Private Information Systems Research Articles

Digital rights persons carrying out a preliminary investigation

The emergence of the Internet and intangible digital objects of value to humans led to the proclamation of the concept of “digital human rights” in civil substantive law. In criminal procedure law this term is not absent. In this case, the investigator collects information about the circumstances to be proved in a criminal case under the conditions of digitalization of all human life processes. The Internet network has combined a large number of data sets of government agencies, commercial organizations, and individuals. The investigator’s access to these data sets and their study would allow optimizing the investigator’s activities by quickly collecting the necessary information for the criminal case and using it as evidence. To this end, the article gives the concept of” digital rights “ of an investigator, suggests an approach to creating such rights in criminal procedure legislation, and defines the problems of organizing the collection of criminally significant information from public and private information systems on the Internet.

Learning quasi-identifiers for privacy-preserving exchanges: a rough set theory approach

The challenging and pervasive issue associated with information exchange is inferential disclosure. It occurs in the following three situations: (1) the exchanged data correlate with publicly available information, (2) the exchanged data comprise patterns similar to those in a sharing partner’s datum, and (3) the shared data’s attributes are interdependent. In this work, we provide and implement new algorithms that impede the third type of inferential attack. They rely on rough set theory to undermine the deductive route from nonsensitive to sensitive features. Our approach comprises three steps which include learning quasi-identifiers, computing a granulation of the underlying information system that maximizes the distribution of sensitive attributes in each granule, and masking the deductive route from nonsensitive to sensitive features. Our routine for learning quasi-identifiers achieves both the largest distinction and separation without an exhaustive search among tuples of features. The learned quasi-identifiers are employed to find a granulation of the information system that strikes a balance between the anonymity of quasi-identifiers and the diversity of sensitive attributes, without solving a difficult optimization problem. We employ this granulation in a strategy similar to that used in k-anonymity to de-identify private information systems.

Entangled Stakeholder Roles and Perceptions in Health Information Systems: A Longitudinal Study of the U.K. NHS N3 Network

The combination of pervasive and complex technology and an increasingly challenging healthcare environment is the setting for this research study. As a longitudinal case study, the research tracks the development and implementation of a large private information systems network in the UK National Health Service (NHS). Using stakeholder theory, we unpack the story of a complex network of stakeholder roles and perceptions and how these change over time. Our findings show that favorable and unfavorable positions held by multiple stakeholder groups become entangled, where even the same focal group may adopt competing positions which undermine the adoption of the health network. As this situation develops, the policy and implementation of the broader health IT program becomes confused and destabilized. This study makes three contributions. It expands the literature on stakeholder theory within the IS domain; it extends the managerial focus of stakeholder approaches to include policy-making in the diverse multi-stakeholder setting of healthcare; it demonstrates how stakeholder analysis can be employed in IS research by adopting a broader, dynamic approach to identifying and including different stakeholder groups focusing on their varied roles and views during the course of a large scale health IT program.

Aligning Security and Privacy to Support the Development of Secure Information Systems

The increasing dependency on information systems to process and manage sensitive information requires the usage of development methods that support the development of secure and private information systems. The literature provides examples of methods that focus on security and privacy individually but fail to provide evidence of information systems development methods that consider security and privacy in a unified framework. Security and privacy are very much related, in particular certain security properties and mechanisms support the achievement of privacy goals. Without a development framework to support developers to explicitly model that relationship, conflicts and vulnerabilities can be introduced to a system design that might endanger its security. In this paper, we present our work in developing a framework that supports the unified analysis of privacy and security. In particular, we present a meta-model that combines concepts from security and privacy requirements methods, such as security and privacy goals, properties, constraints, and actor and process patterns within a social context. A real case study is employed to demonstrate the applicability of our work.

Managerialism, Accounting and Accountability in the Italian Local Governments: An Empirical Analysis

The paper aims to investigate the intricate relationship between accounting information systems, managerialism and accountability in Local Governments. The exploratory case study was conducted using a mix of method both qualitative and quantitative, in the context of a medium-size Italian municipality. The findings confirm that the quality of accounting information systems is central in the managerial development of an organisation, public but also private, and the presence of internally coherent systems of accountability. The technological and procedural slack of the AIS allows managers to develop their private information systems to fulfil also accountability obligations or needs. The uncontrolled introduction of the reforms brought about the development of conflicting forms of accountability, the search for internal and external legitimation by managers, to protect themselves from the political influence and the attempt to evaluate their performance. The paper provides interesting insights on the impact of accounting/managerial based public sector reforms on the inner functioning of Local Government, emphasising the risk of delivering changes not foreseen by the official aims.

Public Versus Private Information Systems

Bozeman and Bretschneider’s (1986) seminal work posited that there are important differences between public and private information systems and that different principles should be used in the management of these systems. However, little empirical research has been conducted concerning this topic. The authors developed hypotheses based on the argument that competition forces businesses to use information technology (IT) as a weapon to gain competitive advantage that makes it more likely they will view IT as more important and be willing to invest more resources in IT. They test these hypotheses by comparing samples of municipalities and private organizations. The results confirmed that private sector organizations do invest more resources in IT training. However, public organizations, despite the low amounts they invest in training, rate IT as important as does the private sector.

Connecting AAC Devices to the World of Information Technology

Modern day information technology (IT) is converging around wireless networks. It is now possible to check E-mail and view information from the World Wide Web from commercially available mobile phones. For individuals with disabilities, the ability to access multiple and different types of information not only promises convenience, but also can help to promote independence and facilitate access to public and private information systems. There are many barriers to access for people with disabilities, including technological hurdles, security, privacy, and access to these emerging wireless technologies. However, legislation, advocacy, standards, and research and development can ensure that users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and assistive technology have access to these technologies. This article provides a historical context for the field of AAC and IT development, a review of the current state of these technologies, a glimpse of the potential of wireless information access for the lives of AAC users, and a description of some of the barriers and enablers to making access available to users of AAC and assistive technologies.

Uniform basic data sets for health statistical systems.

The United States approach to coordinating health statistics involves introduction of multipurpose basic data sets describing health status and the health care system. Standard reporting procedures have been used for many years for vital statistics. Recently designated data sets cover health manpower, inpatient facilities, short-stay hospital discharges, and use of ambulatory care services. A data set for long-term health care is in the design stage. Advantages of this approach in the United States and internationally are: basic comparisons can be made between health care settings are geographic areas while maintaining the variety and flexibility of existing public and private information systems; shared local, regional, and national data systems can be set up; and better coordination can be achieved between government-sponsored general-purpose and administrative data systems. Problem areas are: avoiding undue proliferation, e.g. of disease-specific data sets; adhering to the principle of minimal requirements; linking data sets and coordinating them with census and other social indicators; promoting widespread use; assuring data quality; establishing mechanisms for review and revision; and extending the concept internationally.