Syaripah Ruzaini Syed Aris

Risk management practices in IT outsourcing projects

Risk management in IT outsourcing projects is a process of identifying, analyzing, controlling and reducing risks in IT outsourcing projects life cycle. Risk management is important as the practices of risk management will reduce the risks thus lead to success in IT outsourcing projects. Risk management should be conducted in IT outsourcing as it will foresee risks that might disturb the smooth flowing of IT outsourcing and prevent or reduce the impact of risks if they occur. Therefore, the primary objective of this paper is to analyze how organizations conducted risk management in IT outsourcing practices. The findings revealed that organizations highly considered the last phase of risk management in IT outsourcing which is on-going monitoring. The organizations least considered the first phase; analysis of decision to outsource whereas this phase is very important as a preparation to enter IT outsourcing activities. Therefore, even though other phases were highly considered, lack of initial preparation will reduce the probability of success in IT outsourcing. For future works, the weaknesses and vulnerability of current practices will then be enhanced and framework of risk management in IT outsourcing will then be developed.

Crowdsourcing: The Trend of Prior Studies

Crowdsourcing is view as major changes in current economy as it has revolutionary effects on organizations. Unlike previous outsourcing trends that practices closed inter-organizational relationships subject to the long-term legal contract, these new crowdsourcing practices take place in an open and virtual context, characterized with small and short-term deals. Crowdsourcing has been recognized as new industry that able to uplift the economy and bring significant benefits to business and people in general. Although the phenomenon of crowdsourcing is fairly new and still in a formative stage, the indications and predictions are optimistic. Under the recent Malaysian government initiatives called Digital Malaysia, various crowdsourcing efforts and programs have been introduced. This paper reports on the review of prior studies pertaining crowdsourcing from a general view.

A preliminary study for critical success factors of micro sourcing in Malaysia

Micro sourcing is the act of outsourcing small or micro task to the crowd. During recent years, commercial micro sourcing has become a successful business model. Micro sourcing initiative in Malaysia is still nascent. The implementation is targeted to B40 group; those with low income household. This study is attempted to identify the critical success factor of micro sourcing initiative on the industry level and to identify the weights of each critical success factors in order to determine the priority of each of them. Interview has been conducted with Micro sourcing to Generate Income for the B40 committee member. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to set critical success factors priority. Results show the reputation system, the ease of use of technology and provide training to the micro workers as the most imperative critical success factors related with success of micro sourcing in Malaysia. In the future, this study should involve the participation from stakeholders such as micro workers, platform owner and organizations.

Investigating technology readiness of rural community: An analysis of age differences

In Malaysia, although the government has promoted technology inclusion of rural area, the consideration of readiness for technology is being neglected. Research effort on technology readiness in Malaysian rural area is low. This research argues that low technology readiness may worsen the disparity of e-inclusion in Malaysia. Hence, this research is performed to provide evidence of the extreme importance of the investigation of readiness to technology implementation before its inception. The aim of the study is to assess the readiness level in Malaysian rural areas according to different age groups. Kampung Tengah, Melaka, Malaysia was chosen as a case study, and a survey study design was adopted. Data from 150 respondents of four different age groups was gathered and being analyzed with Kruskal Wallis Test. The results display significant differences among different age for optimism, innovativeness and insecurity. The results have indicated that there is a need to increase the technology readiness based on different age group, and different age groups require different strategies for e-inclusion initiatives. Further work will be performed in this community to gather technological and ICT requirements to conceptualize the value chain and implementation strategy for the inception of technology. The value chain can be further integrated and enhanced with e-inclusion initiatives towards the implementation of ICT-based initiatives such as e-learning.

Managing Risk in Decision to Outsource IT Projects

Organizations all around the world are increasingly adopting the activity of outsourcing their IT function to service providers. However, the decision to outsource IT project is not an easy task. The risk will mostly affect the organizations as opposed to service provider. Therefore, it is important for the managers to manage this activity. This paper presents how organizations manage their decision to outsource IT projects. Mixed method was used to gather the information regarding current practices. The analysis revealed that some organizations did not have structured process to come up with the right decision to outsource. In the other hand, some of them assessed the risk associated with the decision to outsource. The analysis of the findings was then used as a basis of the proposed framework of Risk Management in Decision to Outsource IT Project. The proposed framework can act as a guideline to help organizations in making the decision to outsource as well as assessing and managing risk associated with the decision to outsource IT project.

