Money Walks: A Human-Centric Study on the Economics of Personal Mobile Data

In the context of a myriad of mobile apps which collect personally identifiable information (PII) and a prospective market place of personal data, we investigate a user-centric monetary valuation of mobile PII. During a 6-week long user study in a living lab deployment with 60 participants, we collected their daily valuations of 4 categories of mobile PII (communication, e.g. phonecalls made/received, applications, e.g. time spent on different apps, location and media, photos taken) at three levels of complexity (individual data points, aggregated statistics and processed, i.e. meaningful interpretations of the data). In order to obtain honest valuations, we employ a reverse second price auction mechanism. Our findings show that the most sensitive and valued category of personal information is location. We report statistically significant associations between actual mobile usage, personal dispositions, and bidding behavior. Finally, we outline key implications for the design of mobile services and future markets of personal data.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. To appear in ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2014

Innovative public governance through cloud computing: Information privacy, business models and performance measurement challenges

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze challenges and to discuss proposed solutions for innovative public governance through cloud computing. Innovative technologies, such as federation of services and cloud computing, can greatly contribute to the provision of e-government services, through scaleable and flexible systems. Furthermore, they can facilitate in reducing costs and overcoming public information segmentation. Nonetheless, when public agencies use these technologies, they encounter several associated organizational and technical changes, as well as significant challenges. Design/methodology/approach: We followed a multidisciplinary perspective (social, behavioral, business and technical) and conducted a conceptual analysis for analyzing the associated challenges. We conducted focus group interviews in two countries for evaluating the performance models that resulted from the conceptual analysis. Findings: This study identifies and analyzes several challenges that may emerge while adopting innovative technologies for public governance and e-government services. Furthermore, it presents suggested solutions deriving from the experience of designing a related platform for public governance, including issues of privacy requirements, proposed business models and key performance indicators for public services on cloud computing. Research limitations/implications: The challenges and solutions discussed are based on the experience gained by designing one platform. However, we rely on issues and challenges collected from four countries. Practical implications: The identification of challenges for innovative design of e-government services through a central portal in Europe and using service federation is expected to inform practitioners in different roles about significant changes across multiple levels that are implied and may accelerate the challenges' resolution. Originality/value: This is the first study that discusses from multiple perspectives and through empirical investigation the challenges to realize public governance through innovative technologies. The results emerge from an actual portal that will function at a European level. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Conceivable security risks and authentication techniques for smart devices

With the rapidly escalating use of smart devices and fraudulent transaction of users’ data from their devices, efficient and reliable techniques for authentication of the smart devices have become an obligatory issue. This paper reviews the security risks for mobile devices and studies several authentication techniques available for smart devices. The results from field studies enable a comparative evaluation of user-preferred authentication mechanisms and their opinions about reliability, biometric authentication and visual authentication techniques

Explaining the Impact of Cloud Assurance Seals on Customers’ Perceived Privacy

Privacy concerns inhabit professional cloud adoption. Assurance seals resulting from a third-party certification are frequently used from cloud service provider to provide privacy assurance for their customers. However, empirical findings on the effectiveness of assurance seals focusing on “who” issues those, even if customers also require the information why the assurance seal is valid and reliable. To fill this gap, we build on information integration theory and investigate the impact of certification authorities’ reputation and the quality level of an audit on customers’ perceived privacy within a professional cloud environment by using an experimental design including 43 professional cloud decision makers. We show that certification authorities’ reputation does not alone produce opinion change, it rather affects customers’ perceived privacy resulting from the quality level of an audit. Our findings have theoretical implications for the information integration theory and assurance seal research. We also discuss the managerial implications of our work for cloud service providers and certification authorities

Design Principles of Mobile Information Systems in the Digital Transformation of the Workplace - Utilization of Smartwatch-based Information Systems in the Corporate Context

