Mid Sweden University

The article introduces the development of research support systems (RSS) as a special form of information systems (IS) development. Building on experiences from a concrete case several crucial differences between RSS development and development of conventional business support systems (BSS) are identified. So, development for RSS means less of mission and more of continues collaboration, less of producing and more of reciprocal learning and social change. It also involves an expanded universe of discourse that requires support more from an IS researcher and less of a conventional IS-developer. Further, there are issues of ethics and funding that makes RSS development extra challenging. All this represents a shift in focus away from How to do things, toward, What things to do. The article is closed with some tentative guidelines for RSS development. Those include preparing, learning, working arena, anticipatory acting, prototyping and stepwise improvement and scrutiny.

Technical communication (TC) is an important activity in order to provide the users of technical artifacts with necessary information concerning the operation and maintenance of the products they are using. In the current working procedures of TC, however, the users become too passive. They are just receivers of information. Further, there is no effective feedback from the users to the producers of the information. In order to overcome those problems we here propose an application of social media (SM) in future TC. By using SM as a complementary channel for TC it becomes possible for technology firms to boost their competitive advantage and to improve the quality and completeness of their TC. This technique, however, is still more of a potential and less of a reality. Several problems, mostly concerning security and confidentiality remain to be solved. The empirical base for this work comes from TIC, an EU-funded development project involving several Swedish technology companies. Published research results are somewhat scattered but several sources coherently indicate both the need and potential for SM as a vehicle in TC. By scanning the net it is further possible to identify a number of seemingly successful applications of SM in such applications.

Governmental as well as other public systems are facing new challenges due to, among other things, current information technology trends and changes in peoples’ lifestyles. Hence, ideas of web services for the citizens and agencies accessible over the net 24-hours per day are born. However, in order to implement this new type of net-based services a set of accessibility, integrity and security problems and hindrances are to be overcome. Further, the methodological challenges are far from unproblematic. Neither the artefact approach nor the approach of social systems design seems to be directly applicable. Instead, an approach called pragmatic systemics is proposed. At last, organizational transformation is not only a technical problem. Seen in a systemic perspective, the technological changes and the introduction of new artefacts have to be carefully balanced with changes in human competence, organizational structures, and system culture. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Cooperation across national borders is of paramount importance for the security in border close regions. Timely and adequate training, reflection, and preparation are core tools for facilitating and stimulating such interregional cooperation. Hence, NetAgora, a service oriented web portal for security cooperation, was designed. In NetAgora there is first a service package with accident- and emergency scenarios. Here multi-actors can train their cooperation and decision making skills. The R-statistics open source package is applied for recording and analyzing data from those training occasions. In subsequent debriefing sessions this is used for post-learning. Further, from anticipatory modeling and simulation it is found that rescue operations are delayed and misguided due to shortcomings in the communication between security command and communication centers. Hence, the NetAgora Learning System is designed and prototyped in order to overcome that problem. It will facilitate and stimulate reflection in action and double loop learning and aims at improving communication patterns by anticipatory pre-learning.

Projektet Gränsöverbryggande Samverkan för Säkerhet (GSS) har syftat till att bidra till ökad säkerhet, och därmed också ökad livskvalitet, såväl för den befolkning som stadigvarande bor i gränslandet som de besökare som tillfälligt vistas i området. I detta syfte ligger också ökade möjligheter att rädda liv och hälsa samt att begränsa skador på miljö och materiella (ekonomiska) tillgångar. GSS fokuserar på den information och kunskap, som krävs i en räddnings-och krissituation. GSS sätter förberedelsearbetet i främsta rummet.Projektets gränsöverskridande mervärde har flera dimensioner:•Det ökar förståelse, tillit och samarbete mellan säkerhetsansvariga på ömse sidor nationsgränsen.•Myndigheter med säkerhetsansvar etablerar långsiktiga institutionella samarbeten runt säkerhet och krishantering.•Gränsregionens attraktionskraft ökar tack vare ökad säkerhet och förbättrad krishanteringsförmåga.•Den ömsesidiga kunskapen och förståelsen om förhållanden på andra sidan nationsgränsen ökar hos projektdeltagarna.Projektet har genomförts i form av tre årliga cykler bestående av scenarioskapande, ledningsövning och utvärdering. Resultatet från utvärderingarna har sedan legat till grund för nästa års cykel. Parallellt med detta har ettövningssystem utvecklats. Systemet innehåller scenariobank, övningar och stöd för dessa, play-backfunktion samt utvärderingsmodul inklusive statistikfunktioner. Utvärderingarna från övningarna finns i separat bilaga. Den första övningen genomfördes som en tabletop-övning vid Gränsräddningsrådets möte 2011. De två andra övningarna genomfördes så att deltagarna satt på sina respektive arbetsplatser och kunde kommunicera med varandra, dels via traditionella kommunikationsmedel, dels med hjälp av övningssystemet. Dessa övningar diskuterades sedan vid Gränsräddningsrådets möten.I framtagande av scenarios och övningar har personer från de verksamheter som skulle öva deltagit. Erfarenheterna från projektet är att behovet av övningar av det här slaget är stort. De deltagande organisationerna uttrycket att det varit mycket lärorikt att delta och man har skaffat sig nya kontakter och/eller utvecklat de kontakter man redan haft. Det har också visat sig att man haft direkt nytta av projektet vid verkliga händelser.Projektets kostnader har upplöpt till ca 3,2 mill. SEK och knappt 2,5 mill. NOK. Kostnader har huvudsakligen bestått i arbetstid och i någon mån av resor. Resekostnaden har minskat genom att projektet frekvent använt sig av distansteknik i stället för fysiska möten.

