Background Information: Activities of the SSMEnetUK
In order to achieve its objectives, SSMEnetUK has a three-year plan with the following three types of activity.
- Case Study Workshop. In total three of these workshops will be held, one per year, typically running from lunch to lunch over two days. These workshops will be relatively small and will examine different perspectives on the case studies and hence achieve some common understanding of underpinning principles and concepts of SSME.
- Open Workshop: This will be a one day workshop held once a year. The workshop will open to network members and those interested in the SSME agenda. The workshops will address both service design and service innovation.
- Workshop or Panel Discussion at International Conferences: These events are designed to expand the network, involving international participation (especially Europe, North America, and East Asia) and to provide a dissemination mechanism for the UK community as well as an opportunity to learn from and compare our experiences with those of the internationa
Detailed topics of these activities will emerge during the lifetime of the project as participants gain further understanding of the subject domain. Topics will always include input from at least two disciplines and will aim to develop a cross discipline agenda. Each activity, however, will have a focal point as follows.
- Case Studies. Services in the ‘real world’ (case studies from commercial or social enterprise projects; perspectives from service providers and service consumers). Abacus Billing Ltd has agreed to act as the first case study; they provide outsourced billing services to Telecommunications and Utilities companies and provide an excellent example of the complexities of an information services business. Network participants can explain how they would view the case study from their perspective, what problems they would see and how they would address these. In this way, computer scientists, engineers, management, business and social scientists can share knowledge and understanding of the complexities of services science.
- Service Design. How services interact with other systems; the complexity in service design; service requirements specification; service-oriented architecture; web services; design standards; efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery; quality of services.
- Service Innovation. New skills; innovation systems in service economy; technology enablement of global services; transnational service provisioning; services as actors in patterns of industrial globalization.