This thesis concerns itself with the changes wrought by the movement from analog to digital spaces. These changes are mirrored by changes in the way states practice sovereignty. Examples of new practices of sovereignty are found in the documents of the National Information Infrastrucure Advisory Council. Close analysis of these examples reveals the disciplinary projects of spatial (re)construction implied by these new practices. The effects of these types of spatial disciplinarity on individual subjectivities are also discussed. / Master of Arts

The ability to interoperate between systems, people, and organizations is considered an important issue within eHealth in order to deliver patient centered care. The achieving and improving of interoperability is a complex undertaking involving the evolution of an information infrastructure, sharing of knowledge and resources, governance of the interoperation between organizations, people and work practices, and handling of economic and legal matters. This thesis contributes with practical knowledge on improving interoperability, based on active participation in and empirical studies of improving interoperability in ePrescribing. A case study describes and analyzes the evolution of ePrescribing in Sweden since the early pioneering years in 1980s, its growth and consolidation before the reregulation of the pharmacy market in 2009. Apractical theory on ePrescribing is presented. A unique field experimental study measuring improvement of interoperability in ePrescribing, before and after a major intervention to improve the quality of ePrescriptions between 2004 and 2009 is presented. Furthermore, a practical theory on interoperation and interoperability is presented. Interoperability is seen as the exercised capability of organizations through their agents to interoperate in a shared work practice in an effective, efficient, and satisfactory manner based on a common ground in a mediated, prescriptive, and non-personal communicative setting using an information infrastructure for mediating interoperation.

Understanding ways of improving the safety of food is an important area of research. In this project, I explore the history of the food safety systems in the United States and the Republic of Zambia. Focusing on the traceability of meat (as a form of risk management), I reveal the factors shaping each of these systems, with an eye towards their similarities and differences. I argue that food safety systems come to look different due to how these regulatory systems differently define risk, some of which traceability has brought to light. In both countries, what influences risk cultures is trust in institutions, political leaders and in science and technology. For the Zambian public, trust is in local political leaders, in individuals and in brands. For the US public, trust is in information and knowledge of producers, which is found on labels. While the Zambian public generally trusts institutions, the US public, due to its history of institutional failures, does not. / Master of Science / Tracing where food comes from can be an important aspect of our food system. In this project, I show why food safety systems in the United States and Zambia look the way they that they do today. I do this by specifically focusing on how the two nations trace beef throughout the food supply chain. I show the different factors that have led to the food systems to look the way they do. My argument is that in the US and Zambia, there are non-scientific reasons why these food systems to look the way that they do today and why these countries address risk differently.

This dissertation investigates the nature and management of information infrastructure risks in organizations. Specifically, it examines how practitioners identify and manage threats towards their organizational aims, and suggests ways of achieving sustainable risk management, in settings characterized by the integration of information technology (IT) and organizational processes. The dissertation is motivated by the difficulties organizations encounter when attempting to leverage IT as an organizational resource and the observation that IT projects have high rates of failure despite three decades of research on and practice of risk management in Information Systems (IS). Three aspects of the underlying logic of existing research and practice on IS risk management are challenged: (1) the infrastructural character of IT is suggested to be consequential for organizational risk management, however not recognized by either IS research on risk or risk experts, (2) risk management is enacted within and across practices beyond the boundaries of formal risk management models, and subsequently, (3) risks are increasingly emergent rather than predictable. To investigate such risks and risk management processes the studies in the dissertation build on information infrastructure theory and practice theory and a qualitative approach. As the role of IT in organizations has changed significantly over the last decades, so has both practice and research concerned with IT related risks. Research on risk in the field of IS has thus come to encompass a large variety of levels of analysis, risk levels and dimensions, organizational processes and research approaches. An analysis of the extant literature shows that despite this richness, it still does not account, or offer support, for situations characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and equivocality. In these kinds of situations, risks are typically emergent and cannot be identified or managed by the prescriptions found within the IS discourse. However, emergence has long been recognized as a characteristic of the organizational consequences of information technology. Paradoxically, while most IS scholars would recognize the socio-technical, or even sociomaterial, nature of IT, it has had little impact on research on risk in our field. A key argument in this dissertation is that theories of technology and organizational change within IS are equally valid for practice and research on IT related risk and risk management. Information infrastructure theory has been influential in improving our understanding of the changing nature and role of contemporary IT in organizational processes. It highlights the infrastructural character of IT, technological agency, and the entanglement of IT and organizational practices. Grounded in information infrastructure theory, this dissertation examines how practitioners identify, assess, prioritize and resolve risk in their everyday organizational practices. While risk has been used as a concept to characterize the underlying logic of information infrastructure evolution, scant attention has been paid to the particularities of risk emergence and operational risk management practices. As such, existing IS research on risk management explains why risk emerges but not how. The notion of practice has recently gained momentum in the IS field for its usefulness as an analytical lens in approaching complex, dynamic and emergent phenomena, and it is reflective of information infrastructure theory in its fundamental ontological and epistemological assumptions. All of the papers included in this dissertation build, to varying degrees, on information infrastructure theory and a practice approach. The dissertation contributes new knowledge to research on information infrastructure risk and risk management in IS by theorizing information infrastructure risk as emergent, interstitial, and rooted in practice and sociomaterial contexts.

