Decision Analytics, Mobile Services and Service Science

The Decision Analytics, Mobile Services and Service Science Track got started 20 years ago at the HICSS-31 in 1998 under the name Modelling Technologies and Intelligent Systems that Prof 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 co-chair. As Dan Dolk wanted to retire from the track chair after running the track very successfully for 14 years, Prof 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 is driven by 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 present form of DA/MS/SS for HICSS-46 in 2013.

There have been a number of 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 will probably be noted by historians as some of the disruptions that changed the mobile industry forever were discussed in the workshop.

The DA/MS/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 3 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, business intelligence, cognitive analytics, decision support, gamification, logistics and supply chain management, machine learning and network analytics, deep learning, visual decision analytics, streaming data analytics, multi-criteria analysis, etc. which now are core research themes in analytics. Mobile services focus on development and interaction with data, information and analysis results on mobile technology platforms and have collected papers on mobile value services and open digital services. Challenges and issues of service industries, service orientation and service transformation of strategies, processes, organizations, systems and technologies are covered in Service Science.

In the 2018 HICSS, the DA/MS/SS Track has stabilized at 23 mini-tracks:

1. Big Data and Analytics: Pathways to Maturity
2. Business Intelligence, Analytics and Cognitive: Case Studies and Applications (COGS)
3. Data Analytics in Behavioral Research
4. Data, Text and Web Mining for Business Analytics
5. Decision Support for Complex Network
6. Decision Support for Smart Cities
7. Deep Learning, Ubiquitous and Toy Computing
8. Digital Nudging: Online Decision Making and Information Systems Design
9. Digital Services and the Digitalization of Services
10. Gamification
11. Intelligent Decision Support for Logistics and Supply Chain Management
12. Interactive Visual Analytics and Visualization for Decision Making – Making Sense of Big Data
13. Internet of Things: Providing Services Using Smart Devices, Wearables, and Quantified Self
14. Learning Analytics
15. Machine Learning and Network Analysis in Finance
16. Mixed, Augmented and Virtual Reality
17. Mobile Value Services
18. Multi-criteria Decision Analysis and Support Systems
19. Open Digital Services and Platforms
20. Service Analytics
21. Service Science
22. Smart Service Systems: Analytics, Cognition and Innovation
23. Soft Computing: Methods and Applications

The mini-track chairs have written brief summaries of their mini-tracks and overviews of the papers in their sessions. Panels are organized to explore potential demand for new mini-tracks or re-orientation of existing mini-tracks to capture emerging trends in Analytics.

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 papers in the DA Track (with an acceptance rate of about 50%) is a result of their efforts.

Track Chairs:

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

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