Citizen Engagement in Smart Cities: Theoretical Dreams vs Practical Reality

By: Muneera Bano (@DrMuneeraBano) and Didar Zowghi (@DidarZowghi) 

It has been predicted that by 2050, around two-thirds of the world’s population might be living in urban settlements. To make the cities ready for population expansion and growth, ICT is playing a critical role in the future of urbanisation referred to as ‘Smart City’. It has recently become the hot topic of research as the tech giants such as Google and Microsoft entering the race of real state.

There is no consensus on the exact definition of smart cities, however, any definition would refer to the core concepts of advanced technological infrastructure for urban society with collaborative and interactive human-centred design. An emerging view is that smart cities aim to increase efficiency, sustainability, and improve quality of life for citizen by utilizing technologies to connect every layer of a city, from the air to the streets to underground, to capture and analyse data from various independently-managed and operating infrastructures, utilities and service providers.

The buzz words used by researchers to propose architectural solutions for smart cities include Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Smart Phones, Cloud-based Services and Big Data. In essence, a smart city is a large-scale cyber-physical complex socio-technical system for an urban population that is comprised of many interconnected subsystems. Examples of these subsystems include transportation, power and water supply, waste management, pollution monitoring, crime detection, video surveillance, emergency response system and other smart community initiatives for e-governance. Typical examples of smart city are Singapore, Dubai, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Stockholm, and New York.

The three core components of a smart city are People, Processes and Technology. Regardless of the type of technology used for smart city implementation, the most emphasised factor is ‘Citizen Engagement’. As pointed out by Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president at Gartner, "The way forward today is a community-driven, bottom-up approach where citizens are an integral part of designing and developing smart cities and not a top-down policy with city leaders focusing on technology platforms alone”.

Smart city design should not only allow the community of citizens to interact directly with the technology but increase their participation in the governance of the cities. However, relatively little research has focused on the complexities and pragmatics of citizen engagement leading to their participation in governance.

There are various stakeholders in the smart city and citizens are only one group of stakeholder. The intention for involving citizens in co-production and the evolution of the smart city is to turn them into a technologically intelligent community where collective human intelligence works in parallel to AI for maximum effectiveness. However, in practice, such form of citizen engagement (to the level of co-governance by society) has yet to be observed in real life examples.

The democratic concept of stakeholder involvement in system design is quite old and well established. Without careful consideration and management, involving stakeholders can cause issues rather than provide benefits. Smart city, being a complex, large-scale, cyber-physical, multi-faceted, multi-layered and socio-technical system, presents new challenges on how to involve and engage the right stakeholder (citizens).

The critical aspect of any smart city project is derived from the political, social and cultural values of the society. The design and infrastructure of a smart city, type of citizen engagement and its evolution will reflect the political system. Examples of such differences can be seen in the citizen engagement by Japan, in the Social Credit System by China, or the bio-microchip implementation by Sweden.

Whether citizen engagement is a democratic initiative (neo-humanist), where the technology is utilised to improve the life and environment of a city, or is it a step towards an increase in controlling the behavioural patterns of the citizens on politically acceptable values inherent in the governance layer of society (functionalist approach) or as simply phrased mass surveillance, the questions regarding citizen engagement such as who will be involved, why, when, how and how much, would all be answered within the political context and the paradigm of governance of a country.

There is a need for further research on various dimensions of citizen engagement not just from purely technological perspectives but also from a social perspective such as political, cultural, and ethical. It is one of the important aspects of smart city and lack of proper citizen engagement and fair representation of citizens from all walks of life can have serious repercussions. Lack of diverse representation can lead to biases in design, that can disadvantage the under-represented or underprivileged groups of citizens. Also, there is a possibility of increasing the digital divide that will impact the less technologically savvy population of cities.

