Capturing Student Achievement and Learning Pathways at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

In 2015, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) recognized the need to capture knowledge, skills, and abilities acquired by students in both co-curricular and curricular endeavors not being captured in any identifiable way. The Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer desired to document competencies gained by students in the variety of contexts on campus and to track student, faculty, and staff achievements in a way that would both benefit each individual while also supporting the mission of the institution. This vision led to the adoption of a digital badging initiative resulting in a scalable process for implementing new badges throughout the university community. UMBC's digital badging program became the springboard for the institution's entrance into the Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) realm whose objective is to capture all credentials earned by students, whether they be awarded before, during, or following their tenure at the institution.

The Implementation of Strategic Threat Intelligence for Business Organization

Nowadays strategic threat intelligence is very important to all the organization. Strategic cyber threat intelligence can determine who and why to provide key insights to the organization. It purpose is to determine who is behind a particular threat or threat family and addressing to evolving trends. The strategic level of cyber threat intelligence also included and explains about why. Why makes a company or an organization a target? Strategic Threat Intelligence offer the overview of the threat status of the organization. Therefore, the C-Suite include chief executive officer (CEO), chief financial officer (CFO), chief operating officer (COO) and chief information officer (CIO) of the organization use cyber threat intelligence data to understand the high-level trends and threats to the company or the organization. The C-Suite of the organization also need to know how to implement the strategic threat intelligence to prevent unexpected things happen. This research paper aims to discuss about the importance of the strategic threat intelligence to the company or organization and how to implement it. After knowing and understanding the implementation of strategic threat intelligence to the company or organization, this research paper also will discuss about the when of using strategic threat intelligence. The issue and challenges is also discussed in the article.

Innovation, Collaboration and New Zealand Public Sector ICT Middle Managers

<p>The case study explores the relationship New Zealand public sector information and communication technology (ICT) middle managers have with innovation and collaboration in relation to an all-of-government ICT strategy. Middle managers are key to implementing ICT strategy, innovation is a stated expectation and collaboration is a critical enabler. The study identified that awareness of the ICT strategy amongst middle managers was lower than desirable, although slightly higher from core public sector managers mandated to follow the strategy. There was not a consistent sense of what innovation is, although managers indicate they are engaging in innovations to quite a high degree. There is a very limited range of stakeholders collaborated with; primarily other agencies, consultants and vendors. This may inhibit potential for innovation that could come from wider engagement. Agencies are exhibiting a narrow view of collaboration and appear reluctant to share resources. Middle managers engage in collaboration and networking within their sector, and appreciate assistance provided by the Government Chief Information Officer, however they also note there is little support provided to collaborate. They would like more forums, facilitators, tools, and policies that support collaboration and systems thinking. The most significant factor empowering middle managers to innovate was the support of their senior manager; however lack of senior manager support was also noted as a significant issue. Primary barriers to innovation were workload and budget, leadership thinking, internal governance mechanisms and risk aversion.</p>

Innovation, Collaboration and New Zealand Public Sector ICT Middle Managers

<p>The case study explores the relationship New Zealand public sector information and communication technology (ICT) middle managers have with innovation and collaboration in relation to an all-of-government ICT strategy. Middle managers are key to implementing ICT strategy, innovation is a stated expectation and collaboration is a critical enabler. The study identified that awareness of the ICT strategy amongst middle managers was lower than desirable, although slightly higher from core public sector managers mandated to follow the strategy. There was not a consistent sense of what innovation is, although managers indicate they are engaging in innovations to quite a high degree. There is a very limited range of stakeholders collaborated with; primarily other agencies, consultants and vendors. This may inhibit potential for innovation that could come from wider engagement. Agencies are exhibiting a narrow view of collaboration and appear reluctant to share resources. Middle managers engage in collaboration and networking within their sector, and appreciate assistance provided by the Government Chief Information Officer, however they also note there is little support provided to collaborate. They would like more forums, facilitators, tools, and policies that support collaboration and systems thinking. The most significant factor empowering middle managers to innovate was the support of their senior manager; however lack of senior manager support was also noted as a significant issue. Primary barriers to innovation were workload and budget, leadership thinking, internal governance mechanisms and risk aversion.</p>

A CIO-centric local government data-sharing leadership ecosystem in China

The digital transformation of local government brings about massive change in IT leadership. As the strategic designer and process developer for government data sharing, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) needs to build self-centered leadership systems with strong coordination capabilities and adaptable mechanisms. Through a qualitative multi-case comparative study of three provinces in China, we applied IS innovation ecosystem theory to construct a CIO-centric local government data-sharing leadership ecosystem. The competencies, behaviors, and mechanisms of leadership roles are analyzed in five dimensions (personal, interpersonal, organizational, inter-organizational, and socio-economic and generation). Results show that a CIO-centric local government data sharing ecosystem can be resilient to administrative structure change, facilitating data sharing across levels, regions, and departments through collaborative networks and rotation approach. It provides useful insights into similar practices for constructing data sharing leadership ecosystem in local government, and can bring public value to citizens.

