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PART
1 Information Systems in Perspective
CHAPTER
4: SELF-ASSESSMENT TEST ANSWERS
(1) communications media (2) c. (3) wireless communications
(4) b. (5) ARPANET (6) a. (7) a. (8) Internet Service Provider
(ISP) (9) False (10) d. (11) d. (12) c. (13) search engine (14)
telepresence (15) extranet (16) True
REVIEW
QUESTIONS
1. What is meant by broadband communications?
2. Describe the elements and steps involved in the
telecommunications
process.
3. What is a telecommunications protocol?
4. What are the names of the three primary frequency ranges
used in wireless communications?
5. What is VPN? How do organizations use this technology?
6. What is the difference between near field communication
and ultra
wideband?
7. What is the difference between Wi-Fi and WiMAX communications?
8. What roles do the bridge, router, gateway, and switch play
in a network?
9. Distinguish between a PAN, LAN, MAN, and WAN.
10. What is TCP/IP? How does it work?
11. Explain the naming conventions used to identify Internet
host computers.
12. What is a Web browser? Provide four examples.
13. What is cloud computing?
14. Briefly describe three ways to connect to the Internet. What
are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
15. What is an Internet service provider? What services do they
provide?
16. How do Web application frameworks assist Web developers?
17. What is a podcast?
18. What is content streaming?
19. What is instant messaging?
20. What is the Web? Is it another network like the Internet
or a service that runs on the Internet?
21. What is a URL and how is it used?
22. What is an intranet? Provide three examples of the use of
an intranet.
23. What is an extranet? How is it different from an intranet?
DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS
1. Why is an organization that employs centralized processing
likely to have a different management decision-making
philosophy than an organization that employs distributed
processing?
2. Briefly discuss the evolution of wireless 3G and 4G
communications.
3. Identify the fundamental differences between a file server
system and a client/server system.
4. What are the pros and cons of distributed processing versus
centralized processing for a large retail chain?
5. Social networks are being widely used today. Describe how
this technology could be used in a business setting. Are
there any drawbacks or limitations to using social networks
in a business setting?
6. Why is it important to have an organization that manages
IP addresses and domain names?
7. What are the benefits and risks involved in using cloud
computing?
8. Describe how a company could use a blog and podcasting.
9. Briefly describe how the Internet phone service operates.
Discuss the potential impact that this service could have on
traditional telephone services and carriers.
10. Why is XML an important technology?
11. How do HTML, CSS, and XML work together to create
a Web page?
12. What are the defining characteristics of a Web 2.0 site?
13. Name four forms of Internet communication describing
the benefits and drawbacks of each.
14. What social concerns surround geolocation technologies?
15. One of the key issues associated with the development of
a Web site is getting people to visit it. If you were developing
a Web site, how would you inform others about it
and make it interesting enough that they would return and
tell others about it?
16. Downloading music, radio, and video programs from the
Internet is easier than in the past, but some companies are
still worried that people will illegally obtain copies of this
programming without paying the artists and producers
royalties. If you were an artist or producer, what would you
do?
17. How could you use the Internet if you were a traveling
salesperson?
18. Briefly summarize the differences in how the Internet, a
company intranet, and an extranet are accessed and used.
PROBLEM-SOLVING
EXERCISES
1. As the CIO of a hospital, you are convinced that installing
a wireless network and providing portable computers to
nurses and doctors is a necessary step to reduce costs and
improve patient care. Use PowerPoint or similar software
to make a convincing presentation to management for
adopting such a program. Your presentation must identify
benefits and potential issues that must be overcome to make
such a program a success.
2. Think of a business that you might like to establish. Use a
word processor to define the business in terms of what
product(s) or service(s) it provides, where it is located, and
its name. Go to www.godaddy.com
and find an appropriate
domain
name for your business that is not yet taken. Shop
around online for the best deal on Web site hosting. Write
a paragraph about your experience finding a name, and why
you chose the name that you did.
3. You have been hired to research the use of a blog for a
company. Develop a brief report on the advantages and
disadvantages of using a blog to advertise corporate products
and services. Using a graphics program, prepare a slide
show to help you make a verbal presentation.
TEAM
ACTIVITIES
1. Form a team to identify the public locations (such as an
airport, public library, or café) in your area where wireless
LAN connections are available. Visit at least two locations
and write a brief paragraph discussing your experience at
each location trying to connect to the Internet.
2. With your teammates, identify a company that is making
effective use of Web 2.0 technologies on its Web site. Write
a review of the site and why you believe it is effective?
3. Use Flickr.com to have a photo contest. Each group member
should post four favorite photos that they personally
took. Share account information between group members
and use photo comment boxes to vote on your favorite
photos. The photo with the most favorable comments wins.
WEB
EXERCISES
1. Do research on the Web to identify the latest 4G communications
developments. In your opinion, which carrier’s
4G network (AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobil, or Verizon)
is the most widely deployed? Write a short report on what
you found.
2. Research some of the potential disadvantages of using the
Internet, such as privacy, fraud, or unauthorized Web sites.
Write a brief report on what you found.
3. Set up an account on www.twitter.com
and invite a few
friends to join. Use Twitter to send messages to your friends
on their cell phones, keeping everyone posted on what you
are doing throughout the day. Write a review of the service
to submit to your instructor.
CAREER
EXERCISES
1. Consider a future job position with which you are familiar
through work experience, coursework, or a study of industry
performance. How might you use some of the telecommunications
and network applications described in this
chapter in this job?
2. Do research to assess potential career opportunities in the
telecommunications or networking industry. Consider
resources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics list of fastest
growing positions, Network
World, and Computerworld.
Are there particular positions within these industries that
offer good opportunities? What sort of background and
education is required for candidates for these positions? You
might be asked to summarize your findings for your class
in a
written or oral report.
CASE
STUDIES
Case One
Adidas Turns to Cellular Network for Inventory Data
The
Adidas Group is a global leader in the sporting goods
industry,
offering a large portfolio of products in virtually every
country
in the world. Adidas Group brands include Adidas,
Reebok,
and TaylorMade – Adidas Golf. The Adidas Group
headquarters
is in Herzogenaurach, Germany, with 170
subsidiaries
located around the world.
Adidas
America is the U.S. division of the Adidas Group,
employing
around 2,000 people at its offices and distribution
centers
across the country. Recently, Adidas America
discovered
an inexpensive way to use telecommunications
technologies
to help their salesforce become more
productive.
Adidas
sales representatives spend a lot of time traveling,
paying
visits to customers that range from small private
sporting
shops to large franchises. One major inconvenience
for
the salesforce and the customers it calls on lies in
checking
current inventory levels for order placement. For
years,
a salesperson was required to phone Adidas customer
service
representatives (CSRs) to find out which products
were
in stock and which were sold out. Because Adidas
inventory
fluctuates frequently, this important information is
needed
to keep customers from being frustrated by backordered
products.
Having to phone for the information was
frustrating
for sales representatives as well as customers
who
would have to wait while the salesperson talked on the
phone.
It also over-burdened the CSRs, whose main job
wasn’t
inventory reporting but assisting customers.
The
Adidas America information systems group thought
they
had a solution. They set up a VPN to enable customer
representatives
to securely connect to the corporate data
from
their laptops and access the inventory data directly.
However,
what looks good on paper doesn’t always work well
when
implemented. Customer service employees were not
comfortable
visiting customers with their laptop computers,
because
they had to make the customer wait while they
booted
up and looked up information. Instead, they would
typically
take the customer’s order, then check inventory
later,
getting back to the customer if there were product
shortages.