Another crucial issue that requires attention is data protection and privacy.  Smart cities capture and manage large amounts of data that is extremely important for their operations. Any data loss will disrupt city operations and will impact citizen’s trust and confidence. Data collected and manipulated by Smart Cities solutions are critically sensitive for citizens, businesses, governmental, and emergency services, etc. To ensure compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR, smart city architecture must include data protection as a critical requirement and must embed privacy protection in all stages of the data lifecycle.   

Microservice API Patterns - How to Structure Data Transfer Representations and Endpoints

Authors: Olaf Zimmermann, Uwe Zdun (@uwe_zdun), Mirko Stocker (@m_st), Cesare Pautasso (@pautasso), Daniel Lübke (@dluebke)

Associate Editor: Niko Mäkitalo (@nikkis)

The Microservice API Patterns at www.microservice-api-patterns.org distill proven solutions to recurring service interface design and specification problems such as finding well-fitting service granularities, promoting independence among services, or managing the evolution of a microservice API.

Motivation

It is hard to escape the term microservices these days. Much has been said about this rather advanced approach to system decomposition since James Lewis’ and Martin Fowler’s Microservices Blog Post from April 2014. For instance, IEEE Software devoted a magazine article, a two-part Insights interview (part 1, part 2) and even an entire special theme issue to the topic.

Early adopters’ experiences suggest that service design requires particular attention if microservices are supposed to deliver on their promises:

• How many service interfaces should be exposed?
• Which service cuts let services and their clients deliver user value jointly, but couple them loosely?
• How often do services and their clients interact to exchange data? How much and which data should be exchanged?
• What are suitable message representation structures, and how do they change throughout service lifecycles?
• How to agree on the meaning of message representations – and stick to these contracts in the long run?

The Microservice API Patterns (MAP) at www.microservice-api-patterns.org cover and organize this design space providing valuable guidance distilled from the experience of API design experts.

What makes service design hard (and interesting)?

An initial microservice API design and implementation for systems with a few API clients often seem easy at first glance. But a lot of interesting problems surface as systems grow larger, evolve, and get new or more clients:

• Requirements diversity: The wants and needs of API clients differ from one another, and keep on changing. Providers have to decide whether they offer good-enough compromises or try to satisfy all clients’ requirements individually.
• Design mismatches: What backend systems can do and how they are structured, might be different from what clients expect. These differences have to be dealt with during the API design.
• Freedom to innovate: The desire to innovate and market dynamics such as competing API providers trying to catch up on each other lead to the need to change and evolve the API. However, publishing an API means giving up some control and thus limiting the freedom to change it.
• Risk of change: Introducing changes may result in possibly incompatible evolution strategies going beyond what clients expect and are willing to accept.
• Information hiding: Any data exposed in an API can be used by the clients, sometimes in unexpected ways. Poorly designed APIs leak service implementation secrets and let the provider lose its information advantage.

Such conflicting requirements and stakeholder concerns must be balanced at the API design level; here, many design trade-offs can be observed. For instance, data can be transferred in a few calls that carry lots of data back and forth, or alternatively, many chatty, fine-grained interactions can be used. Which choice is better in terms of performance, scalability, bandwidth consumption and evolvability? Should the API design focus on stable and standardized interfaces or rather focus on fast-changing and more specialized interfaces? Should state changes be reported via API calls or event streaming? Should commands and queries be separated?

All of these – and many related – design issues are hard to get right. It is also hard to oversee all relevant consequences of a design decision, for instance regarding trade-offs and interdependencies of different decisions.

Enter Microservice API Patterns (MAP)

Our Microservice API Patterns (MAP) focus – in contrast to existing design heuristics and patterns related to microservices – solely on microservice API design and evolution. The patterns have been mined from numerous public Web APIs as well as many application development and software integration projects the authors and their industry partners have been involved in.

