Network effect

Interoperability issues are widely discussed not only within business community, but more constantly between public administration representatives. An eGovernment Interoperability Framework (eGIF) is one way to achieve eGovernment interoperability. An eGIF is a set of standards and guidelines that a government uses to specify the preferred way that its agencies, citizens and partners interact with each other. eGIF includes: "... the basic technical specifications that all agencies relevant to the eGovernment strategy implementation should adopt". eGovernment Interoperability Frameworks appear as the governmental policy cornerstones for deploying joined-up information systems and providing one-stop services to citizens and businesses. Lack of interoperability is due to a number of factors. It may be due to policy reasons. Privacy, particularly as it relates to personal health information and national security, are good examples. Lack of interoperability also has to do with the heterogeneous nature of government information systems the result of past decisions regarding hardware, software, and legacy systems. There is also the "turf" issue various agencies want their own systems and are worried about sharing data and/or common services. Lastly, the network effect of some companies that use proprietary standards have helped create some of the current problems. Many governments did not know they had a choice, nor were they aware of the long-term effects of their procurements. Thus, to achieve interoperability, there needs to be a desire for transformation and the cooperation of the various agencies of government. Unless commitment to achieving interoperability is demonstrated at the highest levels, a plethora of policies, as well as bureaucratic and narrowly construed corporate interests can always be used to challenge efforts to make interoperability happen. In order to come up to the expectations of their stakeholders and to achieve real resolution of the evolving interoperability problems, the scope of the eGIFs needs to be extended, including service composition and discovery, development and management of semantic schemas for governmental documents, certification mechanisms and authentication standards. Moreover, a shift from a paper-based specification towards a repository of services, data schemas and process models is needed, in order to serve the ever-changing nature of governments under transformation. Upon conducting a state of the art analysis of relevant frameworks at a pan-European and national level, lessons learnt from the pioneers UK eGIF, German SAGA and Greek eGIF are presented. The proposed Lithuanian eGIF model describes new approach outlines the technical, semantic and organization dimensions and stresses the importance of political interoperability. It also provides three layers model moving from only standards and specifications based approach to systems and coordination support elements. Finally the paper tackles the issues that rose within stakeholders' community in the eGovernment interoperability context.

Since the introduction of mobile telephony in the early fifties in Europe, US and Japan the demand for this service exploded. It seems that the latent demand for mobile telecommunication services for decade's continued to be very strong. Since the introduction of cellular technology the capacity of the services increasingly became able to meet the massive demand. Next and future generations of mobile telecommunication technologies bring increased transmission speed and more versatile services. This forces network operators to organise multi sourced information flows supplied by service providers to increase the network effect of the system instead of providing the network infrastructure and leave the content to the users as in pure voice telephony. The drivers and inhibitors behind the emergence and recent developments of mobile telecommunications systems in Europe are highlighted in this paper. Liberalisation of the telecom markets in Europe drove new entrants to the market and curbed excessive pricing. However, in recent years the lack of challenging service is the main cause for the wavering development of newer generations of mobile telecommunication services.

The effect of different sized alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) nanoparticles on the mechanical properties of thermoset epoxy-based nanocomposites is investigated using molecular dynamic (MD) simulations combined with sequential scale bridging methods. In molecular structures, the cross-linked networking effect of the pure EPON862 Ò -TETA Ò polymer has been independently considered and validated by MD simulations. Based on the validation of pure epoxy structures, nanocomposites' unit cells, consisting of spherical Al 2 O 3 particles and epoxy, have been constructed. In order to investigate the particle size effects, various unit cells having different particle radii but the same volume fraction have been considered and simulated. The mechanical properties of the nanocomposites are calculated using the Parrinello-Rahman fluctuation method to give an enhanced reinforcing effect in smaller particle reinforced cases. Based on the MD simulation results, the sequential bridging method is adopted for efficient estimation of the particle size and epoxy networking effects. An effective interface concept is incorporated as a characteristic phase which can describe the particle size effects. The values calculated from the micromechanics model are in good agreement with those of the molecular dynamics simulations.