Crowd-Sourcing Issues - Essay Example

Crowd-Sourcing Customer’s Name Customer’s Grade Course Customer tutor’s Name 19th October, 2011 Meaning of Crowd Sourcing The term crowd sourcing is a merge of the two words crowd and outsourcing, which indicates the process of outsourcing to the crowd. The origin of crow sourcing was during the initiation of web 2.0, and so crowdsourcing was coined by a user in an internet forum. Crowdsourcing shares it’s under ridding principles with web-based social media, where a user gets feedback from other users on a certain topic of their own choice. Crowdsourcing takes into use the philosophy of “two heads are better than or in unity we stand divided we fall”. Crowdsourcing was first utilized by Howe Jeff in his article which was disseminated by American magazine. Since its inception crowdsourcing has become part of the modern society and technology. In order to understand what crowdsourcing is we can take a moment and reflect on how a useful resource was started and how it is able to gather information about everything under the sun and disseminate the same information by outsourcing various researchers who write about various topics and description of various things through the power of web2.0. Yet another good illustrator of what cloudsourcing is yahooBuzz Game which has been a platform of many marketers who utilize it to give prediction, concepts and trends of high tech products. If this does not bring a point home then if you mention the world success story of the renowned search engine known as ‘Google’ is the clearest and mostly used illustrator of what crowd sourcing is, Google organizes numerous websites on how they link to each other. Google intelligence is able to coordinate links from a user consolidates and lists various specific sites consisting of the information which a user is looking for. It uses the wisdom of crowdsourcing to determine the most relevant websites for the user. Peculiar to crowdsourcing, however is that it involves an actual externalization of the product or service sourcing to the crowd of various internet users who responds to our needs and it usually has a budget line. Crowdsourcing can be understood as a wisdom of the crowd concept, in which the wisdom and knowledge of numerous individuals is leveraged to make it possible for a resultant content which is then used to solve problems. Jeff Howe puts it this way, “crowdsourcing is the act of an institution or organization taking an initial function that was once performed by its employees and then venture into outsourcing it to a generally larger network of individuals in form of an open call”. There are three specific categories of Crowdsourcing which are creation Crowdsourcing such as Wikipedia, prediction Crowdsourcing such as Yahoo Buzz and organizational Crowdsourcing such as Google and Amazon. Implications of Crowdsourcing for Project Management from a Client’s Perspective For there to be a win-win situation in project management the designer and the client have to be all happy with what they get (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Therefore without the normal client and producer interaction, a project just tends to favour one side of the two (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Crowdsourcing hurts the client in various ways It Is Not Cost Friendly To the Client Whenever a client engages crowdsourcing designer so that the designer conducts a certain work for him or her, the clients always makes sure that the designer does his or her work in a contracted set target time and budget (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). It therefore turns out to be a costly affair when the client’s work that was crowd-sourced is not done well, therefore being given to a professional to redo the same work but in the required fashion (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Another way in which a client utilizing crowdsourcing can get financially ruined is when the client outsources a designer who plagiarizes the work given to him or her by the client (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). There are however means of avoiding plagiarism within crowdsourcing but it is difficult to hold the whole crowd in crowdsourcing accountable for complete restrain from plagiarizing the work given to them (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Crowdsourcing Can Negatively Affect the Way A Client Benefits Once a client is dependent on crowdsourcing, it becomes apparent that the project he or she is implementing is vulnerable to failure once the hosting infrastructure and the crowd being sourced become compromised or unavailable (Klososky, 2011). This kind of vulnerability the project gets exposed to is magnified when it happens that the hosting technology is purely based on virtual environment, as there are no readily accessible hands on component that can be fixed through conventional process (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). It therefore means that crowdsourcing continuously depends on outside agents who are charged with providing a digital framework i.e. internet providers, server hosts and so on; this is done in order for the client to sustain a project implementation by using crowdsourcing (Klososky, 2011; Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). The virtual nature of these frameworks also means that the client is not fully in control of his or her business and what sustains it which broadens the spectrum of possible danger well beyond what business had to contend with over the years (Klososky, 2011). Web Based Security Problems Can Affect the Client It should be by no means be