Current Challenges Facing Information and Communications Technology: A Manifesto For Change

A distinction is drawn concerning the true nature of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) which previously was seen as technology-focused or techno centric but actually concerns transformation and the management of change in business (socio-techno centric). Current issues and challenges in ICT are examined and future trends and directions highlighted. This leads to a manifesto for change outlining a coherent approach to transforming ICT into a resource which fully contributes to business. Finally given this manifesto, challenges for tertiary education are outlined

Measuring information security governance within general medical practice

Information security is becoming increasingly important within the Australian general medical practice environment as legal and accreditation compliance is being enforced. Using a literature review, approaches to measuring information security governance were analysed for their potential suitability and use within General Practice for the effective protection of confidential information. The models, frameworks and guidelines selected were analysed to evaluate if they were Key Performance Indicator (KPI), or process driven; whether the approach taken was strategic, tactical or operational; and if governance or management assessment tools were presented. To measure information security governance, and be both effective and practical, the approach to be utilised within General Practice would need to function at an operational level and be KPI driven. Eight of the 29 approaches identified, were deemed to be applicable for measuring information security governance within the General Practice environment. However, further analysis indicated that these measurement approaches were either too complex to be directly implemented into General Practice, or collected self-assessment security data rather than actual security measurements. The literature review presented in this paper establishes the need for further research to develop an approach for measuring information security governance within General Practice

Challenges in improving information security practice in Australian general practice

The status of information security in Australian medical general practice is discussed together with a review of the challenges facing small practices that often lack the technical knowledge and skill to secure patient information by themselves. It is proposed that an information security governance framework is required to assist practices in identifying weaknesses and gaps and then to plan and implement how to overcome their shortcomings through policies, training and changes to processes and management structure

Shared Use of Diagrams in Requirements Elicitation: roles, expectations and behaviours

This paper describes the results of an action research study whose focus was requirements elicitation for an e-business system. The study showed that analysts and end-users use the same diagrams for quite different purposes, the former for validation and establishing correctness and the latter as a structuring mechanism for uncovering requirements and gaps and reasoning about a system under consideration. A model of cognition that explains this behaviour is proposed

Using Ontological Ideas to Facilitate the Comparison of Requirements Elicitation Methods

There are a plethora of system development methods available to practitioners, all purporting to be the best method. This variety brings with it an element of choice which can be perceived as a problem in itself, quite apart from the issue of developing a system. This paper uses elements of the ontological framework of Bunge, Wand and Weber to critically examine the constructs of several methods used to develop requirements specifications (and, in particular, business process models), notably the Business Rules Diagram (BRD) Method and the Unified Modelling Language (UML)

Challenges in Improving Information Security Practice in Australian General

The status of information security in Australian medical general practice is discussed together with a review of the challenges facing small practices that often lack the technical knowledge and skill to secure patient information by themselves. It is proposed that an information security governance framework is required to assist practices in identifying weaknesses and gaps and then to plan and implement how to overcome their shortcomings through policies, training and changes to processes and management structure

An Information Security Governance Framework for Australian Primary Care Health Providers

The competitive nature of business and society means that the protection of information, and governance of the information security function, is increasingly important. This paper introduces the notion of a governance framework for information security for health providers. It refines the idea of an IT Balanced Scorecard into a scorecard process for use in governing information security for primary care health providers, where IT and security skills may be limited. The approach amends and justifies the four main elements of the scorecard process. The existence of a governance framework specifically tailored for the needs of primary care practice is a critical success factor if such organizations are to move to a robust level of information security. The challenge is twofold. Firstly, measures for governance need to be understandable to the target audience using the framework. Secondly, the number of measures needs to be controllable otherwise the process will become unviable and unused. This research synthesizes existing models and industry standards to formulate a new governance process that meets these two important criteria. The contribution of this research is in the refinement of governance metrics to make them useful to healthcare providers, specifically in relation to IT and new information communication technologies

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

The Fifteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: First Release of MaNGA-derived Quantities, Data Visualization Tools, and Stellar Library

Twenty years have passed since first light for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Here, we release data taken by the fourth phase of SDSS (SDSS-IV) across its first three years of operation (2014 July–2017 July). This is the third data release for SDSS-IV, and the 15th from SDSS (Data Release Fifteen; DR15). New data come from MaNGA—we release 4824 data cubes, as well as the first stellar spectra in the MaNGA Stellar Library (MaStar), the first set of survey-supported analysis products (e.g., stellar and gas kinematics, emission-line and other maps) from the MaNGA Data Analysis Pipeline, and a new data visualization and access tool we call "Marvin." The next data release, DR16, will include new data from both APOGEE-2 and eBOSS; those surveys release no new data here, but we document updates and corrections to their data processing pipelines. The release is cumulative; it also includes the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since first light. In this paper, we describe the location and format of the data and tools and cite technical references describing how it was obtained and processed. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has also been updated, providing links to data downloads, tutorials, and examples of data use. Although SDSS-IV will continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V (2020–2025), we end this paper by describing plans to ensure the sustainability of the SDSS data archive for many years beyond the collection of data

Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: mapping the Milky Way, nearby galaxies, and the distant universe

We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopy for thousands of nearby galaxies (median ). The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) is mapping the galaxy, quasar, and neutral gas distributions between and 3.5 to constrain cosmology using baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions, and the shape of the power spectrum. Within eBOSS, we are conducting two major subprograms: the SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources (SPIDERS), investigating X-ray AGNs and galaxies in X-ray clusters, and the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), obtaining spectra of variable sources. All programs use the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory; observations there began in Summer 2014. APOGEE-2 also operates a second near-infrared spectrograph at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, with observations beginning in early 2017. Observations at both facilities are scheduled to continue through 2020. In keeping with previous SDSS policy, SDSS-IV provides regularly scheduled public data releases; the first one, Data Release 13, was made available in 2016 July