This certainly wasn’t the intended workflow, and
the
solution ended up being as bad as the original problem.
Adidas
Sales Force Automation Manager, Tim
Oligmueller,
was struck by a solution while attending a
telecommunications
trade show. He realized that the
BlackBerry
smartphones the salesforce used could do much
more
than deliver e-mail and make phone calls. He saw
demonstrations
of BlackBerry phones that ran sophisticated
business
information systems. Tim realized that the solution
was in
the salespeople’s pockets all along. All that was
required
was for Adidas to invest in BlackBerry’s Mobile Data
System
and Enterprise Server and for the information system
group
to develop their own Sales Force and CRM applications.
Within
two weeks and with an investment of less than
$10,000,
Tim and his team had deployed a mobile information
system
that now allows salespeople to quickly and effortlessly
access
inventory data without inconveniencing customers or
CSRs.
Now salespeople can provide customers with the
information
they need to make quicker purchasing decisions
on the
spot. Salespeople and CSRs spend less time on the
phone
with each other, freeing both sides to be more
productive.
Customers are impressed with the improved
service
and technological innovativeness of the company.
Salespeople
can e-mail catalogues and order information to
the
customer as they converse. The new system has
increased
customers’ confidence in doing business with
Adidas.
Adidas
is looking to many other wireless applications that
can
assist the salesforce and others in the organization. As
with
all of the examples provided in this chapter,
telecommunications
technologies provide Adidas with rapid
access
to information when and where it is needed,
empowering
the company to maximize its productivity and
potential
and gain a competitive advantage.
Discussion
Questions
1.
Describe the problem that plagued Adidas’ salesforce that
was
addressed through a telecommunications solution.
2. Why
do you think the handheld solution was better than
the
laptop computer solution?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1.
What other types of information, besides inventory, might
salespeople
like to have access to over their BlackBerry
phones?
2.
What security concerns might arise over mobile access to
private
corporate information?
SOURCES: BlackBerry Staff, “Adidas
America Equips Sales Team with Powerful
Wireless
Sales Tool,” BlackBerry Case Study, www.blackberry.com/
products/pdfs/Adidas_LOB_CS_Final.pdf,
accessed February 20, 2010; About
Adidas
Web page, www.adidas.com/us/shared/aboutadidas.asp, accessed
February
20, 2010; Schultz, Beth, “Realizing Rapid ROI Through Mobility,”
Computerworld
White Paper, www.slideshare.net/PingElizabeth/rapid-roirealizing-
rapid-roi-through-mobility,
accessed February 20, 2010.
Case Two
Barriers to Enterprise 2.0
Web
2.0 and social media such as Facebook, Wikipedia, and
YouTube
have transformed life for many people, providing
new
ways to connect with friends and share information and
media. While social Web
2.0 sites have become popular with
the
general public, businesses have had a difficult time
deciding
how these technologies can benefit their employees.
The
use of Web 2.0 technologies and social media in the
enterprise
has been dubbed Enterprise 2.0. In most instances,
Enterprise
2.0 is an extension of a corporate intranet; it is
sealed
off for access to employees only. VPN technology may
be
used to allow employee access from any Internetconnected
device
using a corporate login.
Some
companies have been extremely successful with the
implementation
of Enterprise 2.0. Cisco, one of the world’s
largest
technology companies, has implemented Enterprise
2.0
for its 65,000 employees. Cisco is the global leader in the
design,
manufacturing, and sales of networking and
communications
technologies and services. Cisco created a
Facebook-like
application for its employees to assist in
finding
subject matter experts within the organization. Like
Facebook
users, Cisco employees create profiles within the
system
that include their professional areas of expertise.
When
other employees need assistance with a problem, a
quick
search of the system will lead them to an expert within
the
organization.
Cisco
also provides a video wiki used for training on
different
products and technologies and a Wikipedia-like
application
for sharing knowledge across the Enterprise. A
number
of mash-up applications have been developed to draw
information
from the main Enterprise 2.0 applications to
address
specific needs. For example, one mash-up can be
used
to quickly contact technical support staff.
Initially
Cisco experienced some cultural pushback in the
planning
stage of its Enterprise 2.0 applications. A highly
skeptical
group of engineers thought that the company was
wasting
resources on needless technologies. Ultimately, the
technologies
have created real improvements for Cisco’s
business
models.
Cisco
is in a vast minority of companies that have
successfully
implemented Enterprise 2.0; however, it is likely
that
many companies will be following Cisco’s lead.
Traditional
business culture often acts as a barrier to the
adoption
of Web 2.0 technologies. There is often a prevailing
notion
that posting to social networks is wasting time rather
than
being productive, and doesn’t constitute “real work.” In
reality,
people are most productive when interacting with
networks
of colleagues.
Another
barrier to Enterprise 2.0 is a concern that social
networks
act as gateways to chaos, generating an
unmanageable
amount of mostly worthless data. The
response
to this argument is to provide tools that allow users
to
filter out the junk to get an optimal signal-to-noise ratio.
Those
that have been successful with Enterprise 2.0 find that
getting
users to generate as much noise and activity as
possible
creates the most valuable information to mine.
Yet
another barrier to implementing Enterprise 2.0 is fear
that
the social network will be used as a “digital soapbox for
disgruntled
employees.” This issue, as with the others, can be
handled
with proper management of the system and
employees.
If employees have grounds for complaining,
management
can more easily address those issues through
the
open forum of a social network.
In
general, Enterprise 2.0 has been slow to take off due to
an
inability to easily show a return on investment. Social
networks
within an enterprise provide a soft return that is
sometimes
difficult to quantify. Successful Enterprise 2.0
implementations
typically have two things in common: they
are
built to support key business processes, and they are not
expected
to show a ROI.
Discussion
Questions
1.
What Web 2.0 applications can provide benefits to
employees
in a business environment?
2.
What barriers exist in some businesses that hamper the
adoption
of Enterprise 2.0?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1. How
might an information system administrator make a
case
for the implementation of Enterprise 2.0 when no ROI
can be
easily demonstrated?
2. In
a large global enterprise, how might Enterprise 2.0
applications
be organized so as to provide local benefits
as
well as global benefits?
SOURCES: Bennett, Elizabeth, “Web 2.0 in
the Enterprise 2.0,” CIO Insight, July
13,
2009; Gardner, W. David, “Enterprise 2.0: How Cloud Computing Is Challenging
Questions for Web Case
See
the Web site for this book to read about the Altitude
Online
case for this chapter. Following are questions
concerning
this Web case.
Altitude Online: Telecommunications and Networks
Discussion
Questions
1.
What telecommunications equipment is needed to fulfill
Altitude
Online’s vision?
2. Why
is it necessary to lease a line from a
telecommunication
company?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1.
What types of services will be provided over Altitude
Online’s
network?
2.
What considerations should Jon and his team take into
account as they select
telecommunications equipment?
Altitude Online: The Internet, Web, Intranets, and
Extranets
Discussion
Questions
1.
What impact will the new ERP system have on Altitude
Online’s
public-facing Web site? How will it affect its
intranet?
2.
What types of applications will be available from the
employee
dashboard?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1.
Altitude Online employees have various needs, depending
on
their position within the enterprise. How might the
dashboard
and intranet provide custom support for
individual
employee needs?
2.
What Web 2.0 applications should Altitude Online consider
for
its dashboard? Remember that the applications must
be
available only on the secure intranet.
