abstract: A long tradition of adoption of innovations research in the information systems context suggests that innovative information systems are typically adopted by the largest companies, with the most slack resources and the most management support within competitive markets. Additionally, five behavioral characteristics (relative advantage, compatibility, observability, trialability, and complexity) are typically associated with demand-side adoption. Recent market trends suggest, though, that additional influences and contingencies may also be having a significant impact on adoption of innovative information systems--on both the supply and demand-sides. The primary objective of this dissertation is to extend our theoretical knowledge into a context where consumer influence is a key consideration. Specifically, this dissertation focuses on the Personal Health Record (PHR) and patient portal market due to its unique position as a mediator between supply (ambulatory care clinic) and demand-side (patient and health consumer) interests. Four studies are presented in this dissertation and include: 1) an econometric examination of the contingencies associated with supply-side (ambulatory care clinic) adoption of patient portals, 2) a behavioral assessment of patient PHR adoption intentions, 3) an integrated latent variable and discrete choice evaluation of consumer business model preferences for digital services (PHRs), and 4) an experimental evaluation of how digital service (patient portal) feature preferences are impacted by assimilation and contrast effects. The primary contribution of this dissertation is that adoption (and adoption intentions) of consumer information systems are significantly impacted by: 1) supply-side adoption contingencies (even when controlling for dominant-paradigm adoption of innovation characteristics), and 2) demand-side consumer preferences for business models and features in the context of assimilation-contrast (even when controlling for individual differences). Overall, this dissertation contributes a new understanding of how contingent factors, consumer perceived value, and assimilation/contrast of features are impacting adoption of consumer information systems / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Information Management 2012

Effective management of electronic records (MER) facilitates implementation of e- government. While studies have been carried out on management of records in Kenya, none of these studies has focused on MER in support of e-government implementation in Kenya. To address the knowledge gap, the current study sought to establish the current state regarding MER in support of e-government in Kenya. The study investigated how MER supported e-government in Kenya with a view to develop a best-practice framework for MER in support of e-government. The specific objectives of the study were to: ascertain current status of MER in government ministries in Kenya; determine the current level of e-government utilization; establish the effectiveness of existing practices for MER in supporting e-government; identify challenges faced by ministries in MER that could impact on implementation of e- government; propose recommendations that could improve MER in ministries to support e-government effectiveness and develop a framework for MER in support of e-government. The theoretical framework was the European Commission’s (2001) Model Requirements for Electronic Records Management (MoReq) and the United Nation’s (2001) five-stage e-government maturity model. The study was anchored on the interpretive research paradigm and adopted qualitative research methodology using phenomenological design. The study sample consisted of 52 respondents drawn from eighteen government ministries, the Kenya ICT Authority (ICTA), the Kenya National Archives and Documentation Service (KNADS) and five e- government service areas. Maximum variation sampling technique was used. Data was collected through face-face interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. The findings established that: the general status of MER in government ministries is inadequately positioned to support e-government; utilization of e-government in Kenya had grown significantly and more ministries were adopting e-government services; although some initiatives have been undertaken to enhance MER, the existing practices for MER require improvement to ensure they adequately support e-government; there exists several challenges in the MER that impact on implementation of e-government. The study concluded that the current practices for managing electronic records in support of e-government implementation were not adequate. Recommendations and a best-practise framework for managing electronic records in support of e-government have been provided. Suggestions for further research are provided. / Information Science / D. Litt. et. Phil. (Information Science)

