Agile methods fit well for software development teams in the requirements elicitation activities. It has brought challenges to organizations in adopting the existing traditional methods, as well as new ones. Design Thinking has been used as a requirements elicitation technique and immersion in the process areas, which brings the client closer to the software project team and enables the creation of better projects. With the use of data triangulation, this paper brings a literature review that collected the challenges in software requirements elicitation in agile methodologies and the use of Design Thinking. The result gave way to a case study in a Brazilian public organization project, via user workshop questionnaire with 20 items, applied during the study, in order to identify the practice of Design Thinking in this context. We propose here an overview of 13 studied challenges, from which eight presented strong evidence of contribution (stakeholders involvement, requirements definition and validation, schedule, planning, requirement details and prioritization, and interdependence), three presented partial evidence of contribution and two were not eligible for conclusions (non-functional requirements, use of artifacts, and change of requirements). The main output of this work is to present an analysis of the use of Design Thinking to see if it fits properly to be used as a means of solving the challenges of elicitation of software requirements when using agile methods.

Information technology (IT) outsourcing has for a long time been a major trend in business and government. Accountability of IT outsourcing contracts in the public administration is recognized as an important factor contributing to government transparency and public services quality, given the legislation governing these contracts and the amount of related expenditures. Considering the trend towards open government data publishing, including data on outsourcing contracts, there is an interesting opportunity for citizens to participate in the open auditing of these contracts as a means to assess the good application of public resources. In this study we explore this possibility by analyzing open data published by the Brazilian Federal Court of Accounts (TCU is its acronym in Portuguese), an interesting case since this agency has a paramount role in auditing the whole Brazilian Federal Public Administration. To this end, we gathered open data from the TCU regarding all outsourced IT services contracts maintained by the agency during the years 2000-2013. This data is analyzed to verify, from an external point of view, the related duration and values, identifying diferences between the predicted and actual amounts spent and evaluating the administration of such contracts regarding legislation. This analysis is based on a detailed survey of the relevant legislation as well as the verification of original contract terms and their addendums. As a result, we observed substantial differences in the amount spent on execution with respect to those predicted in the original contracts. Also, we identified the utilization of special justifications prescribed by law to sustain the extension of some contracts. Given these results, it is possible that IT outsourcing is not necessarily proved to be the best solution for the public sector problems regarding the lack of skilled personnel, which implies the need to assess the cost-benefit of maintaining these contracts. Also, it is possible that the existing legislation needs development in order to provide more flexibility to outsourcing contract management.

Many countries are in the run for implementing their national electronic health strategies, on top of the existing health systems administrative and clinical procedures. There have been international successful initiatives in these cases, however, a substantial effort is necessary in order to adapt the best practices to national realities. In Brazil, the effort of implementing a technological solution, inspired by these international cases, is under way. This paper describes the technical specification of an implementation architecture for a SOA-based infrastructure that created the Electronic Health Record solutions for the Brazilian public health system. We identified here, the context where it has been implemented and particular need of the National e-health strategy, the information health management standards and patterns used. We described the SOA architecture built and implemented, aiming at specific needs at stake, such as basic care, hospital, medicines and individual patient’s information. The basic EHR profiles used are also described with an emphasis on specific use cases. The integrated solution implemented was also presented in a general design that brings together, in a simplified manner, the components of a semantically interoperable SOA architecture for electronic health records designed specifically for the Brazilian health context, but we hope can be an asset and success case for other ongoing e-health strategy design initiatives.

Na atualidade, comparada com a 4a Revolução Industrial, a indústria precisa ser competitiva, inovadora e incorporar as tecnologias digitais. Esse desafio e busca por competitividade necessita de amparo diante da escalada de níveis de maturidade potenciais que uma empresa pode alcançar, o que torna essencial mensurar a maturidade empresarial. Este trabalho tem o objetivo apresentar um estudo exploratório da literatura sobre o uso do modelo de maturidade na Indústria 4.0. utilizando para tanto a Teoria de Enfoque Meta Analítico Consolidado (TEMAC) na identificação da literatura de impacto e análises bibliométricas. A partir da análise de diversos artigos encontrados, foram identificados critérios para um modelo de maturidade para a indústria 4.0, a saber: auxílio de parceiros, fornecedores e clientes, bem como mão-de-obra qualificada, uso de dados do consumidor e visão estratégica aberta à inovação. Ficou evidenciada a preocupação com as PME´s nessa literatura, as quais são mais numerosas e propensas a se lançarem na indústria 4.0. Essa pesquisa também revelou a oportunidade de se desenvolver um modelo de maturidade específico capaz de atender a recente demanda por um arcabouço teórico e prático que auxilie na mensuração da maturidade de empresas na indústria 4.0.