Power Issues in G2G E-Government Applications

This paper addresses a type of wicked problem in the design of information systems in the context of G2G e-Government information systems. These problems, called power issues, have all of the characteristics of wicked problems; however, they are differentiated from them because their roots are based in power. The Power Perspectives Framework from Bradshaw-Camball and Murray is utilized in the context of these G2G systems to provide a framework for the identification and classification of power issues and Courtney’s DSS paradigm is extended to assist in resolving them by incorporating the power perspective into the methodology

IS Security Requirements Identification from Conceptual Models in Systems Analysis and Design: The Fun & Fitness, Inc. Case

This teaching case introduces students to a relatively simple approach to identifying and documenting security requirements within conceptual models that are commonly taught in systems analysis and design courses. An introduction to information security is provided, followed by a classroom example of a fictitious company, Fun & Fitness, in the process of updating its e-Commerce site for class registrations. The case illustrates how UML class diagrams can be used for information classification, data input validation, and regulatory compliance considerations; how a UML use case diagram can be transformed into a “misuse case” diagram to identify threats and countermeasures to functional use cases; and how a data flow diagram may be used to analyze and document threats and countermeasures to data stores, data flows, processes, and external entities using the STRIDE approach developed by Microsoft. The case is geared toward a systems analyst who does not have former training in IS security, and is suitable for upper-division undergraduate and graduate courses

Mindful Administration of IS Security Policies

Managers of information systems have ethical, moral and legal obligations to protect their organization’s intellectual property. They often look to frameworks such as the Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (CobIT) to guide them to what data needs to be secured or standards such as the ISO/IEC 27000 series to provide best practices regarding their policies on how to safeguard this information. However, these policies are either vague in the details or not fluid and flexible enough to account for the unexpected security events that may render them obsolete. For example, Google recently released an online suite of applications that would allow an organization’s employees to collaborate on items of intellectual capital stored on Google’s servers outside the control of the organization’s information technology (IT) department. Additionally, new techniques have been discovered to break the encryption of data that was previously thought to be lost when the device containing it was powered off. While these events certainly have utility to practitioners, they also pose new threats to the security of intellectual capital created and stored on IT artifacts. This paper advocates mindfulness (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2001) as a necessary component of choosing and adapting security policies to better predict the unexpected security threats that may come as a result of technological change, environmental forces, or organizational use of IT

Toward a Theory of Emergent Leadership for Collaborative Information Systems Development among Social Enterprises

Many social enterprises (SEs) are adopting collaborative strategies to overcome fragmentation and duplication in the socialsector to effectively address the world’s social needs (i.e. hunger, poverty, healthcare, education). SEs are increasinglyutilizing IT to support collaboration. However, historically SEs have been slow to integrate IT into their organizations solittle is known about information systems design (ISD) in SEs; even less at the collaborative level. Effective leadership inISD is important to realizing desired outcomes. Current leadership theories do not translate easily to the SE context. Weexplore the collective leadership, emerging from the collaborative ISD process itself, as being relevant to SE contexts. Weapply the neohumanist philosophy, and incorporate Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, to develop a theory ofleadership in collaborative SE ISD, in which leadership emerges from communicative actions in the ISD process. We offer aframework for leadership in collaborative ISD in social sector collaboration

Churchman\u27s Inquiring Systems: Kernel Theories for Knowledge Management

Churchman [1971] defines inquiry as an activity that produces knowledge. He examines the epistemologies of five schools of philosophy from the perspective of general systems theory, asking the question as to whether each is suitable as the basis for the design of computer-based inquiring systems. He considers systems design and design theory in some detail. We believe that Churchman\u27s inquiring systems can form the basis for the design of knowledge management systems and that the IS research community has hardly tapped the potential of inquiring systems in that regard. Mason and Mitroff [1973] brought inquiring systems into the IS literature early on, essentially making the work endogenous to the field. We argue that building on inquiring systems can contribute to developing IS as a discipline by maintaining continuity in research and developing a theory that IS can call its own. We believe that the lack of use of Churchman\u27s work may be due to its lack of visibility in recent years and attempt to remedy that by summarizing the basics of the inquirers in some detail, trying not to interpret, but to remain faithful to the original. The paper encourages readers to study the original and develop their own notion of how the inquirers might be used in knowledgemanagement work. There are probably as many different perspectives on how inquiring systems could support KMS as there are IS researchers willing to study them. We would like to encourage a proliferation of such perspectives

Isolation and Characterization of Adenoviruses Persistently Shed from the Gastrointestinal Tract of Non-Human Primates

Adenoviruses are important human pathogens that have been developed as vectors for gene therapies and genetic vaccines. Previous studies indicated that human infections with adenoviruses are self-limiting in immunocompetent hosts with evidence of some persistence in adenoid tissue. We sought to better understand the natural history of adenovirus infections in various non-human primates and discovered that healthy populations of great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) and macaques shed substantial quantities of infectious adenoviruses in stool. Shedding in stools from asymptomatic humans was found to be much less frequent, comparable to frequencies reported before. We purified and fully sequenced 30 novel adenoviruses from apes and 3 novel adenoviruses from macaques. Analyses of the new ape adenovirus sequences (as well as the 4 chimpanzee adenovirus sequences we have previously reported) together with 22 complete adenovirus genomes available from GenBank revealed that (a) the ape adenoviruses could clearly be classified into species corresponding to human adenovirus species B, C, and E, (b) there was evidence for intraspecies recombination between adenoviruses, and (c) the high degree of phylogenetic relatedness of adenoviruses across their various primate hosts provided evidence for cross species transmission events to have occurred in the natural history of B and E viruses. The high degree of asymptomatic shedding of live adenovirus in non-human primates and evidence for zoonotic transmissions warrants caution for primate handling and housing. Furthermore, the presence of persistent and/or latent adenovirus infections in the gut should be considered in the design and interpretation of human and non-human primate studies with adenovirus vectors

A school-based physical activity promotion intervention in children: rationale and study protocol for the PREVIENE Project

The lack of physical activity and increasing time spent in sedentary behaviours during childhood place importance on developing low cost, easy-toimplement school-based interventions to increase physical activity among children. The PREVIENE Project will evaluate the effectiveness of five innovative, simple, and feasible interventions (active commuting to/from school, active Physical Education lessons, active school recess, sleep health promotion, and an integrated program incorporating all 4 interventions) to improve physical activity, fitness, anthropometry, sleep health, academic achievement, and health-related quality of life in primary school children. The PREVIENE Project will provide the information about the effectiveness and implementation of different school-based interventions for physical activity promotion in primary school children.The PREVIENE Project was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (DEP2015-63988-R, MINECO-FEDER). MAG is supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivenes

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure