Standards for the information infrastructure

Many standards groups and consortia are now addressing global information infrastructure (GII) standardization. Each group is working on issues within its particular GII area, and some are aggressively promoting government activities, commercial mergers, and social concerns. In many cases, essential standards already exist but are unknown to other groups that could benefit from their use     

Exploring the perceived business value of the flexibility enabled by information technology infrastructure

We developed a multidimensional definition of IT infrastructure (ITI) and applied it in exploring the perceived strategic payoffs of ITI-enabled flexibility. We began by developing a typology of theoretical approaches that can be used to organize the literature and then developed a multidimensional model by conceptualizing how flexibility can be enabled through technical, human, and process elements of ITI and how these are interrelated. We used a resource-based view of the firm and a dynamic capabilities perspective to account for competitive impacts of the flexibility. Finally, we hypothesized on the moderating effects of organizational size and reporting level of the top IT executive. Data collected from 293 IT managers showed that the range of managerial ITI capabilities, which were positively affected by all areas of IT personnel knowledge and skills, was responsible for the competitive impacts of the ITI-enabled flexibility. Multigroup analyses showed that large organizational size or reporting to the CEO reduced the positive effects of the range of managerial ITI capabilities on competitive impacts.     

Development of a multidimensional polychronicity scale for information technology learning

Information technology provides the potential for polychronic learning. However, research on polychronicity in the educational field is scarce. The purposes of this study were to develop a multidimensional polychronicity scale for information technology learning and explore the relationship between polychronicity in information technology-supported learning and personality traits. This study is divided into two phases. First, a questionnaire survey was used to develop a multidimensional polychronicity scale for information technology learning, and 602 questionnaires were included in the analysis. Second, 129 participants reported their polychronicity in information technology-supported learning and Big Five personality traits. The first phase results showed that the scale of polychronicity in IT-supported learning (SPITSL) contained three constructs, that is, time tangibility (α = .89 ), scheduling preference (α = .84 ) and involvement with people (α = .85 ) and that the total variance explained was 69.43%. The confirmatory factor analysis results indicated that the preliminary model fit, overall model fit and internal model fit were acceptable. The second phase results showed that polychronicity was related to the Big Five personality traits. This study showed that the SPITSL has a multidimensional structure that is consistent with the definition of polychronicity advocated by many scholars.     

Encrypting the global information infrastructure

Information. Global conncetivity. Electronic commerce. Competition. Economic espionage. Global organized crime. Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Terrorism. Conflict. Economic and social instability. Violations of privacy and human rights. Erosion of trust. These are some of the global realities we live with today. They explain why cryptography must be an integral part of the Global Information Infrastructure to protect privacy, intellectual property, and financial assets, and to provide a foundation of trust for electronic commerce. They also explain why we ought to proceed thoughtfully in the deployment of this technology.     

Protecting the critical information infrastructure

The same advantage that technologically advanced businesses have over their competitors-their advanced information technology infrastructure-has become a major new vulnerability. As businesses adopt increasingly sophisticated information infrastructures, the complexity of protecting those infrastructures becomes enormous. And the problem isn't helped by the misunderstandings between business and government over what protecting the infrastructure means. So what should you do about hackers? There are three types of problems to be solved: technological, legal, and financial. An overall solution requires effective solutions in each of these three areas     

Effects of time-inconsistent preferences on information technology infrastructure investments with growth options

Increasing information technology (IT) infrastructure spending and the capability of such projects to provide a platform for a firm to realize value from IT marks their importance. Effective management of IT infrastructure investments includes identification of embedded growth options in the infrastructure, and exercising them in a timely manner. Extant research has recognized that while managers could use real options thinking in IT investment management, managerial bias could affect the timing of option exercise and their realized value. We analyze the effect of time-inconsistent preferences of present-biased managers on the exercise time of real growth options and the realized value using a discrete time option valuation model. The results show that present-biased managers are more likely to exercise options early when the net payoffs are low, the option payoffs have high volatility, and the risk free discount rate is small. In addition, present biased managers are more likely to exercise a growth option early in its life when the project is performing well. We provide implications for practice and IT governance.     

