Transparency level of the electronic procurement system in Malaysia

Purpose This paper aims to examine the level of transparency of the electronic procurement (e-procurement) system in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach Using the content analysis method, 23 transparency disclosure items from the Website Attribute Evaluation System (WAES) checklist were used to evaluate the transparency level of the e-procurement system. The data gathered from the WAES were analysed using frequency and percentage based on the various categories of transparency. Findings The study reveals that the e-procurement system disclosed 17 out of the 23 WAES transparency disclosure items, which represents a transparency disclosure level of 73.91%. Of the five categories of disclosure, i.e. ownership, contact information, organizational information, citizen consequences and freshness, the detailed results show that the items are fully disclosed for only two categories, and for three categories, i.e. ownership, contact information and organizational information, the items are not fully disclosed. Research limitations/implications The findings of the present research offer a positive indication that the government is moving in the right direction, particularly in efforts to reduce the corruption level in procurement activities and to improve the accountability level of the government. Originality/value The present study is among the few studies that attempts to address a fundamental issue of transparency in the public procurement system that has an important relationship with the occurrence of corruption in procurement activities.

Understanding the usability issues in contact management of illiterate and semi-literate users

The effective utilization of a communication channel like calling a person involves two steps. The first step is storing the contact information of another user, and the second step is finding contact information to initiate a voice or text communication. However, the current smartphone interfaces for contact management are mainly textual; which leaves many emergent users at a severe disadvantage in using this most basic functionality to the fullest. Previous studies indicated that less-educated users adopt various coping strategies to store and identify contacts. However, all of these studies investigated the contact management issues of these users from a qualitative angle. Although qualitative or subjective investigations are very useful, they generally need to be augmented by a quantitative investigation for a comprehensive problem understanding. This work presents an exploratory study to identify the usability issues and coping strategies in contact management by emergent users; by using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches. We identified coping strategies of the Pakistani population and the effectiveness of these strategies through a semi-structured qualitative study of 15 participants and a usability study of 9 participants, respectively. We then obtained logged data of 30 emergent and 30 traditional users, including contact-books and dual-channel (call and text messages) logs to infer a more detailed understanding; and to analyse the differences in the composition of contact-books of both user groups. The analysis of the log data confirmed problems that affect the emergent users’ communication behaviour due to the various difficulties they face in storing and searching contacts. Our findings revealed serious usability issues in current communication interfaces over smartphones. The emergent users were found to have smaller contact-books and preferred voice communication due to reading/writing difficulties. They also reported taking help from others for contact saving and text reading. The alternative contact management strategies adopted by our participants include: memorizing whole number or last few digits to recall important contacts; adding special character sequence with contact numbers for better recall; writing a contact from scratch rather than searching it in the phone-book; voice search; and use of recent call logs to redial a contact. The identified coping strategies of emergent users could aid the developers and designers to come up with solutions according to emergent users’ mental models and needs.

Development and utility of a close contact information management system for the COVID-19 pandemic

Background Since the outbreak started in 2019, COVID-19 pandemic has a significant global impact. Due to the highly infective nature of SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 close contacts are at significant risk of contracting COVID-19. China’s experience in successfully controlling COVID-19 emphasized the importance of managing close contacts because this strategy helps to limit potential infection sources, prevent the unconscious spread of COVID-19 and thus control this pandemic. As a result, to understand and consider the management of close contacts may be beneficial to other countries. However, managing close contacts is challenging owing to the huge number of close contacts and a lack of appropriate management tools and literature references. Methods A new system called the COVID-19 Close Contact Information Management System was developed. Here we introduced the design, use, improvement and achievements of this system. Results This system was designed from the standpoint of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in charge of managing close contacts. Two main functions and eight modules/themes were ultimately formed after two development stages. The system introduces what information need to be collected in the close contact management. Since the system allows information flow across cities, the geographical distance and administrative regional boundaries are no longer obstacles for managing close contacts, which promotes the management of each close contact. Moreover, when this system is used in conjunction with other data tools, it provides data assistance for understanding the COVID-19 characteristics and formulating targeted COVID-19 control policies. To date, the system has been widely used in Guangdong Province for over 1 year and has recorded tens of thousands of pieces of data. There is sufficient practical experience to suggest that the system is capable of meeting the professional work requirements for close contact management. Conclusions This system provides a new way to manage close contacts and restrict the spread of COVID-19 by combining information technology with disease prevention and control strategies in the realm of public health. We hope that this system will serve as an example and guide for those anticipating similar work in other countries in response to current and future public health incidents.

Interpreting and predicting tactile signals for the SynTouch BioTac

In the human hand, high-density contact information provided by afferent neurons is essential for many human grasping and manipulation capabilities. In contrast, robotic tactile sensors, including the state-of-the-art SynTouch BioTac, are typically used to provide low-density contact information, such as contact location, center of pressure, and net force. Although useful, these data do not convey or leverage the rich information content that some tactile sensors naturally measure. This research extends robotic tactile sensing beyond reduced-order models through (1) the automated creation of a precise experimental tactile dataset for the BioTac over a diverse range of physical interactions, (2) a 3D finite-element (FE) model of the BioTac, which complements the experimental dataset with high-density, distributed contact data, (3) neural-network-based mappings from raw BioTac signals to not only low-dimensional experimental data, but also high-density FE deformation fields, and (4) mappings from the FE deformation fields to the raw signals themselves. The high-density data streams can provide a far greater quantity of interpretable information for grasping and manipulation algorithms than previously accessible. Datasets, CAD files for the experimental testbed, FE model files, and videos are available at https://sites.google.com/nvidia.com/tactiledata .

Peer review declaration

We the editors of this proceeding for Third Conference of Computational Methods & Ocean Technology (COTech2021) and Second Conference of Oil & Gas Technologies in Cold Climate (OGTech2021) declare that peer review information given below is correct. • Type of peer review: Single-blind • Conference submission management system: EasyChair (https://easychair.org/) • Number of submissions received: 125 • Number of submissions sent for review: 107 • Number of submissions accepted: 92 (note: final accepted after IOP review = 88) • Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted/Number of Submissions Received X 100): 73,6% • Average number of reviews per paper: Two • Total number of reviewers involved: 88 • Any additional info on review process: No reviewer had review assignment of more than three articles. • Contact person for queries: Hirpa G. Lemu ([email protected]) List of Screenshot, Evalution, Name and contact information of editors are available in this pdf.

ANALISIS DAN PERANCANGAN APLIKASI PEMESANAN TIKET BUS BERBASIS ANDROID

PO Puspa Jaya is a company that is growing rapidly and is a company that is taken into account in land transportation services in Lampung. but in its service puspa jaya still perform manually, such as ticket booking, departure schedule information, and payment transactions carried out at pull puspa jaya. For that, there is a need for supporting facilities to book tickets at pull puspa jaya. From this problem came the idea to create an android-based application, which can make bus ticket reservations in po puspa jaya. The method used in the creation of applications is the Waterfall method. Programming language used by Android studio. With a MySQL support database. The testing method used is ISO 9126 (Usability, Fungtionality, Portability, Efficiency). Supported by the internet connection in the agency. This application will later be used as a medium of ticket booking and passenger data control. This application is for several features, namely determining the time and destination of departure, choosing the desired seat, tray information, contact information and information about. The ticket booking application in po puspa jaya has been tested using ISO 9126 which consists of four aspects of testing namely Usability, Fungtionality, Portability, Efficiency. The Usability aspect obtained an 80.50% result with a decent record. Fungtionality gets 100% results