Koppel on Security

Ted Koppel's documentary on Privacy and Security is worth watching. It can be viewed here.
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Flying While Asian

The recent detention of 12 men of Asian (or as reported by media, resembling Pakistani or middle eastern or more correctly brown skinned) origin on the Nortwest flight and two men on the Manchester flight are lucid examples of a society that has gone crazy. It is now dangerous for an Asian man or woman (soon) to fly, drive, ride bus or train, or even eat or stand in a public place without being detained. All because the uneducated, paranoid majority (namely the white trash who are also likely to be in law and other government agencies) are scared. These folks had never used whatever brains they may have, and will never be able to think coherently. The media, again a bastion of ignorant bigots, adds fuels to the issue.

If the situation does not improve, perhaps, the same treatment ought to be meted out to all caucasians, whether they are Americans or Europeans travelling and present in Asian countries. An eye for an eye makes everyone blind but the blind cannot see color!

Flying While Asian

The recent detention of 12 men of Asian (or as reported by media, resembling Pakistani or middle eastern or more correctly brown skinned) origin on the Nortwest flight and two men on the Manchester flight are lucid examples of a society that has gone crazy. It is now dangerous for an Asian man or woman (soon) to fly, drive, ride bus or train, or even eat or stand in a public place without being detained. All because the uneducated, paranoid majority (namely the white trash who are also likely to be in law and other government agencies) are scared. These folks had never used whatever brains they may have, and will never be able to think coherently. The media, again a bastion of ignorant bigots, adds fuels to the issue.

If the situation does not improve, perhaps, the same treatment ought to be meted out to all caucasians, whether they are Americans or Europeans travelling and present in Asian countries. An eye for an eye makes everyone blind but the blind cannot see color!

Curious comments!

I don't get to this blog if I am not teaching the business process management course. But, every once in a while I will check up on the contributions to see if anyone had put in a comment or two. This morning (April 24, 2006) I decided to check and found I had some comments on some of my postings. These comments were not from any students, past, present, or future! It turned out that one comment was a link to a porn site and another to a virus site. Third was to a site on Kenneth Cole! I did not venture to check out any of these as I did not want to infect my machine with anything. I spent the next hour or so to clean up the comments, and put in some preventive measures. Though the Bolgger.com site had help messages to guide me, the task was not easy or intuitive. Due to the configuration of my machines the task was a lot more difficult and frustrating. The only way I could get rid of the comment linking to the porn site was by deleting the entire post!

There has to be a better way!

General reflection

For all practical purposes the semester has come to an end for us. I will take the next few paragraphs to reflect upon my experiences with the course. Though I have been teaching this course (MIS 538) now for three years or so (have taught at least six sections of it), each time it has been like new.
Early on I realized that instead of focusing on systems development, which meant application development, the course should focus on a more important aspect of IT, namely process management. I am happy to see that my reading of the cards on this is right on the mark. We see the industry driving towards business process management.
Teaching BPM has been invigorating and difficult. For almost any course we teach in the MIS or MBA program there often is a standard text but not so in BPM. Therein lies a major problem. Articles of interest and value are hard to find, whether they are case studies or research projects.
For the first time in this course I had guest lectures from invited speakers. They came from a varied set of industries. I believe this has been a major success. Sharing real life experiences has tremendous value. Every one of the speakers could add to the collective knowledge of the class.
As I told my class, I like to innovate. I tried something different this time to get students participate more. I do not believe it worked well. Often, I become over ambitious and have to scale down my goals. This semester was no different. I introduced the concept of blogs where the student could reflect upon the proceedings of the class. I had hoped that the blogs would generate an elevated level of enthusiasm and ownership from the students. It did not work the way I had intended. In fact the experience reminded me of the first time I required MBA students to use email (the first batch of module-based MBA, circa mid 90s). Students, like anyone else, are unwilling to change their habit. Creating blogs require that you spend some time reflecting and then writing. The old notion of maintaining a diary is useful here.
I also used a different approach to projects. By deciding to reach out to the Iowa businesses for projects, I had a rich selection of projects. Robin Haberger and Bob Roacher helped out a lot. I may have opened a spigot of interest in these type of projects.

Instead of lengthy term papers, I wanted students to create a knowledge portfolio. The knowledge portfolio would look like a term paper but would be really a hypertext document. In addition I wanted this to be a semester-long effort at compiling relevant resources and weaving these into fine tapestry. But it did not work. Only one person ever got it close to my vision.

Well, that is the end of one semester!