PART 3 Business
InformatioN Systems
Chapter 5 Electronic and
Mobile Commerce and Enterprise Systems
Chapter 6 Information and
Decision Support Systems
Chapter 7 Knowledge
Management and Specialized Information Systems
CHAPTER
7: SELF-ASSESSMENT TEST
Knowledge management allows organizations to
share
knowledge and experience among their managers
and
employees.
1. __________________ knowledge is objective and can be
measured and documented in reports, papers, and rules.
2. What type of person creates, uses, and disseminates
knowledge?
a. knowledge worker
b. information worker
c. domain expert
d. knowledge engineer
3. A community of practice (COP) is a group of people or
community dedicated to a common discipline or practice,
such as open-source software, auditing, medicine, engineering,
and other areas. True or False?
Artificial intelligence systems form a broad
and diverse set of
systems that can replicate human decision
making for certain
types of well-defined problems.
4. The Turing Test attempts to determine whether the
responses from a computer with intelligent behavior are
indistinguishable from responses from a human. True or
False?
5. _______________ are rules of thumb arising from experience
or even guesses.
6. What is not an important attribute for artificial intelligence?
a. the ability to use sensors
b. the ability to learn from experience
c. the ability to be creative
d. the ability to make complex calculations
7. _______________ involves mechanical or computer
devices that can paint cars, make precision welds, and perform
other tasks that require a high degree of precision or
are tedious or hazardous for human beings.
8. What branch of artificial intelligence involves a computer
understanding and reacting to statements in English or
another language?
a. expert systems
b. neural networks
c. natural language processing
d. vision systems
9. A(n) _______________ is a combination of software and
hardware that allows the computer to change how it functions
or reacts to situations based on feedback it receives.
Expert systems can enable a novice to perform
at the level of
an expert but must be developed and maintained
very
carefully.
10. What is a disadvantage of an expert system?
a. the inability to solve complex problems
b. the inability to deal with uncertainty
c. limitations to relatively narrow problems
d. the inability to draw conclusions from complex
relationships
11. A(n) __________________ is a collection of software
packages and tools used to develop expert systems that can
be implemented on most popular PC platforms to reduce
development time and costs.
12. A heuristic consists of a collection of software and tools
used to develop an expert system to reduce development
time and costs. True or False?
13. What stores all relevant information, data, rules, cases, and
relationships used by the expert system?
a. the knowledge base
b. the data interface
c. the database
d. the acquisition facility
14. A disadvantage of an expert system is the inability to provide
expertise needed at a number of locations at the same
time or in a hostile environment that is dangerous to
human health. True or False?
15. What allows a user or decision maker to understand how
the expert system arrived at a certain conclusion or result?
a. the domain expert
b. the inference engine
c. the knowledge base
d. the explanation facility
16. An important part of an expert system is the
_______________, which allows a user or decision maker
to understand how the expert system arrived at certain
conclusions or results.
17. In an expert system, the domain expert is the individual or
group who has the expertise or knowledge one is trying to
capture in the expert system. True or False?
Multimedia and virtual reality systems can
reshape the interface
between people and information technology by
offering
new ways to communicate information, visualize
processes,
and express ideas creatively.
18. _____________________ can be used to create stunning
brochures, presentations, reports, and documents.
19. What type of virtual reality is used to make human beings
feel as though they are in a three-dimensional setting, such
as a building, an archaeological excavation site, the human
anatomy, a sculpture, or a crime scene reconstruction?
a. cloud
b. relative
c. immersive
d. visual
Specialized systems can help organizations and
individuals
achieve their goals.
20. _______________________ involves the use of information
systems to develop competitive strategies for people,
organizations, or even countries.
CHAPTER
7: SELF-ASSESSMENT TEST ANSWERS
(1) Explicit (2) a (3) True (4) True (5) Heuristics (6) d (7)
Robotics (8) c (9) learning system (10) c (11) expert system
shell (12) False (13) a (14) False (15) d (16) explanation
facility
(17) True (18) multimedia (19) c (20) Game theory
REVIEW
QUESTIONS
1. What is a knowledge
management system?
2. What is a community
of practice?
3. What is a chief
knowledge officer? What are his or her
duties?
4. What is a vision system? Discuss two applications of such
a system.
5. What is natural language processing? What are the three
levels of voice recognition?
6. Describe three examples of the use of robotics. How can a
microrobot be used?
7. What is a learning system? Give a practical example of such
a system.
8. What is a neural network? Describe two applications of
neural networks.
9. Under what conditions is the development of an expert
system likely to be worth the effort?
10. Identify the basic components of an expert system and
describe the role of each.
11. Describe several business uses of multimedia.
12. What is virtual reality? Give three examples of its use.
13. Expert systems can be built based on rules or cases. What
is the difference between the two?
14. Describe the roles of the domain expert, the knowledge
engineer, and the knowledge user in expert systems.
15. What is informatics? Give three examples.
16. Describe game theory and its use.
17. Identify three special interface devices developed for use
with virtual reality systems.
18. Identify and briefly describe three specific virtual reality
applications.
19. What is informatics? How is it used?
20. Give three examples of other specialized systems.
DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS
1. What are the requirements for a computer to exhibit
human-level intelligence? How long will it be before we
have the technology to design such computers? Do you
think we should push to accelerate such a development?
Why or why not?
2. You work for an insurance company as an entry-level manager.
The company contains both explicit and tacit knowledge.
Describe the types of explicit and tacit knowledge
that might exist in your insurance company. How would
you capture each type of knowledge?
3. Describe the duties of a chief knowledge officer.
4. What are some of the tasks at which robots excel? Which
human tasks are difficult for robots to master? What fields
of AI are required to develop a truly perceptive robot?
5. Describe how natural language processing could be used in
a university setting.
6. Discuss how learning systems can be used in a military war
simulation to train future officers and field commanders.
7. You have been hired to develop an expert system for a
university
career placement center. Develop five rules a student
could use in selecting a career.
8. What is the relationship between a database and a knowledge
base?
9. Imagine that you are developing the rules for an expert
system to select the strongest candidates for a medical
school. What rules or heuristics would you include?
10. Describe how game theory can be used in a business setting.
11. Describe how a university might use multimedia.
12. What application of virtual reality has the most potential
to generate increased profits in the future?
13. Describe a situation for which RFID could be used in a
business setting.
PROBLEM-SOLVING
EXERCISES
1. You are a senior vice president of a company that manufactures
kitchen appliances. You are considering using
robots to replace up to ten of your skilled workers on the
factory floor. Using a spreadsheet, analyze the costs of
acquiring several robots to paint and assemble some of your
products versus the cost savings in labor. How many years
would it take to pay for the robots from the savings in fewer
employees? Assume that the skilled workers make $20 per
hour, including benefits.
2. Assume that you have just won a lottery worth $100,000.
You have decided to invest half the amount in the stock
market. Develop a simple expert system to pick ten stocks
to consider. Using your word-processing program, create
seven or more rules that could be used in such an expert
system. Create five cases and use the rules you developed to
determine the best stocks to pick.
3. Use a graphics program, such as PowerPoint, to develop a
brochure for a small restaurant. Contrast your brochure to
one that could have been developed using a multimedia
application. Write a report using a word-processing application
on the advantages of a multimedia application compared
to a graphics program.
TEAM
ACTIVITIES
1. Do research with your team to identify KMSs in three different
businesses or nonprofit organizations. Describe the
types of tacit and explicit knowledge that would be needed
by each organization or business.
2. Have your team develop a game between two contestants
in which the winning contestant receives fake money. At
random, pick two team members to play the game against
each other. Have your other team members write a report
on the winning strategy and how the game could be
improved.
3. Have your team members explore the use of a specialpurpose
system in an industry of your choice. Describe
the advantages and disadvantages of this special-purpose
system.
WEB
EXERCISES
1. Use the Internet to find information about the use of
multimedia
in a business setting. Describe what you found.
2. This chapter discussed several examples of expert systems.
Search the Internet for two examples of the use of expert
systems. Which one has the greatest potential to increase
profits for a medium-sized firm? Explain your choice.
3. Use the Internet to get information about the application
of game theory in business or the military. Write a report
about what you found.
CAREER
EXERCISES
1. Describe how a COP can be used to help advance your
career.
2. Describe the roles and salaries of two people involved in
multimedia applications, such as movie production, sound
production, or another multimedia application.
CASE
STUDIES
Case One
MITRE Taps the Brain Trust of Top U.S. Experts
MITRE
Corporation is responsible for managing the Research
and
Development (R&D) Centers for the U.S. Department of
Defense,
the Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal
Revenue
Service, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the
Department
of Homeland Security. MITRE also researches
new
technologies that may assist in solving its clients’
problems.
More
than 7,000 scientists, engineers, and support
specialists
work in labs managed by MITRE, and most have
master’s
or doctoral degrees. Staff members are engaged in
hundreds
of different projects across the company. Each staff
member
possesses valuable technical, operational, and
domain
knowledge that MITRE wants to tap to its full value
and
potential. When knowledge management (KM) systems
came
on the scene in the mid-1990s, MITRE immediately saw
the
benefit for its researchers and has been tinkering with KM
ever
since.
With
so many research specialists engaged across its
labs,
the value of tapping each other’s knowledge and
collaborating
on projects is immense. However, it’s a
challenge
to interact efficiently with low overhead while
researchers
are simultaneously working on hundreds of
separate
projects. For knowledge management, MITRE takes
a
gradual learn-while-you-go approach.
MITRE’s
first step in providing knowledge management
was to
simply track its research staff. A people locator was
developed
as part of the larger MITRE Information
Infrastructure
(MII). The people locator works like an
electronic
phone book, identifying which employees worked
on
which assignments over time. The system drew
information
from the existing project management systems
and
human resource systems. Using the people locator, staff
could
find colleagues with useful knowledge based on
previous
work or the sponsoring organization.
As
MITRE researchers used the people finder, developers
refined
the system based on user feedback. Over time, they
introduced
additional capabilities. For example, they added an
Expertise
Finder to help find researchers with expertise in
special
areas. MITRE also included a library of best practices
for
systems engineering and project management in the
system.
MITRE experimented with technology exchange
meetings
and an annual Innovation Exchange, which allowed
researchers
to share their successes with colleagues. When
they
found new technologies and ideas useful, developers
added
them to the KM system. More recently, MITRE has
experimented
with Web 2.0 technologies similar to Facebook
and
Wikipedia for its KM system.
MITRE’s
approach to KM has been evolutionary. New
ideas
are piloted, and those proven valuable and viable are
kept
in the system. The success of MITRE’s KM system is in
its
unique approach to KM as a journey with continuous
improvements.
Discussion
Questions
1. Why
is KM extremely valuable in areas of research and
development?
2. How
do the different components of MITRE’s KM system
assist
in spreading knowledge throughout its labs and in
storing
knowledge for use in the future?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1.
What unique challenges do research and development
labs
provide for KM implementation?
2.
What is the benefit of MITRE’s evolutionary approach to
KM?
SOURCES: Swanborg, Rick, “Mitre’s Knowledge
Management Journey,” CIO,
February
27, 2009, www.cio.com; “About MITRE,” MITRE Web site,
www.mitre.org/about,
accessed January 31, 2010.
Case Two
JEA Uses AI to Optimize Water Delivery
JEA
supplies much of the Jacksonville, Florida area with
electricity,
water, and sewer services. The JEA water system
uses
150 artesian wells to tap the Florida Aquifer, distributing
water
to 44 water treatment plants and then down 3,480 miles
of
underground water pipes to businesses and residences.
Making
sure that its wells are producing enough water to
meet
customer demand is a tricky and sometimes wasteful
process.
Reservoirs accommodate anticipated demand, often
overcompensating
to make sure they have enough water to
accommodate
an unusually high demand. When too much
water
is kept on hand, the quality of the water decreases (due
to
salt intrusion), and the health of the well decreases (due to
inactivity).
Recently,
JEA decided to put artificial intelligence to work
assisting
its wells in pumping just enough water to meet
customer
demand. It purchased AI-based software from
Gensym
and created a neural network to predict hourly
consumption
of water over a given time frame. The neural
network
is trained using previous water-usage data. The
consumption
forecasts created by the neural net are fed into
an
expert system. The expert system allocates the total
anticipated
demand to the 44 water treatment plants and
artesian
well pumps.
The
schedule for hourly water production is fed into
automated
systems in the production and treatment plant to
control
production and delivery of the water. The Gensym
software
allows JEA engineers to define inputs (including
reservoir
sensors and meter-reading) and outputs (such as
controls
on equipment) to optimize the production and flow of
water
through the JEA system.
It
took JEA six months to develop and implement the
optimized
expert system and automation. The system has
resulted
in better use of reservoir capacity by filling reservoirs
only
to levels required with each hour of operation. The needsbased
production
has minimized costs while maximizing
water
quality. Salt intrusion has been reduced, and the health
of the
wells is increasing. As JEA rolls out its new system to
all of
its wells and treatment plants, it will enjoy considerable
benefits
and savings, including lower energy costs and
reduced
equipment failures from smarter pumping.
Discussion
Questions
1.
What problem did JEA face that required the use of an
expert
system and automation?
2.
What benefits were provided by JEA’s new automated
system?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1.
What are the components of JEA’s new system, and what
tasks
does each component accomplish?
2.
What other industries might benefit from a Gensym
optimization
and automation system like JEA’s? Why?
SOURCES: Gensym Staff, “Success Story:
JEA,” Gensym Web site,
www.gensym.com,
accessed January 31, 2010; “About JEA,” JEA Web site,
www.jea.com/about,
accessed January 31, 2010.
Questions for Web Case
See
the Web site for this book to read about the Altitude Online
case
for this chapter. Following are questions concerning this
Web
case.
Altitude Online: Knowledge Management and Other
Considerations
Discussion
Questions
1. Why
do you think it is a good idea for Altitude Online to
maintain
records of all advertising projects?
2. How
can social networks and blogs serve as knowledge
management
systems?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1.
What challenges lie in filling a wiki with information
provided
by employees?
2.
What other tools could Altitude Online use to capture
employee
knowledge, build community, and reward
productive
employees?
PART 04 Systems Development and Social Issues
Chapter 8 Systems Development
CHAPTER
8: SELF-ASSESSMENT TEST
Effective systems development requires a team
effort of stakeholders,
users, managers, systems development
specialists,
and various support personnel, and it starts
with careful planning.
1. __________________ is the activity of creating or modifying
existing business systems. It refers to all aspects of
the process—from identifying problems to be solved or
opportunities to be exploited to the implementation and
refinement of the chosen solution.
2. Which of the following individuals ultimately benefit from
a systems development project?
a. Computer programmers
b. Systems analysts
c. Stakeholders
d. Senior-level managers
3. Like a contractor constructing a new building or renovating
an existing one, chief information officer (CIO) takes the
plans from the systems analyst and builds or modifies the
necessary software. True or False?
Systems development often uses different
approaches and
tools such as traditional development,
prototyping, rapid
application development, end-user development,
computeraided
software engineering, and object-oriented
development
to select, implement, and monitor projects.
4. Agile development allows systems to change as they are
being developed. True or False?
5. ____________________ takes an iterative approach to
the systems development process. During each iteration,
requirements and alternative solutions to the problem are
identified and analyzed, new solutions are designed, and a
portion of the system is implemented.
Systems development starts with investigation
and analysis of
existing systems.
6. Feasibility analysis is typically done during which systems
development stage?
a. Investigation
b. Analysis
c. Design
d. Implementation
7. Rapid application development (RAD) employs tools,
techniques, and methodologies designed to speed application
development. True or False?
Designing new systems or modifying existing
ones should
always be aimed at helping an organization
achieve its goals.
8. Scenarios and sequence diagrams are used with
________________.
a. object-oriented design
b. point evaluation
c. incremental design
d. nominal evaluation
9. _________________ involves systems development
efforts that slash power consumption and require less physical
space.
10. The design report is the final result of system design that
technical and detailed descriptions of the new system. True
or False?
The primary emphasis of systems implementation
is to make
sure that the right information is delivered to
the right person
in the right format at the right time.
11. Software as a Service (SaaS) allows an organization to
subscribe
to Web-based applications and pay for the software
and services actually used. True or False?
12. The phase-in approach to conversion involves running
both the old system and the newsystem for a three months
or longer. True or False?
Maintenance and review add to the useful life
of a system but
can consume large amounts of resources, so they
benefit from
the same rigorous methods and project
management techniques
applied to systems development.
13. Reviewing and monitoring the number of errors encountered,
the amount of memory required, the amount of
processing or CPU time needed, and other problems
should be closely observed. This is called
a. Object review
b. Structured review
c. systems performance measurement
d. Critical factors measurement
14. Monitoring a system after it has been implemented to make
it more useful in achieving user and organizational goals is
called ______________________.
CHAPTER
8: SELF-ASSESSMENT TEST ANSWERS
(1) Systems development, (2) c (3) False (4) True (5) Prototyping
(6) a (7) True (8) a (9) environmental design (10) True
(11) True (12) False (13) c (14) systems maintenance
REVIEW
QUESTIONS
1. What is an information system stakeholder?
2. What is the goal of information systems planning? What
steps are involved in IS planning?
3. What are the steps of the traditional systems development
life cycle?
4. What is the difference between systems investigation and
systems analysis? Why is it important to identify and
remove errors early in the systems development life cycle?
5. What is end-user systems development? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of end-user systems development?
6. List the different types of feasibility.
7. What is the result or outcome of systems analysis? What
happens next?
8. How does the JAD technique support the RAD systems
development life cycle?
9. What is prototyping?
10. What are the steps of object-oriented systems development?
11. What is an RFP? What is typically included in one? How
is it used?
12. What is systems operation?
13. What activities go on during the user preparation phase of
systems implementation?
14. Give three examples of a computer system vendor.
15. What are the financial options of acquiring hardware?
16. How can SaaS be used in software acquisition?
17. What are some of the reasons for program maintenance?
18. Describe how you back up the files you use at school.
DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS
1. Why is it important for business managers to have a basic
understanding of the systems development process?
2. Briefly describe the role of a system user in the systems
investigation and systems analysis stages of a project.
3. You have decided to become an IS entrepreneur and
develop applications for the iPhone and other PDAs.
Describe what applications you would develop and how
you would do it.
4. Imagine that your firm has never developed an information
systems plan. What sort of issues between the business
functions and IS organization might exist?
5. You have been hired by your university to find an outsourcing
company to perform the universities payroll function.
What are your recommendations? Describe the
advantages and disadvantages of the outsourcing approach
for this application.
6. Briefly describe when you would use the object-oriented
approach to systems development instead of the traditional
systems development life cycle.
7. How important are communications skills to IS personnel?
Consider this statement: “IS personnel need a combination
of skills—one-third technical skills, one-third business
skills, and one-third communications skills.” Do you think
this is true? How would this affect the training of IS personnel?
8. You have been hired to perform systems investigation for
a French restaurant owner in a large metropolitan area. She
is thinking of opening a new restaurant with a state-of-theart
computer system that would allow customers to place
orders on the Internet or at Kiosks at restaurant tables.
Describe how you would determine the technical, economic,
legal, operational, and schedule feasibility for the
restaurant and its new computer system.
9. Identify some of the advantages and disadvantages of purchasing
a database package versus the DaaS approach.
10. You have been hired to design a computer system for a
small business. Describe how you could use environmental
design to reduce energy usage and the computer’s impact
on the environment.
11. Assume that you want to start a new video-rental business
for students at your college or university. Go through logical
design for a new information system to help you keep
track of the videos in your inventory.
12. Identify some of the advantages and disadvantages of
purchasing
versus leasing hardware.
13. Identify some of the advantages and disadvantages of
purchasing
versus developing software.
14. Identify the various forms of testing used. Why are there
so many different types of tests?
15. You have been hired to purchase a new billing and accounting
system for a medium-sized business. Describe how you
would start up the new system and place it into operation.
16. How would you go about evaluating a software vendor?
17. Assume that you have a personal computer that is several
years old. Describe the steps you would use to perform a
systems review to determine whether you should acquire a
new PC.
18. Describe how you would select the best admissions software
for your college or university. What features would
be most important for school administrators? What features
would be most important for students?
PROBLEM-SOLVING
EXERCISES
1. You are developing a new information system for The Fitness
Center, a company that has five fitness centers in your
metropolitan area, with about 650 members and 30
employees in each location. This system will be used by
both members and fitness consultants to track participation
in various fitness activities, such as free weights, volleyball,
swimming, stair climbers, and aerobic and yoga classes.
One of the performance objectives of the system is that it
must help members plan a fitness program to meet their
particular needs. The primary purpose of this system, as
envisioned by the director of marketing, is to assist The
Fitness Center in obtaining a competitive advantage over
other fitness clubs. Use a graphics program to develop a
flowchart or a grid chart to show the major components of
your information system and how the components are tied
together.
2. For a business of your choice, use a graphics program to
develop one or more Use Case diagrams and one or more
Generalized/Specialized Hierarchy diagrams for your new
business using the object-oriented approach.
3. You have been hired to develop a payroll program for a
medium sized company. At a minimum, the application
should have an hours-worked table that contains how many
hours each employee worked and an employee table that
contains information about each employee, including
hourly pay rate. Design and develop these tables that could
be used in a database for the payroll program.
TEAM
ACTIVITIES
1. Your team should interview people involved in systems
development in a local business or at your college or university.
Describe the process used. Identify the users, analysts,
and stakeholders for a systems development project
that has been completed or is currently under development.
2. Your team has been hired to determine the requirements of
a new medium-cost coffee bar to compete with higherpriced
coffee shops like Starbucks. The new coffee bar will
offer computer kiosks for customers to surf the Internet or
order coffee and other products from the coffee bar. Using
RAD and JAD techniques with your team, develop requirements
for this new coffee bar and its computer system.
3. Your team should perform a systems review of a computer
application being used at your college or university. Include
the strengths and weaknesses of the computer application
and describe how it could be improved from a student perspective.
