Subject categories used in Nuclear science abstracts, 1967-1975 /

"TID-26500/R1. Distribution category: UC-2."

An ontology for risk management of digital collections

Maintaining accessibility to and understanding of digital information over time is a complex challenge that often requires contributions and interventions from a variety of individuals and organizations. The processes of preservation planning and evaluation are fundamentally implicit and share similar complexity. Both demand comprehensive knowledge and understanding of every aspect of to-be-preserved content and the contexts within which preservation is undertaken. Consequently, means are required for the identification, documentation and association of those properties of data, representation and management mechanisms that in combination lend value, facilitate interaction and influence the preservation process. These properties may be almost limitless in terms of diversity, but are integral to the establishment of classes of risk exposure, and the planning and deployment of appropriate preservation strategies. We explore several research objectives within the course of this thesis. Our main objective is the conception of an ontology for risk management of digital collections. Incorporated within this are our aims to survey the contexts within which preservation has been undertaken successfully, the development of an appropriate methodology for risk management, the evaluation of existing preservation evaluation approaches and metrics, the structuring of best practice knowledge and lastly the demonstration of a range of tools that utilise our findings. We describe a mixed methodology that uses interview and survey, extensive content analysis, practical case study and iterative software and ontology development. We build on a robust foundation, the development of the Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment. We summarise the extent of the challenge facing the digital preservation community (and by extension users and creators of digital materials from many disciplines and operational contexts) and present the case for a comprehensive and extensible knowledge base of best practice. These challenges are manifested in the scale of data growth, the increasing complexity and the increasing onus on communities with no formal training to offer assurances of data management and sustainability. These collectively imply a challenge that demands an intuitive and adaptable means of evaluating digital preservation efforts. The need for individuals and organisations to validate the legitimacy of their own efforts is particularly prioritised. We introduce our approach, based on risk management. Risk is an expression of the likelihood of a negative outcome, and an expression of the impact of such an occurrence. We describe how risk management may be considered synonymous with preservation activity, a persistent effort to negate the dangers posed to information availability, usability and sustainability. Risk can be characterised according to associated goals, activities, responsibilities and policies in terms of both their manifestation and mitigation. They have the capacity to be deconstructed into their atomic units and responsibility for their resolution delegated appropriately. We continue to describe how the manifestation of risks typically spans an entire organisational environment, and as the focus of our analysis risk safeguards against omissions that may occur when pursuing functional, departmental or role-based assessment. We discuss the importance of relating risk-factors, through the risks themselves or associated system elements. To do so will yield the preservation best-practice knowledge base that is conspicuously lacking within the international digital preservation community. We present as research outcomes an encapsulation of preservation practice (and explicitly defined best practice) as a series of case studies, in turn distilled into atomic, related information elements. We conduct our analyses in the formal evaluation of memory institutions in the UK, US and continental Europe. Furthermore we showcase a series of applications that use the fruits of this research as their intellectual foundation. Finally we document our results in a range of technical reports and conference and journal articles. We present evidence of preservation approaches and infrastructures from a series of case studies conducted in a range of international preservation environments. We then aggregate this into a linked data structure entitled PORRO, an ontology relating preservation repository, object and risk characteristics, intended to support preservation decision making and evaluation. The methodology leading to this ontology is outlined, and lessons are exposed by revisiting legacy studies and exposing the resource and associated applications to evaluation by the digital preservation community.

La disrupción: el punto de partida de la resiliencia o del fracaso empresarial (reflexiones desde la ingeniería)

La perdurabilidad empresarial ha sido un tema recurrente en la literatura sobre dirección de empresas. A pesar de los avances, la liquidación de las empresas aumenta permanentemente. Buscando alternativas de mejora se estudia el caso de dos empresas cuadragenarias dedicadas a prestar servicios de consultoría en ingeniería eléctrica y civil que, en condiciones de crisis, implementaron acciones que les permitieron, no sólo mantenerse en el mercado sino también fortalecer su estructura financiera. Los resultados demostraron que un enfoque equilibrado caracterizado por la toma oportuna de decisiones y la definición e implementación de estrategias de negocio efectivas constituyen herramientas óptimas para asegurar un mayor grado de resiliencia empresarial.

A Multiplicative Homomorphic Sealed-Bid Auction-Based on Goldwasser-Micali Encryption

Instead of the costly encryption algorithms traditionally employed in auction schemes, efficient Goldwasser-Micali encryption is used to design a new sealed-bid auction. Multiplicative homomorphism instead of the traditional additive homomorphism is exploited to achieve security and high efficiency in the auction. The new scheme is the currently known most efficient non-interactive sealed-bid auction with bid privacy.

Contemplating Open Source Enterprise Systems

Until recently, integration of enterprise systems has been supported largely by monolithic architectures. From a technical perspective, this approach has been challenged by the suggestion of component-based enterprise systems. Lately, the nature of software as proprietary item has been questioned through the increased use of open source software in business computing in general. This suggests the potential for altered technological and commercial constellations for the design of enterprise systems, which are presented in four scenarios. © Springer-Verlag 2004.

Critical success factors for positioning Australian business talent in the global knowledge economy : a current research agenda

"Globalisation‟ and the "global knowledge economy‟ have become some of the most common "buzzwords‟ in Australian business, economic, and social sectors in the past decade. Further, knowledge service exports are a growing sector for Australia that utilise complex technical and creative capacities, increasingly rely on virtual work innovations, require new socio-technical systems to establish and maintain effective client relationships in global contexts; and – along with other innovations in the electronic age – may require novel coping abilities on the part of both managers and their employees to achieve desired outcomes (Bandura, 2002). Accordingly, this paper overviews such trends. The paper also includes a research agenda which is a "work-in-progress‟ with a major global company, Shell (Australia); it highlights both the objectives and proposed methodology of the study; it also outlines anticipated key benefits arising from the research.

Understanding the Main Phases of Developing a Maturity Assessment Model

Practitioners and academics have developed numerous maturity models for many domains in order to measure competency. These initiatives have often been influenced by the Capability Maturity Model. However, an accumulative effort has not been made to generalize the phases of developing a maturity model in any domain. This paper proposes such a methodology and outlines the main phases of generic model development. The proposed methodology is illustrated with the help of examples from two advanced maturity models in the domains of Business Process Management and Knowledge Management.

IT service desk process improvement : a narrative style case study

This paper is a detailed case narrative on how a Faculty of a leading Australian University conducted a rigorous process improvement project, applying fundamental Business Process Management (BPM) concepts. The key goal was to increase the efficiency of the faculty’s service desk. The decrease of available funds due to reducing student numbers and the ever increasing costs associated with service desk prompted this project. The outcomes of the project presented a set of recommendations which leads to organizational innovation having information technology as an enabler for change. The target audience includes general BPM practitioners or academics who are interested in BPM related case studies, and specific organisations who might be interested in conducting BPM within their service desk processes.