Transnational public sector knowledge networks: Knowledge and information sharing in a multi-dimensional context

Sharing of knowledge, information, and practices across cultural and national boundaries has become a means to address critical global problems. As government agencies increasingly collaborate with international counterparts on these issues, transnational knowledge and information sharing networks grow in importance as mechanisms for collaboration. This paper explores the nature of transnational public sector knowledge networks (TPSKNs) and identifies critical contextual factors that shape their performance. In these networks, each participating organization operates within complex national, organizational, and information contexts. The contextual differences between participants produce distances in culture, politics, intentions, organizational factors, relationships, knowledge, resources, geography, and technology. These distances influence their ability to engage in the processes and interactions that are essential to network performance. The paper concludes with a conceptual dynamic model that accounts for the relationships among these factors that can guide further research in understanding knowledge and information sharing across national and cultural boundaries.     

Public value creation through voluntary business to government information sharing enabled by digital infrastructure innovations: a framework for analysis

Public value creation is traditionally considered as the citizens' collective expectations with respect to government and public services. Recent e-government literature indicates that what exactly constitutes public value in digital government is still debated. Whereas previous research acknowledges aspects such as co-production and the orchestration role of government in the context of public value creation, there is only a limited understanding of how public value is created by the interactions between government and business actors, and the role digital technologies play in that process. Furthermore, so far, research into public value creation processes is limited to specific services that aim to meet a specific goal; for a more complete view, an integrative perspective is required to address the multiplicity of goals. Societal challenges including climate change, sustainability, and the transition towards circularity will require governments to play a crucial role. Businesses are also transforming their vision by adding societal goals to their economic objectives and contributing to these societal challenges. This necessitates even more the need to explicitly consider the role of business in public value creation processes. In this paper we argue that there is a need to understand public value creation as an interactive process, involving both government and business actors. In this process, voluntary information sharing enabled by digital infrastructures has the potential to contribute to the value creation processes, but the increased complexity of digital technologies obscures the effects they can have on value creation. Therefore, we develop a framework that allows to reason about public value creation as an interactive process, involving government and businesses, facilitated by voluntary information sharing. The framework also allows to reason about how the technological design choices of the underlying digital infrastructure influence this value creation process. For the framework development, we use an in-depth case study from the domain of international trade. We analyze the interactions between customs authorities and supply chain actors for jointly creating public value related to revenue collection, as well as safety and security of goods entering the European Union, using business data made available via a global blockchain-enabled infrastructure. In future research, the framework that we developed can be used to analyze more complex cases with additional public value aspects, such as sustainability and circularity.     

Tattoo information creation: Towards a holistic understanding of tattoo information experience

The tattoo information experience reveals possibilities to explore how tattoo images are created as things, what actions lead to the creation of a tattoo image, who is considered a creator of a tattoo image, and how different personal, social and cultural contexts influence creation of information through the tattoo acquisition experience. Based on the findings from nine interviews, the process of tattoo information creation was conceptualized encompassing all stages of the tattoo experience: from the moment the first idea of getting a tattoo emerges to sharing of information about a tattoo. Participants' stories about their tattoo experiences were used to develop a framework of four key phases of tattoo information creation: conceptualizing, verbalizing, visualizing, and pluralizing. These phases occur between four anchors identified in the participants' stories: anticipation, identification, ideation, and creation. This framework can be used to assist future empirical and theoretical research on tattoo information experience.     

Resourceful blogging: using a blog for information sharing

In an effort to help raise awareness about the need for disaster planning in health sciences libraries, emergency response planners at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia considered how best to promote the idea and provide a forum for gathering and exchanging information, while maintaining control over content in order to keep the focus and the quality of the entries consistent. The blog they created has been successful in providing much-needed assistance to hospital libraries and other libraries, both large and small, as well as for individuals and other organizations worldwide.     

Information asymmetry and information sharing

Although much digital divide research focuses on access to technology, another cause of the divide is the lack of information awareness that we call information asymmetry. Information asymmetry often stems from inadequate information sharing and can result in negative consequences for both the information poor and the information rich. Information asymmetry has been insufficiently studied as a possible cause of underdevelopment and inequality. In response, we develop a typology to classify information asymmetry into two categories, horizontal and vertical, and then identify those information sharing practices that cause the imbalance. To illustrate the negative consequences of information asymmetry and the potential benefits of information sharing, we discuss two examples from the experiences of modern American Indian tribes. First, Indian tribes face horizontal information asymmetry when they attempt to access the capital markets, and second, they face vertical information asymmetry in terms of law enforcement data sharing. This article also describes our ongoing examination of horizontal information sharing among tribes and vertical information sharing between tribes and others sovereigns in the American polity as possible solutions to the problems created by information asymmetry. These strategic responses are embodied in two information systems, the Tribal Financial Information Clearinghouse and an Intergovernmental Tracking System for sharing law enforcement data. We conclude with a discussion of how our typology can be more generally applied to other instances of information asymmetry.     

Organizational information creation through a design game: A sensemaking perspective

Information creation taking place in the use of an organizational design card game, Topaasia® is discussed. Using 18 video-recorded play sessions, the researchers analyzed the ways in which players make propositions based on cards and raise points or further development in the organization, as well as discuss contextual factors. The sessions were analyzed on topical turn-taking and by using the Systems Intelligence Inventory. Through these processes, the study shows the importance of breaking organizational communication genre conventions for the goal of revealing tacit information and for the creation of new information. The research thereby contributes to studies of organizational information creation and sensemaking.     

