About the author
Alan Oxley is a Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS in Malaysia. Alan is an all-rounder in computer science and has written numerous academic articles and chapters. He has expertise in understanding the risks associated with the use of social media and in formulating guidelines to mitigate them. Recently he was awarded a research stipend by the IBM Center for the Business of Government. (The basis for all of the work undertaken by the IBM Center for the Business of Government is to improve the effectiveness of government work. Their reports draw attention to current research and practice and make it generally available. The Center has a Social Media Director, who is currently Gadi Ben-Yehuda.) The author’s research led to the publication of the report A Best Practices Guide for Mitigating Risk in the Use of Social Media (Oxley, 2011). Readers have found the guidelines to be extremely valuable and have incorporated much of the advice into their literature on IT security, including confidentiality. The guidelines have been cited, and Alan’s role as the sole author has been acknowledged. Hyperlinks point to the guidelines and a web page describing his work. Because of his leadership role in the development of guidelines detailing social media risks and controls to mitigate them Alan is well placed to act in the role of advisor on these matters. A considerably more expansive exposition of the topic is presented in Security Risks in Social Media Technologies. Alan currently supervises two PhD students researching into Web 2.0 – one on mash-ups and one on social networking.
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS’ Computer and Information Sciences Department has been conducting research into e-government for the last few years. The topics covered include government website quality, measuring e-government service quality, knowledge management in government, and the secure use of social media for citizen participation. The Computer and Information Sciences Department has several staff and graduate students undertaking research in e-government, and Alan supervises a number of graduate students. Alan is a chartered member of the British Computer Society. He has written a number of articles for the society’s publications.
Alan received his Ph.D. in Engineering (thesis title: “Computer Assisted Learning of Structural Analysis”) from Lancaster University, UK. He has recently taught courses on computer vision and image processing, software agents, and software architecture and patterns. He recently revamped the software architecture course to make it more relevant to Web 2.0. Alan produced the acceptable use policy for the previous university at which he was employed (Oxley, 2005). He has obtained grant funds for computer science research.
Alan has a number of research interests, a key one of which is IT service management. He has written articles and conducted presentations on a variety of topics.
The author can be contacted at:
Dr. Alan Oxley, MBCS, CITP, CEng
Computer and Information Sciences Department
email: [email protected]
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS website: http://www.utp.edu.my/
Author’s website: http://www.utp.edu.my/staff/ex.php?mod=ex&sn=132723