We present Information System Hazard Analysis (ISHA), a novel systemic hazard analysis technique focused on Clinical Information System (CIS)s. The method is a synthesis of ideas from United States Department of Defense Standard Practice System Safety (MIL-STD-882E), System Theoretic Accidents Models and Processes (STAMP) and Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM). The method was constructed to fill gaps in extant methods for hazard analysis and the specific needs of CIS. The requirements for the method were sourced from existing literature and from our experience in analysis of CIS related accidents and near misses, as well as prospective analysis of these systems. The method provides a series of iterative steps which are followed to complete the analysis. These steps include modelling phases that are based on a combination of STAMP and FRAM concepts. The method also prescribes the use of triangulation of hazard identification techniques which identify the effects of component and process failures, as well as failures of the System Under Investigation (SUI) to satisfy its safety requirements. Further to this new method, we also contribute a novel hazard analysis model for CIS as well as a safety factor taxonomy. These two artifacts can be used to support execution of the ISHA method. We verified the method composition against the identified requirements by inspection. We validated the method’s feasibility through a number of case studies. Our experience with the method, informed by extant safety literature, indicates that the method should be generalizable to information systems outside of the clinical domain with modification of the team selection phase. / Graduate

Introduction and background: The use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) sometimes referred to as Electronic Patient Care Records (ePCRs) amongst health and social care providers is increasing.  Many countries are anticipating the benefits of maintaining patients’ records in one place to facilitate real time access by clinicians and other health and social care providers at the point of need; thereby saving resources, seeking to work more efficiently and indeed taking advantage of the rapid advancement in technology to enhance communication.   Objectives:  Investigate challenges facing implementation of England’s EHRs programme by reviewing two design research approaches. Link the findings to possible barriers to augmenting the scope of the use of EHRs in the pre-hospital care at the Ambulance Service under study.   Approach and Methodology:  Literature review on design approaches to rolling out EHRs systems of 4 countries. Followed by an examination available information on England’s EHRs implementation programme whilst considering the findings to draw out any similarities and differences with each of the countries examined. Follow-on enquiry through interviews whose results help draw relationships between success and design/implementation methodologies. In this systematic review, several article sources are used, including ERIC, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar and Springer Link. Examples of cases are selected after reading titles and abstracts to decide whether the articles are peer reviewed, and relevant to the subject of enquiry. In addition, for articles to be selected they have had to meet the following criteria, a) written in English, b) full text is available online, c) had to have had primary empirical data, and d) focused on EHR implementation programmes.  Iinterviews are carried out to gather first hand data for review, analysis and evaluation, to inductively make an end point explanation of patterns in EHRs implementation programmes.   Findings:  Of the examples of EHRs systems across Europe and North America reviewed, independent and dependent variables closest to the research questions and hypotheses are identified, narrowing them down to design and implementation approaches to make probable causal link to implementation of EHRs system in England in general and the Ambulance Service in particular.   Conclusion: A connection with England’s EHRs implementation programme is made as the study alludes success to user driven bespoke solution as opposed to technology engineered systems. The study concludes that the design approach adopted by a country plays a significant role in gaining ‘buy-in’ when implementing EHRs systems. Subsequently recommendations are made to explore participatory design as a key promoter to ensure uptake of EHRs systems across main stakeholder groups whilst making a specific case for augmenting the scope of using ePCRs at  the Ambulance Service provider in England. Furthermore, the conclusions deduce direct correlation to rollout progress and appetite for using EHRs in healthcare generally and could in theory influence behavior and attitudes that could foster acceptance and improve chances of successful implementation of ePCRs programme in England in general and the Ambulance Service under study.        Keywords: Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Electronic Patient Care Records (ePCRs), Design Approach, Ambulance Service (Pre-Hospital Care), Design Approach

