From General Services to Pervasive and Sensitive Services

Background

The IS refers to the social model in which the means of wealth generation are based on the production, management and transmission of information (Sarell & Machlup, 1963). In the IS, information and knowledge are established as the main economic engine, giving greater importance to services over production and products. Information and knowledge technologies (ICT) are an essential tool for the development of IS services. Their main objectives are the generation of knowledge and the exchange of information, through its encapsulation in the form of services to ensure its efficiency and accessibility to the citizen.

The services deployed in this society have undergone a continuous evolution to adapt to the needs of society and the specific characteristics of the technology used for its development. The incidence of these services in the IS goes beyond the technical field, and its evolution has been influenced, not only by the technology used in its development, but also by the socio-economic factors related to new forms of communication and global coexistence.

In (Achrol & Kotler, 2014) services are defined as the application of specialized competence by an entity through actions, processes and activities for the benefit of another entity or the own. This concept, in the context of the IS, refers to any set of features provided at a distance, electronically and by individual request from the recipient of the service (Directive 98/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council). To achieve this, ICTs are used as a means of developing the transmission, processing, and storage of the data associated with it.