WEB
EXERCISES
1. Use the Internet to find two different systems development
projects that failed to meet cost or performance objectives.
Summarize the problems and what should have been done.
You might be asked to develop a report or send an e-mail
message to your instructor about what you found.
2. Cloud computing, whereby applications like word processing
and spreadsheet analysis are delivered over the Internet,
is becoming more popular. You have been hired to analyze
the potential of a cloud computing application that performs
payroll and invoicing over the Internet from a large
Internet company. Describe the systems development steps
and procedures you would use to analyze the feasibility of
this approach.
3. Using the Web, search for information on the advantages
and disadvantages of environmental design. Write a report
on what you found
CAREER
EXERCISES
1. Pick a career that you are considering. What type of
information
system would help you on the job? Perform technical,
economic, legal, operational, and schedule feasibility
for an information system you would like developed for
you.
2. Research possible careers in developing applications for
iPhones, other smartphones, and PDAs. Write a report that
describes these opportunities. Include in your report applications
that aren’t currently available that you would find
useful.
CASE
STUDIES
Case One
Hotwire.com Gains Control of Hotel Partner
Information
Hotwire.com
advertises four-star hotels at two-star prices
throughout
North America and Europe. By building
businesses
partnerships with more than 7,000 hotels across
North
America, Hotwire assists its hotel partners in filling
otherwise
empty rooms and helps its customers by finding
them
rates discounted by as much as 60 percent.
Hotwire
maintains a wealth of information about each of
its
7,000 hotel partners. Besides basics such as location,
amenities,
customer reviews, and prices, it also maintains
information
about the number of available rooms. Much of the
information
Hotwire tracks changes frequently. Maintaining
accurate
and up-to-date information is a key to success in this
highly
competitive business.
Until
recently, Hotwire maintained its hotel information on
shared
Excel spreadsheets. Hotwire employees kept the
information
up to date by accessing the shared spreadsheets
over
the corporate network. Various applications drew
information
from the spreadsheets to provide Hotwire the
information
it needed to provide its customers with deals.
Unfortunately,
the system was prone to errors and extremely
difficult
to maintain.
Hotwire
systems analysts considered the problem and
possible
solutions. The data that the system manipulated was
well
defined, as were the processes that were applied to the
data.
The problem lay in the manner in which the data was
stored
and accessed.
It was
clear to Hotwire analysts that a centralized
database-driven
system would allow Hotwire to gain better
control
over its data. Hotwire analysts considered costs and
benefits
of designing its own database and DBMS compared
to
outsourcing the service to a provider. Upon evaluation of
the
requirements for the system, they discovered that the data
Hotwire
was managing could be easily managed by a
Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) system, even
though
its partner hotels were not exactly customers.
Hotwire
systems analysts evaluated a variety of CRM
solutions
and found the one from Salesforce to be most
effective
and feasible in terms of cost and technology. The
Salesforce
CRM allows Hotwire employees to access hotel
data
through a user-friendly Web-based interface from any
Internet-connected
computer. Hotwire data is securely
stored
and maintained on Salesforce servers, relieving
Hotwire
of that costly responsibility. Hotwire system
engineers
customize the CRM to deliver the information and
reports
needed by Hotwire managers and systems.
The
new system has improved data reliability and
accuracy,
allowing better management of the information,
happier
customers, and improved relationships with Hotwire
partners.
Discussion
Questions
1. How
do you think system engineers determined that it was
a good
time to invest in this information systems
development
project?
2.
What benefits did Salesforce provide Hotwire.com over its
previous
system?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1.
What considerations are required in deciding whether to
host
your own system or outsource to a vendor like
Salesforce?
2. How
can Hotwire gauge the success of this information
systems
development project?
SOURCES: “Hotwire Uses Salesforce CRM to
Keep Tabs on More Than 7,000
Hotel
Partners Across North America,” Salesforce success stories,
www.salesforce.com,
accessed May 25, 2010; Salesforce CRM Web site,
www.salesforce.com/crm/products.jsp,
accessed May 25, 2010; About
Hotwire,
www.hotwire.com/about-hotwire/press-room/factSheet.jsp,
accessed
May 25, 2010.
Case Two
Russian Sporting Goods Chain Scales Up Budgeting
System
The
Sportmaster Group is the largest sporting goods chain in
Eastern
Europe. It handles Sportlandia and Columbia brands
and
more than 200 other trademarks, including its own.
When
Sportmaster was established, its CIO decided to
build
a budget planning system in house. The system was built
with
Excel spreadsheets and was well suited for a young startup
business.
But in recent years, with stores spread across
Eastern
Europe, the executives at Sportmaster Group wanted
to
gain better control of their budgets and use their financial
information
to make wise strategic decisions. Due to the large
amount
of data involved, using the current Excel-based
system
had become burdensome, and the information
provided
was too limited to support corporate needs.
In the
process of system maintenance and review,
Sportmaster
realized that to move to the next stage of growth,
it
needed to move to information systems used by large global
corporations.
In researching packages from a variety of
vendors,
the company settled on software from Cognos, an
IBM
company. To customize the Cognos software for its own
needs,
Sportmaster hired a company named IBS.
Sportmaster
chose IBS because it was a certified Cognos
vendor
and had experience working with Russian companies.
IBS
consultants met with Sportmaster executives and
information
systems staff to discuss the expectations for the
new
budget analysis system. They worked on site so they
could
test prototypes on actual corporate data and have their
progress
reviewed by Sportmaster to confirm that they were
on
target.
The
resulting system met the following goals defined by
Sportmaster.
According to the Cognos case study, the system
could
perform the following tasks:
• Create a basic gross profit budget
• Create budgets for investment
activity, including opening
new
stores and capital investments
• Create an operating expenses budget
for all corporate
divisions,
including more than “500 centers of responsibility”
• Create specialized budgets,
including a consolidated Revenue
and
Expenditure Budget, a Cash-Flow Budget, and
a
Balance Sheet of Payables and Receivables
• Create a Revenue and Expenditure
Budget for the
divisions
• Integrate with external accounting
systems
Sportmaster
used a parallel start-up method, introducing the
new
budget planning and accounting system, keeping the old
system
available as a backup. After six months of successful
use
and a few tweaks to perfect the system, the company now
fully
depends on the new system and is enjoying its benefits.
Sportmaster
can access highly detailed budget reports that
assist
in making strategic decisions. The process for creating
budget
reports has been simplified, and the duration of the
budget
cycle is shortened. Operations that used to take days
are
now accomplished in near real time. Most important is
that
the reliability of the data is improved so that budget errors
are
minimized.
Discussion
Questions
1.
What motivated Sportmaster to start an IS project to build
a new
budget planning and accounting system?
2.
What steps did the development team take to make sure
that
the project was completed in minimum time while
meeting
the company’s needs?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1. How
can the level of detail of the information provided by
a
budget planning and accounting system affect a
company’s
decision-making capability?
2. Why
do you think Sportmaster decided to outsource the
systems
development project rather than work in house?
SOURCES: Cognos Staff, “Sportmaster
Group,” Cognos Case Study,
www-01.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/ABRR-7WEBZ3?
OpenDocument&Site=corp&cty=en_us,
accessed March 3, 2010.
Questions for Web Case
See
the Web site for this book to read about the Altitude Online
case
for this chapter. Following are questions concerning this
Web
case.
Altitude Online: Systems Investigation and Analysis
Considerations
Discussion
Questions
1.
What important activities did Jon’s team engage in during
the
Systems Investigation stage of the Systems
Development
Life Cycle?