While it is evident that network services continue to play an ever-increasing role in our daily lives, it is less evident that our information infrastructure requires a concerted, well-conceived, and fastidiously executed strategy to remain viable. Government agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations (\NGOs"), and private organizations are all targets for malicious online activity. Security has deservedly become a serious focus for organizations that seek to assume a more proactive posture; in order to deal with the many facets of securing their infrastructure. At the same time, the discipline of data science has rapidly grown into a prominent role, as once purely theoretical machine learning algorithms have become practical for implementation. This is especially noteworthy, as principles that now fall neatly into the field of data science has been contemplated for quite some time, and as much as over two hundred years ago. Visionaries like Thomas Bayes [18], Andrey Andreyevich Markov [65], Frank Rosenblatt [88], and so many others made incredible contributions to the field long before the impact of Moore's law [92] would make such theoretical work commonplace for practical use; giving rise to what has come to be known as "Data Science". / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Stockholm's healthcare system faces increasing strains on its resources. In order to address these issues, the Stockholm county council has devised a plan for future healthcare, as well as a strategy for IT to accompany this future vision. This master’s thesis investigates inhibitors and facilitators facing this IT-strategy and subsequently evaluates its efficacy based on interviews with individuals with extensive knowledge of Health IT in Sweden. This study employs a holistic and socio-technical perspective on eHealth and healthcare IT, regarding the object of study as an information infrastructure. Defining eHealth in the interview study proved to be a dubious task and is suggestive of a potential inhibitor for the IT-strategy. The study has located the facilitators and inhibitors in three domains: the sociotechnical, institutional and within how healthcare, patients and healthcare professionals are constituted. Important facilitators include stakeholder involvement, where the more engaged citizen is a promising resource. Certain design choices, an appropriate innovation support structure as well as a close attention to work practice development could facilitate the achievement of the goals in the strategy. Many aspects of the institutional environment are potential inhibitors. The strategy for implementation was found to be vague and is thus regarded as difficult to properly evaluate, apply, and follow-up. Furthermore, it is not evident from the way it is phrased what role citizens will have in the development process. While work practice development is mentioned as a substrategy, the corresponding implementation strategy needs elaboration in order to ensure that this aspect is accounted for. In light of the interviewee’s discussion on interoperability, the potential attributed to the Service Platform in the implementation strategy seems overestimated.

Diploma thesis deals with monitoring critical infrastructure, critical information infrastructure and network monitoring in energetic industry. The goal is to create analytical environment for processing logs from the network, to map the most critical segments of the network and implementation of monitoring and network devices, that increase security and mitigate risks of security events or security incidents

As the power industry enters the new century, powerful driving forces, uncertainties and new services and functions are compelling electric utilities to make dramatic changes in the way they communicate. Expanding network services such as real time monitoring are also driving the need for more increasing bandwidth in the communication network backbone. These needs will grow further as new remote real-time protection and control applications become more feasible and pervasive. This dissertation addresses two main issues for the future power system information infrastructure: communication network infrastructure and associated power system applications. Optical network no doubt will become the predominate network for the next generation power system communication. The rapid development of fiber optic network technology poses new challenges in the areas of topology design, network management and real time applications. Based on advanced fiber optic technologies, an all-fiber network was investigated and proposed. The study will cover the system architecture and data exchange protocol aspects. High bandwidth, robust optical network could provide great opportunities to the power system for better service and efficient operation. In the dissertation, different applications were investigated. One of the typical applications is the SCADA information accessing system. An Internet-based application for the substation automation system will be presented. VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) technology is also used for one-line diagrams auto-generation. High transition rate and low latency optical network is especially suitable for power system real time control. In the dissertation, a new local area network based Load Shedding Controller (LSC) for isolated power system will be presented. By using PMU and fiber optic network, an AGE (Area Generation Error) based accurate wide area load shedding scheme will also be proposed. The objective is to shed the load in the limited area with minimum disturbance. / Ph. D.

