Carole Alcock - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Carole Alcock

2001 was a key year for privacy in Australia. In December 2001 new privacy legislation came into ... more 2001 was a key year for privacy in Australia. In December 2001 new privacy legislation came into existence for both the public and private sector. This legislation changes how organisations handle their information management. This study reports on a survey of 70 Australian Business websites from August to September 2001. The purpose of the survey was to determine what percentage of

Libraries in an information society: online databases and access to information

Digital archiving, knowledge management and the persistence of digital data: managing access to digital resources as technologies change: A Discussion Paper

... No. 22: 361-387. Page 17. Carole Alcock, Joan Cooper and Lois Burgess 9 MOORE, Fred.(2000) Fi... more ... No. 22: 361-387. Page 17. Carole Alcock, Joan Cooper and Lois Burgess 9 MOORE, Fred.(2000) First ISP, then ASP, now SSP. In: Computer Technology Re-view. May 2000: 1, 24. O'DONNELL, James J.(1998) Avatars of the word: from papyrus to cyberspace. ...

THE ADOPTION OF PDAS WITHIN THE HEALTH CARE SECTOR: IMPROVING WORK PRACTICES AND SERVICE DELIVERY IN AMBULATORY CARE

The adoption of PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) with mobile communication capability has the p... more The adoption of PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) with mobile communication capability has the potential to improve work practice and efficiency in the health care sector. Ambulatory care workers, particularly, might welcome the prospect of point of care availability and capture of client information. A key factor in the lack of adoption of such systems, is that traditionally, health care information

There is little doubt that the emergence of the Internet and World Wide Web has had a strong infl... more There is little doubt that the emergence of the Internet and World Wide Web has had a strong influence on marketing . Through the interactive Web medium, relationship marketing and personalisation can be achieved relatively easily compared to traditional forms of media . In order to assist business to make the move online and to enable them to realise the benefits that the Internet and Web have to offer, Government's around the globe are providing both education and support, in the form of government policy and financial support programs. However, the success of government funded programs depends largely on business uptake of such programs and their ability to leverage on the benefits stemming from the assistance provided . This paper presents the results of a recent study of the level of uptake of the web as a marketing tool by businesses in the Regional Tourism Industry sector in Australia. The results of the study show that this industry sector is at a relatively advanced stage of adoption of Web Marketing, indicating that to date, Government programs aimed at this industry sector have been successful in getting businesses online.

COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY CENTRES: A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABILITY

ABSTRACT The effectiveness of Community Technology Centres (CTCs) in meeting many of the challeng... more ABSTRACT The effectiveness of Community Technology Centres (CTCs) in meeting many of the challenges presented by the digital divide invites a closer scrutiny of factors that contribute to their sustainability. The success of CTCs appears to be related to the way in which these initiatives are able to respond to the multifaceted nature of the digital divide problem. However, more systematic approaches are required to enable the identification of common factors that contribute to sustainability in different contexts. The paper responds to this challenge by initially reviewing recent contributions on the digital divide debate. From a more refined understanding of what constitutes the digital divide the paper extends Kling's (6) two- part portrayal of the digital divide into a framework that captures both technical and social factors that contribute to sustainability of CTCs. The purpose of this proposed framework is to enable further research into the sustainability of CTCs for indigenous people of Australia.

CONSUMER CONCERN AND PRIVACY: A TRANSITION FROM PRE-WEB TO POST-WEB

Before the Internet, and more specifically, before E-commerce, consumers were confronted with pot... more Before the Internet, and more specifically, before E-commerce, consumers were confronted with potentially privacy-invasive selling mechanisms. Consumers made a choice as to whether the privacy invasion was worth the resulting benefit. In recent years, the major focus of consumer privacy studies has been the Internet. There has been little work done to compare these concerns with what existed before the

Electronic Health Systems: Integration of Inconsistent Information in Heterogeneous Multidatabase Health Systems