Las voladuras son una forma de generación de vibraciones comunes en la actividad de construcción de obra civil, extracción de materiales (cantera y minas) y demoliciones. Estas son vibraciones causadas por actividad humana y han cobrando importancia a medida que las fuentes generadoras de tales vibraciones aumentan en cantidad, magnitud y cercanía a zonas pobladas. Unión Andina de Cementos (UNACEM), la cual se encuentra ubicada en el distrito de Atocongo en Villa María del Triunfo, dedicada a la extracción de caliza para la fabricación de cemento, realiza voladuras diarias con este fin. En ese sentido el objetivo de nuestra investigación es evaluar en qué medida los efectos dinámicos producidos por las voladuras, en la explotación minera de la planta de cementos UNACEM, podrían afectar las edificaciones del centro poblado Virgen de Lourdes. El tipo de investigación es cuantitativa y de nivel descriptivo; al no manipular las variables tenemos que su método es no experimental y de diseño explicativo. Los resultados obtenidos debían tener un punto de comparación, por lo que en la NORMA E030 DISEÑO SISMORESISTENTE del 2014 nos sirvió para aplicarla en un caso específico de una vivienda típica de la zona en mención. Se modelo esta vivienda en el software VISUAL FEA y se aplicaron las vibraciones recolectadas por las voladuras con la finalidad de analizar los resultados con la Norma E030 y verificar si las vibraciones eran capaces de afectar estructuralmente a la vivienda modelo. Los datos obtenidos demuestran que las vibraciones producidas por Cementos UNACEM para ese periodo cumplieron con las normas y no afectan estructuralmente a las viviendas del poblado Virgen de Lourdes. The explosions are a common way of generating vibrations in the activity of civil engineering construction, extraction of materials (quarry and mine) and demolitions. These vibrations are caused by human activity and have been gaining importance as generating sources of such vibrations increase in number, size and proximity to populated areas. Union Andina de Cementos (UNACEM) located in Atocongo Villa Maria del Triunfo, for the extraction of limestone for cement, makes daily blasts for this purpose. The objective of our research is to evaluate the extent to which dynamic effects of blasting in the mine UNACEM plant could affect the buildings of the Virgin of Lourdes populated center. The research is quantitative and descriptive level. By not manipulate the variables have their method is not experimental and explanatory design. The results should be a point of comparison, so the TECHNICAL STANDARD OF BUILDING E.030 EARTHQUAKE-RESISTANT DESIGN 2014 helped us to apply in a particular case which was a typical home in the area. This apartment in the FEA model VISUAL software and vibrations collected by blasting in order to analyze the results together with the standard E030 and see if the vibrations were able to structurally affect the model will be applied. The data obtained show that the vibrations produced by UNACEM’S CEMENTS for that period met the standards and not structurally affect the housing of the town Virgen de Lourdes.

The individual of today incessantly insists on more protection of his/her personal privacy than a few years ago. During the last few years, rapid technological advances, especially in the field of information technology, directed most attention and energy to the privacy protection of the Internet user. Research was done and is still being done covering a vast area to protect the privacy of transactions performed on the Internet. However, it was established that almost no research has been done on the protection of the privacy of personal data that are stored in tables of a relational database. Until now the individual had no say in the way his/her personal data might have been used, indicating who may access the data or who may not. The individual also had no way to indicate the level of sensitivity with regard to the use of his/her personal data or exactly what he/she consented to. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to develop a model to protect the personal privacy of the individual in relational databases in such a way that the individual will be able to specify how sensitive he/she regards the privacy of his/her data. This aim culminated in the development of the Hierarchical Privacy-Sensitive Filtering (HPSF) model. A secondary aim was to test the model by implementing the model into query languages and as such to determine the potential of query languages to support the implementation of the HPSF model. Oracle SQL served as an example for text or command-based query languages, while Oracle SQL*Forms served as an example of a graphical user interface. Eventually, the study showed that SQL could support implementation of the model only partially, but that SQL*Forms was able to support implementation of the model completely. An overview of the research approach employed to realise the objectives of the study: At first, the concepts of privacy were studied to narrow down the field of study to personal privacy and the definition thereof. Problems that relate to the violation or abuse of the individual’s personal privacy were researched. Secondly, the right to privacy was researched on a national and international level. Based on the guidelines set by organisations like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Council of Europe (COE), requirements were determined to protect the personal privacy of the individual. Thirdly, existing privacy protection mechanisms like privacy administration, self-regulation, and automated regulation were studied to see what mechanisms are currently available and how they function in the protection of privacy. Probably the most sensitive data about an individual is his/her medical data. Therefore, to conclude the literature study, the privacy of electronic medical records and the mechanisms proposed to protect the personal privacy of patients were investigated. The protection of the personal privacy of patients seemed to serve as the best example to use in the development of a privacy model. Eventually, the Hierarchical Privacy-Sensitive Filtering model was developed and introduced, and the potential of Oracle SQL and Oracle SQL*Forms to implement the model was investigated. The conclusion at the end of the dissertation summarises the study and suggests further research topics. / Prof. M.S. Olivier

This works deals with carrying on a private medical surgery, duties relating to the establishment of private health-care facility, accounting and tax records. It solves problems arising from bookkeeping (f.e. recording of incoming payments from health insurance funds). It includes comparison of accounting and tax records in several separate medical surgeries,incl. tax relations.

