Editorial
This issue of the Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy presents a selection of papers from the 1998 International Workshop on Innovative Internet Information Systems (IIIS '98). The IIIS workshop was held in conjunction with the Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAISE '98) in Pisa,Italy. In all, 18 papers were presented, eight of which appear in this issue. IIIS '98 was attended by 24 researchers from 13 different countries. The papers have been revised and expanded to reflect the feedback and insights gained at the workshop.
There were three main themes addressed at the two-day event, each of which is represented in this issue. Managing information and knowledge is an area that has become acutely important, owing to the growth and success of the Internet. As organizational memories and knowledge bases play an increasingly active role in the long-term viability of businesses, knowledge management has become a CIO-level issue. Addressing various aspects of managing information and knowledge are papers by Brasethvik, Mobasher et al., and myself.
The second theme is that of the distribution and co-ordination of Internet-based information systems. From that area we have papers by von Uthmann and Speck, Omicini and Zambonelli,and Piccinelli et al. The third theme is that of design and development issues. Here, we have two contributions. Tuikka and Salmela deal with product development across the Internet an innovative application I am sure we will see more of in the near future. Franckson et al. present the results of an ESPRIT project working toward a formal framework for distributed software development that is, the developers and the organization are distributed;the software itself may have to run in one place. These papers share a common thread. At some level they each deal with issues of co-ordination that are brought about by the sheer scale of Internet-based systems. One of the most volatile discussions of the workshop centered on just that issue in what ways does information systems development differ now that the Internet is a factor? Not just in terms of considering Java, HTML and their progeny as development environments, but rather in terms of some fundamental paradigm shifts that require systems developers and information systems management to revisit their procedures for software development, testing, and deployment.
Switching hats for a moment, as chairman and co-organizer of IIIS '98 I would like to thank Monica Divitini and Terje Brasethvik, both of the Department of Computer and Information Science at the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology, for helping organize, referee and run IIIS '98. I would also like to thank the auxiliary reviewers who helped out in the paper selection process, the participants of IIIS '98 who gave valuable input to these papers, and the members of the journal's Editorial Advisory Board. The success of the workshop,and the results you see in this issue, are to a large extent due to their dedicated efforts.
David Schwartzdschwar@mail.biu.ac.il
