Post date: Jan 29, 2018 12:22:15 PM
Technology-based Support for the Informal Sector of South Africa (TESISSA) PROJECT
The specific focus of this proposed research, which is dubbed Technology Support for the Informal Sector of South Africa (TESSISA) is on customer service providers in the informal sector of South Africa. The aim of the research is to develop an ICT-based initiative that will enhance the profitability of operators in the informal sector of South Africa, enable wealth generation, and facilitate quasi-formalization of the informal sector of South Africa. This project belongs to the domain of information and communication for development (ICTD).
The research objectives of the TESSISA project are to:
Assess the readiness of South African informal sector to leverage on electronic technology support ;
Investigate the factors that can influence subscription of technology-facilitated services from the informal sector by South Africa’s urban and peri-urban consumer market (*);
Develop a usable knowledge e-infrastructure that will support expertise profiling, documentation, intelligent information and transaction services, and multi-modal (web, mobile, SMS) interactions with operators in the South African informal sector (*); and
Create a cloud-based multi-modal portal framework that will facilitate service discovery, and e-business transactions with operators in the informal sector, and their integration with the South African formal economy(*).
*Masters and doctoral students are required
Elaboration of Objectives of the Research
Objective 1: Assess the readiness of South African informal sector for electronic technology support - Ongoing
Research Approach: Quantitative Research
Prospective Researcher: This study is being undertaken by a doctoral student
Skill Requirements: Knowledge of descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics (Factor Analysis, Regression, correlative statistics etc.; Use of statistical tools for data analysis e.g. SPSS, Minitab, Amos; Data collection techniques; Good writing skill
Objective 2: Investigate the factors that can influence subscription of technology-facilitated services from the informal sector by South Africa’s urban and peri-urban consumer market - Ongoing
Research Approach: Qualitative study (grounded theory favoured)
Prospective Researcher: This study is being undertaken by a doctoral student
Skill Requirements: Knowledge of application of qualitative research methods (grounded theory, case study techniques); Data collection techniques (interviews, case study, thematic analysis); Good analytic and writing skills.
Objective 3: Develop a usable knowledge e-infrastructure that will support expertise profiling, documentation, intelligent information and transaction services, and multi-modal (web, mobile, SMS) interactions with operators in the South African informal sector. - Ongoing
Typically, this research will involve the design and development of the South African Informal Business Regulatory Ontology (SAIBRO), which will serve as a reference knowledge infrastructure that contains an extensive vocabulary of the informal business sector represented using formal semantics. It will embrace dimensions such as informal sector regulations and by-laws, informal business models, and description of informal business services amongst others.
Research Approach: Design Science Research (DSR)
Prospective Researcher: The pursuit of this research objective is being undertaken by Master student.
Skill Requirements: Knowledge of ontology design and ontology development methodologies; familiarity with ontology development tools (Protege, Jena, and SPARQL); Knowledge elicitation techniques; Requirements Analysis; Java/Python programming; Web/Mobile application development (Android, IOS); Good analytic and writing skills
Objective 4: Create a cloud-based multi-modal portal framework that will facilitate service discovery, and e-business transactions with operators in the informal sector, and their integration with the South African formal economy.
This is the main product-focussed objective of the TESSISA project, which will entail research activities in the fields of software engineering and artificial intelligence. The bulk of this will happen in the second phase of TESSISA. This research will involve the design and development of a multi-modal Portal System - TESSISA portal. This object offers research opportunities in many critical aspects such as requirements engineering, participatory software design, agile development methodologies, and usability evaluation, constrained-based recommendation, context-awareness, semantics-awareness, and multi-lingual information retrieval.
Research Approach: Design Science Research (DSR)
Prospective Researcher: The pursuit of this research objective will accommodate research studies by two Master’s, and two doctoral students.
Skill Requirements: Knowledge of ontology management technologies (Protege, Jena, and SPARQL); Algorithm Design; Requirements Analysis; Java programming; logic specification; use of AI programming frameworks and middleware; and Good analytic and writing skills.
For more information on the TESSISA project, I can be reached via the email: daramolaj@cput.ac.za