2. Why
are all forms of feasibility considerations especially
important
for an ERP development project?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1. Why
is the quality of the systems analysis report crucial
to the
successful continuation of the project?
2. Why
do you think Jon felt the need to travel to
communicate
with Altitude Online colleagues rather than
using
e-mail or phone conferencing? What benefit does
face-to-face
communication provide in this scenario?
Altitude Online: Systems Design, Implementation,
Maintenance, and Review Considerations
Discussion
Questions
1. How
did Jon’s team coordinate with the vendor in the
implementation
stage of the systems development
project?
2.
What did Jon’s team do in advance of contacting SAP that
made
the design and implementation systems proceed as
smoothly
as possible?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1.
What risks were involved in the systems development
project?
2.
What benefits were gained from this systems
development
project? Was it worth the risks?
PART 05 Information Systems in Business and Society
Chapter 9 The
Personal and Social Impact of Computers
CHAPTER
9: SELF-ASSESSMENT TEST ANSWERS
(1) True (2) costs, profits (3) monitoring (4) False (5) social
engineering (6) cyberterrorist (7) Federal Trade Commission
(8) Geographic Information Systems (9) False (10) d (11) variant
(12) False (13) Security dashboard (14) formation of blood
clots in the legs or lungs (15) True
REVIEW
QUESTIONS
1. What does the CAN-SPAM Act specifically allow?
2. What is a potential danger of using spam filters?
3. According to the 2009 FBI Internet Crime Report, how
much did computer crime increase between 2008 and
2009?
4. What is social engineering?
5. Briefly discuss the seriousness with which the U.S. federal
government views cyberterrorism.
6. How do you distinguish between a hacker and a criminal
hacker?
7. Why are insiders one of the biggest threats for company
computer systems?
8. What is a virus? What is a worm? How are they different?
9. What is vishing? What actions can you take to reduce the
likelihood that you will be a victim of this crime?
10. What is filtering software? Why would organizations use
such software?
11. What does intrusion detection software do? What are some
of the issues with the use of this software?
12. What is the difference between a patent and a copyright?
What copyright issues come into play when downloading
software or music from a Web site?
13. What is a John Doe lawsuit? How would such a lawsuit
arise?
14. What is ergonomics? How can it be applied to office workers?
15. What specific actions can you take to avoid spyware?
16. What is a code of ethics? Give an example.
DISCUSSION
QUESTIONS
1. Discuss how policies and procedures can help prevent computer
waste and mistakes.
2. Discuss at least three examples of the computer being used
as a tool to fight crime.
3. Identify the risks associated with the disposal of obsolete
computers. Discuss the steps that one must take to safely
dispose of personal computers.
4. Identify five strong measures organizations can take to
safeguard against the theft of computer hardware and the
data stored on it.
5. Briefly discuss software piracy. What is it, how widespread
is it, and who is harmed by it?
6. Identify and briefly discuss three acts of Congress that were
implemented to limit children’s exposure to online pornography.
7. Imagine that your friend regularly downloads copies of
newly released, full-length motion pictures for free from
the Internet and makes copies for others for a small fee. Do
you think that this is ethical? Is it legal? Would you express
any concerns to him?
8. Outline an approach, including specific techniques (e.g.,
dumpster diving, phishing, social engineering), that you
could employ to gain personal data about the members of
your class.
9. Your 12-year-old niece shows you a dozen or so photos of
herself and a brief biography, including address and cell
phone number that she plans to post on Facebook. What
advice might you offer her about posting personal information
and photos?
10. Imagine that you are a hacker and have developed a Trojan
horse program. What tactics might you use to get unsuspecting
victims to load the program onto their computer?
11. Briefly discuss the potential for cyberterrorism to cause a
major disruption in our daily life. What are some likely
targets of a cyberterrorist? What sort of action could a
cyberterrorist take against these targets?
12. Do you believe that the National Security Agency should
be able to collect the telephone call records of U.S. citizens
without the use of search warrants? Why or why not?
13. Using information presented in this chapter on federal privacy
legislation, identify which federal law regulates the
following areas and situations: cross-checking IRS and
Social Security files to verify the accuracy of information,
customer liability for debit cards, your right to access data
contained in federal agency files, the IRS obtaining personal
information, the government obtaining financial
records, and employers’ access to university transcripts.
14. Briefly discuss the differences between acting morally and
acting legally. Give an example of acting legally and yet
immorally.
PROBLEM-SOLVING
EXERCISES
1. Access the Web sites for the Recording Industry Association
of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA), and Business Software Alliance (BSA) to get estimates
of the amount of piracy worldwide for at least five
years. Use a graphics package to develop a bar chart to show
the amount of music, motion picture, and software piracy
over a five-year time period.
2. Using spreadsheet software and appropriate forecasting
routines, develop a forecast for the amount of piracy for
next year. Document any assumptions you make in developing
your forecast.
3. Do research on recent changes to the USA Patriot Act. Use
presentation software to document these changes and
present your position on the impact and legitimacy of these
changes.
TEAM
ACTIVITIES
1. The Digital Due Process Coalition includes the Internet’s
largest online service providers, such as Google, Microsoft,
Facebook, AOL, and eBay, as well as social organizations
such as the ACLU and the Bill of Rights Defense
Committee. The Coalition is pushing for updates in the
nation’s electronic privacy law, the 1986 Electronic
Communications Protection Act. Do research to find out
more about this organization and the four principles it
wants to see implemented in new or revised privacy legislation.
Prepare to debate either side of this statement: the
Digital Due Process Coalition is doing worthwhile work to
improve the privacy of electronic data.
2. Have each member of your team access ten different Web
sites and summarize their findings in terms of the existence
of data privacy policy statements. Did the site have such a
policy? Was it easy to find? Was it complete and easy to
understand? Did you find any sites using the P3P standard
or ICRA rating method?
WEB
EXERCISES
1. Do research on the Web and find information about efforts
being taken to speed up and improve the patent application
process. What are the forces that are driving these changes?
Write a brief report summarizing your findings.
2. Do research on the Web to find the latest information about
Google’s ongoing battle with China over the filtering of
Internet search results. Write a brief report documenting
your findings. Do you think that Google has acted in an
ethical manner in regards to its response to China’s request
to filter search results?
3. The Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination
Center (CERT/CC) is located at the Software Engineering
Institute (SEI), a federally funded research and development
center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Do research on the center and write a brief
report summarizing its activities.
CAREER
EXERCISES
1. You are a senior member of a marketing organization for a
manufacturer of children’s toys. A recommendation has
been made to develop a Web site to promote and sell your
firm’s products as well as learn more about what parents
and their children are looking for in new toys. Develop a
list of laws and regulations that will affect the design of the
Web site. Describe how these will limit the operation of
your new Web site.
2. You have just begun a new position in customer relations
for a retail organization that sells its products both online
and in brick-and-mortar stores. Within your first week on
the job, several customers have expressed concern about
potential theft of customer data from the store’s computer
databases and identity theft. Who would you talk to within
your organization to develop a satisfactory response to
address your customers’ concerns? What key points would
you need to verify with the store’s technical people?
CASE
STUDIES
Case One
The ‘My SHC Community’ Privacy Disaster
Sears
Holdings Corporation is the third largest retailer in the
U.S.,
owning both Sears Roebuck and Kmart. Like all
retailers,
Sears is heavily invested in marketing research.
Discovering
customers’ interests and purchasing habits is
essential
to successful marketing and sales campaigns.
