<p> In the past decade, the role of data has increased exponentially from being the output of a process, to becoming a true corporate asset. As the business landscape becomes increasingly complex and the pace of change increasingly faster, companies need a clear awareness of their data assets, their movement, and how they relate to the organization in order to make informed decisions, reduce cost, and identify opportunity. The increased complexity of corporate technology has also created a high level of risk, as the data moving across a multitude of systems lends itself to a higher likelihood of impacting dependent processes and systems, should something go wrong or be changed. The result of this increased difficulty in managing corporate data assets is poor enterprise data quality, the impacts of which, range in the billions of dollars of waste and lost opportunity to businesses. </p><p> Tools and processes exist to help companies manage this phenomena, however often times, data projects are subject to high amounts of scrutiny as senior leadership struggles to identify return on investment. While there are many tools and methods to increase a companies&rsquo; ability to govern data, this research stands by the fact that you can&rsquo;t govern that which you don&rsquo;t know. This lack of awareness of the corporate data landscape impacts the ability to govern data, which in turn impacts overall data quality within organizations. </p><p> This research seeks to propose a means for companies to better model the landscape of their data, processes, and organizational attributes through the use of linked data, via the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and ontology. The outcome of adopting such techniques is an increased level of data awareness within the organization, resulting in improved ability to govern corporate data assets. It does this by primarily addressing corporate leadership&rsquo;s low tolerance for taking on large scale data centric projects. The nature of linked data, with it&rsquo;s incremental and de-centralized approach to storing information, combined with a rich ecosystem of open source or low cost tools reduces the financial barriers to entry regarding these initiatives. Additionally, linked data&rsquo;s distributed nature and flexible structure help foster maximum participation throughout the enterprise to assist in capturing information regarding data assets. This increased participation aids in increasing the quality of the information captured by empowering more of the individuals who handle the data to contribute. </p><p> Ontology, in conjunction with linked data, provides an incredibly powerful means to model the complex relationships between an organization, its people, processes, and technology assets. When combined with the graph based nature of RDF the model lends itself to presenting concepts such as data lineage to allow an organization to see the true reach of it&rsquo;s data. This research further proposes an ontology that is based on data governance standards, visualization examples and queries against data to simulate common data governance situations, as well as guidelines to assist in its implementation in a enterprise setting. </p><p> The result of adopting such techniques will allow for an enterprise to accurately reflect the data assets, stewardship information and integration points that are so necessary to institute effective data governance.</p>

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Marshall University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Includes abstract. Document formatted into pages: contains viii,115 p. Includes bibliographical references p. 98-106.

<p> Clerical review of Entity Resolution(ER) is crucial for maintaining the entity identity integrity of an Entity Identity Information Management (EIIM) system. However, the clerical review process presents several problems. These problems include Entity Identity Structures (EIS) that are difficult to read and interpret, excessive time and effort to review large Identity Knowledgebase (IKB), and the duplication of effort in repeatedly reviewing the same EIS in same EIIM review cycle or across multiple review cycles. Although the original EIIM model envisioned and demonstrated the value of correction assertions, these are applied to correct errors after they have been found. The original EIIM design did not focus on the features needed to support the process of clerical review needed to find these errors. </p><p> The research presented here extends and enhances the original EIIM model in two very significant ways. The first is a design for a pair of confirmation assertions that complement the original set of correction assertions. The confirmation assertions confirm correct linking decisions so that they can be excluded from further clerical review. The second is a design and demonstration of a comprehensive visualization system that supports clerical review, and both correction and confirmation assertion configurations in EIIM. This dissertation also describes how the confirmation assertions and the new visualization system have been successfully integrated into the OYSTER open source EIIM framework.</p>

<p> Information technology (IT) investment decision makers are required to process large volumes of complex data. An existing body of knowledge relevant to IT portfolio management (PfM), decision analysis, visual comprehension of large volumes of information, and IT investment decision making suggest Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and hypervariate display techniques can reduce cognitive load and improve decision confidence in IT PfM decisions. This dissertation investigates improving the decision confidence by reducing cognitive burden of the decision maker through greater comprehension of relevant decision information. Decision makers from across the federal government were presented with actual federal IT portfolio project lifecycle costs and durations using hypervariate displays to better comprehend IT portfolio information more quickly and make more confident decisions. Other information economics attributes were randomized for IT portfolio projects to generate Balanced Scorecard (BSC) values to support MCDM decision aids focused on IT investment alignment with specific business objectives and constraints. Both quantitative and qualitative measures of participant comprehension, confidence, and efficiency were measured to assess hypervariate display treatment and then MCDM decision aid treatment effectiveness. Morae Recorder Autopilot guided participants through scenario tasks and collected study data without researcher intervention for analysis using Morae Manager. Results showed improved comprehension and decision confidence using hypervariate displays of federal IT portfolio information over the standard displays. Both quantitative and qualitative data showed significant differences in accomplishment of assigned IT portfolio management tasks and increased confidence in decisions. MCDM techniques, incorporating IT BSC, Monte Carlo simulation, and optimization algorithms to provide cost, value, and risk optimized portfolios improved decision making efficiency. Participants did not find improved quality and reduced uncertainty from optimized IT portfolio information. However, on average participants were satisfied and confident with the portfolio optimizations. Improved and efficient methods of delivering and visualizing IT portfolio information can reduce decision maker cognitive load, improve comprehension efficiency, and improve decision making confidence. Study results contribute to knowledge in the area of comprehension and decision making cognitive processes, and demonstrate important linkages between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Decision Support Systems (DSS) to support IT PfM decision making.</p>

