Abstract: This lecture will introduce the foundations of the evolving science of services and how it can inform the design, engineering, and management of complex IT - centric service systems.  Some of the key of research themes in this emerging field and the progress achieved will be reviewed. With the service sector accounting for over 70% of the economic activity and nearly 80% of employment in most of the developed economies including Australia's, service systems have become the focus of considerable research. These are in essence socio-technical systems in which information technology plays a central role. The inter-disciplinary field of 'service science' is concerned with the design, value co-creation (between the service providers and customers), delivery, management, and evolution of service systems. The multi-dimensional concept of value in service systems as they relate to metrics and service level agreements will be discussed. I will also cover the relationship between service science and the transition from the internet as a network of information to a network of knowledge and services (sometimes referred to as Service Web 3.0) assisted by emerging technologies such as semantic web, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and web services.

Speaker's Bio: Joseph G. Davis is Professor of Information Systems and Services and the Director of the Knowledge Discovery and Management Research Group at the School of Information Technologies, the University of Sydney. His primary research interests are in the areas of knowledge management including ontologies, information technology-centric service systems, and data mining. He completed his PhD at the University of Pittsburgh and Masters at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India.  He has served in the Information Systems departments at Indiana University Bloomington, the University of Auckland, University of Wollongong and held visiting appointments at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Syracuse University, and IBM Research Labs. His research has been supported by grants from the Australian Research Council, IBM Research Labs, Carnegie Bosch Institute, among others. He is a senior member of ACM and a charter member of the Association for Information Systems.