AIS Grand Vision Project for the ICT-enabled Bright Society

Global societal knowledge infrastructures and communication platforms have made life and business more efficient and effective. However, many serious side effects have emerged alongside these information and communications technology (ICT) platforms, imperiling the foundation of future not only in a particular country, but also across borders.

So far, there has been no dedicated academic discipline or society that aims to solve these problems through systematic research on a global scale. Therefore AIS Council agreed to adopt the vision of ICT-enabled Bright Society as an AIS Grand Vision Project (in short Bright ICT Initiative) in Dec. 2014, and established a task force.

The initiative will encompass the development of relevant technologies, business models, public policies, social norms, international agreements, metrics of measuring national progress and more. This endeavor is expected to create many research opportunities to make AIS research outcomes more available and significant for society.

Bright ICT Memorandum of Understanding Signing with ITU

In December 2015, AIS signed an agreement with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to formally collaborate on research and implementation on the Bright Internet for Trust Infrastructure. The Bright Internet is the first core research topic of Bright ICT (Jae Kyu Lee, MIS Quarterly, June 2015), and aims to drastically reduce cybercrimes by achieving the Principles of Origin Responsibility, Deliverer Responsibility, Rule-based Digital Search Warrant, and Traceable Anonymity.

Video of the Signing of the MOU for Bright ICT

Task Force

The task force consists of Jane Fedorowicz (Immediate Past-President), Helmut Krcmar (President), Jae Kyu Lee (President-Elect), Past Presidents of AIS, Joey George and Nils Bjorn-Anderson, Ramayya Krishnan (Dean, Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University), Allen Lee (AMCIS Representative), and Cynthia Beath (VP of Conferences). For more information, please contact  jklee@business.kaist.ac.kr.

Panels on the Bright ICT Initiative in AIS Conferences

To encourage the exchange of ideas about the Bright ICT Initiative, panels were organized during various AIS Conferences.

1. ICIS 2014 Held in Dec. 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand, the inaugural panel was hosted by Jane Fedorowicz (Immediate Past-President of AIS), Helmut Krcmar (President of AIS), Jae Kyu Lee (President-Elect of AIS), Ramayya Krishnan (Dean of Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University), and Kevin Desauza (AIS VP of Communications, Arizona State University).

2. ECIS 2015 Held in May in Munster, Germany, the panel “European Perspectives of the Bright ICT Initiative with Global Reach” was organized by Ferdinando Pennarola (AIS ICIS Representative, Italy) with the panelists Helmut Krcmar (Germany), Henk G. Sol (Netherlands), Niels Bjørn-Andersen (Denmark), and Jae Kyu Lee (Korea).

3. PACIS 2015 The July meeting in Singapore featured a panel with the Asia Pacific perspective. Jungpil Han (National University of Singapore) moderated the panel with panelists from Japan (Masaki Hirano, Waseda University), Singapore (Steven Miller, Singapore Management University), New Zealand (Michael Myer, Auckland University), and Korea (Jae Kyu Lee, KAIST).

4. AMCIS 2015 The August meeting in Perto Rico featured a panel focused on “The AIS Grand Vision Project: What, Why, and How”. Jane Fedorowicz (Bentley University) moderated the panel with panelists Ritu Agarwal (University of Maryland), Gwanhoo Lee (American University), Richard Watson (University of Georgia), Ping Zhang (Syracuse University), and Jae Kyu Lee (KAIST).

5. ICIS 2015 The December meeting in Fort Worth, Texas featured a panel on “The Bright Internet as the Future Trust Infrastructure”. Victoria Yoon moderated the panel with panellists Andrew Whinston (University of Texas), Chae Sub Lee (Director of ITU), Jae Kyu Lee (KAIST), and a forthcoming expert in security trend.

Special Issues of Journals on the Bright ICT Initiative

A special issue of the Journal of AIS will be guest-edited by Wonseok Oh (KAIST), Alessandro Acquisti (Carnegie Mellon University), and Choon Ling Sia (City University of Hong Kong). A call for papers is current with the following illustrative topics for the issues, but is not limited to:

• Responsibilities of cyber security and obligations of Internet platform providers
• Design of traceable anonymity that secures both privacy and security
• Economics of computer security and privacy
• Legal aspects of Internet crimes and privacy violation
• Effects of privacy concerns on online consumer behaviors
• Big data analytics and privacy concerns
• Exploration of cyber bullying and online harassment in social networking sites
• Social and political conflicts in online communities and social networks
• Assessments of digital addictions to games and social networking sites
• Potential risks of the Internet of Things society.

Contact Wonseok Oh: ohws@business.kaist.ac.kr

MIS Quarterly published the editorial article on the “Research Framework of the Bright ICT Initiative (Jae Kyu Lee, June 2015), and welcomes submissions on Bright ICT related papers. Editor-in-Chief, Paulo B. Goes, recommended several Senior Editors who are well qualified and committed to handle the submissions, including Youngjin Yoo, H.R. Rao, Sulin Ba, Paul Pavlou and Arvind Malhotra.

The Editor-in-chief, Ritu Agarwal, of Information System Research plans to have a special section focused on Bright ICT issues as well.

Global Research Network and Global Summit

As the national research projects are granted from many countries, the research teams from many universities and/or countries can establish the AIS Global Research Network of Bright ICT. As the technical standards and global governance structure for the Bright Internet become developed, the Global Bright Internet Summit can be established with the relevant government representatives and global governance leaderships. We hope to host the Global Summit in ICIS 2017 in Seoul.