ISIG in the News 2010

15 December

Outsource Magazine
Pharaoh Trade
One area, however, where Egypt’s proposition is compelling indeed is cost. While comparative assessments in this area are known to produce a wide variety of results, one 2009 survey by the London School of Economics placed Egypt right at the top of the rankings in the area of delivery costs, including start-up, infrastructure and labour expenses. (Indeed the LSE report found Egypt an extremely attractive proposition overall: “Egypt has scored highest on market potential of all the countries [surveyed]... This potential is only now becoming available and analysts and businesses see this as a real opportunity to expand markets and develop new services based on the strong educational and linguistic skills of the population.”)

Bloomberg
WikiLeaks can survive Swedish, US Assange probes, lawyers say
Such attempts to constrain WikiLeaks’ resources are probably a “total waste of time,” Peter Sommer, a professor at the London School of Economics’ Information Systems Integrity Group, said by phone. “The stuff is out there, and it will continue to be circulated.”

Coffee Today
Assange wants to be charged
“U.S. officials probably well advised, if they think they have a case, to try to extradite him while he was still here,” said Peter Sommer, an expert on cyber crime at the London School of Economics.

BBC Radio Five Live
5 Live Breakfast Phone-In
Professor Peter Sommer, LSE, discussed Wikileaks.

SCL.org
Predictions 2011 – First Course
From Peter Sommer, a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and an expert witness:
E-disclosure is now important in much relatively low-key litigation and the many solicitors outside the big firms and specialist boutiques will spend 2011 struggling to change their practices to cope with PD 31B and the new questionnaire which commenced on October 1. Increasingly e-disclosure has to include informal as well as formal records.

November

Finance Week
Finance moves towards the Cloud
Web-based finance and ERP applications are "on the financial radar" in spite of residual resistance to "Cloudification", according to London School of Economics professor Leslie Willcocks

AccountingWEB UK
Finance is waking up to the Cloud
In a presentation of interim survey findings from 628 UK organisations, London School of Economics professor Leslie Willcocks said that 16-17% of respondents were currently using business Cloud applications,

Business Cloud9
Business Cloud use to double in 18 months
Mainstream corporate use of business Cloud applications will more than double in the next 18 months, according to London School of Economics professor Leslie Willcocks. Presenting interim findings from a survey of 628 organisations at the Business Cloud Summit in London, Willcocks said that more than half the respondents had “strong momentum” towards Cloud business services. Their enthusiasm was driven by speedy deployment and access to best in class applications that were previously beyond their reach, he said.

Business Cloud9
Don’t perpetuate bad habits, warns Gianforte
The RightNow CEO backed the view of London School of Economics professor Leslie Willcocks who urged the summit to move its focus from Cloud computing to Cloud business services. “Our focus is on business value, and that is a message the business understands.”

18 November

Defence Management
US web traffic 'hijacked by China'
The UK's House of Commons Science and Technology Committee heard this week that the UK should focus on defence and resilience to cyber attacks, which are predicted to increase in future. In evidence, Peter Sommer, from the London School of Economics, said: "The problem with cyber attacks is that it is often difficult to know who is carrying them out, and even if the attacker can be identified, it takes too long to enable retaliation. "Therefore, cyber efforts need to focus on resilience of networks."

Computer Weekly
UK cyber efforts 'should concentrate on defence'
The problem with cyber attacks is that it is often difficult to know who is carrying them out, and even if the attacker can be identified, it takes too long to enable retaliation, said Peter Sommer, visiting professor, London School of Economics. "Therefore, cyber efforts need to focus on resilience of networks," he said.

Jaxenter
Google Docs on the Go and OODT Becomes Apache Top Level Project
A survey conducted by independent analyst company Horses for Sources and the London School of Economics, of over 1,000 executives, has discovered that business executives seem to be more susceptible to the notion of cloud computing, than IT executives. Horses for Sources and the London School of Economics, presented survey participants with a list of the potential benefits of cloud computing, and "in almost every case" a greater percentage of business executives said these benefits were relevant and appealing to their job, than IT executives.

ZDNet UK
Whitehall official outlines cybersecurity funding plan
London School of Economics information security expert Peter Sommer told the committee that it was difficult to know how much the public sector spent on information security, as part of the budget went to secret intelligence agency budgets, and the rest was split over disparate public-sector bodies. "The problem is we don't know the budget the government is putting in GCHQ," said Sommer. "Part is in the police, part in the Cabinet Office, and part appears in other budgets. It's easy to say we're not spending enough, but we don't know how much is being spent."