Gathering
data on customer interests can be difficult. The
Internet
helps considerably by allowing businesses to analyze
the
actions of visitors on their sites. Though helpful, Web
analytics
provide only a small glimpse into the online activities
of
customers; businesses cannot see what users do
elsewhere
on the Web. Some businesses have tried, typically
with
disastrous effects, to track users around the Web. For
example,
online advertiser DoubleClick was charged with
violations
of privacy laws when it placed ads on many Web
sites
to track users’ movements around the Web. More
recently,
Facebook has been scrutinized for its Open Graph
technology
that allows it and its partners to track users’
movements
around the Web.
Sears
Holdings Corporation (SHC) took its stab at tracking
customers’
online activities through a program it called My
SHC
Community. Customers of Sears and Kmart were
different.”
My SHC was framed as a “dynamic and highly
interactive
online community” where “your voice is heard and
your
opinion matters, and what you want and need counts!”
Members
were asked to install “research software” on their
computers
that would allow SHC to track their online
browsing.
To further entice customers to participate, SHC
paid
them $10 each.
After
operating for several months, technology analysts
discovered
that the SHC “research” software collected a lot
more
information than users were aware of. It not only
tracked
URLs of Web pages visited, but also information typed
into
secure online forms. Such information included user
names
and passwords, credit card numbers, online shopping
cart
contents, essentially everything the user typed and every
page
the user visited. When Harvard Business School
Assistant
Professor Ben Edelman learned of the situation, he
accused
SHC of distributing spyware. Shortly thereafter, the
Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) took up the case.
The
FTC found that Sears Holdings did not sufficiently
notify
its customers about what information was being
gathered
by the software. The only notice of what the software
actually
did was buried on page 10 of the software license that
users
may have glanced at before installing the software.
The
FTC ordered Sears Holdings to discontinue
distribution
of the software, destroy all data gained from the
experiment,
and to stop collecting data from copies of the
software
still running on customer computers. Additionally,
should
Sears Holdings decide to attempt a similar experiment
in the
future, it must "clearly and prominently disclose the
types
of data the software will monitor, record, or transmit.
This
disclosure must be made prior to installation and
separate
from any user license agreement. Sears must also
disclose
whether any of the data will be used by a third party."
Sears
Holdings has stated that while the software did
collect
sensitive user information, the company made
“commercially
viable efforts automatically to filter out
confidential
personally identifiable information such as user
ID,
password, credit card numbers, and account numbers,
and
made commercially viable efforts to purge our database
of any
such information if it was collected inadvertently.”
Discussion
Questions
1.
What plan did Sears Holdings implement to gain more
insight
into customer’s online shopping behavior?
2. Why
was the plan considered by a Harvard Law Professor
and
the FTC to be unethical and unlawful?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1. If
Sears Holdings had implemented its plan in accordance
with
FTC guidelines, do you think any customers would
have
been willing to sacrifice their privacy for $10?
2.
What other methods might Sears Holdings and other
companies
consider implementing to gather information
about
customers’ online habits and interests?
SOURCES: Anderson, Nate, “FTC forces
Sears, Kmart out of the spyware business,”
Ars
Technica, www.arstechnica.com, September 13, 2009; McMillan,
Robert,
“Researcher Accuses Sears of Spreading Spyware,” PCWorld,
www.pcworld.com,
January 2, 2008; My SHC Community Web page,
www.myshccommunity.com,
accessed June 26, 2010.
Case Two
U.S. Fights Fraud with Personal Certificates
One of
the goals of the Obama administration has been to
improve
national information security to better protect the
nation’s
infrastructure. Toward this goal, the President
created
a new post in his administration called the
Cybersecurity
Coordinator, appointing Howard Schmidt to the
position.
One of
Schmidt’s first assignments was to develop a plan
to
effectively fight Internet fraud. Internet fraud is the most
common
type of Internet crime, covering a range of scams in
which
a buyer or seller assumes a false identity to trick
someone
out of money or merchandise. According to the FBI’s
Internet
Crime Complaint Center, Internet fraud reports
increased
by 22.3 percent in 2009, with losses totaling close
to
$560 million. Among the most popular forms of fraud in
2009
were e-mail scams that used the FBI name to gain
information
(16.6 percent), undelivered merchandise or
payment
(11.9 percent), and advanced fee fraud (in which
targets
are asked to pay upfront) (9.8 percent). The one fact
that
is consistent across all cases of fraud is the use of a false
identity.
If real identities were used, the fraudsters would be
caught.
Cybersecurity
Coordinator Howard Schmidt has proposed
a plan
by which those involved in online transactions can be
positively
identified. Because credit cards and bank account
numbers
can be easily stolen and used by fraudsters,
Schmidt’s
plan requires the possession of a smart identity
card
or digital certificate to buy and sell online.
The
notion of national ID cards has been struck down by
privacy
advocates in the past, so Schmidt made his proposal
a
voluntary one. According to a draft plan, those who wish to
authenticate
their transactions would be able to acquire a
secure
identifier from a variety of service providers. Schwartz
emphasizes
that the system will balance efforts to maintain
privacy
while still collecting enough information about the
card
owner to ensure his identity.
Security
vendors believe that the technology is already
available
for Schmidt’s plan. For example, Google and
Microsoft
already have “single sign-on” systems for which
people
can use their credentials to sign on to partner sites. In
this
scenario, Google or Microsoft maintains information
about
the user, while the partner sites are not provided access
to
that private information. A similar system could be used for
online
transaction authentication. What is needed is a national
push
for standards so that businesses and consumers can
invest
in a technology with some assurance that it will be long
lasting.
Security
experts have expressed skepticism that a
voluntary
system will be effective. Some argue that unless all
Internet
users are required to use the system, many
transactions
will remain vulnerable. The government must
walk a
fine line between privacy and ensuring secure
transactions.
Only time will tell what type of authentication
system
will be regarded as acceptable to government,
consumers,
and businesses.
Discussion
Questions
1. Why
does the U.S. government think it’s necessary to
intervene
in online transactions?
2. Why
might the use of digital certificates or smart identity
cards
to fight Internet fraud be controversial?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1. How
might a digital certificate or smart identity card
system
be implemented so that individuals’ privacy is
maintained
and yet transactions are made more secure?
2.
What ways might a smart card system backfire or present
other
security or privacy concerns?
SOURCES: 2009 IC3 Annual Report, IC3 Web
site, www.ic3.gov/media/annualreport/
2009_IC3Report.pdf,
accessed July 15, 2010; Baldor, Lolita, “White
House
Unveils Cybersecurity Plans,” NewsFactor Network,
www.newsfactor.com,
June 29, 2010; Stokes, Jon, “White House wants to help
you
‘blog Anonymously’,” Ars Technica, www.arstechnica.com, June 29, 2010;
Markoff,
John, “Taking the Mystery Out of Web Anonymity,” New York Times,
www.nytimes.com,
July 2, 2010.
Questions for Web Case
See
the Web site for this book to read about the Altitude Online
case
for this chapter. Following are questions concerning this
Web
case.
Altitude Online: The Personal and Social Impact of
Computers
Discussion
Questions
1. Why
do you think extending access to a corporate network
beyond
the business’s walls dramatically elevates the risk
to
information security?
2.
What tools and policies can be used to minimize that risk?
Critical
Thinking Questions
1. Why
does information security usually come at the cost of
user
convenience?
2. How
do proper security measures help ensure
information
privacy?
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