Posts

The Growing Fragility of Cities – 2019 ICMA Annual Conference

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I will present findings from my research on fragile cities at the 2019 Annual ICMA Conference. This research was funded by ICMA as part of my research fellowship. Michael Hunter collaborated with me on this research project.

Resiliency, cybersecurity, and creating more sustainable places are all topics being discussed by local government practitioners and scholars. Could it be that as local governments are increasing reliance on technology that they are becoming more fragile in the absence of considering some of the socio-economic consequences? Join this roundtable to offer your thoughts and opinions.

Beijing and Xi’an: China Development Research Foundation and University Visits

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I am heading to Beijing today to attend 2019 International Symposium on Budget Performance Management: National Governance and Comprehensive Budget Performance Management in the New Era hosted by the China Development Research Foundation. I will present a paper co-authored with M. Zhang, Evolving from Performance Management to Proactive Governance: The Opportunity and Gaps. 

I will also deliver research presentations at China University of Political Science and Law and
Xi'an Jiaotong University.

 

Research Partnerships – Brazil – August

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I am spending the next two weeks in Brazil visiting colleagues and developing research partnerships. I will deliver two research seminars:

Shaping the Future of Autonomous Systems in Society: Research with Impact

Emerging technologies are fundamentally impacting and transforming all aspects of our society. I am particularly concerned with how technological innovations impact 1) the design of our public institutions, 2) the apparatuses through which we shape, implement, and evaluate public policies, and 3) our governance frameworks for public goods. All indications suggest that we are moving toward a world where autonomous systems will dictate how we interface and interact with other agents and objects in our society. We can take advantage of emerging technologies to make our societies more livable, just, resilient, and sustainable. To realize this future, we need active and sustained engagement by scholars across a myriad of disciplines, especially public policy and management.

Public policy and governance scholars have largely been absent when it comes to engineering efforts related to the design and deployment of autonomous systems and policy debates that will shape their impact on our society. In this talk, I will outline why we need active engagement by public policy and management scholars during phases of autonomous systems development and implementation. Examples will be drawn from over a dozen research engagements that have studied emerging technologies in the public sector, from predictive analytic systems to blockchain, social media platforms, and machine learning algorithms. I will outline key governance dilemmas and policy challenges confronting public agencies as they try to keep up with the rapid pace of technological innovations.

Studying complex phenomena requires us to undertake research that 1) draws on multiple disciplines, 2) engages a diverse group of stakeholders, 3) appreciates a plurality of research approaches, and 4) generates actionable solutions. Executing inter-disciplinary research is no easy feat to accomplish. Researchers face daunting challenges from the onset; beginning with the inception of ideas, continuing to the crafting of problem statements, executing the research process, and then communicating the results via publications in academic and practitioner outlets. However, these challenges should not be viewed as an excuse to abandon inter-disciplinary research in favor of narrowly focused research exercises. Opportunities for use-inspired research will be discussed. In addition, I will present a working model for executing inter-disciplinary research that has served me well. I will openly share some of the trials and tribulations that I have encountered along the way.

Scheduling meetings: Feel free to send me an email. I will be in Vitória from Aug 10-13 and in Rio de Janeiro from Aug 14-18.

 

Strategically-Motivated Advanced Persistent Threat – Computers & Security

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Atif Ahmad (University of Melbourne), Jeb Webb (Oceania Cyber Security Centre), James Boorman (Oceania Cyber Security Centre), and I have a new article accepted for publication in Computers & Security.

Advanced persistent threat (APT) is widely acknowledged to be the most sophisticated and potent class of security threat. APT refers to knowledgeable human attackers that are organized, highly sophisticated and motivated to achieve their objectives against a targeted organization(s) over a prolonged period. Strategically-motivated APTs or S-APTs are distinct in that they draw their objectives from the broader strategic agenda of third parties such as criminal syndicates, nation-states, and rival corporations. In this paper we review the use of the term “advanced persistent threat,” and present a formal definition. We then draw on military science, the science of organized conflict, for a theoretical basis to develop a rigorous and holistic model of the stages of an APT operation which we subsequently use to explain how S-APTs execute their strategically motivated operations using tactics, techniques and procedures. Finally, we present a general disinformation model, derived from situation awareness theory, and explain how disinformation can be used to attack the situation awareness and decision making of not only S-APT operators, but also the entities that back them.