The aim of this paper is to review some methods for text authorship attribution and to discuss the development of a software library with tools for automatic authorship attribution. The presentation is focused on an analysis of two groups of tools oriented to: (1) methods for extraction of features and (2) methods for computing the distance between character strings based on data compression algorithms.

The knowledge hierarchy, which is widely used in Information Systems (IS) research, may provide the desired user-view framework. The knowledge hierarchy can support the selection of targeted stakeholders in accordance with their skills and abilities. This can be done by matching each type of e-participatory activity to the appropriate level in the knowledge hierarchy. For example: matching processed inputs on a conceptual level, termed knowledge, with the wide community; matching specific information with engaged citizens that possess local knowledge in their areas of interest; and matching data with semi-professional local representatives that produce value out of data much as experts do. This model should help understand conflicts such as the ban of mosque minarets in a country with Muslim minority, or the often heard accusation of “too much democracy,” the disfavor of open debates and other expressions of imbalance in the new era of e-participation. Governments and communities may benefit from the proposed user-view framework while designing and implementing new e-participation initiatives.

Knowledge management has become a major application of information technology (IT) and a major focus of IT research. Thus, it becomes increasingly important to understand the nature of the knowledge object and knowledge engineering processes. The assumption underlying this article is that in order for knowledge to be managed by technological means, it must first be represented in the relevant technology. As Sowa (1999) puts it:Knowledge engineering can…be defined as the branch of engineering that analyzes knowledge about some subject and transforms it to a computable form for some purpose.

The evolution of E-Government provides the opportunity to explore Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption by individuals and organizations. A systematic study of local egovernment has provided important insights into this topic. This research created an in-depth index of the local e-government in Israel, and consequently contributed to the establishment of a theory on ICT acceptance and management. 88 Internet websites of local authorities were evaluated. In an attempt to understand the differences between them, questionnaires and interviews were carried on among managers in local authorities. This study draws a line from the individual's digital literacy to her ability to intuitively accomplish the normative principles of Information Systems (IS) planning and implementation.

In this paper the semantic and abstraction content of art images is studied. Different techniques for search in art image repositories are analyzed and new ones are proposed. The content-based retrieval process integrates the search on different components, linked in XML structures. Some experiments over 200 paintings of six Israel contemporary artists are done and analyzed.

Information technologies are an integral part of any organization and are constantly emerging and evolving. Theories explaining the impact of technological innovations on organizations and the individuals that populate them are developed as new technologies emerge, and future business applications are explored. Despite this richness of research, we have a fairly narrow view of how these technologies are related. Furthermore, new technologies are often assigned labels that strongly connote disconnect from existing technologies despite the fact that few true evolutionary leaps exist and, for the most part, information technologies evolve from each other and share many similarities. Consequently, our ability to apply knowledge gained from the application of one technology to interactions with another is limited. Developing general theories of information technologies require strong understanding of the different technologies that exist and how they are related. To this end, this article puts forward a concise classification of information technologies. Using a multidimensional scaling approach and survey data from IS academics, we identify three dimensions which capture the commonalities and differences among information technologies. We believe that the resultant classification will enable researchers to better integrate existing and future theories, and to move away from technology-specific theories toward more general ones.

This paper puts forward an academic identity for the IS discipline which emerges out of its displayed academic artifacts - namely, papers published in two of the discipline's major journals (Information Systems Research and MIS Quarterly) between 1977 and 2006. Our study focuses on two specific attributes of these papers: the focal IT Artifact and the IS Theme. An analysis of 1056 papers reveals an academic identity characterized by a relatively persistent focus on a small set of IT Artifacts and a similarly small set of IS Themes. The analysis suggests that our academic identity is indicated by two central and enduring intellectual cores associated with a handful of IT Artifacts and IS Themes, which have captured the attention of IS researchers over three decades. This academic identity may be described as the scientific study of the design, development, and management of information technologies, as well as their use by and impact on individuals, groups, and organizations. Of particular interest are information technologies (and their specific components) that enable communication, collaboration, and decision making. A follow up analysis of the papers published in 2007 and 2008 provides support to the central and enduring nature of our discipline's intellectual core.

Significant advances in artificial intelligence, including machines that play master level chess, or make medical diagnoses, highlight an intriguing paradox. While systems can compete with highly qualified experts in many fields, there has been much less progress in constructing machines that exhibit simple commonsense, the kind expected of any normally intelligent child. As a result, commonsense has been identified as one of the most difficult and important problems in AI (Doyle, 1984; Waltz, 1982).

The field of management emerged in response to the challenges of the industrial age that is now coming to an end. Since its inception, the information systems (IS) research community has argued that the information technology will bring fundamental challenges to the forces that underpin the way we organize our work. The IS discipline played a significant role in bringing the end of the industrial age, fulfilling its early promises. However, the IS community is struggling to find a way to move beyond the powerful institutional and intellectual hegemony based on the industrial-age organization. The proposed panel will take up this challenge and debate several ways of going beyond the hegemony of industrial age organization that has dominated both research and education of the field.

This exploratory paper attempts to describe the status of the international digital divide in the Mediterranean area. To do so, it has assembled data on the level of Internet penetration in the Union for the Mediterranean (UM), Some non-littoral UM states were included for purposes of comparison, as were a number of EU non-UM states. Finally, a small number of non UM, non EU, OECD members were included, again for benchmarking purposes. In all, 27 countries were studied, 21 of them Mediterranean littoral states and 6 not. Internet penetration was evaluated in terms of Internet penetration (number of users relative to population), number of Internet hosts relative to population, broadband subscribers relative to population, Digital Opportunity Index score (DOI), and Change in DOI. score. These measures were used to assign the countries involved to tier levels for each measure. The individual tier measures were then averaged to provide an overall tier ranking for each country; the rankings defined are Upper, Upper Middle, Lower Middle, and Lower. . The major findings are that there are clear distinctions between the Upper Tier consists primarily of the benchmark states; the Upper Middle tier contains mainly Northern Mediterranean littoral states; the Lower Middle Tier comprise mainly Eastern Mediterranean littoral states, while the Lower tier consists of littoral states dispersed throughout the Mediterranean. A conclusion is that the UM contains states at all levels of Internet development, and that the higher level states in that grouping could greatly assist the lower level ones in addressing the digital divider.

