information insights

I mean, what is up with this type of spam?  Now it is personalised with the name of a non-existent relative?  I mean, they couldn’t find an Axelsen in Denmark, where the name is more common than Smith?  Seriously, these scammers need to start trying to be least a little convincing. 

Togbe Law Firm
No R.C. 5468-A
Guinkomè Rue Roi Dakodonou Carré Žo 48
01 B P 2202 Cotonou-Benin Republic

Dear Axelsen,

I am Barr. Leopold O. Togbe, the attorney at law to Late Mr. Peter Axelsen, a national of your country, who used to work as the Director of Products pétroliers (TOTAL BENIN) in Benin Republic West Africa Here in after, shall be referred to as my client.
On the 27th of May 2004, my client, His wife and their three Children were involved in a car accident Along Sagbama express-road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives. Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives this has also proved Unsuccessful.

After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track His last name over the Internet, to locate any member of his Family hence I contacted you. I have contacted you to assist in Repatriating the money and property left behind by my client before they get confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank here. These huge deposits were lodged particularly, with the “BANQUE ATLANTIQUE DU BENIN (BAB)” An affiliate of Commercial Bank of Africa where the Deceased had an account valued at about $12.5 million dollars.

The Bank has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have the account confiscated. Since I have been unsuccessful in Locating the relatives for over 5 years now I seek your consent To present you as the next of kin of the deceased since you have The same last name so that the proceeds of this account valued at $12.5 million dollars can be paid to you and then you and me can Share the money.50% to me and 50% to you I will procure all Necessary legal documents that can be used to back up any claim we may make. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us seeing this Deal through.

I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. And the way we are going to achieve this, is I will need the
following information from you,
Your Full Name and Address,
Your Age, Occupation and Position,
Your Telephone and Mobile for Communication Purpose.
For privacy reply to my private,
Email: officeleopoldtogbe@ymail.com

I await your reply ASAP.
Best Regards,
Barr.Leopold O.Togbe

Well, I just spent the last few days writing an assignment for a university course I am taking in qualitative research, which was made a little difficult by a daughter with hand foot and mouth disease.  Said disease meant she couldn’t go to the daycare centre, and so I have been the good husband and stayed home with her Monday & Tuesday.  Unfortunately it meant I had to go to work early on Friday and work all day Saturday, and then all Tuesday night out at uni, so that I could get it done. 

Oh, and I’m probably post-positivist now - whatever that means.  Sorry - I can’t come at being a full-blown interpretivist. 

Introduction to the assignment I am currently working on.  Just for you, @raark:

1    Introduction

Australian rural communities that are economically dependent upon a single primary industry can be particularly affected by systemic change in industry viability over time (Marshall, Fenton, Marshall, & Sutton, 2007).  The challenges faced by such communities are only increased by factors such as government policy to reduce local services and policies relating to rural industries (Hyde, 1998) and the narrow and shrinking skill base of the local work force (Humphrey, 1994). 

The resource-dependence of rural communities is detrimental to the long-term economic sustainability of those communities (Buttel & Newby, 1980; Gramling & Freudenburg, 1990).  In this context, Kranich and Luloff (1991) identify several obstacles to the success of rural development programs that seek to increase the robustness of these rural communities by reducing the community’s dependence upon a single industry. 

This paper seeks to further explore these obstacles on the basis of analysis of a subset of twenty-one interview transcripts generated for prior studies (Herbert-Cheshire, 2000, 2003).  These interviews were carried out with key residents of the rural community of Monto in regional Queensland, which at the time of the interview process was heavily dependent upon the dairy industry (Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource and Economics, 2001).  The purpose of this paper is to further consider this evidence in order to examine the manner in which Monto’s historic reliance on dairy farming and other forms of agricultural production has shaped the response of the local residents to the deregulation of the dairy industry, and furthermore to consider the potential of this response to enhance Monto’s viability and economic sustainability. 

Courtesy of @ekreeger, I thought this blog post might be a good one for anyone who presents in a world of Twitter:

How to Present While People are Twittering | Pistachio.

