an elaborate work to achieve these adaptions as almost all pages have to be rewritten. This paper shows an approach of semi automatical page generation for mobile devices. It is assumed that a general HTML page is already existing. Based on this page, an approach of generating personalized mobile device compatible pages is shown. This approach is illustrated using the software eSarine. eSarine is an e‐shop softare that can be used to set up an electronic shop.

This paper examines how electronic government is being used in the delivery and improvement of public services in the UK, and the actual and potential problems inherent in this. Although there have been examples of very creative use of electronic government in the public sector, there have also been numerous spectacular failures. This paper highlights a number of problematic issues surrounding its use. These include the fact that government's two central aims, namely high quality customer service and value‐for‐money, could potentially be in conflict; and the lack of evidence to support the claim that the use of technology in service delivery results in less bureaucracy and increased quality. Clearly these tensions and issues need to be much more fully explored so that a “government for people” can be created. The paper concludes by posing the question: Can e‐government produce truly innovative, responsive public services, or merely exacerbate electronically, existing shortcomings?

The purpose of this paper is to propose and validate a framework that can be used for assessing the level of banks' readiness for providing e‐banking services in Jordan.

A questionnaire‐based data‐gathering technique, descriptive, and analytical analyses are used.

This study has used three constructs to propose a framework that can assess e‐banking readiness: perceptions of bankers, perceptions of customers, and IT infrastructure in banks. However, there is evidence in this paper to support that e‐banking has achieved a degree of strategic and operational importance among bank managers. Also, customers are positive about embracing new banking channels. But it seems that technological aspects and IT employees' skills are paramount concerns.

This paper proposes a comprehensive framework to gauge banks' readiness to offer e‐banking services. Also, it suggests that future work could entail investigating the readiness from financial aspects, and the effect of marketing campaigns on customer's acceptance of using e‐banking services.

The findings presented in this paper can be used by banks to evaluate their readiness to provide e‐banking services to their customers. Also, banks can create a readiness profile, in order to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses of their e‐banking services.

This paper adds to readiness studies by providing a framework to assess e‐banking services. It is of interest to researchers to add to this framework and of interest to banks to evaluate services provided to customers.