This article tracks the development of the Internet in Israel over the period 1999- 20007. Insofar as possible, those developments are viewed from an international perspective by comparing the data for Israel with those for a nine other countries, some in which the Internet is more highly developed, and some in which it is less so.Three main elements of Internet progress studies are addressed. These are: infrastructure - comprising number of Internet hosts, international Internet bandwidth and broadband usage; pervasiveness of the Internet as evidenced by number of Internet users, some Internet development indices and the extent of broadband use; finally, the role of ITC industry is considered under the headings of ITC trade and ITC research.

This paper reports on a panel held during the 2006 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). The panel titled, "Social Activism in IS Research: Making the World a Better Place," was organized to question whether and how Information System (IS) research is making tangible impacts to our society. More specifically, each panelist was asked to address: (1) How can IS research, and researchers, make contributions to underdeveloped societies and underserved communities?; and (2) How can IS researchers learn from the particularities of these communities to inform better research, teaching, and service? While each panel member had different perspectives to offer in relation to these two questions, all agreed that IS academe needs to raise its awareness and efforts considerably with a view to address the needs of underserved communities.

Offshore provision of IS/IT related services has been growing rapidly in recent years and seems firmly set to continue. This trend is fueled by the many advantages of offshore service procurement; however, there are dangers in this practice. Furthermore, offshoring requires adaptation of the IS function and IS management. This, in turn suggests the need for modifications of IS curricula in order to prepare graduates for the new environment. The advantages of offshoring are those of outsourcing in general cost saving and allowing the organization to focus on its core activities. The main dangers include loss of possibly-important business skills and reliance on remote suppliers who face risks that are unfamiliar to the client firm. The loss of jobs due to offshoring also introduces political considerations. Offshore IS activities are generally the responsibility of an organization's CIO. This management responsibility requires awareness of cultural and legal differences and of risks associated with offshoring and outsourcing in general. Offshoring has an effect on job opportunities for graduates of information systems programs. The number of some jobs will shrink, but new positions with new responsibilities are likely to emerge. Training of students in the U. S. and other countries in the developed world to function in an environment of offshored operations will introduce new IS roles and skills and require the adaptations of IS curricula.

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It is generally accepted that knowledge has become a third major factor of production, in addition to the traditional factors — labor and capital. Information technology production is a significant factor in the knowledge economy both because it is a major enabler of that economy and because it is itself highly knowledge intensive. Many countries around the world are looking for ways to promote the development of the knowledge economy, and information technology industries in particular. An important question is to what extent — and how — small developed countries might succeed in this endeavor. This study suggests a modified and more comprehensive version of the Ein-Dor et al. (1997) model of IT (information technology) industry success in small developed countries. Whereas the earlier model of IT industry success was based solely on the macro-economic theory of Grossman and Helpman (1991), the revised model suggested here incorporates Romer’s (1990) work in New Growth economics. A significant advance over earlier work in this area is the use of both longitudinal and time slice data. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the IT industry in four countries over a five-year period: Finland, Israel, New Zealand and Singapore. It analyses some changes that occurred over the period 1994 through 1998 and thus provides a reasonably comprehensive picture of the factors affecting the production of IT in these small developed countries. Our study reveals that four of the five endogenous variables studied have a close relationship to the development of IT industries in small developed countries. These variables are research and development, technological infrastructure, firm strategies, and capital availability. On the other hand, domestic IT use does not seem to be a major factor in IT industry development. Our analysis thus largely supports the more comprehensive model of IT industry success. These findings should be of interest to both researchers and policy makers seeking to develop the knowledge economy and information technology industries in particular.

It is customary for the outgoing President of AIS to publish a report in CAIS on the activities during his or her tenure and on future directions for the organization. This is such a report. On becoming President I was fortunate in findinbg an organization in good shape thanks to the excellent work of my predecessors. Consequently, AIS faced no immediate crises and it was possible to focus on some longer term issues such attaining global reach for the organization, increasing member involvement, transparency, and the state of the discipline. One crisiss that did arise concerned AACSB curriculum standards; this crisis was successfully solved thanks to the rapid and dedicated reaction of a number of members. The longer term issues mentioned, together with the need to constantly enhance service to members, will probably continue to occupy the AIS leadership.

In recent years there has been some interest in applying Artificial Adaptive Agents (AAA) to the study of complex adaptive systems, especially economic systems. Neural networks are frequently employed as AAA. Artificial neural nets mimic certain aspects of the physical structure and information processing of the human brain and their most attractive characteristic is their ability to learn a pattern from a given set of examples. In this study, we investigated the ability of neural nets to model human behavior in a group decision process. The context was a market entry game with a linear payoff function and binary decisions. The players had to decide, for each trial, whether or not to enter a market whose capacity is public knowledge. Human behavior in this situation has been modeled and empirically validated by the Nash equilibrium for noncooperative n-person games. A simulation of the game was performed with neural nets instead of human subjects. The nets were trained using the results of the games in which they participated. The simulation with groups of neural nets exhibits phenomena very similar to those observed in groups of human players.