The GSS project (Gaining SecuritySymbiosis) aimed at contributing towards increased security and quality of life for inhabitants and visitors of the border region of the middle part of Sweden and Norway. Within this goal the project also aimed at increasing the likelihood of saving livesand reducing threats to the environment and material assets. GSS focuses on providing the information and knowledge required in emergency and crisis situations. GSS emphasizes preparatory activities. The cross-border value added by the project has several dimensions: •It increases understanding, trust and cooperation between emergency personnel on both sides of the border.•Authorities with responsibility for security establish long-term institutional partnership with respect to security and crisis management.•The attractiveness of the border region increases due to enhanced securityand improved crisis management.•The mutual knowledge and understanding regarding the situation across the national border increases among project participantsThe project has implemented three yearly cycles of training consisting of building a scenario, training in handling a crisis situation and evaluation. The results from the evaluation have provided the foundation for the next year cycle. The project also developed a training system across these three cycles. The training system includes a scenario bank, training exercises and support, play-back function and an evaluation module including statistical functions. The evaluations from these training sessions are included in a separate appendix. The first training session was conducted as a table-top exercise at the Border Rescue Council meeting in 2011. The other two training sessions were designed in order to allow the participants to sit at their respective workplaces and communicating with the other participants partly through traditional communications channels and through the training system. The training sessions were then discussed in the subsequent Border Rescue Council meetings. By accessing the scenarios and exercises in the training system the participants from the various rescue teams took part in the training sessions.The project results show that there is a great need for this kind of training. The participating organizations express that the training sessions havebeen very instructive and that participants have gained new contacts or developed the contacts that were already established. The results also show that participants have directly benefited from the project during real emergency events. The project costshave amounted to approximately 3,2 SEK and just under 2,5 NOK. Expenses have primarily consisted of the working hours of partners and to some extent travel expenses. The travel expenses have been reduced by the frequent use of distance communication technologies instead of physical meetings.

In this paper we will discuss security in functional regions that are divided between twoor more nations. Awareness and preparation requires some sort of warning mechanismmaking it possible for the people in the region to become aware and to preparethemselves for upcoming emergency situations. As both the disaster indicators and thecrisis to come are both fuzzy and unknown, we will speak about Soft Early WarningSystems (SEWS). In SEWS each individual living in a region will act as a networkedhuman anticipatory emergency sensor and actor. Our conception of such a regionalsecurity SEWS is given in the form of an idealised design called the netAgora portal.After discussing the broad lines of the netAgora design this paper will be focusing onthe key role anticipatory modelling and simulation may play in a tool for developing aSEWS capacity for handling transnational complex emergencies and disasters.

This paper addresses the issue of competence management in companies in the branch of Technical Communication. The problems these companies deal with concerns lack of specific education, more complex products, and a rapid change in how technical information is produced. Due to the rapid change the companies also need to be proactive and steer towards a desired future state. A design of a tool, SYNCOM, for competence management in modern high technology companies is presented. The tool is developed during a process based in idealized design.  SYNCOM constitutes of a group of systemic models and techniques for competence management and competence development that has been used in earlier projects. The SYNCOM Tool presented is a general tool aiming to be a model for organizations. Implementation of the tool will require adjustments and adaptation to the specific organizations. The SYNCOM Tool has not yet been tested as a tool in any organization. The systemic models and techniques for competence management and competence development have been tested with good results in earlier projects where they in form of prototypes have been tested and verified.

The idea of anticipatory modeling and simulation with subsequent learning from the outcomes is here applied on inter-regional security work. In this setting, multi-actors have to both cooperate and make coordinated decisions with just partial information about each other. With help of netAgora, a net based environment for simulation, learning, and communication, the goal of training, preparedness and continuous improvement of decisions is met.

This paper presents data from an emergency management exercise conducted in May 2011 with participants from emergency teams in Norway and Sweden. Software was developed specifically for the tabletop exercise in which a web-based presentation of the events of the emergency scenario allowed detailed recording of the communication among the teams both within and between the two countries. The communication messages were used to analyze who communicated with whom, how often and with what kind of information about the emergency event. The R-statistics open source package allowed analysis of the data for the debriefing session following the training session. A social network analysis model is planned as input to a system dynamics model. Data from 13 discrete events in the tabletop simulation will provide input to the system dynamics model in order to visualize communication patterns between emergency teams both within each country and across the border.