Sophie Cockcroft

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The use of Social Network Analysis to explore relationships between the Medical Informatics and Information Systems literature

Americas Conference on Information Systems (2010)

Sophie Cockcroft

Health informatics (HI) research has evolved over several decades from its roots in computer science (CS) and artificial intelligence in medicine (AIM). Information Systems (IS) evolved independently, but recently IS within health environments are being embraced as a new test bed for Information Systems theories. The purpose of this paper is to present an objective view of the level of cross reference between the IS and MI bodies of literature, and to either provide evidence of uptake of IS theories in HI or of outlets that would provide appropriate targets for such work due to their antecedents and influence. The extent of the cross fertilization between the two disciplines is still thought to be low. Using social network analysis (SNA) we present an exploratory study which identifies the bridges and cutpoints within a basket of 44 key journals and identify the impact of Information Systems research on the Health Informatics discipline. This work is informed by a number of recent studies using this approach.

Social Network Analysis

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Citations (2)

First experiences in implementing a spatial metadata repository

Sophie Cockcroft

Part of the GeoComputation '96 Special Issue 96/25; follow the related link to download the entire collection as a single document.

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Gaps between policy and practice in the protection of data privacy

The Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (2002)

Sophie Cockcroft

ABSTRACT A common casualty of poor information security is the privacy of the individual. Much has been written about formulating privacy policies, and there has been some work in identifying privacy abuses. This paper brings the two areas together by reviewing some of the key aspects of privacy policy. It presents a taxonomy of privacy abuses distilled from publicly available online reports issued during 2001. gaps between policy and practice are identified and some solutions put forward to fill those gaps. INTRODUCTION Poor information security can have a severe impact on an organisation. major risk in consumer to business e-commerce is that security concerns will result in a lack of consumer confidence resulting in a loss of business. Information security is defined by Parker (2001) as: The preservation of confidentiality and possession, integrity and validity, and availability and utility of information. With reference to the definition above, privacy is incorporated in the first two items; confidentiality and possession. A recent report suggested that only one in three businesses implement formal privacy policies (Computer Economics 2001). Even when policies are in place they are often not rigorously applied until a significant security breach forces management to focus on them (Fonseca 2000; Milberg, Smith et al. 2000). This study is confined to privacy abuses relating to computerised data assets of an organisation or an individual, and any channels through which this data is transmitted. Before any meaningful discussion of privacy abuses and their remedies can occur, it is necessary to acknowledge the complex backdrop against which such a discussion takes place. There are three dimensions to the space in which privacy policy and safeguards are developed; first, a plethora of regulatory approaches to assuring privacy exist worldwide. These approaches stem at least in part from the culture of the country in which they are developed. Second, new technologies are changing the landscape of privacy, but also the way organisations function, and third, organizational issues, including the structure of the organisation itself and the policies that evolve within it. This conceptual space is illustrated in Figure 1. paper is organised into four sections. First a review of the current research into the regulatory, technological and organisational policy aspects of privacy is given. purpose of this review is to develop an understanding of how privacy policy evolves within an organisation. In the second section a content analysis of a cross section of news stories is carried out. From this, a taxonomy of privacy abuses is distilled, these are compared to the results of existing studies. Third, using the taxonomy and guidelines for managing information security from section 1, gaps or representational deficiencies are identified which suggest where the weaknesses in current thinking on information privacy exist. Each of these abuses is discussed in turn. Finally some technical data management solutions are put forward. Laws, regulations and ethics Laws and regulations Balancing different privacy perspectives within the realm of increasingly connected global e-commerce presents a significant challenge to managers. Whilst privacy as an individual right is a very old concept, the information age has brought confusion about what is ethically right or wrong in the realm of privacy. Many privacy abuses do not break any law - it depends under which jurisdiction they occur. Even at the ethical level, opinions differ about what constitutes an abuse of privacy. Henderson (1999) gave the example of mailbox clutter or spam as something that could be seen as merely inconvenient rather than damaging to an individuals privacy. Eliminating spam was, however identified as one of the top five objectives for assuring privacy in a recent study (Dhillon and Moores 2001). …

Possession (linguistics)

Consumer privacy

Privacy software

Data Security

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Citations (44)

User defined spatial business rules: storage, management and implementation — a pipe network case study

Sophie Cockcroft

The application of business rules as a means of ensuring data quality is an accepted approach in information systems development. Rules, defined by the user, are stored and manipulated by a repository or data dictionary. The repository stores the system design, including rules which result from constraints in the þy u s e r s environment, and enforces these rules at runtime. The work presentedhere represents the application of this approach to spatial information system design using an integrated spatial software engineering tool (ISSET) with a repository at its core.

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Exploring the Impact of IS Theory on Health Informatics

Sophie Cockcroft

We report the results of a citation analysis of the Health Informatics literature. The study takes the health informatics literature as its starting point, looking inward at the IS literature to seek evidence for the impact of IS theories in healthcare environments. A review of 286 references from the Health Informatics discipline confirms findings of earlier studies that the technology acceptance model is the dominant theory in use with some adaptations emerging.