<p> The purpose of this paper was to create a primer for a security awareness program to educate senior level executives on the key aspects of cyber security. This is due to the gap area that was discovered in the lack of both executive security awareness programs, and the lack of executives that fully abide by their company's security policies. This, coupled with research showing that executives are highly targeted by attackers, was the impetus behind this project. It was determined that the content of an executive security awareness program should be similar to that of a security awareness program for all other employees, with the differences being in the delivery and time frame of each segment. Due to this, literature was reviewed on the various topics of security awareness. Research revealed the importance of capturing an executive's attention, in order to keep their interest in the program. It was recommended that individuals charged with creating an executive security awareness program begin by having one on one meetings with the executives in their company. These meetings will help assess the time constraints of their company executives as well as their current knowledge of the various security awareness topics. This will help with tailoring the program specifically to their company executives. This primer may be used by any company or organization in the beginning stages of creating their own security awareness program for executives. Keywords: Cybersecurity, Professor Albert Orbinati, Executive Security Awareness, Internet Safety.</p>

<p> Collaboration is vital in today's information age, and tools are increasingly used to bring together teams that are geographically dispersed. Second Life, a 3D virtual world, can incorporate most of the visual, hearing and spatial elements of the real world, and can create a feeling of presence or the sense of actually "being there" for users. Common 2D groupware collaboration tools, such as web conferencing and conference calls used for virtual team collaboration in professional contexts, are key enablers for virtual teams. However, businesses and organizations have not adopted virtual worlds for virtual teams and workgroup collaboration. Shen &amp; Eder (2009) conducted a study using their modified Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) applied to the adoption of Second Life for business purposes. For participants, they used college students who were new to Second Life. The purpose of this research is to examine how the seven factors identified in the Shen and Eder's (2009) extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) relate to the behavioral intention to use workgroup collaboration tools in the Second Life using a non-student sample of experienced Second Life users that was more demographically representative of the Second Life population. Although this research supported many of Shen and Eder's findings, it found a negative relationship between the construct of perceived enjoyment and behavioral intent. This finding is important because contrary to positive relationship with gaming and entertainment environments, perceived enjoyment is not an antecedent for behavioral intention of 3D virtual worlds when used for productivity activities. The results of this study may provide insight for tool developers and integrators on where to focus efforts that lead to improved adoption of these workgroup collaboration tools.</p>

<p> The Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) presents an ever present and more growing threat to organizations across the globe. Traditional Information Technology (IT) incident response falls short in effectively addressing this threat. This researcher investigated the use of single-loop and double-loop learning in two organizations with internal incident response processes designed to combat the APT. Two cases were examined within organizations employing an internal incident response team. The third case was examined from an organization providing incident response as a service in addressing APT compromises. The study developed four themes: the inefficacy of single-loop learning in addressing APT, the need for better visibility within corporate infrastructure, the need for continuous improvement and bi-directional knowledge flow, and the need for effective knowledge management. Based on these themes, a conceptual model was developed modifying the traditional incident response process. Three implications were derived from the research. First, perimeter defense falls short when addressing the APT. Second, the preparation phase of incident response requires modification along with the addition of a new baseline loop phase running contiguously with the entire process. Finally, opportunistic learning needs to be encouraged in addressing the APT.</p>

<p> This study sought to investigate whether the popularity of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) would impact the behavioral intention (BI) to use of these technologies to aid in interpersonal task completion. Out of the ICTs available today, the most popular is text-messaging, especially among a sizable percentage of the college population. Approximately 600 students at a small, private junior college in eastern North Carolina were invited to participate in this study with a target of 248 responses needed to comprise an adequate sample. A total of 259 usable surveys (n = 259) were received and analyzed.</p><p> Qualitative data collection instruments consisted of an open-ended questionnaire and other open-ended responses that were solicited throughout the data collection phase. Quantitative data collection instruments consisted of a 22&ndash;item Likert-scale survey and a forced-choice ordinal scale instrument that measured computer user self-efficacy (CUSE) and experience using technology (EUT). Situated in the context of academic help-seeking (AHS), vignettes were developed, validated and administered to offer AHS scenarios where a problem was presented and the participants were then asked to reveal which type of ICT he or she would utilize to seek academic help (AH) in that particular situation.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, School of Information Science, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 2703. Adviser: Susan C. Herring. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 14, 2008).

Thesis (M.S.C.I.T.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 03, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.