博弈论:分析文献信息资源共享的新方法

本简要介绍了博弈论的发展及博弈论的基本类型和要素，通过分析博弈与献信息资源共享主体活动的关系，得出献信息资源共享的过程就是各种主体间的博弈过程。并且论证了博弈论是分析献信息资源共享现状及根本障碍的有效方法。     

Time as a context of information seeking

The ways in which the temporal context of information seeking has been approached in the information-seeking literature are explored. Three major approaches were identified: (i) time as a fundamental attribute of situation or context of information seeking, (ii) time as qualifier of access to information, and (iii) time as an indicator of the information-seeking process. Temporal factors qualify situations and contexts of information seeking by expresssions such as dynamic, reiterative, and project. These factors can also be referred to as qualifiers of accessibility in the sense of constraints within which information may be accessed particularly in hurry situations. Temporal factors also qualify information seeking as a process from the viewpoint of stages or cycles. Recently, cyclic and non-linear models challenge the stage models of information seeking by emphasizing the contingency of information-seeking processes.     

Media effects on information sharing: A field experiment

The purpose of this field experiment was to test hypotheses concerned with media effects on the ability to share and discuss information in administrative appeals hearings in the area of unemployment insurance. Three communication modes were compared: (a) face‐to‐face, the traditional mode; (b) split telephone, in which participants speak from locations convenient to each; and (c) office telephone, in which the agency representative is at one location and all other participants are located together at another agency office. Of the numerous tests conducted, few revealed significant differences among the three modes. These results corroborated findings from previous laboratory and field research: in‐person hearings compared favorably with the two telephone modes, and the split conference hearing tended to receive higher ratings than the office telephone configuration.     

文献信息资源共建共享中的标准化

分析了我国文献信息资源共建共享平台的现状,指出了文献信息资源共建共享存在的问题,论述了文献信息资源建设中的标准化,以及文献信息标准化的趋势。     

深圳公立医院信息化建设及信息共享现状

抽样调查了深圳市、区级公立医院信息化建设和信息共享情况,总结了其成效和不足,提出了完善信息化建设、提高信息共事水平、实现区域医疗信息共享等建议,为深圳公立医院制订信息化发展规划及卫生信息政策提供参考。     

图书馆信息资源共享中的问题与对策

图书馆信息资源共享是图书馆间开展信息共享活动、分担共享成本、分享共享收益的群体行为。利益平衡是共享的基本原则。主导共享主体积极、主动地实现共享行为的是其内在与外部因素。共享制度体现社会信息公平获取的政府驱动力，共享需求体现了共享的市场需求驱动力。提出促进信息资源共享的新思路。     

知识共享的过程和背景模型研究

针对知识共享的基本过程,利用概率空间和条件概率原理,建立相应的数学模型,以期解决知识共享过程的定量描述问题;针对知识共享的背景,选择框架表示方法,提出提供者背景 、接受者背景、关系背景、知识背景和环境背景“槽”及相应的“侧面”来描述知识共享背景模型的一般参考框架。依此建立知识共享的条件框架,为系统分析实现知识共享的因素,认识知识共享的规律,提供理论和方法上的支持。     

Communities,knowledge creation,and information diffusion

In this paper, we examine how patterns of scientific collaboration contribute to knowledge creation and diffusion. Recent studies have shown that scientists can benefit from their position within collaborative networks by being able to receive more information of better quality in a timely fashion, and by presiding over communication between collaborators. Here we focus on the tendency of scientists to cluster into tightly knit communities, and discuss the implications of this tendency for scientific production. We begin by reviewing a new method for finding communities, and we then assess its benefits in terms of computation time and accuracy. While communities often serve as a taxonomic scheme to map knowledge domains, they also affect the way scientists engage in the creation of new knowledge. By drawing on the longstanding debate on the relative benefits of social cohesion and brokerage, we discuss the conditions that facilitate collaborations among scientists within or across communities. We show that highly cited scientific production occurs within communities, when scientists have cohesive collaborations with others from the same knowledge domain, and across communities, when scientists intermediate among otherwise disconnected collaborators from different knowledge domains. We also discuss the implications of communities for information diffusion, and show how traditional epidemiological approaches need to be refined to take knowledge heterogeneity into account and preserve the system’s ability to promote creative processes of novel recombinations of ideas.     

Resource sharing in university libraries: A tool for information interchange

Experience developed in two university libraries, Advertising and Marketing School of Rio de Janeiro library and Medicine Faculty of Petrópolis library, members of CBIES/RJ-resource sharing consortia of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, with the aim of identifying benefits for both institutions through their participation in the consortia. The main results are as follows: scientific and technological knowledge sharing, cooperative acquisition of software and databases, and the development of a cooperative online serials catalog; facilities to search for and access information. This experience shows how library consortia are efficient tools to information resource sharing and can contribute to increase the quality of academic education.     

Small world and information grounds as contexts of information seeking and sharing

This study compares and contrasts small world and information grounds as contexts of everyday information seeking and sharing. More specifically, the focus is on spatial and social factors constitutive of small world and information grounds. To this end, the main works written by Elfreda A. Chatman and Karen E. Fisher and their associates are scrutinized by means of an in-depth review of the literature of studies on small world and information grounds. Both approaches primarily discuss the spatial factors in terms of physical places. The construct of small world places more emphasis on spatial factors as constraints, while the construct of information grounds thematizes spatial factors as open arenas. As to social factors, the construct of small world focuses on normative constraints of information seeking and sharing. The construct of information grounds, in contrast, emphasizes the co-presence of other people as an opportunity to serendipitous seeking and sharing of information. Although Chatman and Fisher thematize the contextual factors differently, the constructs may also be seen as complementary.