An Empirical Analysis of Development Processes for Anticipatory Standards

There is an evolution in the process used by standards-development organizations (SDOs) and this is changing the prevailing standards development activity (SDA) for information and communications technology (ICT). The process is progressing from traditional SDA modes, typically involving the selection from many candidate, existing alternative components, into the crafting of standards that include a substantial design component (SSDC), or 'anticipatory' standards. SSDC require increasingly important roles from organizational players as well as SDOs. Few theoretical frameworks exist to understand these emerging processes. This project conducted archival analysis of SDO documents for a selected subset of web-services (WS) standards taken from publicly available sources including minutes of meetings, proposals, drafts and recommendations. This working paper provides a deeper understanding of SDAs, the roles played by different organizational participants and the compliance with SDO due process requirements emerging from public policy constraints, recent legislation and standards accreditation requirements. This research is influenced by a recent theoretical framework that suggests viewing the new standards-setting processes as a complex interplay among three forces: sense-making, design, and negotiation (DSN). The DSN model provides the framework for measuring SDO progress and therefore understanding future generations of standards development processes. The empirically grounded results are useful foundation for other SDO modeling efforts

End-user security in mobile telecommunications: Policy perspectives anda research agenda

The recent advances in mobile technologies have brought about increased functionality, however this increased functionality in turn increases the vulnerability of mobile networks, services and users. In such an environment supplying secure mobile services requires a high degree of coordination among a variety of industry players including equipment manufacturers, application developers, operating system developers and service providers. The scale of the challenge can be assessed by merely observing the difficulties faced by administrators of fixed organizational networks in their attempts to maintain virus-free networks in a context where the end users are to some degree under their control. In this light it is easy to imagine that providing secure services to end users in a highly decentralized public mobile network environment will certainly be a challenge. The complexity such services entail raises questions about whether or not service providers will be able to deliver and even more challenging offer security quality of service guarantees. Whether or not secure mobile services will be offered is a function of both supply and demand. While certain measures can be taken to assist the traditional market mechanisms that face challenges when high degrees of coordination are required there may also be a role for public policy. As both a component of critical infrastructures and as a licensed use of the public spectrum with public interest obligations, there may be a basis for public policy mechanisms to be employed to facilitate the supply of such services. In this paper we address these issues by first exploring factors affecting the supply and demand of security technologies and services. This is followed by a review of the policy context and recent developments in the U.S. and Europe. Information from these synopses are then combined with findings from our companion report "The Delft UMTS Testbed and End-user Security Features: to suggest a research agenda that if implemented will answer fundamental questions concerning the future of end-user mobile security

Inter-Generational Transitions in Technological Ecosystems: The Case of Mobile Telephony

Many technology studies have conceptualized transitions between technological generations as a series of S-curve performance improvements over time. Surprisingly, the interregnum between successive technological generations has received little attention. To understand what happens in the interregnum, we build upon a framework of technological change as happening within an ecosystem that is characterized by both momentum and inertia. Applying this framework to study the mobile communications ecosystem, we found that the transition between 2G to 3G wireless was far from sequential. Different parts of the ecosystem evolved at different rates exerting both inertia and momentum with 'collateral technologies' playing an important role in shaping the transition path that unfolded. Based on this study we suggest that, rather than a distinct or unitary shift from an old to a new technology, transitions proceed in a zigzag manner resulting in the emergence of hybrid technologies. These processes hold implications for both theory and practice that we explore in this paper

Enhancing Disaster Resilience of Highway Bridges to Multiple Hazards

This research includes analytical investigation of the effectiveness of bridge retrofit in enhancing seismic resilience of highway bridges. A reinforced concrete bridge in the La Cienega- Venice Boulevard sector of the Santa Monica (I-10) freeway in Los Angeles, California, is analyzed. During the 1994 Northridge earthquake, this bridge was severely damaged primarily due to shear failure of one bridge pier. Post-event reconnaissance indicated that the failure was initiated from inadequate lateral confinement of bridge piers designed in pre-1971 era. As part of this research, bridge piers are retrofitted with steel jackets assuming the undamaged condition of the bridge prior to the Northridge event. Research outcome showed that applied retrofit resulted in an enhancement of seismic resilience of the bridge from 57.5 to 99.9 percent. A cost-benefit analysis revealed that the applied retrofit technique is also cost effective (Venkittaraman and Banerjee 2013)