Richard Self

Universities in the UK are now subject to League Table reporting by a range of providers. The criteria used by each League Table differ. Universities, their Faculties and individual Subject areas want to understand how the different tables are constructed and calculated and what is required in order to maximise their position in each league table in order to attract the best students to their institution, in order to maximise recruitment and student related income streams. The School of… Show more

Universities in the UK are now subject to League Table reporting by a range of providers. The criteria used by each League Table differ. Universities, their Faculties and individual Subject areas want to understand how the different tables are constructed and calculated and what is required in order to maximise their position in each league table in order to attract the best students to their institution, in order to maximise recruitment and student related income streams. The School of Computing and Maths at the University of Derby is developing the use SAS® Visual Analytics to analyse each league table to provide actionable insights as to actions that can be taken to improve their relative standing in the league tables and also to gain insights into feasible levels of targets relative to the peer groups of institutions. This paper outlines the approaches taken and some of the critical insights developed that will be of value to other Higher Education institutions in the UK and will suggest useful approaches that may be valuable in other countries. Show less

University lecturer reports bad news about your information governance program
Date: Nov 06, 2013

LAS VEGAS -- The sad truth is that most information governance initiatives either fail or fall short. But there are some steps that companies can take to help increase the chances of success, according to Richard J. Self, a senior lecturer in informatics and business and information governance at the University of Derby in the U.K.

SearchDataManagement caught up with Self in… Show more

University lecturer reports bad news about your information governance program
Date: Nov 06, 2013

LAS VEGAS -- The sad truth is that most information governance initiatives either fail or fall short. But there are some steps that companies can take to help increase the chances of success, according to Richard J. Self, a senior lecturer in informatics and business and information governance at the University of Derby in the U.K.

SearchDataManagement caught up with Self in between sessions at the IBM Information on Demand conference. Self explained that achieving success with an information governance program means first getting buy-in from senior executives. And to get buy-in, IT professionals need to put the benefits of information governance in terms the C-Level executives can understand.

Self went on to say that information governance skills are currently in low demand. He also had some additional tips for those considering an information governance program.
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Traditional approaches to introducing students to computer programming typically involve carefully constructed teaching lectures and workshop exercises using programming languages like Java, C# or Python. As a general rule, this works for some groups of students. However, many less technical – but no less intellectually able – students find the approach intimidating and fail to develop any productive skill in the taught language.
The approach presented in this paper is fundamentally… Show more

Traditional approaches to introducing students to computer programming typically involve carefully constructed teaching lectures and workshop exercises using programming languages like Java, C# or Python. As a general rule, this works for some groups of students. However, many less technical – but no less intellectually able – students find the approach intimidating and fail to develop any productive skill in the taught language.
The approach presented in this paper is fundamentally different and was used to enthuse a group of Information Technology students at the University of Derby (UK) to learn Base SAS. The majority of the students had failed to successfully engage in technical programming in their previous semesters and many provided strong indications that they did not want to be involved in any form of programming.
The approach described in this paper was based around the tried and tested pedagogic approach of “learning by doing”, but modified to become “Learning by Exploring”. The results of this approach were highly positive, resulting in a 98% pass rate, with 77% of the students gaining an overall mark of 60% or higher for the programming and analytics part of the assessment. In addition, six of the forty three students researched, found, learned and used constructs of the provided SAS environment that were unexpected and would have never been taught or learned in a traditional approach but were highly innovative and appropriate solutions to the defined task., see also full details of paper here http://computing.derby.ac.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Novel-Approaches-to-Learning-and-Teaching-SAS-based-Analytics.pdf and see the presentation here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06UpMm3ra6U
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A common complaint from academics in many Western Universities is that their students do little research and tend to deliver small bibliographies with their written assignments. The common question is “How can we develop their ability to research and then deliver strong bibliographies?” The author of this paper has developed two different Learning and Teaching strategies that have had considerable success over a period of four years which are discussed in this paper, based on the results of… Show more

A common complaint from academics in many Western Universities is that their students do little research and tend to deliver small bibliographies with their written assignments. The common question is “How can we develop their ability to research and then deliver strong bibliographies?” The author of this paper has developed two different Learning and Teaching strategies that have had considerable success over a period of four years which are discussed in this paper, based on the results of approximately 400 students’ assignments.
Typical groups of students seem to struggle to provide more than five or six sources for any given assignment. The question is why should this be? Academics often refer students to academic writing skills textbooks but the message does not seem to be received or acted on.
Analysis of the bibliographies of student assignments in courses taught by the author suggests that there is a solution which significantly improves the mean number of sources in the bibliographies (to an average of 11 for several groups and to an average of 21 for the final year group), considerably improves the density of citations, improves the analytical quality of the writing of the students and their results, has some impact on the quality of the sources and engenders increased student satisfaction in the learning experience.
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Analysing large amounts of financial information within databases can be hardly accomplished when dealing with money laundering. The main reason is the lack of digital forensics and proper database analysis procedures within the anti-money laundering strategies of financial institutions. Also, analysing single or grouped financial events related to money laundering is difficult when the Know-Your-Customer Policies in these institutions are not enforced, or even used as evidentiary instruments… Show more

