ACM / AIS IS2020: Updating the IS Model Curriculum

The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Association for Information Systems (AIS), two global professional and academic societies with a stake in Information Systems (IS) education, are engaged in a project to revise the Information Systems Curriculum for bachelor’s degrees. A joint taskforce on the Information Systems (IS2020) Model Curriculum was created following the report and recommendation of an Exploratory Taskforce. This panel seeks to introduce the work of this taskforce as well as engage the AMCIS community in this effort. The taskforce seeks to facilitate broad feedback during the IS2020 development process through surveys and open feedback requests. Panelists will introduce key components of this process and seek input and feedback. This session should be of interest to all attendees, especially faculty developing college level curricula in Information Systems

IT Outsourcing in Finnish Business

This paper reviews the characteristics and magnitude of information technology (IT) outsourcing as well as studies its labor productivity effects with a representative sample of Finnish businesses. Depending on the IT task in question, on average from one-third to two-thirds of IT has been outsourced; of the ten categories considered, the development of non-Internet business-to-business applications (e.g., EDI) is the leading activity in this respect. The various dimensions of IT outsourcing are all highly positively correlated. After controlling for industry and regional effects as well as characteristics of firms and their employees, it is found that an externally-supported computer user is about 20% more productive than an otherwise similar worker without a computer, which corresponds to about 5% output elasticity of outsourced IT; the effect of internally-supported computer use is not statistically significantly different for zero, and it is also several times smaller in magnitude. While the issues of causality, timing, self-selection, and unobserved firm heterogeneity are not fully addressed, the findings nevertheless suggest that IT outsourcing may have significant economic consequences

Bandwidth Estimation for Admission Control in MANET: Review and Conceptual MANET Admission Control Framework

The widespread of wireless mobile network have increased the demand for its applications. Providing a reliable QoS in wireless medium, especially mobile ad-hoc network (MANET), is quite challenging and remains an ongoing research trend. One of the key issues of MANET is its inability to accurately predict the needed and available resources to avoid interference with already transmitting traffic flow. In this work, we propose a resource allocation and admission control (RAAC) solution. RAAC is an admission control scheme that estimates the available bandwidth needed within a network, using a robust and accurate resource estimation technique. Simulation results obtained show that our proposed scheme for MANET can efficiently estimate the available bandwidth and outperforms other existing approaches for admission control with bandwidth estimation

Concentrations of potentially toxic elements and soil environmental quality evaluation of a typical Prosecco vineyard of the Veneto region (NE Italy)

Purpose The aim of this work was to assess the concentrations of potentially toxic elements and to evaluate the soil quality of a typical Prosecco Denomination of Controlled and Guaranteed Origin vineyard of the Veneto region, NE Italy. Materials and methods Soil samples and leaves of Taraxacum officinale and Vitis vinifera were collected during spring–summer 2014. Element determination (Al, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Ni, P, Pb, V, and Zn) were performed with ICP-OES after microwave digestion of samples. Soil quality was assessed via the biological soil quality (BSQ-ar) index. Lipid peroxidation test was performed to evaluate the vegetation oxidative stress, based on malondialdehyde (MDA) content via spectrophotometer. Results and discussion High concentrations of Al,Mg, and P were identified in soil, while high contents of Al, Cu, Fe, and Zn were found in V. vinifera leaves. The high concentrations in soil are probably due to agricultural activities, whereas those in leaves are probably due to atmospheric deposition and repeated use of foliar sprays in viticulture. The bioconcentration factor showed an effective transport of Cu, P, and Zn, from soil to leaf. The BSQ-ar values registered were similar to those obtained in preserved soils; hence, the biological class (VI) of these soils is high. The MDA content in T. officinale and V. vinifera leaves was below the reference value for T. officinale (2.9 ± 0.2 μM), suggesting that the metal content did not stress the vegetation in the investigated site. Conclusions The MDA value for V. vinifera (1.1 ± 0.7 μM) could be adopted as another control value for soil quality, which in our case is of Bgood quality.^ Moreover, our results suggest that high concentrations of elements detected in the analyzed samples do not influence negatively the quality of soil, but a better agronomic management could improve soil quality in the studied area

OPTIMAL ACTUATION STRATEGIES FOR SENSOR/ACTUATOR NETWORKS

Sensor networks have been successfully deployed for passively monitoring environments, for example [1], but there has been much less progress towards developing networks that interact with the environment. Wireless sensor and actuator networks (SANETs) represent an important extension, allowing nodes to perform actions (actuation) in response to sensor measurements and shared information. The potentia

PACIS Panel - IS 2020: Developing an ACM/AIS Information Systems Model Curriculum for Undergraduate Programs

The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Association for Information Systems (AIS) engaged in a project to revise the Information Systems Curriculum. The IS2010 model curriculum has been widely used for nearly a decade. However, its value may be decreasing as new approaches to model curricula have been introduced. The AIS and ACM established an exploratory taskforce which found there have been substantial changes in the IS field, and that current graduates’ technical skills do not appear to meet industry needs. The IS discipline must express its core in terms of a standard curriculum that meet stakeholder demands. A joint ACM/AIS taskforce on the Information Systems Model Curriculum (IS2020) was created to develop new IS curriculum guidelines. This panel will introduce the work of the IS2020 taskforce. Panelists will introduce an initial report. This session should be of interest to faculty and administrators developing college-level curricula in IS