MAP addresses the following questions, which also define several pattern categories:

• The structure of messages and the message elements that play critical roles in the design of APIs. What is an adequate number of representation elements for request and response messages? How are these elements structured? How can they be grouped and annotated with supplemental usage information (metadata)?
• The impact of message content on the quality of the API. How can an API provider achieve a certain level of quality of the offered API, while at the same time using its available resources in a cost-effective way? How can the quality tradeoffs be communicated and accounted for?
• The responsibilities of API operations. Which is the architectural role played by each API endpoint and its operations? How do these roles and the resulting responsibilities impact microservice size and granularity?
• API descriptions as a means for API governance and evolution over time. How to deal with lifecycle management concerns such as support periods and versioning? How to promote backward compatibility and communicate breaking changes? 

So far, we have presented ten patterns at EuroPLoP 2017 and EuroPLoP 2018; about 35 more candidate patterns are currently being worked on. The published patterns and supporting material are available on the MAP website that went live recently. The papers are available via this page.

Sample Patterns for Communicating and Improving Interface Quality

To illustrate MAP a bit further, we summarize five patterns on communicating and improving API qualities below. We also outline their main relationships.

Figure: Relationships between Selected Patterns for Communicating and Improving Interface Quality.

• API Key: An API provider needs to identify the communication participant it receives a message from to decide if that message actually originates from a registered, valid customer or some unknown client. A unique, provider-allocated API Keyper client to be included in each request allows the provider to identify and authenticate its clients. This pattern is mainly concerned with the quality attribute security.
• Wish List: Performance requirements and bandwidth limitations might dictate a parsimonious conversation between the provider and the client. Providers may offer rather rich data sets in their response messages, but not all clients might need all of this information all the time. A Wish List allows the client to request only the attributes in a response data set that it is interested in. This pattern addresses qualities such as accuracy of the information needed by the consumer, response time, and performance, i.e., the processing power required to answer a request.
• Rate Limit: Having identified its clients, an authenticated client could use excessively many resources, thus negatively impacting the service for other clients. To limit such abuse, a Rate Limit can be employed to restrain certain clients. The client can stick to its Rate Limit by avoiding unnecessary calls to the API. This pattern is concerned with the quality attributes of reliability, performance, and economic viability.
• Rate Plan: If the service is paid for or follows a freemium model, the provider needs to come up with one or more pricing schemes. The most common variations are a simple flat-rate subscription or a more elaborate consumption-based pricing scheme, explored in the Rate Plan pattern. This pattern mainly addresses the commercialization aspect of an API.
• Service Level Agreement: API providers want to deliver high-quality services while at the same time using their available resources economically. The resulting compromise is expressed in a provider’s Service Level Agreement(SLA) by the targeted service level objectives and associated penalties (including reporting procedures). This pattern is concerned with the communication of any quality attribute between API providers and clients. Availability is an example of a quality that is often expressed in such an SLA.

More patterns and pattern relationships can be explored at www.microservice-api-patterns.org. In addition to the patterns, you find there additional entry points such as a cheat sheet and various pattern filters such as patterns by force, and patterns by scope (phase/role).

Wrapping Up

Microservice API Patterns (MAP) is a volunteer project focused on the design and evolution of Microservice APIs. We hope you find the intermediate results of our ongoing efforts useful. They are available at www.microservice-api-patterns.org – we will be glad to hear about your feedback and constructive criticism. We also welcome contributions such as pointers to known uses or war stories in which you have seen some of the patterns in action.

The patterns in MAP aim at sharing timeless knowledge on distributed system APIs. While trends like microservices come and go, the fundamental design problems of exposing remote APIs will not go out of fashion any time soon!

A Survey of Sustainability in the Workplace of ICT Professionals using the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change

By: Juan M. Carrillo de Gea, José Alberto Garcia-Berna, José L. Fernández-Alemán, Joaquín Nicolás, Begoña Moros, Ambrosio Toval, Ali Idri

Associate Editor: Sofia Ouhbi

We live in a finite world, with limited resources. The idea of sustainable development arises to counteract the overexploitation of natural and environmental resources. The World Commission on Environment and Development (a.k.a. the Brundtland’s Commission), defined sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). At the same time, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) represent an important driver of innovation, competitiveness and sustained long-term growth for modern knowledge-based societies (Cardona, Kretschmer, & Strobel, 2013). ICT are also recognized catalysts of sustainable development and they can boost the impact of sustainable development efforts (Zelenika & Pearce, 2013). However, positive and negative impacts of ICT on sustainability tend to cancel each other out, and it is crucial to actively design policies that encourage ICT applications that result on a positive outcome for the environment (Hilty et al., 2006).