An integrated materials information system for infrastructure planning

The vitality of a nation or region is based on the effective use of material resources for public and private infrastructure. There are an abundance of technological options and policy choices that can be defined. A value chain approach based on the Reference Material System, using state-of-the-art information systems, can be used to provide an integrated framework for information on material resources and finished materials markets to support planning and analysis of the physical infrastructure that is essential to social and economic development. This framework also provides a model for tracking annual flows and stock levels for the capital account of a region or nation.     

基于医院关键信息基础设施安全防护技术的研究与实践

《中华人民共和国网络安全法》自2017年开始实施,意味着网络空间从"合规"走向了"合法"。首都医科大学附属北京妇产医院(简称北京妇产医院)从法律层面上认识关键信息基础设施的安全问题,结合自身的实际情况,建立了比较完备的安全防护体系,建立了合理、可靠的技术平台、细致的日常管理与及时的故障处理应急预案,全面提高了应对网络安全的能力。     

Rényi information measure for a used item

Recently, in the literature, a measure of tail heaviness has been proposed based on Rényi entropy. This measure is very useful in the sense that it can be used to measure tail heaviness even for the distributions for which the kurtosis measure does not exist. Nadarajah and Zografos [Nadarajah, Zografos, Information Sciences 153 (2003), 119-138] have derived the expression for this measure for different univariate continuous distributions. But, this measure can only be used for the lifetime of a new item. In case of used item, this measure needs some modification. In this paper, we have modified the measure accordingly so that it can be used in the case of used item and also for the new item. We have also derived expressions for this measure for sixteen different univariate distributions and ten other standard distributions derived from the general distributions used in reliability and survival analysis. The most of the results obtained in the literature in this direction can be obtained as particular cases of our general results.     

Towards a measure of biometric feature information

This paper develops an approach to measure the information content of a biometric feature representation. We define biometric information as the decrease in uncertainty about the identity of a person due to a set of biometric measurements. We then show that the biometric feature information for a person may be calculated by the relative entropy D(p||q){D(p\|q)} between the population feature distribution q and the person’s feature distribution p. The biometric information for a system is the mean D(p||q){D(p\|q)} for all persons in the population. In order to practically measure D(p||q){D(p\|q)} with limited data samples, we introduce an algorithm which regularizes a Gaussian model of the feature covariances. An example of this method is shown for PCA and Fisher linear discriminant (FLD) based face recognition, with biometric feature information calculated to be 45.0 bits (PCA), 37.0 bits (FLD) and 55.6 bits (fusion of PCA and FLD features). Finally, we discuss general applications of this measure.     

信息技术与网络空间安全发展趋势

首先剖析了互联网、移动互联网、物联网、云计算、大数据等技术的基本特征、相互间差异及其内在关系,深层次梳理了信息技术和信息服务模式的演化规律,从宏观上探讨了信息技术螺旋式上升的发展态势和我国后发式赶超的机遇,并指出了下一代信息技术的革新关键在于能耗。在此基础上,详细分析了我国网络空间在互联互通、工业 4.0等方面的安全需求和挑战,提出了安全技术的研究应与信息技术的发展同步。最后凝练了我国网络空间安全的发展机遇与对策,并对网络空间安全的发展趋势进行了展望。     

An information measure for class discrimination

This article describes a separability measure for class discrimination. This measure is based on the Fisher information measure for estimating the mixing proportion of two classes. The Fisher information measure not only provides a means to assess quantitatively the information content in the features for separating classes, but also gives the lower bound for the variance of any unbiased estimate of the mixing proportion based on observations of the features. Unlike most commonly used separability measures, this measure is not dependent on the form of the probability distribution of the features and does not imply a specific estimation procedure. This is important because the probability distribution function that describes the data for a given class does not have simple analytic forms, such as a Gaussian. Results of applying this measure to compare the information content provided by three LANDSAT-derived feature vectors for the purpose of separating small grains from other crops are presented.     