The ability to provide accurate, timely information to authorised health providers will unquestio... more The ability to provide accurate, timely information to authorised health providers will unquestionably improve health care delivery. Essential to this is the development of Electronic Health Record Systems. Such systems will be dependent on accurate linking of data from disparate healthcare databases. Correct identification of Electronic Health Records(EHRs) through Universal Patient Identifiers(UPIs) and guaranteed integrity of content are two elements

Medium-to long-term archiving of digital documents, beyond the lifespan of the authoring software... more Medium-to long-term archiving of digital documents, beyond the lifespan of the authoring software/hardware, is a challenging problem. Magnetic and optical media are susceptible to environmental influences and deteriorate over time, often to the point where the archived documents can no longer be retrieved. Previous attempts to address this problem include migration and emulation, both of which have their attendant difficulties. It is the contention of the present study that an Open Source approach offers several advantages. More specifically, by archiving the Open Source application programs (in source code, not executable form) along with the documents in question, in both plain and compressed form, significantly increases the likelihood of being able to retrieve such archives at some future time. The application source code can be recompiled to a form suitable for reading in (Open Source) viewers, thereby presenting to the user the archived document as the original author envisaged it. One set of experiments was undertaken distributing documents together with their (Open Source) authoring software ('speckle' or salt-and-pepper) noise was deliberately introduced to the archived documents in order to mimic degradation of the storage medium over time. It was found that survivability was heavily dependent on file type: simple text files and MPEG movies were impervious to even 18% introduced noise. Source code programs and JPEG images, by contrast, were intolerant to even the smallest noise levels (it has to be said however that straightforward re-editing of the former led to error-free compilation without much difficulty). Lastly, it was found that decompression (specifically the publicly available RAR decompressor) further enhanced the file recovery process. We conclude that an Open Source approach to the preservation of digital archives has considerable potential.

On-line Privacy: An analysis of the gaps between consumer privacy expectation, Australian legislation and implementation on Australian Web Sites

ABSTRACT this report is to find the gap between consumer expectations of privacy and the implemen... more ABSTRACT this report is to find the gap between consumer expectations of privacy and the implementation of privacy on business web sites. The results are drawn from a service quality gap analysis. A full marketing gap analysis has not been conducted as the results are not of a quantitative nature, are not a marketing service and, as such, can not have numerical gaps. What is used however, is the purpose and philosophy of the GAPs model in measuring service level, using privacy protection as the service attribute. This is an effective measure for determining what privacy service a site is delivering and what satisfaction to the consumer they are providing. The notion of a gap describes level of customer service: the difference between customer expectations and perceptions of actual service (Broadley, 2001). Below is an adapted diagram of the GAPS Model this report will be looking at the gaps between expectation and perception, which is influenced by the actual service to be delivered. This fits within the limitations of the survey as the implementation can only be measured from a consumer viewpoint. The shaded areas relate to the study, positioning it within the GAPs model. This model will assist in identifying what differences exist between expectation and implementation

Integrating the Internet into the Distribution End of the Supply Chain to Facilitate a Business to Consumer Link

The Evolution of eCommerce Strategy and Supply Chain Management Practices in the Steel Manufacturing Industry