Identification of Influential Visual Markers in Extremist YouTube Videos from the Viewpoint of Younger Viewers through Partial Least Square (PLS) Analysis

Videos related to extremists containing violent and graphic contents referred as ‘extremist YouTube videos’. Abundance of these videos found on the YouTube despite prohibition by the community guideline. Extremist YouTube videos may vary in language, size format and purpose. However, the similarities are apparent on impressive messages that emotionally moved the viewers via embedded part that calls for visual attention – also known as visual markers. To date, little investigation has been done to identify visual markers that have influence on viewers’ emotion. Eighty university students were recruited to rate their emotional responses upon watching 20 extremist YouTube videos during a Kansei evaluation. This paper will report on Partial least square (PLS) analysis of data obtained against 30 visual marker attributes converted into dummy variables. From PLS coefficient score, mean of range was calculated in order to identify the most influential visual markers according to particular emotion concepts. Six visual markers – profile, quantity, violent act, weaponry, logo and scene setting are identified as the most influential from viewpoint of younger viewers in evoking their emotion upon watching the videos. Nonetheless, the order of influence is slightly different for each of the emotion concept. The findings shall benefit academia and other stakeholders in understanding kind of emotion concepts evoked by which visual markers and future work on affective video classification.

Analysis of Evoked Emotions in Extremist YouTube Videos Through Kansei Evaluation

Extremist YouTube videos are always associated with the ‘Dark side’ and potentially bring negative influence on younger viewers. These videos are deemed inappropriate for containing violent, has since triggered interest of academia and other stakeholders to study on its content. Extensive body of research mostly emphasizes on extremists’ messages, modus operandi, production features and may overlook on emotion perspective of the viewers. Viewing the videos can evoke specific emotional response in the viewers. Emotional response can be described in specific sets of adjective words or sentences which can be referred as emotional descriptors. This paper will report on factor analysis of 62 emotional descriptors rated by 80 university students after having watched 20 extremist YouTube videos during a Kansei evaluation. Significant emotional descriptors are successfully ascertained wherein 27 descriptors are retained in 3 factors; offensive, intrigue and awkward. The remaining 35 descriptors can be ignored as the proportions of variability explained by the remaining factors are close to zero and can be considered insignificant. The finding for ‘offensive’ and ‘awkward’ is expected since majority of the descriptors are of negative affect in nature. Rather interesting is the finding about ‘intrigue’ as a factor since it contains positive affect in circumstance which commonly perceived as negative. That however, adds to novelty for this research. Together the result shall benefit academia and other stakeholders in understanding evoked emotions in extremist YouTube videos and future work on affective video classification.

Microsourcing Job Provider Maturity Model

Microsourcing is an emerging outsourcing practice by organization to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in a form of an open call. It is considered as a new entrepreneurial evolution in digital economy value creation. Because of the challenges and competition faces by organization nowadays, organization approved the need to provide services with higher added value and less cost. One way to achieve that is using microsourcing to accomplish tedious tasks at faster rate. However in Malaysia, the concept is fairly new and still in a formative stage. Due to that, organizations awareness, interest and willingness to participate in microsourcing initiatives need to be investigated and evaluated. This research is aim to produce the multiperspectives micro sourcing maturity integration model that able to assess the maturity level of organization to participate in microsourcing initiative. In this study, the characteristics of viable microsourcing maturity model and the significance factors contributing to implementation success have been identified. The analysis and results can be used as a road map to prepare an action plan for a successful microsourcing implementation in Malaysia.

Evaluating user satisfaction of Veteran Integrated Benefit System (VIBES) in Jabatan Hal Ehwal Veteran (JHEV)

Nowadays, e-government has become an important application in many countries. Most countries including Malaysia have implemented e-government to support and give services to their citizens. The e-government is not only involve internet and government website but to support and automate various processes which can improve the quality of public services. In Malaysia, there are many government agencies that implements e-government. One of the agencies is Department of Veteran Affair or also known as Jabatan Hal Ehwal Veteran (JHEV). JHEV implements the Veteran Integrated Benefit System (VIBES) to support its business and services. The VIBES was implemented to systematically monitor and manage business process of JHEV Pension. Overall, this system is an online system which have centralize database for processing, enforcement, monitoring, accounting and payment of the pension benefit. However, with the growing establishment of information system like VIBES, there are some issues usually occur in e-government system including the system does not meet users expectations and requirements. This issue usually related to user satisfaction area and perception. Thus, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the system based on nine dimensions of content, accuracy, format, ease of use, timeliness, efficiency, customization, flexibility and utility. The study also provides recommendations for developer to make enhancement to the system which will help to improve and enhance JHEV productivity further.

Risk Management Determinants in Vendor Selection of IT Tender Evaluation Process

This study reports on the determinants of Information Technology tender activity focusing on vendor selection process. The evaluation process in the selection of vendors is crucial because this is the phase where risks occur frequently. A survey is conducted among government agencies, government-linked companies and private sectors which are involved in IT procurement. Sixty percent of the population responded. A factor analysis is performed and four risk categories are extracted with a total of 11 determinants identified. The four categories of risks are vendor financial stability, hazards, operation and strategic. Determinants for vendor financial stability include pricing and the determinants for operation are performance, and deliverable. Meanwhile, reporting, customer demand, business enabler and supply chain are the determinants for strategic and agreement, security and support are the determinants for hazard. This study contributes towards new knowledge by proposing a risk management model for vendor selection in IT Tender Evaluation process.