Having been involved in Rostrum for years, public speaking is, you know, one of my things, so it is interesting to know about how Twittering might affect a presentation (hmmm, must add to the PD of Rostrum).  However the only thing I think is that there are negatives for a speaker - it isn’t all Pollyanna and light.

I know that when I was lecturing at QUT I found it very distracting to have people on Facebook chatting away with others - and I think you do lose something if you aren’t paying attention as an audience member.  Still, the problems probably are outweighed by the benefits.

Today I have had a coffee with Clive Warren, subject supervisor, and we have sorted out our general approach to the subject I am going to lecture next semester.  Major innovation:  two assignments and a group presentation on the final day of the course, no examination.

I have also reviewed Ali’s assignment for him - it’s a draft of his confirmation document, and he just wants a proofread - and tried to set up my approach to wikis for the old phd.

As part of all that I have also reviewed Tversky & Kahnemann (1974) and written up a discussion review. 

References

Tversky, A. and D. Kahnemann (1974). “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science 185(4157): 1124-1131.

Hmmm.  Well today was meant to be a really productive day in which I dealt with all the outstanding issues, wrote papers, read papers and set up my PC.

PC got in the way through a case of destruction of MX records, and so I got half an article read (Tversky & Kahnemann 1974).  I also have to update the interview protocol for the ARC project.  There is a bit of fun going on at the moment in the context of exactly trying to define what an ‘IS audit’ is.  Grrr. 

Still I am adamant that I will get somewhere with this - look out for a short paper on cognitive psychology and its relationship with user expertise.  Now I really should go and do some proper work.  It is my intention to use this blog a bit more to pick up this material around technology dominance and so on.  Let’s see how that goes.

CPA Australia have asked me to present at their conference in Melbourne in October. They didn’t want to do Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme - that’s already been well-covered apparently. I did suggest that I could relate some case studies from the field about data governance - you know, how to get databases right and so on. I decided that I would try for the entertainment factor - after all, I have seen quite a few fun things in my time, and embellishment never hurt :) - and so I have written an outline for ‘The devil is in the detail - which is why the Lord of the Nine Hells should never be your database administrator’.

Seminar overview:

A successful business knows about its business environment to deliver consistently good services or products to its customers at a reasonable price. Accountants prepare the information that provides the feedback to the business on how it is travelling.

Unfortunately, getting that information right is quite a trick! Some of the information is locked away in limbo; we know it exists but how do we get to it? And no, ‘it’s in the database’ is not really all that helpful. Is the information we rely on actually all that accurate?

In this entertaining presentation, Micheal Axelsen explores the steps and some of the pitfalls you can take to achieve good governance of your data so that the information you prepare for the business is as right as you can get it (and meets compliance requirements!).

On this journey we take a look at some of the practical pitfalls and case studies of working with data that Micheal has seen in fifteen years of working and consulting to industry and commerce, with practical advice you can use to help your business escape its database hell.

Short overview:

As accountants, we prepare the information that a business uses to make its important decisions. Sometimes, though, the data we use seems to be impossible to track down - and when we do find it, who knows whether it’s actually useful or not?

In this entertaining presentation, Micheal looks at some of the practical pitfalls and case studies of working with data - from rampant spreadsheets to the DBA from Hell - that Micheal has seen, with practical advice you can use to help your business escape its database hell.

Does anyone care to leave feedback for me? Would you go to such a session? Or is it trying too hard to try and make databases entertaining… Still, this stuff is what I live for - which is a sad indictment of the times, I suppose, or at least of my sense of humour.

Image from Flickr User Lessio. Some Rights Reserved.

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Mistakes made in Academic Blogs | eLearning Blog // Don’t Waste Your Time ….

This semester I have been lecturing at QUT, and as part of the course we made students write blog entries regarding the material for the course.

This blog entry by David Hopkins really hits the mark for those students - if you’re doing blog entries for me in the future, be sure to read this entry!

Last week I was invited to present to the CPA Australia Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Discussion Group as part of the CitySmart Innovation Festival, along with Danny Powers, Michele Chelin, and Andrew Rogers.

It was an informative night and I think the audience appreciated what we did, as usual.  At any rate, I did promise I’d put up my slides; they’re attached below as Slideshare.  If you’d like the originals for your own purposes please feel free to email me.

Presentation

Points noted in the presentation

• Compliance with the reporting requirements (National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007) means the development or implementation of major information systems.
• NGERS is independent of the CPRS – and captures more companies than the CPRS.
• The current proposed delay of one year has some impact on the carbon pricing models, but compliance efforts by NGER reporting entities will need to continue.
• Reporting entities (entities producing > 125KT in 2008/2009, through to > 50kt CO2 equivalents by 2010/2011) will need to report emissions by one of four methodologies:
  • Method 1: the National Greenhouse Accounts default method
  • Method 2: a facility-specific method using industry sampling and listed Australian or international standards or equivalent for analysing fuels and raw materials
  • Method 3: a facility-specific method using Australian or international standards or equivalent for sampling and analysing fuels and raw materials
  • Method 4: direct monitoring of emission systems, on either a continuous or periodic basis
• Methods 1-3 are estimates of emissions based upon increasingly accurate emissions factors. Method 4 monitors actual emissions.
• A single annual emissions report is required by 31 October each year under NGER Act.
• Information that should be kept – electronically or in paper-based form - includes:
  • a list of all sources monitored
  • the activity data used for calculation of greenhouse gas emissions for each source
  • categorised by process and fuel or material type
  • documentary evidence relating to calculations – e.g. receipts, invoices & payment methods
  • documentation of the methods used for greenhouse gas emissions and energy estimations
  • documents justifying selection of the monitoring methods chosen
  • documentation of the collection process for activity data for a facility and its sources
  • records supporting business decisions, especially for high-risk areas relating to reporting coverage and accuracy.
• AS ISO 15489 (the Australian and international standard for record management) provides guidance – but not all documents are records!
• Management of information over the lifecycle is a challenge due to potential changing definitions and criteria
• Under the CPRS, liable entities whose emissions exceed 125K tonnes per annum (‘Large Emitters’) must have their emissions independently audited. For all other entities under NGERS and the CPRS, they may be subject to audit on suspicion of non-compliance or on a risk-management basis.
• As report identifies actual CO2 equivalent emissions, and thus the number of permits surrendered, business must ensure its calculation is accurate, and that people understand the report and data they are producing.
• To support auditable systems, the information systems of liable entities will need to address asset safeguarding, data integrity, system effectiveness and system efficiency concerns.
• Systems will need to be reliable and timely (“95% confident”) having regard to:
  • Transparency
  • Comparability
  • Accuracy
  • Completeness
• Extensions or integrations to accounting information systems are likely.
• There are important factors for a business to address if it is going to create an auditable information system to support its emissions report.
• 50kt of CO2 emissions is the equivalent of, for example, the operation of 15 data centres with 1000 servers over one year – so, not a small business!
• As for SME’s, they are less affected from an information systems perspective.
• Similar concerns exist though for ensuring that the integrity of, for example, price estimation models is accurate (given, for example, electricity cost increases of 18% and gas cost increases of 12%).
• It is likely that you will need to estimate and select prices based upon a rigorous method, or potentially attract the attention of the ACCC.
• SME’s that supply liable entities and/or entities that have ‘green’ purchasing policies may especially need to understand the impact of the scheme on their future demand
• ‘Very Large’ SME’s and large corporations that are currently outside of the CPRS, but could be caught in potential future expansions of the definition, should consider implementing greenhouse gas emissions reporting information systems to inform future lobbying efforts and by way of advance preparation.

This is a video of Russell Terrace I took about 5pm today.  I tried to go through here at 3pm, and it was definitely flooded and impassable then!

Came back 20 minutes later and it was all gone… so went down for a walk there and took a video, not realising Spencer had done it two hours beforehand… just goes to show how quickly these floodwaters can rise AND fall. Probably testament to good stormwater drainage in this area.

This is how Russell Terrace looked about 3pm - according to Spencer Howson’s video:

And this is how it was when I went down about 5pm - my video is much less spectacular :). 

Thanks: Micheal Axelsen