Bloomberg
Vodafone, France Telecom Push to Regain App Edge From Apple
Operators “had high hopes until 2007 or 2008,” said Patrik Karrberg, a researcher in the London School of Economics’ Department of Management. The hopes dimmed after the emergence of iPhones and improved data speeds that made the Internet directly accessible on handsets. “They gave up the idea of controlling the entry point,” Karrberg said. “That was the death of the portal.”

Awards for ISIG staff

Academy of Management Annual Meeting honours
A paper co-authored by Dr Susan Scott, Senior Lecturer in the Information Systems and Innovation Group and Professor Wanda Orlikowski (MIT), entitled "Reconfiguring Relations of Accountability: The Consequences of Social Media for the Travel Sector" won an award at the AoM Conference in Montréal this year. As a result the paper was included in the conference's Best Paper Proceedings.

Best Conference Paper at the American Conference for Information Systems
In August 2010 Professor Leslie Willcocks and co-authors won the Best Conference Paper award at the American Conference for Information Systems (900+ delegates) for the paper 'From Boundary Spanning to Creolization: Cross cultural strategies from the offshore provider's perspective.'

Dr Will Venters, working with partners from Oxford University, UCL and the Virtual Knowledge Studio (Masstricht), has won £120k of funding to research information use in the physical sciences. This research builds on Dr Venters' previous work with particle physicists at CERN and will be undertaken by his current PhD student Avgousta Kyriakidou. More information.

The EnCoRe project was highlighted as 'truly innovative' in the Research Councils' Technology Strategy Board report.

Green IT Department
Committee launches inquiry into scientific advice on cyber security
The Commons Science and Technology Committee has launched an inquiry into the quality of the scientific advice the government has received on cyber security. The first of three hearings will take place on Wednesday 17 November when MPs will cross examine ... and professor Peter Sommer, visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Computing.co.uk
Committee launches inquiry into scientific advice on cyber security
The first of three hearings will take place on Wednesday 17 November when MPs will cross examine professor Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, Dr Robert Hayes of the Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments, Malcolm Hurrt, head of public affairs at London Internet Exchange and professor Peter Sommer, visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Outsourcery
Cloud services will 'transform' the way IT is provisioned, expert says
Michael Dean, head of marketing at the National Computing Centre (NCC), said that cloud services will "transform" the way IT is structured in businesses when more firms use applications such as hosted email, hosted SharePoint 2007 and hosted CRM 4. It comes as a new survey by the London School of Economics found that more business executives are interested in the potential value of cloud computing than those in similar IT positions.9 November

Women in Technology
Are IT executives reluctant to buy into the cloud?
Research by the London School of Economics and Horses for Sources found that business leaders are more attracted to the potential savings and by the way that the technology can transform a business as a whole, while IT executives do not see such potential.

PurCon
Cloud computing will revolutionise IT procurement
IT procurement for businesses will be altered forever by cloud computing, it has been said, even though there are still very few organisations fully embracing the technology.The comments come from the National Computing Centre (NCC) after research from the London School of Economics (LSE) revealed that business leaders are much more enthusiastic about the cloud than those in the IT industry.

Information Age
Business execs like cloud more than IT leaders
The survey, conducted by independent analyst company Horses for Sources and the London School of Economics, presented respondents with a list of potential benefits of cloud computing. In almost every case, a greater proportion of business executives said the benefit appealed to them “as it pertains to [their] job” than of IT executives.

October

BBC Radio 4
Thinking Allowed
Are most scientific claims little more than delusions? Professor of Information Systems, Ian Angell talks about his co-authored book 'Science's First Mistake' which critiques science's claims to 'truth'.

BBC News
LSE rejects privatisation claim
Mike Cushman of the lecturers' union, the University and College Union (UCU), said the group was committed to seeing the LSE remain as part of the UK national higher education system. "Privatisation runs totally counter to LSE's role as the leading social science university; it would have to follow the agendas of corporate funders," he said.

Manchester Wired
The London School of Economics has rejected claims that it is considering going private
Mike Cushman of the lecturers' union, the University and College Union (UCU), said the group was committed to seeing the LSE remain as part of the UK national higher education system. "Privatisation runs totally counter to LSE's role as the leading social science university; it would have to follow the agendas of corporate funders," he said. "We believe that developing access for all potential students regardless of background is essential: LSE must not become a finishing school for the wealthy specialising in delivering bright, but uncritical, graduates to the finance industry."

Nouse.co.uk
Internet data storage policy resurrected
An investigation by the London School of Economics estimated the total cost of the project in excess of £2.5 billion. The program may be of special concern to the teenage and student population, who already have much of their private lives displayed on the internet. But does our use of networking sites, such as Facebook, negate our right to complain over this attempt to breach our privacy?

Guardian
LSE looks at option of going private
Mike Cushman, speaking on behalf of the LSE branch of the lecturers' union, the University and College Union (UCU), said: "We believe that developing access for all potential students regardless of background is essential: the LSE must not become a finishing school for the wealthy specialising in delivering bright, but uncritical, graduates to the finance industry."

Bloomberg
Outsourcing No Longer `Dirty Word' as Technology Spending Rises
“The cloud should enable entry into these services faster,” for smaller companies, said Patrik Karrberg, a researcher in the London School of Economics’ Information Systems and Innovation Group. “The promise of the cloud is more flexibility.”

PC Pro
Is your computer killing you?
“There’s an interesting phenomenon that says everything is considered dangerous when it first arrives on the scene,” said Carsten Sorensen, senior lecturer in information systems at the London School of Economics. The problem is reading between the lines of initial fear and misinformation.

V3.co.uk
UK government to store all internet traffic data
The plans will place responsibility on ISPs to store the data, but similar plans have also put an onus on companies to store their own records in case of investigation or litigation. The London School of Economics published research last year suggesting that the cost of such as scheme could be as much as £2bn.

20 October

Guardian.co.uk
Plan to store Britons' phone and internet data revived
The cost of the programme has been estimated at a minimum of £2bn by the London School of Economics, in a paper published last year. The government had previously declined to respond to Freedom of Information queries about the project.

Daily Mail
Our No.1 threat: Cyber terrorists who can knock a jet out of the sky (no link available)
The National Security Strategy, published today, has warned of new dangers facing the country in the form of hackers employed by terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda or the Real IRA. Earlier this year, a security specialist warned of a 'blended attack' in which physical and cyber targets are hit simultaneously. Peter Sommer, of the London School of Economics, said: 'The physical attack is made easier because someone is disrupting cyber systems at the same time.'

18 October

Channel 4 News
Peter Sommer interviewed on the dangers of cyber terrorism

Running In Heels
Britain’s Identity Crisis
A study by the London School of Economics published in 2005 established that the cost for the plan [fro identity cards] to be implemented could oscillate between £12 and £18 billion. his seemed to be confirmed by the constant budget revisions, that saw the plan’s expenditures for the following ten years rising from £5.3 to £5.612 billion in 2007.

September

The Daily Mirror
'Porn share' names leak on the web
A data breach has left more than 5,3000 subscribers and those who file shared pornography with their details visible on an online website. Simon Davis, a privacy expert at the London School of Economics, called it "one of the worst breaches" of the Data Protection Act he had ever seen.

E-Health Europe
Expert view: Colin Jervis
[They] would have agreed on the importance of design, but Tony Cornford, senior lecturer in information systems at the London School of Economics, has a different take. “I am always suspicious of people who think they can solve problems by going back to rationality,” he told me. “We do not live in a linear world but one of multiple interests and views.” Cornford is one of the authors of ‘Implementation and Adoption of Nationwide Electronic Health Records’; a paper recently published in the BMJ.

Computing.co.uk
Interview: Ian Campbell, CIO, Transport for London
Campbell traces his passion for technology back to his time studying at the London School of Economics. It was, he says, a module on systems analysis that inspired him to enter the world of IT. “It struck me that you could do a lot of problem solving through systems analysis in a very structured way. Suddenly this term ‘IT’ came up, and after considering and then rejecting a career in financial services, I took a job with Logica. I joined as a graduate and never looked back,” he says.