Citation analysis

10.1109/hicss.2015.585

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Can Semantic mapping be used to model information seeking behaviour in resource discovery systems

Sophie Cockcroft Hanna Stelmaszewska

Locating accurate information on academic topics is a challenge for today’s information seekers. Whilst specialist portals exist, users have a marked preference for finding their own information yet are rarely trained in formal information searching using library resources. Further such electronic resource discovery systems are often complex or highly complicated to use. Work is underway to produce a tool to support academic users in accessing relevant information via library sources. Any tool that seeks to assist students and researchers in finding the information they need must be developed in cognisance of their existing workflow. Thus we sought to identify the processes novice and expert users carry out to find information. Using observations with a think aloud protocol, and follow-up interviews we gathered qualitative data on usage and responses to information searching

Think aloud protocol

Seekers

Information resource

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Securing the commercial internet: Lessons learned in developing a postgraduate course in information security management

The Journal of Information and Systems in Education (2002)

Sophie Cockcroft

This paper describes the inception, planning and first delivery of a security course as part of a postgraduate ecommerce program. The course is reviewed in terms of existing literature on security courses, the common body of knowledge established for security professionals and the job market into which students will graduate. The course described in this paper is a core subject for the e-commerce program. This program was established in 1999 and the first batch of students graduated in 2001. The program is offered at both postgraduate and undergraduate level. The work described here relates to the postgraduate offering. Students on this program are graduates of diverse disciplines and do not have a common e-commerce or business background.

Course (navigation)

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Citations (7)

Gender and other social issues

Sophie Cockcroft Susan Cunningham

The problem of reducing cultural and gender biases in tertiary level software engineering education is a broad based one. The roots of these biases lie not only in primary and secondary level education, but also in society at large. In addition, the continuing prevalence of cultural and gender biases have far reaching implications for the software engineering workforce of the future. In the first workshop of the gender and other social issues discussion group, the question of how cultural or gender biases can be reduced in software engineering instruction was addressed. In order to focus the discussion, it was decided to concentrate on the issue of gender, and more specifically the recruitment and retention of female students. It is widely accepted that many gender issues in this field are applicable to ethnicity as well. The group participants came from a variety of teaching backgrounds. Contact with women and students from indigenous cultures was on a variety of levels. At the University of Waikato the interest of Maori students in computer science had been encouraged in the following ways: Maori language tutorials and lab manual for 1st year applications course; projects with a Maori focus; and staff research in Maori applications described in courses where appropriate.< >

10.1109/sedc.1994.475356

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Citations (1)

Decision-making performance in big data era: the role of actual Business Intelligence systems use and affecting external constraints

European Conference on Information Systems (2018)

Thi Van Hau Trieu Sophie Cockcroft Arif Perdana

Business Intelligence (BI) has received wide recognition in the business world as a tool to address ‘big’ data-related problems, to help managers understand their businesses and to assist them in making effective decisions. To date, however, there have been few studies which have clearly articulated a theoretically grounded model that explains how the use of BI systems provides benefits to organisations, or explains what factors influence the actual use of BI systems. To fully achieve greater decision-making performance and effective use of BI, we contend that BI systems integration with a systems user’s work routine (dependence on the systems) is essential. Following this argument, we examine the effects of system dependent use along with effective use (infusion) on individual’s decision-making performance with BI. Additionally, we pro-pose that a fact-based decision-making culture, and data quality of source systems are constraints factors that impact on BI system dependence and infusion. We adopt a quantitative method approach. Specifically, we will conduct a two-wave cross-sectional survey targeting 400 North American BI users who describe themselves as both using a BI system and making decision using data from the system. We expect to make an important theoretical contribution to BI literature by providing a model that explains the dimensions of actual BI system use, and makes a practical contribution by providing insights into how organisational external constraints facilitate BI dependence and infusion in the pursuit of BI-enabled performance gain.

Business Intelligence

Argument (complex analysis)

Business analytics

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Citations (3)

Attitudes towards information privacy

Sophie Cockcroft Peter Clutterbuck

This paper presents the results of a cross-cultural study into attitudes towards information privacy. Based on an instrument developed and validated by Smith, Milburg and Burke (Smith et al., 1996), this study sets out to measure individual concerns regarding organisational use of information along four dimensions: collection, errors, unauthorised secondary use, and improper access. The survey was completed by 52 undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in an e-commerce security subject at the University of Queensland. Comparisons are drawn between the results of this study and an identical one carried out at the University of North Alabama. Whilst it is too early to draw conclusions about the impact of these attitudes on the success of e-commerce in general, the results should be of interest to those within universities seeking to expand the use of networking technologies for handling sensitive information such as enrolment and fee processing.

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Citations (18)