Wardah Zainal Abidin

The evolution of services science

Services science has emerged as the key factor in developed economies as it becomes the main driver of productivity and economic growth. With the evolution of consumer and business processes, it has become a large part of economy. Services have become the main differentiator guided by the principle that every business has to be a service business in order to survive and compete effectively. The explosion of recent service research has shown the growing importance of services science in todaypsilas economy with the increasing efforts to focus more on the service sector in improving the standard of living and boosting productivity. Besides, technological advances have revolutionized businesses to focus more on service. IT has also opened up new revenues through improved services which is a more attractive strategy for success. In this paper, we present the evolution of services science based on the chronology of the research in services and hence postulating the progression of its academic research and the paradigm shift of services through an in-depth literature review. The future of services science is also discussed in this paper.

Knowledge Audit on Special Children Communities

This paper reports on how knowledge audit analysis was conducted for special children (SC) communities in Malaysia context. The purpose of the knowledge audit is to determine the knowledge requirement of SC communities which may reveal the required, available and missing knowledge and the person involved related to SC. Four communities of practice (CoPs) have been identified namely Parents, Educators, Medical Experts and Researchers. The knowledge audit has been conducted in four phases. There are Knowledge Needs Analysis, Knowledge Inventory Analysis, Knowledge Flows Analysis and Knowledge Mapping. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted as knowledge audit tools for facilitating the collection of data, information and evident. In order to represent the knowledge audit results, matrices presentation is used. These representations help in tracing knowledge and verify the results with the CoPs more clearly. The result shows that knowledge audit yields a number of benefits that include the missing gap between required and available knowledge. The requirement can be used to develop a one stop center for SC communities to communicate among other CoPs. Subsequently, recommendations can be derived for better managing of the knowledge.

Investigation of mashups for managers

Main focus of this paper is on investigating mashups for managers in organizations. The question to answer is whether mashups have value for managers, to what extent, and in what ways. The first part of the paper is dedicated to reviewing of what managers do in their work. The second part is to determine what mashups are and what they do. The overlapped functions that managers and mashups share will be highlighted. In order to evaluate mashup effectiveness in management in real world, a conducted experiment will be provided as proof of concept. Therefore, a further study is dedicated to experimenting mashups in the School of Postgraduate Studies (SPS) Admission Unit in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). Corresponding managers are involved in assessing mashups usefulness for their management processes. Finally the study will propose mashups for managers in the light of previous studies on mashups themselves and results from the case study.

Information and communications technology (ICT) policy implementation among academicians of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)

ICT policies are the crucial constituent of successful ICT utilization in an organization but yet their implementation is a challenging concern. This paper elucidates the important elements on achieving successful implementation in addition with high priority policies respective to three academic activities from academicianpsilas viewpoint.

Investigation into a University Electronic Portfolio System Using Activity Theory

The last few years have seen an enormous growth of interest in e-portfolios and the benefits they can bring to learners. While it is generally agreed that e-portfolios have great potential to engage students and promote deep learning, the research that has been conducted to date focuses very little on student perceptions of value of the e-portfolio for their learning. If students do not agree or wish to use the e-portfolio as an integral part of their educational experience, then the potential impact the e-portfolio have on learning will not be realised. This paper describes the development of an e portfolio system to promote reflective skills for engineering students in a university in Malaysia. The Activity Theory is used as a lens to explain the reasons for the failed adoption of the e portfolio system.

Electronic Customer Relationship Management for VoIP Service

Many businesses believe that information technology deployment which supports and cultivates one-to-one relationships with customers is one of the most important fundamental means for the creation of competitive advantage in telecommunication industry. This principle has helped in making customer relationship management (CRM) in the area of enterprise software as one of the most important recent developments. Electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) emerges from the Internet and web technology to assist the implementation of CRM within organizations which focusing on communications between organizations and their customers via Internet or web-based systems. This paper discusses an e-CRM for Voice over IP (VoIP) service illustrating the functions needed to support the unique challenges of CRM in VoIP service. An example of solution for e-CRM in VoIP service is also described. It will also discuss the importance and impact of e-CRM in voice service, besides pointing out several benefits of e-CRM in VoIP service.

Mobile payment framework for the unbanked Filipinos

One of the best methods to reach geographically remote and unbanked population is through mobile services. With the prevalent use of mobile phones, most parts of the ASEAN countries can be reached and this is a promising setting for mobile payment growth. One such country is the Philippines. This study conducted a quantitative research via online survey among the unbanked Filipinos to determine the factors that influence the intention to use mobile payment services. The motivation for this quest is the extremely low usage of mobile payment services reported by the World Bank Global Findex which indicated that only four percent of the adult population have an active mobile payment account. A new theoretical framework is suggested to study this phenomenon using adaptations of the UTAUT2.

Information security culture in health informatics environment: A qualitative approach

Information security culture is recognised as having an influence towards end-user compliance towards information security controls and policies in the organisation. Literature agrees that cultural beliefs can be found to influence behaviours among members of a profession that distinguish them in the organisational system and profession that they belong to. Therefore, these phenomena led towards the investigation and understanding of factors influencing information security culture in healthcare organisations. A qualitative approach has been conducted to evaluate the proposed conceptual model that hinges on Systematic Literature Review (SLR), organisational culture characteristics and Health Belief Model (HBM). A semi-structured interview has been conducted with 19 healthcare professionals. Twelve themes found to be the factors that may influence information security culture in health informatics environment. The study outcomes may contribute towards the design of an appropriate Information Security Management System (ISMS) for establishing information security culture in healthcare organisations.

Skills Sets Towards Becoming Effective Data Scientists

The tsunami of data and information brings with it challenges in decision making to organisations especially so to the government sector. Decision making is vital in ensuring effective service delivery to constituents. Nowadays, Big Data Analytics (BDA) tools and software are readily available but what is lacking are the skills and competency of the personnel to handle and manage these data. The Government of Malaysia requires its IT officers to assume a more important role to extract data and turn into valuable information which is beneficial to operations and planning. However initial findings revealed that these IT officers are lacking in data scientist skills. Therefore, there is a need to propose a guideline on the direction towards acquirement of these skills to become data scientists. This paper presents the findings conducted recently via experts’ views using the Delphi technique, regarding data scientist skills required by the Government IT officers. The findings revealed 46 in-service skill sets which are deemed mandatory for IT officers to have, of which the top seven being analysis, data visualisation, data modelling, decision making, ethics, communication and basic database knowledge and skills. This data is helpful towards building a Data Scientist Competency Development Roadmap for the next five years as a stop gap measure before data scientists graduates are churned from universities.

Data Scientist Skills

Decision making is one of the most important aspects in order to enhance service delivery to citizens and businesses, gain more profit, and help stakeholders to strategize their business functions. Nowadays, most of the stakeholders make decisions based on the data that is precise, concise, appropriate, and accurate. Even though Big Data Analytic (BDA) tools and software can assist in this matter, skills and competency of the personnel that handle and manage the data is more crucial and important. Thus, the aim of this paper is to identify data scientist skills from global best practices and examine the most important data scientist skills required by Information Technology (IT) personnel. From our findings, we found 44 data scientist skills and the top 5 (five) skills are business, statistic, machine learning, communication, and analysis.