Disruptive Innovations and Disruptive Assurance: Assuring Machine Learning and Autonomy

Autonomous and machine learning-based systems are disruptive innovations and thus require a corresponding disruptive assurance strategy. We offer an overview of a framework based on claims, arguments, and evidence aimed at addressing these systems and use it to identify specific gaps, challenges, and potential solutions

Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS - a collection of Technical Notes Part 1

This report provides an introduction and overview of the Technical Topic Notes (TTNs) produced in the Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS (Tigars) project. These notes aim to support the development and evaluation of autonomous vehicles. Part 1 addresses: Assurance-overview and issues, Resilience and Safety Requirements, Open Systems Perspective and Formal Verification and Static Analysis of ML Systems. Part 2: Simulation and Dynamic Testing, Defence in Depth and Diversity, Security-Informed Safety Analysis, Standards and Guidelines

The case for cloud service trustmarks and assurance-as-a-service

Cloud computing represents a significant economic opportunity for Europe. However, this growth is threatened by adoption barriers largely related to trust. This position paper examines trust and confidence issues in cloud computing and advances a case for addressing them through the implementation of a novel trustmark scheme for cloud service providers. The proposed trustmark would be both active and dynamic featuring multi-modal information about the performance of the underlying cloud service. The trustmarks would be informed by live performance data from the cloud service provider, or ideally an independent third-party accountability and assurance service that would communicate up-to-date information relating to service performance and dependability. By combining assurance measures with a remediation scheme, cloud service providers could both signal dependability to customers and the wider marketplace and provide customers, auditors and regulators with a mechanism for determining accountability in the event of failure or non-compliance. As a result, the trustmarks would convey to consumers of cloud services and other stakeholders that strong assurance and accountability measures are in place for the service in question and thereby address trust and confidence issues in cloud computing

Emotional assuring, trust Building, and resource mobilization in start-up organizations

Based on a five-year field study of six new ventures, we investigate whether and how organization foun-ders use affective influence, a form of emotion management, with diverse stakeholders, namely investors, board members, customers, and employees. We found wide differences in founders' propensity to use affective influence actions and that not all affective influence actions were effective in mobilizing re-sources for the new firm. We identified a particular form of beneficial affective influence we call "emo-tional assuring," which refers to affective influence actions that seek to build three different dimensions of trust in regard to the new firm: (1) the firm's integrity, (2) the founder's competence as an entrepreneur, and (3) the founder's benevolent character. Although firms that practiced little emotional assuring could mobilize adequate resources as well as firms that did it in munificent environments, the latter gained an upper hand and were more resilient under tough economic conditions. We also identified the moderating conditions and limitations of emotional assuring.Affective influence; emotional assuring; emotion; entrepreneurship; organization creation; resource mobilization; trust;

Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS - a collection of Technical Notes Part 2

This report provides an introduction and overview of the Technical Topic Notes (TTNs) produced in the Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS (Tigars) project. These notes aim to support the development and evaluation of autonomous vehicles. Part 1 addresses: Assurance-overview and issues, Resilience and Safety Requirements, Open Systems Perspective and Formal Verification and Static Analysis of ML Systems. This report is Part 2 and discusses: Simulation and Dynamic Testing, Defence in Depth and Diversity, Security-Informed Safety Analysis, Standards and Guidelines

Authentication and authorisation in entrusted unions

This paper reports on the status of a project whose aim is to implement and demonstrate in a real-life environment an integrated eAuthentication and eAuthorisation framework to enable trusted collaborations and delivery of services across different organisational/governmental jurisdictions. This aim will be achieved by designing a framework with assurance of claims, trust indicators, policy enforcement mechanisms and processing under encryption to address the security and confidentiality requirements of large distributed infrastructures. The framework supports collaborative secure distributed storage, secure data processing and management in both the cloud and offline scenarios and is intended to be deployed and tested in two pilot studies in two different domains, viz, Bio-security incident management and Ambient Assisted Living (eHealth). Interim results in terms of security requirements, privacy preserving authentication, and authorisation are reported

Quality assurance of qualitative research: a review of the discourse

BACKGROUND: Increasing demand for qualitative research within global health has emerged alongside increasing demand for demonstration of quality of research, in line with the evidence-based model of medicine. In quantitative health sciences research, in particular clinical trials, there exist clear and widely-recognised guidelines for conducting quality assurance of research. However, no comparable guidelines exist for qualitative research and although there are long-standing debates on what constitutes 'quality' in qualitative research, the concept of 'quality assurance' has not been explored widely. In acknowledgement of this gap, we sought to review discourses around quality assurance of qualitative research, as a first step towards developing guidance. METHODS: A range of databases, journals and grey literature sources were searched, and papers were included if they explicitly addressed quality assurance within a qualitative paradigm. A meta-narrative approach was used to review and synthesise the literature. RESULTS: Among the 37 papers included in the review, two dominant narratives were interpreted from the literature, reflecting contrasting approaches to quality assurance. The first focuses on demonstrating quality within research outputs; the second focuses on principles for quality practice throughout the research process. The second narrative appears to offer an approach to quality assurance that befits the values of qualitative research, emphasising the need to consider quality throughout the research process. CONCLUSIONS: The paper identifies the strengths of the approaches represented in each narrative and recommend these are brought together in the development of a flexible framework to help qualitative researchers to define, apply and demonstrate principles of quality in their research

Exploring Strategies for Successful Implementation of Electronic Health Records

Adoption of electronic health records (EHR) systems in nonfederal acute care hospitals has increased, with adoption rates across the United States reaching as high as 94%. Of the 330 plus acute care hospital EHR implementations in Texas, only 31% have completed attestation to Stage 2 of the meaningful use (MU) criteria. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies that hospital chief information officers (CIOs) used for the successful implementation of EHR. The target population consists of 3 hospitals CIOs from a multi-county region in North Central Texas who successfully implemented EHRs meeting Stage 2 MU criteria. The conceptual framework, for this research, was the technology acceptance model theory. The data were collected through semistructured interviews, member checking, review of the literature on the topic, and publicly available documents on the respective hospital websites. Using methodological triangulation of the data, 4 themes emerged from data analysis: EHR implementation strategies, overcoming resistance to technology acceptance, strategic alignment, and patient wellbeing. Participants identified implementation teams and informatics teams as a primary strategy for obtaining user engagement, ownership, and establishing a culture of acceptance to the technological changes. The application of the findings may contribute to social change by identifying the strategies hospital CIOs used for successful implementation of EHRs. Successful EHR implementation might provide positive social change by improving the quality of patient care, patient safety, security of personal health information, lowering health care cost, and improvements in the overall health of the general population

A normal paranoia? The emergence of distrust between parents of autistic children and public officials

This paper explores the development of distrust and paranoia among parents and carers of autistic children in their interactions with public officials charged with such children’s diagnosis, education and care. The suspicion and distrust framework of Fein and Hilton (1994), and Kramer’s typology of organisational paranoia (1998, 2001) are used to show how distrust impacts on client experiences. Antecedents of distrust are identified, and the ‘normalcy’ of paranoia in this context is demonstrated. These findings should permit public sector staff dealing with parents and carers of autistic children to address such perceptions and build trust where little seems to exist