The world of scientific research played a crucial role in shaping the national computer networks and the way they spread to other sectors of society, creating the conditions for today's activity toward the construction of a national information infrastructure. This study follows several strategic networking activities and identifies four basic threads that contributed to the overall outcome. The first is the series of efforts to establish resource sharing schemes in computing for higher education institutions. However, difficulties in inter-institutional cooperation in higher education delayed concrete action. The second and third threads are related to the evolution into legitimate sciences of computer science and computational science. Computer science largely developed in support of work in physics and its subsidiary role was reflected in the lack of clout of most of its academic departments and the weak standing of its programs in NSF. Computer networking figured prominently in the strategies adopted by leaders in the field do redress this situation. / Ph. D.

O desenvolvimento de uma infra-estrutura de informação só é possível se ela for sustentada e legitimada por atores organizacionais e pelas pessoas que contribuem para o seu desenvolvimento ou dela se utilizam. O principal objetivo desta tese é contribuir para um maior entendimento do papel desempenhado pelo exercício do poder no processo de desenvolvimento de uma infra-estrutura de informação. Este estudo baseia-se em uma análise empírica de um sistema de informação, cujo desenvolvimento foi sustentado por atores poderosos e por agentes que se tornaram poderosos graças a uma ampliação no seu escopo e à sua utilização como fonte de poder ou vigilância, dando origem a uma infra-estrutura de informação. Uma infra-estrutura de informação difere dos sistemas de informação tradicionais por ser um recurso compartilhado por uma grande comunidade de usuários e organizações não estando sujeito ao controle de uma única unidade organizacional. O seu desenvolvimento é comandado por vários atores, com interesses diversos e sem uma coordenação central que exerça controle sobre todos os agentes, não podendo, portanto, ser projetada e gerenciada de acordo com os princípios utilizados para o projeto de sistemas de informação, ou seja, de forma isolada e estanque. Utiliza-se como fundamentação teórica para esta pesquisa, a teoria de Hanseth e Lyytinen (2005) que estuda a evolução e a expansão de infra-estruturas de informação, a qual não aborda o papel do poder no desenvolvimento de infra-estruturas, conforme reconhecem os próprios autores. Nesta tese usa-se o modelo dos circuitos de poder de Clegg (1989) para analisar os efeitos do exercício do poder para o desenvolvimento da infra-estrutura de informação. O sistema estudado é o SIAFEM ? Sistema Integrado de Administração Financeira para Estados e Municípios, que foi adotado para o controle orçamentário e financeiro do Governo do Estado de São Paulo, sendo posteriormente expandido e integrado a outros sistemas, transformando-se, desta forma, em uma infra-estrutura de informação. Para o desenvolvimento da infra-estrutura analisada foi preciso de-institucionalizar um sistema contábil utilizado anteriormente e institucionalizar um novo sistema. Este processo trouxe profundas mudanças organizacionais e culturais, cuja análise foi baseada na teoria do novo institucionalismo. / The development of an information infrastructure is possible only if it is sustained and legitimated by organizational actors and individuals that contribute to its development or use. The main objective of this thesis is to develop a better understanding of the role played by power as a design constraint in the process of development of an information infrastructure. This study is based on an empirical analysis of an information system that once implemented was enlarged due to new requirements and the role played by it as an empowering tool for some actors. Moreover, powerful actors that sustained its expansion make use of it as an apparatus of control and surveillance. An information infrastructure differs from traditional information systems by being a resource shared by a large community of users and organizations, and not being under the control of a single organizational unit. Several actors command its development, with diverse interests and without a central coordination over the agents. The building of these solutions is significantly different from those of the autonomous information systems built previously. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a new understanding for the building of these solutions, i.e., systems that can be enlarged and become an information infrastructure. Hanseth and Lyytinen´s theory (2005), that studies the evolution and the expansion of information infrastructures, is used as a theoretical foundation for this research, supplemented by Clegg´s Circuits of Power framework (1989) which is used to study power as a design constraint for the development of the information infrastructure. The studied system is SIAFEM - Integrated System for State Financial Administration, a large governmental system adopted by the State of Sao Paulo for budget and financial control. Later on, it was enlarged and integrated with new systems, changing to an information infrastructure. For the development of the analysed infrastructure it was necessary to de-institutionalise an accounting system used previously and to institutionalise a new system. This process brought deep organizational and cultural changes, whose analysis was based on the Theory of New Institutionalism.