A Review of the Cybersecurity Programs in the United States Army

Cybersecurity is very complex, and as such, decisions regarding cybersecurity are highly intertwined with the functionality and application of systems. The threat to cybersecurity is, however, ever-evolving and decisions regarding cybersecurity, therefore, need to be made with this in mind. Cybersecurity systems, therefore, need to be tailored to individual systems, be adaptive, have the ability to evolve with the threat as well as be highly integrated with the system designs and the mission these systems support . In the military, it is critical to develop systems that maintain the expected level of confidentiality, non-repudiation, authentication, integrity, and availability that aids towards the collective goal of cybersecurity. In the military there are several stakeholders that play a key part in cybersecurity with the main ones being; the ones commanding or using the military system, the ones involved in the acquisition, life-cycle management and testing, the authorizing officials, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the intelligence and the counterintelligence officers. Accountability and control is, therefore spread out throughout the organization. This, however, leads to the blurring of roles and responsibilities. In conclusion, therefore, even though militaries exist for the purpose of combat most of the time, they operate in relatively peaceful conditions. During these peaceful times, they imagine and manufacture wartime conditions to determine their preparedness and the chances of a victory with the current conditions and resources. A communication plan approach will be able to tear down the expected natural resistance since the leaders will support the proposed changes and even devote resources to see that they are successful. The purpose of the communication plan is to, therefore, make the leaders the advocates for change. This is based on the understanding that in this environment, change is not possible without support from the leadership. Keywords: Cybersecurity, Intelligence, Communication & United States Army

Making Digital Innovation Happen: A Chief Information Officer Issue Selling Perspective

We encourage chief information officers (CIOs) to play more active roles in organizational level strategy making in the digital era and examine how CIOs could lead their organizations’ digital innovation initiatives. We propose that it is the CIO’s effectiveness in issue selling (i.e., the acts that are directed toward affecting top management teams’ (TMT) attention to and understanding of strategic issues), rather than his or her structural position, that directly influences the level of organizational digital innovation success. Nevertheless, CIO structural power should not be overlooked because it could amplify (i.e., positively moderate) the impact of CIO issue selling to digital innovation outcomes. In addition, we identify four enabling forces of CIO issue selling effectiveness: (1) CIO strategic decision-making authority, (2) CIO/TMT partnership, (3) CIO information technologies (IT)–related strategic knowledge, and (4) CIO political savvy. Matched-pair survey data collected from senior business and IT executives of 179 organizations largely support the research hypotheses.

Developing a digital transformation model to enhance the strategy development process for leadership in the South African manufacturing sector

Purpose: This study’s aim was to gain insight into the transformative skills of business leaders in the South African manufacturing sector to drive their business’ digital transformation process. Technology recources lead digital transformation requires skills not understood by leadership. Cloud computing has facilitated machine learning and artificial intelligence where human comprehension is limited, using algorithms for analytics requiring size and scale to provide data for decision-making and enabled disruptive technologies that have changed the face of industry sectors.Design/methodology/approach: A pragmatic postmodern paradigm supports the theoretical framing of this study, conducted using descriptive research by e-questionnaire using quantitative analysis for deductive statistical evaluation.Findings/results: The findings formed the basis of a model developed to assist chief executive officers (CEOs) to implement digital transformation successfully.Practical implications: The CEO is responsible for the digital transformation of the business and must understand that data management is the most important asset in the digital era. The collection, storage, analysis, reporting and usage of data are key to competing in the digital economy, which requires the appointment of the chief information officer (CIO) to manage data and who should report directly to the CEO.Originality/value: Reporting to the CIO would be data scientists and analysts who work with data; their roles focus on building algorithms from machine learning and developing predictive models from data and simulation models to test if technologies used to drive digital migration are optimal.

Empirical identification of skills gaps between chief information officer supply and demand: a resource-based view using machine learning

PurposeThe role of emerging digital technologies is of growing strategic importance as it provides significant competitive advantage to organisations. The chief information officer (CIO) plays a pivotal role in facilitating the process of digital transformation. Whilst demand continues to increase, the supply of suitably qualified applicants is lacking, with many companies forced to choose information technology (IT) or marketing specialists instead. This research seeks to analyse the organisational capabilities required and the level of fit within the industry between CIO requirements and appointments via the resource-based view.Design/methodology/approachJob postings and CIO curriculum vitae were collected and analysed through the lens of organisational capability theory using the machine learning method of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA).FindingsThis research identifies gaps between the capabilities demanded by organisations and supplied by CIOs. In particular, soft, general, non-specific capabilities are over-supplied, while rarer specific skills, qualifications and experience are under-supplied.Practical implicationsThe research is useful for practitioners (e.g. potential CIO candidates) to understand current market requirements and for companies aiming to develop internal training that meet present and future skill gaps. It also could be useful for professional organisations (e.g. CIO Forum) to validate the need to develop mentoring schemes that help meet such high demand and relative undersupply of qualified CIOs.Originality/valueBy applying LDA, the paper provides a new research method and process for identifying competence requirements and gaps as well as ascertaining job fit. This approach may be helpful to other domains of research in the process of identifying specific competences required by organisations for particular roles as well as to understand the level of fit between such requirements and a potential pool of applicants. Further, the study provides unique insight into the current supply and demand for the role of CIO through the lens of resource-based view (RBV). This provides a contribution to the stream of information systems (IS) research focused on understanding CIO archetypes and how individual capabilities provide value to companies.