Digital sovereignty in sociotechnical systems—AI use and crisis management

Our contribution to the journal Group. Interaction. Organization, discusses the interplay between the concepts of sociotechnical system and digital sovereignty. The respective theoretical backgrounds are considered and functional relationships between the two subject areas are derived. A sociotechnical approach is proposed that can be used to develop evaluation and design criteria for contexts of action that are conducive to the digital sovereignty of companies and employees. Against this background, the article outlines two empirical fields of analysis and design: In the first empirical field, the approach is applied to the participatory design of industrial work environments that are being reshaped by the introduction of advanced algorithmic systems or AI (artificial intelligence) systems. Such AI-based systems pose a major challenge for design in terms of digital sovereignty, among other things because of their inherent opacity. In a workshop with 50 participants from various business enterprises and research institutions, a matrix for the socio-technical analysis of work environments was applied along real case studies. The three case studies came from the application fields of automotive, brewery and packaging technology. All three cases involve the integration of AI-supported methods into existing workflows. The method allows structured interaction with synchronous visualization of design ideas, which is conducive to co-creative formats. The second empirical application field to which the socio-technical approach was applied focuses on digital sovereignty at the organizational level of companies and institutions. The study under consideration explored how organizations dealt with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Five industries were analyzed (retail, health care including nursing, public administration, business-related services, public transport), each with four case studies mapping the impact of the crisis based on guided interviews with both the employer and employee sides. This shows that correlations between the characteristics of socio-technical systems and digital sovereignty also offer interpretative aids here. © 2023, The Author(s).

How Sociotechnical Realignment and Sentiments Concerning Remote Work are Related – Insights from the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic forced sociotechnical systems (STS) to highly integrate remote work. Large-scale analyses show that the positivity of tweets about work from home decreased until COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO and re-increased in the weeks that followed. Nevertheless, it is unclear if this reaction is due to personal and organizational developments or if it mirrors the realignment of entire STS. The present study uses Q methodology to identify differences in how STS realign to the externally enforced integration of remote work. Only STS that reach a state of high alignment to remote work conditions by successfully shifting communication and procedures to digital spheres can be considered resilient. The results show that employees describe their personal experiences with remote work as more positive the higher their level of sociotechnical realignment. Furthermore, personal digital resilience is correlated to successful STS realignment as well. The results confirm the importance of realigning not only the technical and social components of STS but above all their sociotechnical interaction. Negative sentiments relate in particular to the low realization of humanistic objectives in STS. © 2023, The Author(s).

SAFE ENERGY RELATIONS: UNFOLDING THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE WITH THE ADVENT OF HYDROGEN TECHNOLOGIES

Proposals on the inclusion of hydrogen as an energy vector into the large-scale energy socio-technical system has gained considerable momentum along with the effects of the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines the conflict between various dimensions of decarbonization with hydrogen agenda within the conceptual framework of international environmental law and policies. Firstly, we carry out a general due diligence of the technical, economic, and legal aspects of the hydrogen economy particularly in Europe. Subsequently, via textual analyses of European Union's strategic documents, the incompatibility of the hydrogen risk chain with the hydrogen value chain is revealed. Finally, as one remedy to this incompatibility;the precautionary principle, its relation to science, technology and society studies, and its possible policy applications in the context of hydrogen technologies are discussed. © 2022 Proceedings of WHEC 2022 - 23rd World Hydrogen Energy Conference: Bridging Continents by H2. All rights reserved.

Illuminated Devices: A Sociotechnical System to Broaden Access to Digital Assistance

User training and support are crucial factors in bridging the digital divide. The Illuminated Devices sociotechnical system, inspired by our experiences providing online support during COVID-19, will provide personal digital tutoring, accessible anywhere, even with limited prior technology experience. System development leverages a human-centered, design-based research approach. The project will culminate in a pilot rollout and evaluation at three community sites. © ISLS.

Humane organizing in a post-COVID-19 world: Learning from Buurtzorg's trust-based decentralization

This paper examines the enablers and consequences of less hierarchical organizing in which humane values are in focus as a path toward spirituality in the workplace. It describes Buurtzorg Nederland, a revolutionary case in home health care due to its radically decentralized structure and integrative, autonomous system of organizing. Data were collected by studying the responses of directors and nurses to the COVID-19 pandemic. A formative grounded theory methodology based on theoretical sampling using two additional qualitative data sets is used. The paper demonstrates that the simplification of organizational structures through integrative self-management helps to put the organization's purpose at the center. Even in times of COVID-19 pandemic, this decentralized organizational architecture is empowering. The core concept of integrating simplification is elaborated using the enablers of serving, attuning, and trusting, wherein the concept of trust emerges as foundational. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Applying the sociotechnical systems theory to crowdsourcing food delivery platforms: the perspective of crowdsourced workers

Purpose>Crowdsourcing food delivery represents great potential for future development and expansion of the restaurant business. Accordingly, job performance and retention of delivery workers are critical for success. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate how to enhance crowdsourced delivery workers’ job performance and intent to continue working by applying the sociotechnical systems theory.Design/methodology/approach>The data analysis was conducted using responses obtained from crowdsourced food delivery workers. A structural equation model was developed to verify the hypothesized relationships. To test the proposed moderating roles of a three-dimensional concept of social capital within the research model, multi-group analyses were implemented.Findings>This study confirmed the significant relationships between crowdsourcing risks related to workers’ low job commitment and technical systems, attributing to reduced job performance and intent to continue working. Results documented that social systems including networks, trust and shared vision mitigated the negative impact of the perceived difficulty and complexity of technical systems and job performance.Originality/value>Although technology has contributed significantly to the effectiveness of online food delivery, the literature has mainly focused on its benefits and has ignored the critical aspects derived from a virtual and technology-based workplace. This gap was addressed by verifying the important roles of social factors (networks, trust and shared visions) in reducing the negative impacts of technology-driven risks (perceived difficulty of task requirements and technology complexity) within the crowdsourcing food delivery context.

Can Anybody Help Me?: Using Community Help Desk Call Records to Examine the Impact of Digital Divides During a Global Pandemic

The COVID-19 global pandemic has ignited lightning-fast adoption of digital tools in our communities, organizations, and systems of governance. It also inspired an unprecedented level of providing access to digital devices to communities and individuals lacking prior access. The situation and circumstances provide a unique opportunity to understand digital divides through a new lens. In this work, we contribute a contemporaneous understanding of digital divides beyond access by qualitatively analyzing over 300 calls made to a volunteer-based community IT help desk. We highlight the intertwined network of challenges leading to ecosystem digital divides and contribute new insights into how the complex socio-technical systems of practice, and the tools to support them, must adapt to bridge digital divides more effectively. © 2022 ACM.

Managing Pandemic Resilience with Other Cascading Disruptions of a Socio-Technical System

The COVID-19 pandemic spurred the development of methodologies to assess risk to economic development plans. To increase local recovery efforts, the federal government provides funding for regional economic development. Funds are allocated based on immediate needs as well as growth potential. This work advances the risk register methodology to prioritize infrastructure initiatives - potential projects, policies, or other actions an organization may take - while considering the influence of exogenous scenarios on priorities given the impact of COVID-19. The risk register identifies performance criteria which measure performance - for example, an initiative incentivizing restaurants to increase outdoor seating improves a create new jobs criterion. Next, the register identifies disruptive events and groups these events into scenarios. There are now two sets of data: the initiatives considered for implementations, and a set of disruptive scenarios, including a baseline. The register evaluates the impact of each scenario on each initiative. For each scenario, the initiative with greatest impact on performance criteria is ranked first, and so on for the remaining scenarios. These rankings mathematically capture the influence of each scenario on the priority of each initiative. The risk register mathematically quantifies the disruptiveness of each scenario, allowing the comparison of different disruptive events. This information can help determine how to allocate resources to improve system resilience. The risk register methodology is applied to a socio-technical system of systems. This work advances methods outlined in the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge, specifically the System of Systems knowledge area. © 2022 IEEE.

System dynamics model for changing transportation demand during the pandemic in Japan

To realize a sustainable transportation system, it is necessary to estimate the environmental load caused by transportation. Here transportation demand affects carbon dioxide emissions directly. In general, traffic simulations or scenario-based evaluations have been used to predict transportation demand. However, the COVID-19 pandemic that began in late 2019 has changed transportation demand drastically, and such changes have not been considered in conventional simulation models. Therefore, it is important to quantify the impact of the pandemic on transportation demand and its magnitude. In this study, we developed a model focused on describing the changes in transportation demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. We developed a model using system dynamics because this method is effective in describing socio-technical systems such as transportation demand. Based on related studies, we categorized transportation demand by purpose and modeled it based on the cause-and-effect relationship between the amount of transportation and the prevalence of infectious diseases. To verify the developed model, we compared actual data of 2020 in Japan with the output of the model. We set scenarios with varying parameter values that contribute significantly to changes in transportation demand, such as individual awareness of the pandemic. As a result, the developed model was verified at the behavioral level. This model can be used in developing future transportation systems. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.. All rights reserved.