关键信息基础设施检测评估策略

《中华人民共和国网络安全法》对关键信息基础设施检测评估工作提出了明确的要求,是网络运营者的重要任务。对当前关键信息基础设施检测评估工作的不足进行了分析,提出了一套具备普适性及可拓展性的关键信息基础设施检测评估策略,为网络运营者开展关键信息基础设施安全保障工作提供了有效的支撑。     

RFID-enabled real-time manufacturing information tracking infrastructure for extended enterprises

In extended enterprises, real-time manufacturing information tracking plays an important role and aims to provide the right information to the right person at the right time in the right format to achieve optimal production management among the involved enterprises. However, many enterprises are caused by lack of timely, accurate and consistent manufacturing data. The laggard information transfer flow and the unmatched information transfer method bring extended enterprises much more uncertainty and unknowingness. This paper proposes a RFID-enabled real-time manufacturing information tracking infrastructure (RTMITI) to address the real-time manufacturing data capturing and manufacturing information processing methods for extended enterprises. Following the proposed infrastructure, the traditional manufacturing resources such as employees, machines and materials are equipped with RFID devices (Readers and Tags) to build the real-time data capturing environment. In addition, a series of manufacturing information processing methods are established to calculate and track the real-time manufacturing information such as real-time manufacturing cost, progress, WIP (Work-in-progress) inventory etc. in parts/assemblies/products at machines/shop floors/enterprises/ extended enterprises levels. Finally, a case study is given to demonstrate the developed framework and corresponding methodologies.     

Evolving a pervasive IT infrastructure: a technology integration approach

Over the past five years or so, pervasive computing has emerged as a new computing paradigm with a great deal of appeal. Enterprises are increasingly showing interest in deploying pervasive information technology (IT) infrastructures to realise the perceived benefits offered by this new computing paradigm. However, a return on the investment and considerations of the currently deployed infrastructure is a constraint for businesses to invest in a pervasive IT infrastructure. Realising that the economics of an investment in a new infrastructure can affect the embracing of pervasive IT, we suggest an approach that shows how the existing technology solutions available in the market and deployed in an enterprise can be used to develop a pervasive IT infrastructure, thereby protecting investments and maximising returns. We present an evolution model to systematically and incrementally achieve a pervasive IT environment, and present guidelines for evaluating which services to develop first based on evolving the existing infrastructure point of view. This work provides practical implications for enterprises as well as pointers for research.

Markets, standards, and the information infrastructure

The author presents a synthesis of thinking within the economics field about network development and standardization. The analysis focuses on understanding economic factors shaping important contemporary events and the development of standards in tomorrow's information infrastructure. The motivation for such a synthesis is that many observations about market mechanisms are not consistent with one another, nor do they all transparently synthesize into a single policy vision. The key to understanding this confusion is that standards take on a dual role, as a coordinator and as a constraint. These insights should be useful for the development of appropriate public policy and management strategy     

Representational information: a new general notion and measure of information

In what follows, we introduce the notion of representational information (information conveyed by sets of dimensionally defined objects about their superset of origin) as well as an original deterministic mathematical framework for its analysis and measurement. The framework, based in part on categorical invariance theory [30], unifies three key constructs of universal science - invariance, complexity, and information. From this unification we define the amount of information that a well-defined set of objects R carries about its finite superset of origin S, as the rate of change in the structural complexity of S (as determined by its degree of categorical invariance), whenever the objects in R are removed from the set S. The measure captures deterministically the significant role that context and category structure play in determining the relative quantity and quality of subjective information conveyed by particular objects in multi-object stimuli.     

电力基建工程项目管理信息系统的总体设计

为了解决电力系统基建项目管理中存在的问题,通过总结电力工程项目管理的经验和教训,并借鉴基建工程管理的先进经验和成果,设计了一种电力基建工程项目管理信息系统,给出了设计系统的总体结构及其各子系统的功能模块,最终完成了系统开发。本系统的各项功能均符合设计需求,能够改进和规范电力工程项目管理。     

Structural modelling using a simple information measure

The structure of a system of N variables is defined to be the set of N dependency relationships giving, for each variable, the set of other variables upon which it is statistically dependent. Because statistical dependence is indicated by the transmission measure of information theory, this set can be found by finding the smallest subset of variables for which T (subset : variable) is a maximum. Sampling considerations of this method are discussed, and the results of 21 experiments with it are given. The results are compatible with those of other structural modelling methods.