In an organizational context, behavior change is an important tool to improve compliance with business processes and policies (Gelles, 2016). There are many theories of behavior change: diffusion of innovations, hierarchy of effects, steps to behavior change, stages of change or transtheoretical model (TTM), social learning theory and social cognitive theory, theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior, health belief model, operant conditioning, value-belief-norm theory, Fogg behavior model, and DO IT process, just to name a few. In particular, the TTM of behavior change includes five stages, ranging from no intention to change, to maintain behavior: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Behavior change takes place when people progress—or move back—towards a desired behavior. While the TTM of behavior change has been mostly applied in health research, there are similarities between health behavior and environmental behavior (Nisbet & Gick, 2008).

In this work, we specifically address the stage construct of the TTM with the purpose of characterizing behavior change among ICT professionals about four key sustainability areas: (1) electric consumption, (2) waste treatment, (3) water consumption, and (4) transport and mobility. A total of 141 participants from ICT companies participated in an industry survey in the Region of Murcia (Spain) through an on-line questionnaire. We gathered information from all the respondents about their individual behavior at the workplace regarding the four sustainability areas. There were 26 individual behavior questions designed to be rated on a 3-point unipolar Likert-type scale (i.e. No, In some cases, Yes), and we also included a Not applicable (N/A) response option. An additional question was included at the end of each block of questions that depends on the previous answers (i.e. a filter or contingency question) to assign the respondents to the specific stage of change in each sustainability dimension under study.

Figures 1-4 show the results for each sustainability dimension under study. Our findings suggest that the ICT professionals are generally respectful with the environment, especially in relation to electric consumption, waste treatment, and water consumption. With regard to transport and mobility, the situation is not so good. All this is more evident if we move on to Figure 5, where we show the percentage of respondents in each stage of the TTM for each sustainability dimension. 

Figure 1. What sustainable habits do you have at work in relation to electric consumption?

Figure 2. What sustainable habits do you have at work regarding waste treatment?

Figure 3. What sustainable habits do you have at work with respect to water consumption?

Figure 4. What sustainable habits do you have at work in terms of transport and mobility?

Figure 5. Percentage of respondents in each stage of the TTM

Our study is still under development and we are currently working on expanding the results posted here. All in all, we hope that the information obtained will help ICT professionals to become aware that it is also possible to contribute to sustainable development through our behaviors in the workplace.

References

Cardona, M., Kretschmer, T., & Strobel, T. (2013). ICT and productivity: conclusions from the empirical literature. Information Economics and Policy, 25(3), 109-125.

Gelles, M. G. (2016). Chapter 2 - common challenges to maturing an insider threat program. In M. G. Gelles (Ed.), Insider threat(pp. 19-37). Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Hilty, L. M., Arnfalk, P., Erdmann, L., Goodman, J., Lehmann, M., & Wäger, P. A. (2006). The relevance of information and communication technologies for environmental sustainability - a prospective simulation study. Environmental Modelling and Software, 21(11), 1618-1629.

Nisbet, E. K. L., & Gick, M. L. (2008). Can health psychology help the planet? applying theory and models of health behaviour to environmental actions. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 49(4), 296-303.

World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our common future. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Zelenika, I., & Pearce, J. M. (2013). The internet and other ICTs as tools and catalysts for sustainable development: innovation for 21st century. Information Development, 29(3), 217-232.

Designing for E-commerce User-Experience in Complex Scenarios

By: Catherine Hills (@daughterofbev) 

Associate Editor: Muneera Bano (@DrMuneeraBano)

Designing ‘good’ e-commerce and m-commerce usability and user-experience is even more important than before. Issues such as trust, security, service quality, as well as website and mobile application quality continue to be critical and have an impact on how consumers feel about purchasing in digital, non-physical settings.