Electronic Commerce Research

The information-intensive nature of the tourism and travel industry suggests an important role fo... more The information-intensive nature of the tourism and travel industry suggests an important role for Web technology in the promotion and marketing of tourist destinations. The rapid development of the Internet and WWW is having profound impacts on the industry. In fact, according to Tourism Australia, travel and tourism has become the single largest category of products sold over the Internet (Tourism White Paper, Destinations online: approaches for regional tourism organisations, Centre for Regional Tourism Research, Southern Cross University, 2007). With reports of travel purchases being one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet community it is no surprise that the number of tourism operators on the Web has increased considerably over the past few years. This paper presents the results of a longitudinal study that seeks to determine if and to what extent, Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) in Australia are leveraging the benefits of Web technology for destination marketing and eCommerce. The study was undertaken over an eight year period from 2000 to 2008, using the Extended Model of Internet Commerce Adoption (eMICA) (Burgess and Cooper, International conference on telecommunications and electronic commerce, Dallas, November, 2000). A significant finding of this study is that despite assertions that the Tourism industry is leading the field in terms of eCommerce adoption (Buhalis and Law, Information and communication technologies in tourism, Ljubljana, Springer, Berlin, 2007), and this may hold true with some providers in the sector (for example, hotels and airlines) it does not appear to be the case with Australian RTOs who have been slow to embrace eCommerce. The results of the study also add support to the premise of eMICA, that is, in developing commercial websites, businesses (particularly, SMEs) in this industry sector typically start simply by establishing a presence on the Web and build on functionality over time, as their experience with and expertise in the use of Internet and Web technologies increases and they become more aware of the benefits the Web has to offer.

The adoption of PDAs and mobile communication is expected to provide a solution to the use of com... more The adoption of PDAs and mobile communication is expected to provide a solution to the use of computer technology by healthcare workers at the point-of-care. The Australian National Health Information Strategy, Health Online, is providing national leadership for approaches to address the quality and availability of information to assist in the planning and delivery of care. One area for potential growth is the availability and capture of information at the point of care by healthcare providers. A key factor in the lack of adoption of systems, is that traditionally health care information systems have been designed for desktop computing whereas many healthcare workers are highly mobile. This paper discusses phase one of a larger, four-phase project which aims to develop information access applications at point-of-care for Ambulatory Care Services. The initial phase of the research (phase one) involves workflow analysis, requirements specification and the development and testing of a system prototype to assess the feasibility of achieving increased efficiencies in workflow at the Ambulatory Care Service.

PDAs and Effective Community Healthcare Delivery: a Mobile Technology Solution to Point-of-Care Health Services Delivery for Ambulatory Care

Improvements in the delivery of community-based healthcare are expectedthrough the adoption of PD... more Improvements in the delivery of community-based healthcare are expectedthrough the adoption of PDAs and mobile communication at the point-of-care. The Australian National Health Information Strategy, Health Online, is providing national leadership for approaches to address the quality and availability of information to assist in the planning and delivery of care. One area for potential growth is the availability and capture

Understanding Attitudes Towards Internet Banking

Consumer attitudes towards the adoption of Internet Banking have been identified in this paper. T... more Consumer attitudes towards the adoption of Internet Banking have been identified in this paper. This study provides an early analysis of the impediments users perceive as inhibiting non-users adoption of Internet banking Internet Banking has been broadly defined in this paper as as the ability of the customer to transact business with the bank through the use of the Internet.

Using the Internet for electronic business has become an area of action for the Australian Govern... more Using the Internet for electronic business has become an area of action for the Australian Government. This paper presents research results from two regional areas which indicate that while most manufacturing SMEs use email, very few are involved in elecronic commerce activities. Major barriers are concern about security and privacy of transactions, cost of consultants, and lack of IT expertise of staff. Employing people with appropriate knowledge has been added to current training methods such as on-the-job training. Results from the two regional areas are found to be consistent. Comparisons between small and medium organisations highlight some differences.

Using the Internet for electronic business has become an area of action for the Australian Govern... more Using the Internet for electronic business has become an area of action for the Australian Government, and programs have focussed on raising the awareness of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to the opportunities offered by doing business on-line. As the manufacturing industry in Australia has experienced productivity improvements, the outlook is strong and Australian manufacturing SMEs are ideally placed to gain a competitive advantage in global trade. The results of this research indicate that while most manufacturing SMEs in regional Australia use computers, with a majority using email, only a small percentage utilise the Internet for transaction processing. Major barriers to becoming involved in electronic business are identified as concern about security and privacy of transactions, cost of consultants, and lack of IT expertise of staff. Examination of planned IT staff training methods reveal that employing people with appropriate knowledge has been added to current methods such as on-the-job training. Results from two regional areas are compared.