Panel on Ethical Constraints on Validation, Verification, and Application of Simulation

Today's challenges must be addressed as socio-technical systems, including insights from the social sciences and humanities to adequately represent the human components. As results of simulations are increasingly driving and justifying political and social decisions, it is important to validate and verify (VV) simulation and data. However, the understanding of what establishes truth and how these views impact validation differ between the social and technical partners. Therefore, we must expand our view of VV. The panel provides various use cases and derives ethical questions related to supporting universities during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating multi-disciplinary teams with diverse viewpoints, challenges of using validated insights without critical evaluation, and lack of broadly accepted scientific measures to connect social models and empirical data. We conclude that the role of VV must be reemphasized, that its social-theoretical implications must be better understood, and that it should be driven by an overarching metaethical framework. © 2021 IEEE.

Bridging values: Finding a balance between privacy and control. The case of Corona apps in Belgium and the Netherlands

This paper focuses on two examples of the introduction and use of COVID-19 contact tracing apps in The Netherlands (CoronaMelder) and Belgium (Coronalert). It aims to offer a critical, sociotechnical perspective on tracing apps to understand how social, technical, and institutional dimensions form the ingredients for increasing surveillance. While it is still too early to gauge the implications of surveillance-related initiatives in the fight against COVID-19, the "technology theatre" put in place worldwide has already shown that very little can be done to prevent the deployment of technologies, even if their effectiveness is yet to be determined. The context-specific perspective outlined here offers insights into the interests of many different actors involved in the technology theatre, for instance, the corporate interest in sociotechnical frameworks (both apps rely on the Google/Apple exposure notifications application programming interface). At the same time, our approach seeks to go beyond dystopian narratives that do not consider important sociocultural dimensions, such as choices made during app development and implementation to mitigate potential negative impacts on privacy.

Systems Development in Pandemic Times: The Case of a Vaccination Registration Service: Some Well-Known Lessons Might Be Learned Again

There are several theoretical frameworks as well as practical experiences on how to improve the development, implementation, and operations of e-government services. The paper shortly describes the case of the Hungarian COVID-19 vaccination registration service for citizens that was inappropriately designed from the organizing point of view. Application of two general principles, that could have been used during the design of the service, are presented in the paper as an afterthought. Though the lack of reliable data does not allow to identify the root causes of the improper building of the vaccination registration service, it is argued that some well-known lessons could be learned again: e-government services are socio-technical systems that should be designed with systems thinking in mind. © 2021 ACM.

Poll worker security: Assessment and design of usability and performance

Election infrastructure includes socio-technical systems that are designated as United States critical infrastructure within the Government Facilities sector. Following the 2016 United States' General Election and during the 2020 Presidential Election cycle, election security and the integrity of election processes became a prevalent, national conversation. From the 2019 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report indicating that election systems in all 50 states had been targeted by foreign adversaries to the more recent broadened use of, and concern about, mail-based voting during the COVID-19 pandemic, election integrity is increasingly important. Furthermore, poll workers play a crucial role in elections and election equipment, as they are one of the first lines of defense in systems security. This paper contributes to improving the security of election infrastructure through intentional, targeted, cyber, physical, and insider threat training for poll workers. Specifically, this paper details the engineering design, including pedagogical approach, and deployment of online, election-specific, threat training modules. Results of a System Usability Scale assessment from 44 poll workers indicate the content and online platform are easy to interact with and use. Further, the developed modules were piloted and then deployed in a mid-Atlantic state;participating counties include over 1,900 poll workers who serve nearly 750,000 voters. © 2021 IISE Annual Conference and Expo 2021. All rights reserved.

Restoring the medical supply Chain from below: The role of social entrepreneurship in the production of face masks during the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic affected societies worldwide, compromising socio-technical systems across geographical, judicial, and administrative borders. It therefore a cross-border, transboundary crisis. It also exposed the global medical supply chain's vulnerability. Authorities' inability to restore it quickly caused serious problems in crisis response, but private initiatives provided unexpected bottom-up solutions. How social entrepreneurs respond to a crisis alongside the formal crisis governance system and generate resources related to product development and logistics deserves more attention. We therefore present a case study about a Dutch social enterprise (Refugee Company) engaged with the cross-border dimension of the COVID-19 crisis. We show it is possible to establish a supply chain and domestically produce personal protection equipment using a bottom-up approach. Policy and crisis governance should not overlook the potential of entrepreneurial activities to strengthen supply chains during crises, as they make supply chains more sustainable and crisis-resilient. © 2021 Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ISCRAM. All rights reserved.