Legal history is social history, family history, women's history, economic history, business history, and constitutional history; in fact it is a growth industry. Records from the civil division of the British Columbia Supreme Court furnish the best possible primary sources, the evidence for local studies in these fields. This thesis is put forward as a practical guide both for scholars who wish to search records from the Vancouver Supreme Court Registry and for archivists who need a conceptual framework for appraising civil court records. It traces the origins and common law traditions of the court, describes court administration and the rules for civil procedure, tabulates the kinds of record kept by the civil division, and works out for archivists a practical means of selection. / Arts, Faculty of / Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of / Graduate

This thesis sets out to explain how spheres of responsibility or competences are assigned in the administration of government functions in order to assess the ways in which archivists can come to terms with increasingly rapid rates of administrative change in the performance of their work. It examines statutes and government publications to present a picture of the evolution of the competence of agencies of the government of Canada given responsibility for carrying out activities in administration of the function of agriculture. It is found that knowledge of the assignment of functional responsibility is essential to a number of archival tasks. It is vital to know all the bodies participating in carrying out the function when appraising records. A vital part of identifying the external structure of a fonds lies in determining the competence of the agencies creating records in it, and this knowledge must be effectively communicated in archival description. Finally, the concepts of function, competence, and activity, if clearly understood, can guide the development of vocabularies to assist users of archives to find loci of administrative action relevant to searches they are undertaking. Accumulating information about the functions, competences, and activities of organizations and keeping it current can serve many purposes in the administration of records during the entire life cycle. Organizations need this information to control and provide access to records for administrative purposes and to facilitate secondary access under freedom of information and privacy legislation or for historical research purposes. The method of analyzing how functional activity employed in this study can be used for all government organizations in Canada. / Arts, Faculty of / Library, Archival and Information Studies (SLAIS), School of / Graduate

A trustworthy record is one that is both an accurate statement of facts and a genuine manifestation of those facts. Record trustworthiness thus has two qualitative dimensions: reliability and authenticity. Reliability means that the record is capable of standing for the facts to which it attests, while authenticity means that the record is what it claims to be. The trustworthiness of records as evidence is of particular interest to legal and historical practitioners who need to ensure that records are trustworthy so that justice may be realized or the past understood. Traditionally, the disciplines of law and history have relied on the guarantee of trustworthiness inherent in the circumstances surrounding the creation and maintenance of records. For records created by bureaucracies, that trustworthiness has been ensured and protected through the mechanisms of authority and delegation, and through procedural controls exercised over record-writers and record-keepers. As bureaucracies rely increasingly on new information and communication technologies to create and maintain their records, the question that presents itself is whether these traditional mechanisms and controls are adequate to the task of verifying the degree of reliability and authenticity of electronic records, whose most salient feature is the ease with which they can be invisibly altered and manipulated. This study explores the evolution of means of assessing the trustworthiness of records as evidence from antiquity to the digital age, and from the perspectives of law and history; and examines recent efforts undertaken by researchers in the field of archival science to develop methods for ensuring the trustworthiness of electronic records specifically, based on a contemporary adaptation of diplomatics. Diplomatics emerged in the seventeenth century as a body of concepts and principles for determining the authenticity of medieval documents. The exploration reveals the extent to which legal, historical, and diplomatic methods operate within a framework of inferences, generalizations and probabilities; the degree to which those methods are rooted in observational principles; and the continuing validity of a best evidence principle for assessing record trustworthiness. The study concludes that, while the technological means of assessing and ensuring record trustworthiness have changed fundamentally over time, the underlying principles have remained remarkably consistent. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate