IIT MUMBAI

Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT ) Bombay under its Humanities And Social Sciences (HSS) Department has introduced Information Integrity course at PG level as Institute wide elective. The first offering of the course is taking place in the Autumn semester of the academic year 2004-05 from 26 July 2004 to 7 December 2004. Professor K. Narayanan, Associate Professor, Economics, HSS Dept., IIT Bombay (Course Instructor In-Charge) and Professor Vijay Mandke, Research Leader, CIIR (Course Instructor) are conducting the course. The course objective/outline are as follows.

IIT BOMBAY I*I COURSE CONTENT (HS-613 Information integrity)

Course Objective: Information Integrity (I*I) is dependability and trustworthiness of information and is a key factor determining strategic business advantage. It’s determinants are accuracy, consistency, and reliability of information. Information is a working mechanism to deal with environment. Given the reality of ever changing environment, this leads to correctness and exactness requirements of information. Economists and systems theorists argue that the complexity of an organization or a system is limited by amount of information that it can economically process and transfer, i.e., by the costly bandwidth of its internal communication channels. This holds for a business organization as a whole, as also for its systems and sub-systems and their components. In changing system environment, business organizations are, thus, getting recognized to be “open systems”. Whatever else they do, open systems necessarily originate information to formalize environment as a major decision making factor for improved (or otherwise) system performance, and information origination is a costly activity. The degree to which the business competitive advantage (by the way of higher system performance) is feasible is, therefore, controlled by integrity of the information originated, processed and transferred, that is, by the cost and benefit of the available integrity information systems (Integrity IS). At an operational level, integrity deviation (i.e., loss of I*I) is as result of errors, which are now seen as information errors. For minimizing system failures due to errors, this makes Information Integrity (I*I) a holistic, system requirement, which includes incorrect operation consequences of: mechanistic failures, which are stochastic in nature, of data errors (i.e., loss of Data Integrity), of failure of computer-controlled equipment, and of incorrect production (i.e., origination) of information. Course aims at advanced level interdisciplinary and analytical introduction to integrity of information system and information there from as a technology for business competitive advantage in a complex and changing market environment.

Course Outline:Growing importance of information; Information Integrity - concepts and definitions; Need for an Information Economics Framework; Overview of existing integrity concepts and mechanisms; Defining error, modeling information error, system’s view of Information Integrity.
Business Information Systems [IS] view comprising multistage decision process and as information origination process in the presence of uncertainty; Information envelope, implications for DBMS, elements of information origination process; Uncertainties therein, and their error implications and loss of Information Integrity; Information Integrity risk; Inadequacy of existing integrity mechanisms, criticality of Information Integrity for efficient and economic processing of information in IS view; Usefulness-Usability-Integrity paradigm; Information Integrity attributes and their quantifiers.
Cost benefit analysis of Information Integrity; Integrity IS, its comparison with Traditional IS and Quality IS; Design basis for Information Integrity Processes; Overview of techniques for Information Integrity Process implementation, HAZOP, System Dynamics modeling methodology; Examples illustrating Information Integrity Process applications from engineering, business systems, service applications such as finance, healthcare, etc.

Texts/References:
(i) Susanne Kelly and Mary Ann Allison, “The Complexity Advantage”, A Business Week Book, McGraw Hill, 1999.
(ii) Anders Tallberg, “An Economic Framework for Information Integrity”, Library, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, P.O. Box 479, 00101 Helsinki, Finland,1999.
(iii) R.G. Coyle, “Management of System Dynamics”, John Wiley & Sons, London, U.K., 1977.
(iv) George P. Richardson and Alexander L. Pugh III, “Introduction to System Dynamics Modeling”, System Dynamics Series, PEGASUS Communications, 1999.
(v) V. Rajaraman, and V. V. Mandke, [Eds], “Information Integrity: Issues and Approaches”, Proceedings of Discussion meeting at Jawaharlal Nehru Center For Advanced Scientific Research, June 1995.
(vi) Stiglitz, Joseph, Globalisation and its Discontents, W.W. Norton and Co., 2002.

Lecture outline with topics ( no. of lectures)

Growing importance of information, degree of complexity that hierarchical and horizontal organizations can sustain and control; Information Integrity - concepts and definitions; (1)
Need for an Information Economics Framework, information economics vs. information economics where requirement is to treat information as a product; (1)
Overview of existing integrity concepts and mechanisms, namely, integrity concept of database theory, integrity in computer security research, integrity in accounting and auditing, Quality paradigm, noise reduction based technology under communication theory; 3
Overview of Expected Utility Theory of Decision-Making, existing perceptions of certainty, risk, uncertainty, risk aversion, information value; (2)
Defining error, functional (observable) vs. informational (non-observable, decision) error, informational error due to impact of interdependent environmental factors, due to evolving information, due to information origination error in respect of opportunity & constraining spaces, due to conflicting strategic requirements, information error from not formalizing environment as major factor in enterprise wide supply chain management decisions, modeling information error, system’s view of Information Integrity; (4 )
Open system view of business enterprise system, informational and physical work systems; Generic business process as integral to close loop information and control system; Business process IS view comprising multistage decision process and as continuous individual information origination situation in the presence of uncertainty; (4)
Information envelope, uncertainties therein, implications for DBMS; (1)
Elements of information origination process, uncertainties therein, and their error implications and loss of Information Integrity; (2)
Information Integrity risk, Information Correctness Risk, Information Exactness Risk, informational view of risk aversion; Inadequacy of existing integrity mechanisms, criticality of Information Integrity for efficient and economic processing of information in IS view; (2)
Usefulness-Usability-Integrity paradigm; 1 I*I attributes - Accuracy, Consistency, Reliability, I*I Attribute Quantifiers; 2 Cost benefit analysis of Information Integrity; Descriptive statement of mathematical equations for information value and for improvement of Information Integrity;(3)
Integrity IS, its comparison with Traditional IS and Quality IS; (2)
Design basis for I*I Processes for Achieving Information Origination Integrity under the implications of interdependent environmental factors (I*I Process Level 1), for Achieving Information Recognition Integrity (I*I Process Level 2), for Achieving Information Origination Integrity for Opportunity & Constraining Spaces (I*I Process Level 3), and for Achieving Information Origination Integrity for Strategic factors characterized by Conflicting Goals (I*I Process Level 4); (5)
Overview of techniques for I*I Process implementation: failure modes and effects analysis, HAZOP, (3)
Overview of techniques for I*I Process implementation: System Dynamics modeling methodology, (4)
Overview of techniques for I*I Process implementation: DYNAMO simulation language, 3 Overview of techniques for I*I Process implementation: System Dynamics modeling tool STELLA.(2)

Total 45 LECTURES