Big Data Assurance Evaluation: An SLA-Based Approach.

The Big Data community has started noticing that there is the need to complete Big Data platforms with assurance techniques proving the correct behavior of Big Data analytics and management. In this paper, we propose a Big Data assurance solution based on Service-Level Agreements (SLAs), focusing on a platform providing Model-based Big Data Analytics-as-a-Service (MBDAaaS)

Quality assurance in higher education: for whom and of what?

Over the past two decades the quality assurance of higher education institutions has captured a growing interest as evidenced by the increasing number of national and transnational bodies engaged in this area. Yet as the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close, higher education systems and thus the regimes designed to ensure their quality are faced with significant complexity. Issues of accountability, authority and responsibility are paramount when responding to industry bodies, to globalisation and the transnational provision of higher education and to the use of market mechanisms. In this paper we raise some of the challenges for quality assurance for higher education presented by this growing complexity through the question, quality assurance in higher education, for whom and of what, highlighting our concern for a need to expand the centrality of accountability to include authority and responsibility as part of the quality assurance regimes for higher educatio

Towards the Safety of Human-in-the-Loop Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities for Safety Assurance of Robotic Co-Workers

The success of the human-robot co-worker team in a flexible manufacturing environment where robots learn from demonstration heavily relies on the correct and safe operation of the robot. How this can be achieved is a challenge that requires addressing both technical as well as human-centric research questions. In this paper we discuss the state of the art in safety assurance, existing as well as emerging standards in this area, and the need for new approaches to safety assurance in the context of learning machines. We then focus on robotic learning from demonstration, the challenges these techniques pose to safety assurance and indicate opportunities to integrate safety considerations into algorithms "by design". Finally, from a human-centric perspective, we stipulate that, to achieve high levels of safety and ultimately trust, the robotic co-worker must meet the innate expectations of the humans it works with. It is our aim to stimulate a discussion focused on the safety aspects of human-in-the-loop robotics, and to foster multidisciplinary collaboration to address the research challenges identified

Adapting Quality Assurance to Adaptive Systems: The Scenario Coevolution Paradigm

From formal and practical analysis, we identify new challenges that self-adaptive systems pose to the process of quality assurance. When tackling these, the effort spent on various tasks in the process of software engineering is naturally re-distributed. We claim that all steps related to testing need to become self-adaptive to match the capabilities of the self-adaptive system-under-test. Otherwise, the adaptive system's behavior might elude traditional variants of quality assurance. We thus propose the paradigm of scenario coevolution, which describes a pool of test cases and other constraints on system behavior that evolves in parallel to the (in part autonomous) development of behavior in the system-under-test. Scenario coevolution offers a simple structure for the organization of adaptive testing that allows for both human-controlled and autonomous intervention, supporting software engineering for adaptive systems on a procedural as well as technical level.Comment: 17 pages, published at ISOLA 201

Model Based Mission Assurance: NASA's Assurance Future

Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is seeing increased application in planning and design of NASAs missions. This suggests the question: what will be the corresponding practice of Model Based Mission Assurance (MBMA)? Contemporaneously, NASAs Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) is evaluating a new objectives based approach to standards to ensure that the Safety and Mission Assurance disciplines and programs are addressing the challenges of NASAs changing missions, acquisition and engineering practices, and technology. MBSE is a prominent example of a changing engineering practice. We use NASAs objectives-based strategy for Reliability and Maintainability as a means to examine how MBSE will affect assurance. We surveyed MBSE literature to look specifically for these affects, and find a variety of them discussed (some are anticipated, some are reported from applications to date). Predominantly these apply to the early stages of design, although there are also extrapolations of how MBSE practices will have benefits for testing phases. As the effort to develop MBMA continues, it will need to clearly and unambiguously establish the roles of uncertainty and risk in the system model. This will enable a variety of uncertainty-based analyses to be performed much more rapidly than ever before and has the promise to increase the integration of CRM (Continuous Risk Management) and PRA (Probabilistic Risk Analyses) even more fully into the project development life cycle. Various views and viewpoints will be required for assurance disciplines, and an over-arching viewpoint will then be able to more completely characterize the state of the project/program as well as (possibly) enabling the safety case approach for overall risk awareness and communication

Using the Same Provider for Financial Statement Audit and Assurance of Extended External Reports: Choices and Consequences

Independent assurance of extended external reports (EER) is one of the most significant trends in today’s global assurance profession. When companies decide to purchase third-party assurance on EER, they need to decide whether to engage their financial statement auditor or a different assurance provider. We examine factors that impact this decision, and the consequences of this decision on financial statement audit quality and cost. We find that independence concerns are associated with companies choosing different EER assurance providers from their incumbent financial statement auditors, while providers’ expertise in EER assurance and the recent trend of integrating nonfinancial information into the annual report promote the use of the same provider. We further find some evidence that companies with the same provider attesting to both financial statements and EER benefit from having higher financial statement audit quality without paying significantly different audit fees

Algorithmical and topological methods of fault tolerance assurance

Special interest in designing, constructing and exploitation of fault tolerant systems is connected with the need of attending to critical infrastructure systems. In this paper we focus on presentation and analysis of the requirements demanded on the context of fault tolerance assurance in the critical infrastructure systems. Especially, we take into consideration algorithmical and topological methods of fault tolerance assurance

Simulated Audits to Engage Students in IT Governance and Assurance Courses

IT governance - and its related assurance activities - is important knowledge for information systems students to obtain. This teaching tip describes a six-week simulation involving IT assurance professionals from a major certified public accounting firm (and alumni of Miami University) who lead students in an IT risk and assurance class through a mock IT audit. The lessons we learned as we completed the first semester using this case are discussed. One significant lesson we learned is that students will have varying levels of interest in IT audits and will need to be coached through the significance of the case even if they are not planning to pursue a career in audit

A Message of Hope

Kelly Clem\u27s life offers testimony that, in the midst of a crisis, God can provide the assurance and comfort we need