During the last decades, smartwatches emerged as an innovative and promising technology and hit the consumer market due to the accessibility of affordable devices and predominant acceptance caused by the considerable similarity to common wristwatches. With the unique characteristics of permanent availability, unobtrusiveness, and hands-free operation, they can provide additional value in the corporate context. Thus, this thesis analyzes use cases for smartwatches in companies, elaborates on the design of smartwatch-based information systems, and covers the usability of smartwatch applications during the development of smartwatch-based information systems. It is composed of three research complexes. The first research complex focuses on the digital assistance of (mobile) employees who have to execute manual work and have been excluded so far from the benefits of the digitalization since they cannot operate hand-held devices. The objective is to design smartwatch-based information systems to support workflows in the corporate context, facilitate the daily work of numerous employees, and make processes more efficient for companies. During a design science research approach, smartwatch-based software artifacts are designed and evaluated in use cases of production, support, security service, as well as logistics, and a nascent design theory is proposed to complement theory according to mobile information system research. The evaluation shows that, on the one hand, smartwatches have enormous potential to assist employees with a fast and ubiquitous exchange of information, instant notifications, collaboration, and workflow guidance while they can be operated incidentally during manual work. On the other hand, the design of smartwatch-based information systems is a crucial factor for successful long-term deployment in companies, and especially limitations according to the small form-factor, general conditions, acceptance of the employees, and legal regulations have to be addressed appropriately. The second research complex addresses smartwatch-based information systems at the office workplace. This broadens and complements the view on the utilization of smartwatches in the corporate context in addition to the mobile context described in the first research complex. Though smartwatches are devices constructed for mobile use, the utilization in low mobile or stationary scenarios also has benefits due they exhibit the characteristic of a wearable computer and are directly connected to the employee’s body. Various sensors can perceive employee-, environment- and therefore context-related information and demand the employees’ attention with proactive notifications that are accompanied by a vibration. Thus, a smartwatch-based and gamified information system for health promotion at the office workplace is designed and evaluated. Research complex three provides a closer look at the topic of usability concerning applications running on smartwatches since it is a crucial factor during the development cycle. As a supporting element for the studies within the first and second research complex, a framework for the usability analysis of smartwatch applications is developed. For research, this thesis contributes a systemization of the state-of-the-art of smartwatch utilization in the corporate context, enabling and inhibiting influence factors of the smartwatch adoption in companies, and design principles as well as a nascent design theory for smartwatch-based information systems to support mobile employees executing manual work. For practice, this thesis contributes possible use cases for smartwatches in companies, assistance in decision-making for the introduction of smartwatch-based information systems in the corporate context with the Smartwatch Applicability Framework, situated implementations of a smartwatch-based information system for typical use cases, design recommendations for smartwatch-based information systems, an implementation of a smartwatch-based information system for the support of mobile employees executing manual work, and a usability-framework for smartwatches to automatically access usability of existing applications providing suggestions for usability improvement

Proactive Privacy Practices In The Trend Of Ubiquitous Services: An Integrative Social Contracts Perspective

Privacy is a strategic issue that deserves great attention from enterprises because the convergence of customer information and advanced technologies that they engage in diverse business processes in response to competitive pressure, particularly when businesses promote their traditional e-services to ubiquitous services (u-services). The underlying vision of u-services is to overcome spatial and temporal boundaries in traditional services, such as m-services and e-services. U-services will be the next wave and can be recognized as a logical extension of traditional e-services because u-services are initiated by e-services based on current potential customer pool and further propagated by m-services. In the context of u-services, customers are always connected seamlessly in context-awareness networks so that a higher degree of customized and personalized services can be timely provided. While people are served with more convenience and efficiency, they may also well be aware of privacy threats behind that. Hence, privacy concerns have been recognized as a critical impediment for boosting u-services. Drawing upon integrative social contracts theory, this study undertakes to explore a proactive privacy practices framework that embraces technical and non-technical elements such as human, legal, and economic relevant perspectives. The results of this study are expected to shed light on privacy practices

Perceived Control and Privacy in a Professional Cloud Environment

Cloud customers need to assess whether their cloud service provider offers high-quality services and handles sensitive information confidentially. Privacy protection is therefore a major challenge during cloud sourcing. Although cloud customers want control over their sensitive information, they have limited resources to do so. They therefore consider other control agents, such as certification authorities or collectives, but the effectiveness of these groups to ensure privacy protection is unknown. This study differentiates between three control agents (personal control, proxy control, and collective control) and investigates the influence of these agents on cloud customers’ perceived control over sensitive information to protect privacy during cloud sourcing. Results show that proxy and collective control influence cloud customers’ perceptions but personal control does not. Therefore, only external control agents, who can apply sanctions, are perceived as being able to effectively protect privacy

Enhanced Information Systems Success Model for Patient Information Assurance

The current health information systems have many challenges such as lack of standard user interfaces, data security and privacy issues, inability to uniquely identify patients across multiple hospital information systems, probable misuse of patient data, high technological costs, resistance to technology deployments in hospital management, lack of data gathering, processing and analysis standardization. All these challenges, among others hamper either the acceptance of the health information systems, operational efficiency or expose patient information to cyber attacks. In this paper, an enhanced information systems success model for patient information assurance is developed using an amalgamation of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Information Systems Success Model (ISS). This involved the usage of Linear Structured Relationship (LISREL) software to model a combination of ISS and Intention to Use (ITU), TAM and ITU, ISS and user satisfaction (US), and finally TAM and US. The sample size of 110 respondents was obtained based on the total population of 221 using the Conhrans formula. Thereafter, simple random sampling was employed to select members within each category of employees to take part in the study. The questionnaire as a research tool was checked for reliability via Cronbach’s Alpha. The results obtained showed that for ISS and ITU modeling, only perceived ease of use, system features, response time, flexibility, timeliness, accuracy, responsiveness and user training positively influenced the intention to use. However, for the TAM and ITU modeling, only TAM’s measures such as timely information, efficiency, increased transparency, and proper patient identification had a positive effect on intension to use. The ISS and US modeling revealed that perceived ease of use had the greatest impact on user satisfaction while response time had the least effect on user satisfaction. On its part, the TAM and US modeling showed that timely information, effectiveness, consistency, enhanced communication, and proper patients identification had a positive influence on user satisfaction