Launching the Grand Challenges for Ocean Conservation

The ten most pressing Grand Challenges in Oceans Conservation were identified at the Oceans Big Think and described in a detailed working document:A Blue Revolution for Oceans: Reengineering Aquaculture for SustainabilityEnding and Recovering from Marine DebrisTransparency and Traceability from Sea to Shore:  Ending OverfishingProtecting Critical Ocean Habitats: New Tools for Marine ProtectionEngineering Ecological Resilience in Near Shore and Coastal AreasReducing the Ecological Footprint of Fishing through Smarter GearArresting the Alien Invasion: Combating Invasive SpeciesCombatting the Effects of Ocean AcidificationEnding Marine Wildlife TraffickingReviving Dead Zones: Combating Ocean Deoxygenation and Nutrient Runof

Design of a Secure Transmission System for Secure Key Injection During Initialization Phase of IOT Devices

In the last decade society has experienced an exponential growth in the number of devices connected to the Internet. Recently, new gadgets called Internet of Things devices have appeared in our homes. Although they often lack a physical interface to directly interact with them, they are able to read information from sensors and autonomously communicate with servers, performing decisions accordingly. However, most of the domestic devices that are being commercialized do not implement strict security policies, potentially leading to security breaches that compromise the user’s privacy. The following work provides an alternative to the WPS technology in the initial setup phase of these devices, in which the gadget has to be loaded with the Wi-Fi key so it can connect to the Internet. The use of infrared technology implementing a Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol to inject this key makes the process much safer, without compromising the cost of the device or the user experience

Strategies for Reducing Adverse Medical Events from Implanted Medical Devices

Managing medical device monitoring processes is challenging and lacks a realtime, life cycle tracking strategy to reduce adverse medical events and revision costs for hospital administrators, physicians, and patients. Understanding the malfunctions of medical devices for cardiac and orthopedic patients could save lives and reduce hospital liability. Grounded in the business process reengineering conceptual framework, the purpose of this single qualitative case study was to explore strategies hospital managers used to redesign the implant recall surveillance process at one hospital in Pennsylvania. The 5 participants selected successfully implemented a medical device surveillance process that reduced adverse medical events and revision costs. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and a review of relevant medical device surveillance workflow documents. The 4 themes that emerged from a thematic analysis were effective data communication process, central data repository integration, continuous process improvement, and end-to-end surveillance process. A key recommendation for hospital administrators, physicians, and managers is to use blockchain distributed ledger technology to assess device identification challenges as part of the surveillance process to reduce health risks. The implication for positive social change includes the potential to improve the quality of life for medical device recipients who may spend less on healthcare services

Digital Transformation of the Italian Public Administration: A Case Study

This case study looks at the Italian Public Administration’s digital transformation. With 60 million people, 8,000 municipalities, and 23,000 local administrations, this digital transformation case highlights how a digital renaissance prefaces innovative disruption challenges. The digital transformation case uses Italy as the backdrop and Team Digitale, a team of talented individuals embarked on building public administration efficiencies and rebooting Italy’s digital innovation footprint, as the protagonist. Digital transformation is rarely, if ever, a technical solution. Instead, digital transformation is a socio-technical and socio-political solution, especially in large and complex democracies or companies with diverse, contending stakeholders. In the process, the case surfaces best practices and challenges faced when trying to tackle a mega-project across an entire economy. The case offers digital transformation recommendations that one can generalize across any global democracy. This case surfaces best practices and challenges faced when trying to tackle a mega-project across an entire economy

The Quest for National Digital Agility: Digital Responses to Covid-19 in Five Countries

Countries worldwide have employed different digital solutions to contain and cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this explorative case research, we examine national-level digital responses to the pandemic in four specific areas—tracking and tracing, health data reporting, teleconsultation, and vaccination mobilization—across five countries: China, Denmark, Germany, South Korea, and the U.S. Drawing on the notion of agility and digital infrastructures, our cross-case analysis unveils how the countries’ digital responses to the pandemic have been shaped by their national health system characteristics. In addition, we highlight how existing digital health infrastructures, regulatory adaptations, and industry collaborations fostered the alacrity with which nations responded to the pandemic. We define national-level digital agility as the ability of a nation to leverage digital infrastructure capabilities to address urgent societal challenges in a contextually appropriate way. Our key contribution is a model of this complex, but urgently needed concept containing five building blocks, each of which is a critical prerequisite to building such agility. Despite focusing on addressing the existing challenges of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, we believe that researchers and policymakers can also take pointers away from our framework to tackle other socio-environmental challenges