PublicTechnology.net
NHS IT: an uncertain prognosis for electronic records
The study, conducted by researchers from The University of Edinburgh, The London School of Economics and Political Science ... assessed the development and rollout of the NHS Care Records Service in the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). The research team assessed the implementation of electronic records in five NHS acute hospital and mental health trusts from across the National Programme for IT regions in England. Their evaluation consisted of interviews with NHS trust staff, observations and reviewing key documents.

PhysOrg.com
Roll-out of electronic patient records likely to be a long and complex process
The authors, led by Professor Aziz Sheikh from The University of Edinburgh (and which included researchers from The London School of Economics and Political Science ... say experiences from the first-wave implementation site "indicate that delivering improved healthcare through nationwide electronic health records is likely to be a long, complex and iterative process."

Cardiovascular business
British EHR roll-out proves to be long, complex
The research team, comprised of Aziz Sheikh, MD, a professor of primary care research and development at the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland, and colleagues, which included researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science ... assessed the implementation of EHRs in five National Health Service (NHS) acute hospital and mental health trusts throughout England that have been the focus of early implementation efforts at which interim data collection and analysis were completed.

1 September

Horses for Sources (blog)
Finding a needle in 20 million haystacks: CERN’s Computing Grid creates a vision for Cloud Business Services
When you get into areas such as particle physics, these folks need all the computing grunt and pooled brain-power they can muster to succeed. At HfS, we've partnered with the Outsourcing Unit at the London School of Economics (LSE) to determine the future potential of Cloud Business Services by studying the needs, concerns, intentions and views of business-line executives, and not solely the IT department.

August

Computing.co.uk
Collaborative working is forcing IT directors to learn new skills
Dr Carsten Sørensen, senior lecturer in information systems and innovation at the London School of Economics and Political Science, blamed geography, a social tendency towards "ideas hoarding" and the inability of dispersed teams to work together on shared projects as barriers to progress.

July

Human Resources Magazine UK
Employees want financial rewards for innovation but employers are slow on the uptake
Employees want to be financially rewarded for generating ideas for their business but employers are failing to consider innovation when developing their reward strategies. "There is paradox between individualisation and collaboration in business," said Carsten Sorensen, senior lecturer in information systems and innovation at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "There is a nave assumption that collaboration means we all want the same thing but individuals want their own thing in this case reward for their work."

Al-Jazeera News
Patrik Kärrberg on the implications of increased use of image search on the Internet for business and individual users.

June

The Economist
Unticking the box
This excuse may one day no longer hold water– if a British research project called EnCoRe (for “Ensuring Consent and Revocation”) proves successful. It aims to give individuals more control over their personal information online. On June 29th the partners in the project – which include HP Labs, the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick – presented a first working prototype of their “consent management technology”.

V3.co.uk
HP working on new privacy tool
Bramhall also noted HP would be considering making a commercial version of the product in the future but reiterated that currently it was still in development and more work needed to be done by the firms involved to get it ready for market. Those working on the project include the University of Warwick, QinetiQ, HW Communications, Oxford University's HeLEX Centre and regulation and business experts from the London School of Economics (LSE).

Daijiworldcom
London: Flyers Beware! Every Move Under Watch
The research team, headed by James Ferryman, has already conducted trials of the camera system on a British Aerospace plane and the computer system on a mock airbus...The research has alarmed Gus Hosein of campaign group Privacy International and London School of Economics lecturer. "This is getting out of control. An aeroplane is not a privacy-free zone," he said.

28 June

Daily Telegraph
Spy system for airlines to tackle terrorism
Under a European Union project aimed at tackling terrorism, airline passengers could have their conversations and movements monitored. Gus Hosein of campaign group Privacy International and a London School of Economics lecturer is alarmed by the news stating "This is getting out of control. An aeroplane is not a privacy free zone".

22 June

Director
Research reveals poor take-up of collaborative tools
But if collaborative technology became ubiquitous, would all employees use it, and more importantly, would they find it useful? Carsten Sorensen, a senior lecturer in IT and innovation at the London School of Economics, says we need to get over our “old-fashioned notion” of what work really is. “The biggest fallacy is to focus on whether people are working remotely or co-located,” he says. “The future is undoubtedly an extreme mix. We have an old-fashioned notion of what work is, and we have this notion that you can only really do high quality work [together] if you sit in the same room at the same time.”

Is4Profit
Are SMEs Entering a Decisive Decade?
Dr Carsten Sørensen, Senior Lecturer in Information Systems and Innovation at The London School of Economics and Political Science, says: “Throughout history, the pace of innovation has been slowed by the fact that the sharpest minds and the brightest thinkers were often working in isolation. Geography, a social tendency towards ‘ideas hoarding’ and the inability of dispersed teams to work together on shared projects have all been barriers to progress. The companies that come to dominate the next ten years of innovation will be those that are early to embrace online collaborative technologies and these new ways of thinking.”

15 June

Thinq.co.uk
How the UK exaggerated the case against McKinnon
A significant weakness in the US evidence was its failure to address doubts that the files it accused McKinnon of deleting could have caused the sort of disruptions it claimed had occurred as a result of the hacking.These doubts had been raised by both the CPS and Professor Peter Sommer, of the London School of Economics, in an expert witness statement to the High Court in one of McKinnon's appeals against the extradition last year.

12 June

New Business
Firms urged to embrace collaboration
"The companies that come to dominate the next ten years of innovation will be those that are early to embrace online collaborative technologies and these new ways of thinking," said Dr Carsten Sørensen, Senior Lecturer at The London School of Economics and Political Science.

BBC News
Google accused of criminal intent over StreetView data
"The Germans are almost certain to prosecute. Because there was intent, they have no choice but to prosecute," said Simon Davies, head of PI.
In the UK the ICO has said it is reviewing the audit but that for the time being it had no plans to pursue the matter. PI however does intend to take the case to the police. "I don't see any alternative but for us to go to Scotland Yard," said Mr Davies.

Examiner.com
Brits move fast in abolshing anti-terrorist National ID card
The government talked about the cost of the program being about 5-billion pounds or roughly $7.5 billion but the London School of Economics put the figure as high as four times that amount. The cost of the cards was to be borne by the individuals who at first were under a sort of voluntary option to make way for an eventual mandatory carrying of the card.

May

MWC News
Apple 'world's biggest tech firm'
Carsten Sorensen, a senior lecturer in information systems and innovation at the London School of Economics, said: "At that time Apple was in terrible problems and Microsoft promised to develop Microsoft office further for the Apple platform and that made it much more credible. So that was some sort of bailout as Apple was in dire straits at that time."

Economist (blog)
Scrapping ID cards No ID cards, please, we're LibCons
The plan would have required every adult Briton to hold a card, at a cost of £4.5 billion (the London School of Economics reckons a more plausible figure was around £12 billion). Fancy biometric passports, closely linked with the ID card scheme, are to be junked as well.

BBC
Timeline: ID cards
May 2010: A total of 15,000 cards are in circulation. But the cards will soon be useless as the coalition announces it will scrap the scheme. It is said to have cost £5bn, although the London School of Economics has said the true bill would be between £10bn and £20bn.

Bloomberg.com
Alcatel CEO Verwaayen’s Credibility Tested by Losses
European suppliers including Alcatel, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens Networks must continue to invest in innovation while also cutting costs in order to keep ahead of emerging-market competitors, said Patrik Karrberg, a researcher in the London School of Economics’ Information Systems and Innovation Group.

Daily Mail
Meet the mid-ranking civil servant who rakes in £500,000 a year - three times more than the PM
The [ID] scheme was supposed to be rolled out across the UK in 2008, but has been pushed back to 2014 at a Government-estimated cost of £5 billion. A London School of Economics study in 2005 put the cost of the ID card scheme, which both the Tories and Lib Dems have pledged to scrap, at up to £19billion.

April

BBC News
British computer pioneers and their links
LSE Emeritus Professor Frank Land is included in a 'family tree' of British computer pioneers - Professor Land graduated from LSE in 1950 and after a spell as a Research Assistant in the Economics Research Division, joined J Lyons the teashop and food company. They had just built the world's first business computer, LEO (Lyons Electronic Office), and in 1952 Professor Land joined the very small team of people working on the application of LEO to business data processing.

The Advocate
Songs on the side
That's Rudy Hirschheim, 58, on bass. He was 15 years behind Mick at the London School of Economics.
“This takes our minds off the stress of cutbacks at LSU and the pressure to publish in high-quality journals,” said Hirschheim
22 April

Journalism.co.uk
How social networks are using your email address book data - and what it means for journalists
Internet privacy specialist Gus Hosein, a senior fellow at Privacy International and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, told Journalism.co.uk that it is an issue about which he has long been concerned.
"You don't know how long they keep this information. How do we know how they decide this person is a friend of mine? They're keeping this data indefinitely and it's invaluable."

BBC Radio 4
Biometrics: An identity crisis
Reference to an LSE report which cast doubt on the practicality and cost of iris recognition technology. Dr Edgar Whitely is interviewed.

Suite101.com
Issues Facing a Biometric ID Card System in the UK
The initial costs for the UK’s system alone were officially stated to be £5.8 billion by the government, but a London School of Economics investigation in 2005 estimated that the true cost could run as high as £18 billion. This would put the cost to the individual citizen at around £300 each, significantly higher than the government’s £93 estimate.

This is Money
Future Human - Will a machine steal your job?
Tomorrow’s event, The Automated Nation, looks at how the UK’s safe consumer economy might not be as secure as we think, and asks whether with software making highly skilled, middle-class jobs redundant, any of us can sleep easy?
Exploring the question of whether 21st Century middle-class accountants, stockbrokers, travel agents and sales managers will go the way of the 19th Century industrial working class, will be the following guests: Peter Kirwan, Wired magazine’s chief media futurist; Victor Henning, founder of Mendeley, which uses algorithm technology to organise academic research from all over the world; Carsten Sorensen, an expert in business automation working at the London School of Economics; and also from LSE, Jannis Kallinikos, who specialises in the cultural and behavioural effects of ubiquitous information and software.

Financial Times
Tories juggle diet of liberty and red meat
Edgar Whitley of the London School of Economics, an expert on state databases, says the public often accepts draconian measures without realising what little effect they have and the freedoms given up. “Take DNA. Everyone thinks you can ID somebody really easily, but the evidence of what results the database actually gives is far less compelling. And CCTV sounds like a good thing but seems less so when you look at how effective it is and how much it costs.”

March

Mail on Sunday,
High flyers to flee?
Ian Angell, professor at the London School of Economics, has written a book about how the rich will leave the West due to high taxation.

26 March

Bristol 247
Cameron pledges to scrap identity cards law
But as long ago as 2005 a distinguished panel of experts from the London School of Economics put the likely cost at closer to £19bn. Identity cards are already being issued to residents in the north-west of England.

24 March

Computer Weekly
FSA seizes computers in insider trading sting
Peter Sommer, visiting professor at the London School of Economics, who is an expert witness in cases involving complex computing evidence, said the FSA will use its own internal experts and private sector specialists to analyse devices.

23 March

Al Jazeera News
Patrik Karrberg discusses Google providing uncensored searches in China.

Sky News
Twin Terror Threat To London Olympics
Cyber security expert professor Peter Sommer of the London School of Economics warned that computer security would be extremely important during the Games.
"There is what's called a 'blended attack', so there is a physical attack but it's made easier because someone is disrupting cyber systems at the same time, so that is the sort of scenario that people have got to worry about," he said.

Computer Active UK
Inside the UK's surveillance society
Back in 1970, Professor AS Douglas of the London School of Economics was a worried man. Writing in the October 1970 issue of Science Journal, he asked: “Would we be happy under an efficient tyranny one in which every movement and action of the citizen was recorded, analysed, cross-checked instantaneously and no incident, no matter how trivial, ever forgotten?"The systems Professor Douglas foresaw are now falling into place, but are they really as sinister as some people believe?

Guardian
Inevitable harm from university cuts
Mike Cushman, UCU secretary , LSE, writes highlighting "the disastrous effects of the decision to prioritise the Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths). The cultural vandalism of the marginalisation of arts and humanities has been widely and correctly deplored. The effect on the social sciences has attracted less attention. Our members at LSE are world leaders in the crucial areas of, to pick a few examples: child protection; financial regulation; government IT procurement; health service management; international human rights law; and young people and the internet. It would be rash of anyone to say we know enough about any of these subjects or that teaching the next generation about them is not vital for our social and economic future."

Outsource Magazine
Learn sourcing strategy & practice
From October 2010, students at the London School of Economics and Political Science will be able to take a new specialist course in 'Global Sourcing of Business and IT Services'.
The course, part of the Information Systems MSc offered by the Department of Management, will be taught by Professor Leslie Willcocks, Head of the Information Systems and Innovation Group and the leading international expert in global sourcing. The course focuses on global sourcing strategies and practices of corporations and government agencies.