E-commerce purchases and online shopping transactions are increasingly becoming the norm in consumer shopping behaviour. In mature economies, like Australia and the US, this might seem unsurprising, however, worldwide, 50% internet adoption still means, statistically, half the world’s population does not have access to these technologies. Estimated e-commerce sales are expected to rise substantially worldwide, year on year with increased projected growth predicted beyond 2021. While mobile device usage for e-commerce purchasing is ever more popular, the desktop computer still presents as the most popular device type used for e-commerce transactions and browsing. 

Furthermore, if we consider the early adoption of technologies like Alexa or Google Home, voice commands, control and artificial intelligence integrate with visual and non-visual interactions, e-commerce ecosystems and services are further affecting consumers. The way consumers interact with these e-commerce ecosystems will continue to diversify, become more ubiquitous and provide persistent challenges for the designers of these user experiences.  As the user-experience and engineering communities understand more about e-commerce ecosystems and how they might co-exist with service delivery fulfilment and logistical service strategies further influenced by increased technology adoption and device ubiquity, the terrain for both user-experience designers and consumers will become more complex and unique.

In recent research, the perceptions of designers of e-commerce user experiences were tested for their perceptions of e-commerce experiences in comparison to consumers who were tested with the same questions and responses to these same experiences. The research demonstrated that the differences between what is perceived to be good or bad e-commerce user-experience design between designer-consumers and consumer-consumers have been shown to be quite complementary, when the user role, as the consumer is considered as a primary focus.

This research also demonstrated that there is a little dissimilarity in the expectations of designers in their perception of ‘good’ user-experience of e-commerce user-experiences to those of consumers conveniently sampled in a qualitative study. Most participants regardless of their designer or non-designer background agreed that factors such as error-free flows, low advertising, security, clear information design and representative information of products and services for purchase were highly important in their experience of a ‘good’ e-commerce website.

Key differences between the views of designer-consumers and consumer end-users, who are not involved in the design of e-commerce user-experiences, were demonstrated to be caused by the domain and technical knowledge of individuals in the designer-consumer versus the consumer-end-user groups. These differences were manifested by expressed language in their observations of designers regarding their perceptions and ideas of good and bad e-commerce experiences. In addition to the domain and professional knowledge of the people we spoke to, domain-specific biases expressed by designer-consumers in their responses to e-commerce user-experiences were detected via their increased technical knowledge, informing the researchers that they had more cutting-edge and technology-specific expectations of functionality than the needs and opinions expressed by the consumer-end-user participants.

In addition to these aforementioned considerations, the research also considered that as user-experience designers and researchers, the design of the user-experience must be accessible and inclusive.  As the globalisation of e-commerce continues, how might issues such as diversity, gender and culture be addressed in the way we design these shopping interfaces? Moreover, as designers and engineers of e-commerce user-experiences, how might we provide user-experiences that cater for users of diverse backgrounds, networked access as well as devices that are broadly reliant on the socio-economic circumstances of our users?

Given website and service quality frameworks were considered important in the collection of data in this research and the analysis of the findings, it was of curiosity to the researchers as to how gender, culture and personality might be considered in relation to these quality dimensions. Given we had a limited sample size with a small population of participants located in Melbourne, Australia, we were still able to consider data collected from a broad range of ages, ethnicities and both male and female participants.

A limitation to the data collection was the binary sampling of participant genders and to be truly representative, a wider diversity of gender participation would be required. Additionally, in order to fully analyse the differences between countries, a wider data collection is required. Responses relating to gender in this research were broadly stereotyped occasionally amusing and sometimes biased, but not significant enough to draw conclusions and would require a further, focused phase of inquiry. Overarchingly this research indicated that e-commerce is still a widening terrain and as users adapt further to new technologies, we must consider service and user-experience conditions with fresh eyes and attention to the basic needs of consumer end-users.