Broken Process

Here is an example of how a process is broken. Given below is a collection of correspondence between ISU Treasurer (A/R), accounting, and I regarding a question on Ubill. As can be seen from the listing, I wanted to know why I can not see a breakdown of the transactions by the date/time on which it occurred. Instead of responding to the question, the first contact referred me to accounting. Accounting did not answer the question. They gave a breakdown of the transactions. Notice that this information is on their system, which gets uploaded to AccessPlus without the date history! I asked accounting how I can continue to get the history. Notice their reply. It is my responsibility to keep track of their process! Interesting!

-----Begin--------
I can give it to you each month. Better yet, maybe you can keep your cash register receipts for a record.

-----Original Message-----
From: Nilakanta, Sree [LOMIS]
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 12:31 PM
To: Sutton, Dianna D [RES H]
Subject: RE: Billing information
Dianna:

Thank you for the prompt reply.

Will I have to contact you each month to get this type of breakdown? Will AccessPlus data display be modified to reflect this breakdown? If neither option is feasible, how can I still get the breakdown?

BTW, I am still a student of life and learning!

Thanks

Sree

From: Sutton, Dianna D [RES H] [mailto:ddsutton@iastate.edu]
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 12:27 PM
To: Nilakanta, Sree [LOMIS]
Subject: RE: Billing information

All charges are billed at the beginning of a month for all transaction the previous month. Therefore, the $22.24 is the total of all use during the month of October.

Our computer shows the following activity.

October 5 $4.69 at the MU Food Court
October 7 $3.79 at the MU Food Court
October 13 $2.94 at the Business Cafe
October 14 $5.38 at the MU Food Court
October 22 $3.79 at the Business Cafe
October 22 $1.65 at the MU Cafe


To date in November the charges are

November 5 $5.69 at the MU Food Court
November 9 $3.65 at the MU Food Court

These charges and any other use during the month of November will be billed the beginning of December.
Dianna Sutton
Account Specialist
ISU Dining
-----Original Message-----
From: Treasurer/Receivables [RCVBL]
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 12:19 PM
To: Sutton, Dianna D [RES H]
Cc: Nilakanta, Sree [LOMIS]
Subject: FW: Billing information
Dianna,
Could you please assist this student with his dining services inquiry?

Thank you!
-----Original Message-----
From: Nilakanta, Sree [LOMIS]
Sent: Thu 11/11/2004 11:54 AM
To: treasrec@iastate.edu
Cc: Subject: Billing information

On the Current Month Activity, the display of charges on the UBill is quite confusing. All charges are listed under the same date. This does not help in locating or identifying individual transactions. Since I do not ask for a receipt of the transaction from the teller, it is difficult for me to reconcile the transactions. Any information you can provide will be of help. I have copied what I see on the screen.

11-03-2004 Mu Food Court Misc $4.69
11-03-2004 Mu Food Court Misc 5.38
11-03-2004 Business Cafe 10.52
11-03-2004 Mu Cafe 1.65

Total Charges $22.24
Current Balance $22.24
Minimum Payment $0.00

Thanks

Sree Nilakanta
Associate Professor of MIS
Dept. of Logistics, Operations, and MIS
College of BusinessIowa State UniversityAmes, IA 50011
ph: 515-294-8113
fx: 515-294-2534
efax: 240-201-7186
IM: sree_nilakanta@passport.com
Blog: http://radio.weblogs.com/0112415
Feed the hungry today at http://www.thehungersite.com

-----End------

Can you see a broken process here?

Topics to use for Knowledge portfolio

Here are some topics that you may want to consider for your Knowledge portfolio:

• Service Oriented Architecture and BPM
• Compliance rules and BPM
• Privacy, Security, and Trust and BPM
• Converged Communication Network and BPM
• Information Integration and BPM
• Mining for Process: Learning from evidence
• Business Process Outsourcing: Social, ethical, economic, and technical issues
• Tools and Methods for BPM: Evaluation and trends

Keywords: Topics, BPM

Keywords for blogs

If you are using Blogger then you have realized that you can not categorize your posts. One way to overcome this is to add a line at the end of your post that says Keywords: and a list of keywords that reflect the content of your post. It is also a good idea to run the spellchecker before you post!

Keywords: categories, blogs

Welcome

Wecome to the on line journal for the MIS 538 course (Fall 2004). The objective of the BPM Blogs is to elicit active on line discussions and debates on business process management topics. Here I will introduce papers, articles, and postings from you and others.