Analysing large amounts of financial information within databases can be hardly accomplished when dealing with money laundering. The main reason is the lack of digital forensics and proper database analysis procedures within the anti-money laundering strategies of financial institutions. Also, analysing single or grouped financial events related to money laundering is difficult when the Know-Your-Customer Policies in these institutions are not enforced, or even used as evidentiary instruments to gather digital evidence and track suspicious customers through the whole investigation life cycle. Even though the relevant data sources to get information from can be identified and used to create Suspicious Activity Reports, they need to be protected from money laundering events, and by these means, prevent their confiscation. Hence, in this article, we propose a methodology for combining digital forensics and database analysis in order to enhance money laundering detection. Additionally, in order to tackle the lack of synergy between the KYC policies and Information Security requirements, we enhance our previous model by analysing the FATF recommendations, the Basel Frameworks along with the BS ISO/IEC 27001, 27002 and 27037 standards in order to incorporate some of their best-practices into a methodology for money laundering detection model to deliver a set of requirements and activities for customer verification and financial evidence extraction before, during, and after a suspicious activity takes place. Show less

Please note that the true first author is Denys Flores. I am the third author, as one of his supervisors.

This paper draws on the holistic perspective of corporate governance to identify a range of new areas that should be included in the next generation of Sustainability Indices in order to provide management and stakeholders with a clearer perspective on the long-term sustainability of the corporation, starting from the concepts in the UNPRI. It reviews a wide range of literature to identify some bases for long-term corporate sustainability which are critically compared to key factors included in… Show more

This paper draws on the holistic perspective of corporate governance to identify a range of new areas that should be included in the next generation of Sustainability Indices in order to provide management and stakeholders with a clearer perspective on the long-term sustainability of the corporation, starting from the concepts in the UNPRI. It reviews a wide range of literature to identify some bases for long-term corporate sustainability which are critically compared to key factors included in current sustainability indices and reporting. These are then compared and contrasted with a range of factors that have been identified in other literature as causing significant loss of stakeholder value or, alternatively, are part of the overall value created in the corporation but not included in current measures of shareholder or stakeholder value. The resultant gap analysis identifies new elements for inclusion in the next generation of sustainability indices, which have a significant impact on the overall broadly construed stakeholder value. This paper proposes that corporate sustainability metrics should include new quantitative measures of factors such as success of project governance, the value and nurturing of knowledge capital, information systems governance and some aspects of Corporate governance; factors which have a significant impact on the long-term value of organisations and which could be added to the content of a Sustainability Index, which will also add to the diversity of the indices available to responsible investors and executive teams. Show less

This paper critically evaluates the impact and consequences of TechnoPhobia and TechnoStress (Rosen and Weil 1995) on public and corporate ICT policy makers. This research is set in the context of government ministries in Malta and performed by Aquilina in 2010/2011, as part of his MSc Dissertation. It is of particular significance in indicating how little has changed in the perceptions of ICT users surveyed as to their levels of acceptance and trust or distrust in ICT in their work and… Show more

This paper critically evaluates the impact and consequences of TechnoPhobia and TechnoStress (Rosen and Weil 1995) on public and corporate ICT policy makers. This research is set in the context of government ministries in Malta and performed by Aquilina in 2010/2011, as part of his MSc Dissertation. It is of particular significance in indicating how little has changed in the perceptions of ICT users surveyed as to their levels of acceptance and trust or distrust in ICT in their work and recreation, using the CARS and GATS scales of Rosen and Weil. It intimates that the problem may have got worse. The fact that 56% of the respondents in Malta showed some degree of technophobia should be of particular concern to policy makers. The consequences of Technophobia need to be incorporated into the policy making forum to ensure more effective ICT systems are developed. Show less

The Knowledge Management (KM) literature is reviewed with a focus
on theory, finding a core issue in the lack of a widely accepted and understood
definition of knowledge. Theories are categorised on the bisecting continua of personal
vs. organizational knowledge, and reified knowledge vs. knowledge as social
action. It is argued that a fresh approach based on the Discourse Psychology
framework, and its research tool of discourse analysis, would shed new light on
the primary… Show more

The Knowledge Management (KM) literature is reviewed with a focus
on theory, finding a core issue in the lack of a widely accepted and understood
definition of knowledge. Theories are categorised on the bisecting continua of personal
vs. organizational knowledge, and reified knowledge vs. knowledge as social
action. It is argued that a fresh approach based on the Discourse Psychology
framework, and its research tool of discourse analysis, would shed new light on
the primary issues. Social interaction – and therefore, language – is considered by
many KM theorists to be essential to knowledge sharing and creation, yet language
has not been the locus of investigation. DP views language as the site of social
action, and reality construction. Consequently, a study of talk in interaction is
likely to reveal more about the nature of knowledge and in particular its psychological
formulation, with implications for its management. Show less

Poor governance destroys stakeholder value. Maximisation of Shareholder Value has clearly failed; General Motors and BP as recent examples cost $57.6B and $25B respectively. It drives perverse managerial behaviour. A new measure is proposed to support the UN Principles of Responsible Investment to encourage long term value creation.