Al-Jazeera English
Patrik Kärrberg, a researcher in the Department of Management at LSE, was interviewed on the outcome of the Microsoft-EU court case and why internet browsers matter to all of us.

February

MIS-Asia
Golden rules of outsourcing
“IT outsourcing is not a fad, but signifies a fundamental change in the way IT is delivered,” said Leslie Willcocks in a presentation titled “Effective IT Outsourcing: Eight Questions a Client Needs to Ask… and How to Answer Them.”
Considered an authority in the field of outsourcing, the Director of Outsourcing Unit and Head of the IS and Innovation Group, London School of Economics and Political Science, was speaking to a room of more than 30 senior level corporate executives, at an Enterprise Wide Outsourcing CxO Breakfast Forum held in January 2010 in Singapore, organised by SingTel.

Al Jazeera
Google hit by privacy convictions
Google, which is based in Mountain View, California, has said it considers the trial a threat to internet freedom, arguing that pre-screening the thousands of hours of footage uploaded every day to sites like YouTube would be impossible.
Aaron Martin, an internet expert and lecturer [he is a doctoral student] from the London School of Economics, told Al Jazeera the trial posed a challenge to Google's business model.

Computer Active
Inside the UK's surveillance society
The rise of monitoring technology has prompted public suspicion. We investigate whether people’s fears are justified
Back in 1970, Professor AS Douglas of the London School of Economics was a worried man. Writing in the October 1970 issue of Science Journal, he asked: : “Would we be happy under an efficient tyranny one in which every movement and action of the citizen was recorded, analysed, cross-checked instantaneously and no incident, no matter how trivial, ever forgotten?"
[Professor Sandy Douglas was one of the founders of the Information Systems Group at LSE]

BBC
Latest stage of ID cards to be rolled out in London
All 16 to 24 year olds in London will be invited to take part in the scheme One London School of Economics study in 2005 put the cost of the scheme at between £10bn and £19bn.

January

ComputerWorld Management
Outsourcing Problems? Middle Management May Be to Blame
The old definition of a middle manager--those senior staff in charge of overseeing the details of day-to-day management and reporting to top management--is too narrow, says Leslie Willcocks, Professor of Technology Work and Globalization at the London School of Economics (LSE) and head of its Outsourcing Unit. In today's complex and global business environment, middle management is the "glue that holds organizations together," Willcocks says.

Wall Street Journal
How Green Should My Tech Be?
To decide whether an eco-friendly IT idea makes sense, first place it in one of four categories
One caveat. This system—based on an earlier model developed in collaboration with Prof. Leslie Willcocks from the London School of Economics—relies heavily on the judgment of a company's chief information officer. We assume the CIO is closely monitoring promising technologies and can evaluate their possible impact on the business.

news.bbc.co.uk
Hundreds of ID cards taken up in NW England
Critics say the scheme will not be effective against identity fraud The scheme is said to cost £5bn, although the London School of Economics estimates it will cost between £10bn and £20bn.

Singapore's Radio 938
Patrik Kärrberg was interviewed on live on Google’s threat to quit China.

Computer Weekly.com
London School of Economics predictions for outsoucing in 2010
Today I contacted professor Leslie Willcocks, one of the experts on outsourcing at the London School of Economics.I asked him for some predictions for this year. Off the cuff he had some very interesting thoughts. These are some of them:
"A lot of the quick and dirty outsourcing contracts signed during the downturn will break up towards the end of this year.
"The ecomic situation will improve and companies will outsource more, especially BPO, because they have reduced their headcounts. But the recession was deeper in the UK and may take until 2011...

The Guardian
I'm all for privacy. But I don't want to seem like a Luddite
Simon Davies from Privacy International, meanwhile, offers this quite different objection. While the American system (and presumably ours) requires images to be instantly deleted, he believes scans of celebrities or people with unusual or freakish body profiles would prove an "irresistible pull" for some employees.

Computerweekly.com
Security to focus on cloud and virtualisation in 2010
But businesses should watch out that the costs of authentication and confidentiality do not outweigh the benefits, warned Peter Sommer, professor of security at the London School of Economics.

BBC World Service
The World Today
Simon Davies interviewed on the installation of body scanners in UK airports