Business Continuity Innovation in Disruption Time: Sociotechnical Systems, Business Analytics, Virtual Business, and Mediating Role of Knowledge Absorptive Capacity

The continuity strategy of business innovation to deal with the disruption condition, it is still many to be designed and explained. Referring to a sociotechnical systems (STSs) approach, this article conceptualizes and practically examines the business analytics, virtual business, and knowledge absorptive capacity that increase and produce the continuity capability of business innovation in uncertain business environment (e.g., COVID-19). We used SmartPLS to empirically evaluate the model based on 145 companies in a developing country of Indonesia that is currently under high disruption. Drawing a technical perspective, business analytics has successfully enhanced business continuity innovation and knowledge absorptive capacity. In a socio perspective, knowledge absorptive capacity significantly produces business continuity innovation. Business continuity innovation suffers if firms adopt virtual business without increasing their knowledge capabilities. Furthermore, mediating effects present higher support from management level to knowledge absorptive capacity strategy, a bigger impact for business analytics, and virtual business to improve and increase the goals opportunities of business continuity innovation. A novel contribution is the integration of STSs (business analytics, virtual business, and knowledge absorptive capacity) that drives business continuity innovation to deal and recover from uncertain environment. Our efforts also align several fields such as information technology-business alignment strategy, knowledge management, and knowledge-business services. Future research would be worthwhile and interesting whether our framework will suitable to different companies/respondents, business context, industry area, and crisis condition.

Distributed situation awareness: From awareness in individuals and teams to the awareness of technologies, sociotechnical systems, and societies.

A large component of Neville Stanton's work has focused on situation awareness in domains such as defence, transport, and process control. A significant contribution has been to initiate a shift from considering individual human operator situation awareness to considering the situation awareness of human and non-human teams, organisations, and even sociotechnical systems. Though controversial when introduced, the distributed situation awareness model has become increasingly relevant for modern day systems and problems. In this article we reflect on Stanton's contribution and point to a pressing need to consider a. The situation awareness of advanced technologies, and b. situation awareness at a sociotechnical system, societal and even global level. This is demonstrated via discussion on two contemporaneous issues: automated vehicles and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is concluded that, given advances such as artificial intelligence, the increased connectedness of society, emerging issues such as disinformation, and an increasing set of global threats, Stanton's distributed situation awareness model and associated analysis framework provide a useful toolkit for future Human Factors and Ergonomics applications.

The adaptive capacity of public space under COVID-19: Exploring urban design interventions through a sociotechnical systems approach.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the way in which the community interacts within public spaces. Consequently, the design of these urban environments requires new approaches. It is our view that Human Factors and Ergonomics approaches can be used to provide these insights. This article explores the opportunities for making public spaces safer and more accessible for community use under pandemic conditions. The study utilizes a sociotechnical systems model of an archetype public space, developed pre-COVID-19, to explore the infrastructure and activities that are impacted by the introduction of the virus to the public space system. The aim was to identify those elements of the system that are completely unavailable under pandemic conditions, those elements that become limited in use, and those which remained unaffected by the presence of the virus. The findings show that under pandemic conditions pre-COVID-19 public spaces were surprisingly resilient with proportionally few elements within the model completely unavailable. They also demonstrate that overall, the public spaces system, while still operating, is significantly constrained in achieving and optimizing community and individual health and well-being. The insertion of five (5) urban design interventions within the system model presented unique insights into the possibilities for optimizing adaptive capacity. These interventions revealed design opportunities across several levels of the systems model. Such insights are argued to assist in not only re-establishing community access under pandemic conditions but also more inclusive access to a broader range of the community under all conditions.

With Crisis Comes Opportunity: Redesigning Performance Departments of Elite Sports Clubs for Life After a Global Pandemic.

The suspension of major sporting competitions due to the global COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on the sporting industry. As such, a successful and sustainable return to sport will require extensive modifications to the current operations of sporting organizations. In this article we argue that methods from the realm of sociotechnical systems (STS) theory are highly suited for this purpose. The aim of the study was to use such methods to develop a model of an Australian Football League (AFL) club's football department. The intention was to identify potential modifications to the club's operations to support a return to competition following the COVID-19 crisis. Subject Matter Experts from an AFL club participated in three online workshops to develop Work Domain Analysis and Social Organization and Cooperation Analysis models. The results demonstrated the inherent complexity of an AFL football department via numerous interacting values, functions and processes influencing the goals of the system. Conflicts within the system were captured via the modeling and included pursing goals that may not fully reflect the state of the system, a lack of formal assessment of core values, overlapping functions and objects, and an overemphasis on specialized roles. The current analysis has highlighted potential areas for modification in the football department, and sports performance departments in general.