The IS History Initiative: Looking Forward by Looking Back

After officially appointing an AIS historian and forming the AIS history task force at the beginning of 2013, the AIS supported a set of systematic efforts, named IS history initiative, to preserve and represent the IS field’s history. From the perspective of the first AIS historian, I provide some background for the IS history initiative. Then I outline a detailed strategic plan and current status of its implementation. Ultimately, the IS history initiative has three goals: (1) to collect, represent, and preserve the IS field’s history; (2) to interpret, write, disseminate, and review the IS field’s history; and (3) to discover/identify IS genealogy, roots, sources, and facets that deserve to be examined from a historical point of view. Correspondingly, the strategic plan contains three parts. Each part has several specific tasks, many of which were already completed at the time of this writing, and several are either in progress or are planned for future efforts. This paper overviews both current efforts and guiding future efforts related to preserving and representing IS history

A Temporal Model of Mindful Interactions Around New Service Conception

The organizational ability to innovate is widely acknowledged as crucial to sustained success. For libraries and other service providers, innovation entails the continuous development of new services that propose value to customers. This new service development process can be understood as comprising a front end, in which new service ideas are conceived and developed, and a back end, in which selected ideas are implemented. Our understanding of the former - that is, of new service conception in libraries - is particularly underdeveloped. To build a conceptual foundation for research in this area I used qualitative data collection techniques and constant-comparison analysis within the framework of a comparative, embedded case study. Fourteen new service ideas conceived by three case organizations - two public library systems and one library consortium - served as the units of analysis. The model that emerged from the data - a Temporal Model of Mindful Interactions Around New Service Conception - depicts library administrators as active producers of new service concepts. More specifically, the model posits that the innovative library administrator continuously identifies new customer needs and new external solutions through seven types of mindful interactions. At the same time, she tries to match unmet customer needs with potential external solutions in order to produce a new service concept that is ready for implementation. The model extends the concept of individual mindfulness as developed by Weick and Sutcliffe (2006) and Weick and Putnam (2006). In short, it proposes that an individual can concurrently maintain two modes of mindfulness - cognitive-flow mindfulness and content mindfulness - in order to facilitate knowledge creation in the form of a new service concept. More specifically, one can be mindful during an interaction of its potential for engendering novel content (cognitive-flow mindfulness) while keeping in mind certain organizationally-influenced content (content mindfulness). The individual who can concurrently maintain both modes of mindfulness is better able to make novel associations between new information and the content about which she is mindful (e.g., the library\u27s mission and major goals, unmet customer needs, potential external solutions). While the data behind the model suggest that mindfulness can be maintained by admini-strators in smaller, more resource-challenged libraries, and in libraries with non-consolidated organizational structures, the data also reveal that the new service concepts produced by these administrators were yielded only after an external funding source was obtained. For these libraries, developing and delivering new services without grant monies, or without a mechanism within the service for generating revenue, may not be feasible. This does not mean that the administrators of these libraries should stop trying to innovate, or should stop being mindful of new service possibilities, but rather that (1) they must be mindful, perhaps to a greater degree than their counterparts at better-funded libraries, of an interaction\u27s potential for engendering an external funding source, and (2) they may not be able to devote as much time to identifying new customer needs and potential external solutions. Instead, they may need to devote much of their time to addressing ongoing financial challenges

Fall 2005 Vol. 8 No. 2

https://surface.syr.edu/ischool_news/1012/thumbnail.jp

An automated building information modelling-based compliance checking system for Malaysian building by-laws fire regulations

The implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry has significantly amplified the responsibility of designers in creating reliable and accurate BIM models. Fundamentally, the BIM models must comply with the fire safety regulations to provide minimum protection for building occupants and property. Since fire safety regulations are known to be complex and rigid, the manual compliance checking process could lead to inaccuracies, especially in a BIM-based environment. Hence, this study developed an automated BIM-based fire regulations compliance checking system for Malaysian’s AEC industry. In order to establish the rules and BIM properties necessary for fire regulations compliance checking process, 256 clauses from Parts VII and VIII of Selangor Uniform Building (Amendment) (No. 2) By-Laws 2012 were selected to create a BIM model using Revit® based on two-dimensional drawings of a completed 17-storey institutional building. Three investigations were conducted to structure the representation of the rules and BIM properties. First, the fire safety clauses were formalised through a classification technique, semantic mark-up requirement, applicability, selection, exception (RASE) methodology, and interviewing two fire engineers and a representative from the Fire and Rescue Department Malaysia (JBPM). Secondly, the BIM properties consisting of 54 families and their respective parameters in Revit® were identified for the compliance checking process. Lastly, pseudocodes and architecture of the automated system were developed to establish the relationship between the formalised clauses and BIM properties. Dynamo® scripts were used to develop a prototype of an automated fire regulations compliance checking system which could automatically check for fire doors and staircases in Revit®. The representative from JBPM, three fire engineers and architect validated the proposed architecture while the prototype was validated by three architects, two structural engineers, one mechanical engineer, and two civil engineers. This study contributed to a semi-automated rule translation process which combined existing approaches in this field of study. The classification technique and semantic mark-up RASE methodology were refined in this research by developing flowcharts to provide specific guidelines in formalising the clauses. The semi-automated rule translation process encouraged the participation of relevant fire safety experts and provided more accessibility for designers compared to existing studies. This study also offered more practicality for designers to employ the system by utilising native BIM model data representation. High mean scores ranging from 4.00 to 4.96 were obtained for the validation process, which affirmed the feasibility of an automated BIM-based fire regulations compliance checking system to assist designers in the Malaysian AEC industry

Philosophy and Information Systems: Where are We and Where Should We Go?

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version

Proceedings of the Inaugural Meeting ofAIS SIGPrag

The Special Interest Group on Pragmatist IS Research (SIGPrag) was approved by the Association for InformationSystems (AIS) council at its June 2008 meeting in Gallway. The motivation for this initiative is the growingrecognition of the importance of theorizing the IT artifact and its organizational and societal context from apragmatic and action-oriented perspective. SIGPrag\u27s mission is to provide a much-needed centre of gravity and tofacilitate exchange of ideas and further development of this area of IS scholarship.In summary, pragmatist IS research rests on the following set of assumptions: * Human life is a life of activity.* Humans do things that effect changes in their environment and/or within themselves.* Doing permeates thinking, conceptualizations and language use.* Human consciousness is a practical one that is in constant interplay with interventive, investigative, andevaluative actions.* Practical consciousness is formed by experience from previous actions and participation in social contexts.* IT and information systems are fundamentally symbolic language systems.* Linguistically expressed collective presuppositions, norms and categories (such as those embedded in ITand information systems) serve human activity and life.* The true value of IT and information systems lies in their potential to support human communication andcollaboration central to human activity and life.For more information about SIGPrag, its mission and current activities, please visit http://www.sigprag.org/The inaugural meeting of SIGPrag is to be held in Paris on Dec 14, 2008, in conjunction with the InternationalConference on Information Systems (ICIS). The meeting will consist of two parts, a scientific meeting and abusiness meeting. For the scientific meeting a call for position papers was issued in the summer of 2008, whichresulted in the following papers being selected for presentation:• What Kind of Pragmatism in Information Systems Research? by Göran Goldkuhl.• Pragmatic Approach in IS Projects Grounded on Recognised Frameworks by Raija Halonen.• Co-Design as Social Constructive Pragmatism by Mikael Lind, Ulf Seigerroth, Olov Forsgren, and AndersHjalmarsson.• Pragmatism and Information Systems (IS): Neurophilosophical approach by Garikoitz Lerma Usabiagaand Francesc Miralles.• Sustainability Communication: A role for IT and IS in relating business and Society by Mark Aakhus andPaul Ziek.• Managing Ambiguity while Reducing Uncertainty by Gianni Jacucci and Mike Martin.• A Pragmatic Conception of Service Encounters by Mikael Lind and Nicklas Salomonson.• Making the Web More Pragmatic: Exploring the Potential Of Some Pragmatic Concepts For IS ResearchAnd Development by Jens Allwood and Mikael Lind.• Introducing Human in Complex System: A Cognitive Pragmatics Based Model by G. Lortal.• The Pragmatic Web: An Application View by Mareike Schoop.• Design Research from a Communicative Perspective: How to Design Things with Words by Hans Weigand.• Representation and Correspondence: On the Validity of the Representation Assumption in InformationSystem Design by Pär J. Ågerfalk and Owen Eriksson.• Habermas’ theory in action by Jan L.G. Dietz.• Challenges to Information Systems Development by Roland Kaschek.The idea behind this inaugural meeting was to bring together people that share an affinity with pragmatist ISresearch and to initiate a scientific discussion about the role of pragmatist research in IS. We certainly hope that thisdiscussion will continue over the years to come. The papers are freely available for download athttp://www.sigprag.org

DOC 2016-03 Master of Professional Accountancy (MPAcc), Full Proposal

Legislative Authorit