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The Morning Download: CIOs Embrace New Metrics, Illuminating Digital Productivity
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Good day, CIOs. As digital efforts transform software development, with traditional methods giving way to shorter cycles, a whole new school of measuring productivity is emerging. CIO Journal's Sara Castellanos reports on how CIOs are tapping new tools to better understand how software teams are spending their time.
Proving the value of IT. “Being data-driven at each of these stages is equally as important as having a highly skilled engineering team,” Niraj Nagrani, senior vice president for product and technology at genealogy website Ancestry, tells CIO Journal. He is using a tool called Pinpoint to measure how many times a team contributes code and how many bugs are being fixed.
Beyond coding. The focus on metrics extends beyond software development to determining how employees are using—or not using—business applications. Les Ottolenghi, executive vice president and CIO at casino operator Caesars Entertainment Corp., now has about 260 internal software applications, down from more than 800 about 18 months ago, thanks to an effort to improve IT efficiency.
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Attendees at Facebook’s F8 conference on April 30 in San Jose, Calif. PHOTO: STEPHEN LAM/REUTERS
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It begins. After years when the government took a broadly laissez-faire attitude toward the regulation of Silicon Valley, antitrust officials at the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are choosing lanes as they scrutinize the largest technology companies for anticompetitive practices, the WSJ reports.
FTC gets Facebook, Justice gets Google. The Federal Trade Commission secured the rights to begin a potential investigation of Facebook Inc. and whether it has engaged in unlawful monopolistic practices. The Justice Department will retain chief oversight of a probe into practices at Alphabet Inc.'s Google. The FTC, which generally handles retail, also has jurisdiction over certain competition issues related to Amazon.com Inc. And if an antitrust investigation of Apple Inc. is to happen, expect the Justice Department to lead efforts.
Separately. The House Judiciary Committee made public its own investigation Monday. In addition to any competitive problems in digital markets, the probe will look at whether current antitrust laws and enforcement efforts have kept pace with technological change.
Apple focuses on privacy. The company used its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif. Monday to tout its work in privacy, a major focus for Apple as it seeks to differentiate itself from peers in tech, the WSJ reports.
New OS, new privacy features. Apple said its next mobile operating system, iOS 13, which it will release this fall, will include an Apple sign-in capability that allows people to log into apps without revealing any personal information. The iOS also will curtail apps’ ability to track users' location in the background.
Russia orders Tinder to share user data. In the latest sign of Moscow’s tightening grip over online activities in the country, communications censor Roskomnadzor has put the dating app on a list of services required to store user data and communication and hand it over to the government. The WSJ has more.
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Sources: Responses of 100 people surveyed online in January 2017 (strategies) and 300 people surveyed online in July 2017 (reasons) by researchers Karen Renaud, Robert Otondo and Merrill Warkentin; respondents could choose more than one answer. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Does the U.S. Need a Cabinet-Level Department of Cybersecurity?
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DELCAN & COMPANY
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Some say a new department is needed to coordinate the nation’s defenses. Others say it would only weaken those defenses. Below, experts debate the merits.
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Yes:
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Our best people are scattered across too many agencies with ill-defined responsibilities. It’s an inefficient approach that wastes money. The result of this system is that no one cybersecurity group embodies trust and competence or impels fear in our enemies. You would never organize a company this way if you wanted to dominate a market, and we need to be dominant in cybersecurity.
— Ted Schlein is a partner at Kleiner Perkins. He founded a Defense Department sponsored program, DeVenCI (Defense Venture Catalyst Initiative), focused on increasing the department’s awareness of emerging commercial technologies
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No:
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A new cabinet department would either pull current cyber activities out of existing departments, which would be hugely disruptive and hamper overall cyber risk management by separating cyber from sector expertise—or replicate existing activities and expertise, which would increase costs, complicate coordination and exacerbate private-sector confusion.
— Suzanne Spaulding was undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security from 2013-2017, responsible for cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection. She directs the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
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Chinese tech giant Huawei faces a pressure campaign from the U.S. PHOTO: SOE ZEYA TUN/REUTERS
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Huawei selling stake in undersea-cable firm. But the sale of Huawei Marine to China's Hengtong Optic-Electric Co. is unlikely to quell broader U.S. government concerns that China is trying to control international communications networks, the WSJ reports. Like Huawei Technologies Co., Hengtong, one of the country's biggest makers of electric power and optical-fiber networks, has links to the Chinese military.
Quest Diagnostics says 11.9 million patients may have been affected by breach. The data breach occured on the web payment system of American Medical Collection Agency, one of its billing collection firms, the WSJ reports.
When? Between August 2018 and March 2019. AMCA found an unauthorized user had obtained access to the firm’s system, which also gave it access to Quest.
What? The data breach may have involved patients’ financial information as well as medical information and personal detail.
A fresh salvo in the Walmart vs. Amazon delivery battle. Walmart Inc. some three weeks ago announced it would begin offering free next-day delivery shipping on about 200,000 products on some orders in a handful of cities. Amazon.com Inc. on Monday said it has made more than 10 million products available for free one-day delivery to Prime members in the U.S. The WSJ has more.
Reconsidering algorithm-based decisionmaking. The New York Times reports that YouTube's recommendation engine is serving up family videos featuring their kids to "people seemingly motivated by sexual interest in children."
$4,567,888 buys crypto promoter a sitdown with Warren Buffett. Blockchain entrepreneur and cryptocurrency promoter Justin Sun won the charity auction to have lunch with billionaire investor and bitcoin skeptic Warren Buffett, the WSJ reports.
On the menu: indigestion. Mr. Sun, who founded a cryptocurrency platform called Tron and is the chief executive of BitTorrent, plans to use the lunch to speak with Mr. Buffett about the merits of blockchain.
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Everything Else You Need to Know
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Meatless burgers are popping up on more fast-food menus, leading to product shortages. The two main suppliers, Beyond Meat Inc. and Impossible Foods Inc., have struggled to fill demand and expand production. (WSJ)
Economists are projecting that uncertainty created by the Trump administration’s actions on tariffs will prompt the Fed to cut rates later this year. (WSJ)
The coffee industry scored a win in California with the passage of a rule clarifying that the popular beverage doesn’t require a cancer warning. (WSJ)
Lawmakers voted 354-58 to approve a $19.1 billion disaster-aid bill, sending it to the president’s desk after months of wrangling delayed the typically uncontroversial funding. (WSJ)
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