Soils Security is a critical and growing global concern. The OpenSoils´ objective is to host, connect and share large amounts of curated soil data and knowledge at the Brazilian and South America level. The e-infrastructure consists of several layers of services, a database of soil profiles, a cloud-based computational framework to compute and share soil data integrated with a map visualization tools. OpenSoils is open, elastic, provenance-oriented and lightweight computational e-infrastructure that collects, stores, describes, curates, harmonizes and directs to various soil resource types: large datasets of soils profiles, services/applications, documents, projects and external links. OpenSoils is the first open science-based computational framework of soils security in the literature.

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These days information technology (IT) is well known for the critical role it plays in earning and sustaining competitive advantage, and also for yielding a myriad of intangible benefits that are hard to quantify. If an investmentin IT is aimed at improving services in the public sector, then the chances of running into intangibles are much higher. After all, voters’ support, spontaneous media exposure, pressure-groups’ reactions, public security and people’s well-being are common concerns in the conception and deployment of government ideas and projects. This paper presents a method that facilitates the evaluation of IT investments in the public sector. The method enables public officers to maximize the appropriation of the intangible benefits yielded by the investments they make in IT

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A busca pela qualidade de software leva à adoção de boas práticas no processo do desenvolvimento de software, como as práticas especificadas pelo modelo de maturidade do CMMI. A implantação do CMMI, entretanto, constitui um processo penoso e demorado. Além disso, a qualidade deste processo afeta diretamente os resultados obtidos. Este artigo explora a possibilidade de formalização das práticas do CMMI através do seu mapeamento para Regras de Negócio. A viabilidade desta proposta é estudada através do mapeamento da parte do CMMI relativa à área Gerência de Requisitos. As vantagens desta abordagem encontram-se tanto no aumento da qualidade do processo de certificação/auditoria do CMMI, quanto na melhoria da qualidade do sistema de informação que apóia o processo de desenvolvimento de software. Palavras-chaveQualidade, Regras de Negócio, CMMI, gerência de requisitos. AbstractThe search for software quality results in the adoption of best practices in the software development process, such as the practices specified by the CMMI maturity model. However, the CMMI implementation constitutes a difficult and slow process. Besides, the quality of such a process directly affects the results obtained. This article explores the possibility of formalizing the CMMI practices via their mapping into Business Rules. This proposal viability was studied through the mapping of the CMMI part that concerns the Requirements Management area. This approach implies in an improvement of the CMMI certification/audit process and of the information system that supports the software development process.