Smart City as a concept presupposes using new information and communication technologies in order to improve the quality of life within a particular geographic area. There are six different pillars in the frame of this concept and their one purpose is to achieve better efficiency of city operations. Smart mobility and transport are some of them. The efforts of traditional cities to become smart are not easily and quickly achievable. Numerous traffic solutions have already been implemented in different cities all over the world that make the ‘jump’ from traditional city to smart city. This paper provides an overview of the ‘smart’ transport solutions that have been implemented in the city of Skopje as a traditional city, which is on its way to becoming a smart city. The presented smart solutions are related to traffic management and control area and are aimed at alleviating traffic problems. The focus is on non-motorized solutions, e-vehicles, adaptive traffic control systems and public transport solutions. Several aims have been set in this paper – to promote the achievements of the municipality of Skopje aimed at transforming Skopje into a smart city in a transport area; to present its functionality, and to point out the disadvantages related to law regulations and the interconnection of all stakeholders involved. Finally, the idea is to provide a starting point for future research and to recommend future steps in this direction in the city of Skopje.
Purpose: The paper points out a novel approach to e-Government back-office reengineering based on creating a Shared-Services Center at the sectorial level. Design/Methodology/Approach: To prove the Shared-Services Center as a proper solution for e-Government back-office reengineering, the authors used the case study of the Housing Facilities Sector in the Republic of North Macedonia. The research process follows Kettingers et al.'s framework of IT-enabled change with a holistic data-driven approach. Findings: The study indicates a complex information flow between stakeholders, an abundance of the same information and data collected from local stakeholders, and enormous citizen and institutional burden. The e-Government back-office reengineering solution for the specific case study based on creating a Shared-Services Center overcomes the problem of data redundancy, radically simplifies the information flow, and reduces citizen burden in line with the "Once-Only" principle. Practical Implications: The paper shows that by observing the network of all relevant stakeholders at the sectorial level, based on the information flow of core data, back-office problems can be identified, whereby the Shared-Services Center proves itself as a suitable solution. It may be a prerequisite for further studies on back-office process reengineering at the sectorial level. Originality/Value: Publications concerning back-office research at the sectorial level and, as in our case, within the House Facility Sector are almost non existing in scientific literature. Considering that there is a lack of analyses based on information flow and visualization of the information-flow network at the sectorial level (before and after the reforms), this paper will add original value to scientific literature.
Vocational training and coaching delivered through short courses and workshops, needs to be as effective as possible due to several reasons: learners (and their employers) invest their time and energy, they expect direct usefulness of the course content and roadmap on how to implement the knowledge into real-life problems, there is certain extent of professional maturity that expects proper balance of theoretical and practical aspects and the outcomes are evident in short time for the benefit of all, or for the worse. These reasons motivated the trainers to use a specific instructional design that embodies gamification, blended learning and coaching for vocational training in short courses for group of participants from Western Balkans countries, with diverse backgrounds, languages, professions, education, personal and collective goals on the topic of preparing successful project proposals for funding, supported by the Western Balkans Alumni Association projects. The specifics in this instructional design have been multifold, compared to traditional training and coaching. One of the novel aspects is the combination of trainers related to the course content of projects funding from various aspects - National Agency expertise, academic, governmental and non-governmental experience, project evaluation and business practitioners. This setting of training facilitated by representative of almost every stakeholder in the higher educational ecosystem and articulated through the curricula of the trainers is aimed to enable overall knowledge apprehension, networking and immediate feedback loops. The incorporation of virtual activities before, during and after the in-person course utilises blended learning mashup of various tools such as e-learning platform for asynchronous communication, social networks for synchronous communication, webinar tool for virtual presence, video tutorials for future reference and expanded dissemination and personal contact for coaching. Another novelty in this approach is in the gamification aspect - introducing scout-game in the forest, using broad range of symbolic matrices - of compasses, maps, planned activities and unplanned events, training of skills and situational awareness, progress mechanics, challenges to achieve teamwork towards outputs and outcomes. And last but not least, the balance of theoretical and practical aspects is achieved by inviting each participant to have own working example and apply the concepts while receiving immediate feedback, or working on collective example - for all of which, follow up coaching is provided. The ‘magic’ of effective project proposals is complemented with appropriate change management and tactical management. The cognitive and knowledge dimension categories and components have been addressed in their entirety through the extended Bloom taxonomy and the evaluation has been made in formative and summative manner. The learning experience with our instructional design in this pilot instance happens for each participant - on the side of the learners and on the side of the trainers and other HEI stakeholders, including the WBAA - with specific goal to enable emergent effects of networked learners that can put their knowledge, skills and competences in right direction and produce primary and secondary effects for the Western Balkans region and EU.
The implementation of the e-Government concept in the states worldwide has introduced significant changes in improving the functioning of the front office and the re-engineering of the existing back office. Even though the usage of ICT in public administration performance primarily was devised with the purpose of and focused on the re-engineering of the current services, in the developing countries, it instigated engineering of information systems in other areas as well, where the need for that emerged. The paper at hand focuses on the engineering of information system in the housing area. The research discusses the mapping of all the stakeholders in the housing area, the final aim being to create a role model institution in the public sector-Cadaster of Housing Facilities (CHF). The function of the new institution is to set up a data base which will include all the data related to the housing facilities and which will be of service to the rest of the institutions in the private and public sector which might need those data. The idea about this G2G solution is creating on-line public services by introducing a fundamental thinking of the way government departments and agencies work in the housing area.
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