Taltech National Professorship in Information Society Technology
Estonia has an international reputation as leader in digital society technologies. The mission of the Taltech national professorship on information societey technology is to contribute to Taltech in further gaining and keeping a leading role in ICT system architecture and design of the next generation of digital society ICT including large-scale ICT systems, ICT system landscapes, ICT ecosystems, and information exchange platforms.
The professorship established the Information Systems research group at the School of IT in 2016. From the start in 2016, the research group was headed by Prof. Dirk Draheim.
The research group conducts research in ‘information system technologies’ that enable the future information society at the crossroads of distributed computing (including cloud technologies, software-defined networks, Internet of Things, blockchain technology) and next-generation data technologies (including data exchange platforms, automatic machine learning platforms, business intelligence platforms, collective intelligence platforms).
The professorship is an integral part of the following two Taltech priority directions:
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Future governance – research and development focused on technological change (in particular the development and uptake of ICT) and related changes in patterns of human behaviour and international developments affecting the state’s role in society and expectations for public policies and services.
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Dependable IT solutions – reliable and attack-resistant IT systems and services, sustainable development of critical IT infrastructure, energy efficient IT systems and data processing methods. Trust and confidence of users and society in the IT services and guaranteeing privacy.
The research group has collaborations with leading research groups in the field worldwide, e.g., with Delft University of Technology, Kyoto University, Capgemini, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
Members of the research group are participating in different Estonian organizations, networks, workshops and projects in their research field. They are using their knowledge for consulting and other needs of society as well as participating in joint domestic research projects.
Estonia is known for excellent digitization and e-data solutions in the private and the public sector. But the journey has just begun and the next decade offers huge opportunities for Estonian companies and the Estonian society. Now, the introduction of the next generation of e-solutions requires a vast amount of development work, resources and smart people from the university. Therefore, the professorship engages also intensively into teaching at all graduate levels of the university.
About the Activities of the Research Group
Since 2016, the research group has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles in international scientific conference proceedings and journals, has published eight research monographs and was involved in raising a total of 8 Mio EUR national and international research funding. Five PhD theses and over 100 master theses have been successfully defended under supervision of members of the research group.
The group continuously conducts workshops with Estonian public sector authorities and private sector companies on IT related topics such as the interoperability frameworks like X-Road and GAIA-X, eID assessment, IT system architecture, and IT technology adoption. As a major step forward, the group has been able to elaborate a digital government architecture (DGA) framework in order to help large-scale digital government design initiatives to prevent failure and to increase efficiency, effectiveness and adoption of successful e-government endeavours. The framework builds a bridge between the body of knowledge of IT systems architecture and the body of knowledge of institutional economics and unlocks their joint potential. It is the outcome of five years research effort and accumulates insights from various studies on key success factors, design dimensions and technology acceptance of e-government systems and services, see:
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Dirk Draheim, Robert Krimmer and Tanel Tammet. On State-Level Architecture of Digital Government Ecosystems: from ICT-Driven to Data-Centric. In: Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, vol. 48, 2021. (DOWNLOAD)
Recent example publications in top journals from the year 2022:
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S. Lips, V. Tsap, N. Bharosa, R. Krimmer, T. Tammet, D. Draheim. Management of National eID Infrastructure as a State-Critical Asset and Public-Private Partnership: Learning from the Case of Estonia. Information Systems Frontiers, to appear.
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S. Suran, V. Pattanaik, R.H.J.M. Kurvers, C.A. Hallin, A. de Liddo, R. Krimmer, D. Draheim. Building Global Societies on Collective Intelligence: Challenges and Opportunities. Digital Government: Research and Practice, to appear.
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A. Buldas, D. Draheim, M. Gault, R. Laanoja, T. Nagumo, M. Saarepera, S.A. Shah, J. Simm, J. Steiner, T. Tammet, A. Truu. An Ultra-Scalable Blockchain Platform for Universal Asset Tokenization: Design and Implementation. IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 77284-77322, 2022.
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S. Siddiqui, S.A. Shah, I. Ahmad, A. Aneiba, D. Draheim, S. Dustdar. Toward Software-Defined Networking-Based IoT Frameworks: A Systematic Literature Review, Taxonomy, Open Challenges and Prospects. IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 70850-70901, 2022.
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M. Khalid, S. Hameed, A. Qadir, S.A. Shah, D. Draheim. Towards SDN-based Smart Contract Solution for IoT Access Control. Computer Communications, vol. 198, 2022.
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A. Dixit, V. Deval, V. Dwivedi, A. Norta, D. Draheim, Towards User-Centred and Legally Relevant Smart-Contract Development: A Systematic Literature Review. Journal of Industrial Information Integration, vol. 26, 2022, pp. 1-18.
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R. Sharma, M. Kaushik, S.A. Peious, A. Bazin, S.A. Shah, I. Fister, S.B. Yahia, D. Draheim. A Novel Framework for Unification of Association Rule Mining, Online Analytical Processing and Statistical Reasoning. IEEE Access, vol. 10, 2022.