Decision Analytics and Service Science

The Decision Analytics and Service Science Track got started more than 20 years ago at the HICSS-31 in 1998 under the name Modelling Technologies and Intelligent Systems that Dan Dolk of the Naval Postgraduate School introduced. The name and the focus shifted at HICSS-33 to Decision Technology in Management that Dan Dolk now introduced in order to get contributions to the use of information systems to support managerial planning, problem solving and decision making. This theme continued for 12 years (through HICSS-44) under the leadership of Dan Dolk and with quite some success, as the track most of the time had 12 mini-tracks, which kept collecting good contributions of high-quality papers.

The track reacted to the rise of the mobile technology early on and started a mini-track on mobile commerce and mobile services at HICSS-35 in 2002. Mobile technologies then got quickly picked up by most of the other tracks and the plans we had to get a critical mass of papers on mobile services concentrated to one track could be realized only at HICSS-45. The track changed name to Decision Technology, Mobile Technologies and Service Science at HICSS-45 in 2012 when Dan Dolk asked Prof Christer Carlsson of the Abo Akademi University in Finland to join him as track cochair.

As Dan Dolk stepped down from the chairmanship after running the track successfully for 14 years, Haluk Demirkan, University of Washington, was elected to join Christer Carlsson as track co-chair. The discussion had been going on for a couple of years that decision support for managers should start to incorporate the new analytics movement that had started to take over from the classical Operations Research and Management Science as a major shift in producing critical data, information and knowledge for managerial planning, problem solving and decision making. The analytics relies on software that makes it possible to make use of advanced analytical methods as part of corporate and enterprise information systems. The track changed name to the form of Digital Analytics, Mobile Services and Service Science for HICSS-46 in 2013.

One more change was made for HICSS-53, the name is now Digital Analytics and Service Science as mobile services have merged with digital services, at least in the perceptions of the users. Digital technology is moving into the core of research in information systems and digital analytics into business and the use of information systems.

There have been several memorable events organized by the track over the two decades of operation. Space does not permit to report them in any detail – we discussed them in one of the history sessions at HICSS-50 – but the full-day workshop Evolution of Mobile Ecosystems that Nokia and Microsoft organized at HICSS-46 is probably historic, some of the disruptions that changed the mobile technology industry forever emerged in the workshop. Nokia is now the No.2 global corporation in digital network technology and a forerunner in 5G networks. Microsoft decided to not pursue a third ecosystem in mobile technology and software but has recently introduced a new, fully integrated line of support tools.

The DA/SS Track works out emerging managerial and organizational decision-making strategies, processes, tools, technologies, services and solutions in the Digital Age. This is done in 2 interrelated themes. The first theme, Analytics, focuses on decision making processes, analytics tools and supporting technologies which has collected papers on big data and analytics, cognitive analytics, service analytics, decision support, gamification, virtual reality, visual decision analytics, soft computing, logistics and supply chain management, machine learning and network analytics, streaming data analytics, etc. which now are core research themes in analytics. Challenges and issues of service industries, service transformation of strategies, digitalization of services, digital mobile services, smart service systems, smart cities, green IS, processes, organizations, systems and technologies form the Service Science.

In the 2020 HICSS, the DA/SS Track has stabilized at 20 mini-tracks:

1. Accountability and Evaluation of AI Algorithms
2. Analytics and Decision Support for Green IS and Sustainability Applications
3. Big Data and Analytics: Pathways to Maturity
4. Business Intelligence, Analytics and Cognitive Technologies for Industry - Specific Applications
5. Data, Text, and Web Mining for Business Analytics
6. Decision Support for Smart Cities
7. Digital Mobile Services for Everyday Life
8. Digital Services and The Digitalization of Services
9. Gamification
10. Intelligent Decision Support and Big Data for Logistics and Supply Chain Management
11. Interactive Visual Analytics and Visualization for Decision Making – Making Sense of a Growing Digital World
12. Internet of Things: Providing Services Using Smart Devices, Wearables, and Quantified Self
13. Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics in Accounting, Finance and Management
14. Machine Learning, Robotics and Toy Computing
15. Mixed, Augmented, and Virtual Reality: Codesigned Services and Applications
16. Service Analytics
17. Service Science
18. Smart City Digital Twins
19. Smart Service Systems with Analytics and Open Tech Artificial Intelligence
20. Soft Computing: Theory Innovations and Problem-Solving Benefits

The mini-track chairs have written brief summaries of their mini-tracks and overviews of the papers in their sessions.

We wish to thank all the people who have worked efficiently and effectively to develop the DA Track. The authors who have contributed new research results, the MT chairs who have spent countless hours to get good quality papers, to get reviewers to accept work for HICSS and then to evaluate and judge the review results. The high-quality collection of 101 accepted papers in the DA Track (with an acceptance rate of about 46 %) is a result of their efforts.

Christer Carlsson
IAMSR & Abo Akademi University
Christer.Carlsson@abo.fi

Haluk Demirkan
University of Washington - Tacoma
haluk@uw.edu