estimated the kind of negative impact which crowdsourcing that is hosted on virtual web2.0 framework poses to the management of projects which utilize it (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Security considerations have a significant impact on how a client’s project uses crowdsourcing and its extreme cases can make the differences between going out of business and staying in it (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). It is therefore imperative that while a client continues to run the project with lots of vigour and determination to increase the profitability of the business and cut on production costs, he or she should also invest in training and development aimed at ensuring that the IT department is vigilant on ensuring IT security (McDermid, 2008). It should also be noted that given the kind of capacity building on Internet security channelled to the human resources and the tightened security of the IT department, this measures are still not adequate to protect the organization on its own (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). It needs the users of the crowdsourcing platform to always practice safe computing, and that is more of a challenge that the client expects (McDermid, 2008). This is the core reason why most IT department always keeps on struggling to keep their heads above the water and coupling this hustle with the potential security threats that crowdsourcing poses it creates a synergistic effect in multiplying the security risk and that is why many clients always end up opting to block all usage of the IT platforms. A good illustration of this statement is a company that used to be called Verus (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Verus’s system administrator had to temporarily disable security protections in order to enable him to swap around data on its network and then forgot to re-fix it and re-enable them, this ended up exposing the sensitive files of more than 90,000 patients at risk (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). After it come to be known to almost 60,000 patients about what had happened in May 2007, they all went forth and cancelled their contracts and by august 2007 Verus was no longer able to close any business (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). This was a shocking experience for the company given its magnitude and portfolio as one of the leading medical bill paying company in the USA (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). There is a black worldwide society or guilds of unscrupulous individuals who are out to simple enrich themselves in any way possible at the client’s expense (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). In the past local business were only vigilant about physical security dangers that occurred within its circles or its immediate surroundings, today there has been major advancements in technology and more projects and their clients are susceptible to numerous un ending attacks from literally anyone anywhere on the globe (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Global cybercrime syndicates have been on the rise and can descend on the system such as crowdsourcing platform without any warning when they hack into it and can do much havoc (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). System Invasion This occurs when a client’s competitor is able to gain access to a clients system through hacking or use of viruses or invasive programs (Godara, 2009). In case this happen your competitor is able to create a depressing havoc to your project because he might literally erase all the information from the system and make it accessible which in case of crowdsourcing will mean much delays and lose of confidence from customers (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Identity Cloning This is the stealing or reuse of projects vital information by another person in order to enable him or her to gain access to the clients of the company or its financial resources (Alessandro, Maria, Joey and Paolo, 2011). Some of the well known project workers or friends have the greatest chance of doing such (Godara, 2009). Therefore in case of crowdsourcing a worker can access the final project being delivered from the crowd of designers who worked on it and sell it to people who are looking for the same especially the client’s competitors (Klososky, 2011). Intellectual Property Theft and Breaches of Confidentiality Crowdsourcing is a major loop hole that can expose the works that are dearly confidential and important to you to get into the hands of other individuals who are also looking for the same (McDermid, 2008). This people will end up using your ideas for their own purpose, without dire regards for copyright, intellectual property law, corporate ethics or confidentiality rights (Caddle and Yeates, 2008). In regards to crowdsourcing, this is always the scenario when too much information of your project is posted by your team to the crowd being sourced, either by mistake or due to lack of understanding of the confidentiality rules (Caddle and Yeates, 2008). A good illustration of this will be information posted about a project that your organization is handling which is posted to the crowd in order to be used to design the project being outsourced (Klososky, 2011). It can therefore happen that through your own channels, your competitors can be able to snatch away this information and create their own competitive project designs (McDermid, 2008). Conclusion It is imperative to acknowledge the vast advantages that a client managing a certain project can derive from crowdesourcing, some of them are mentioned at the start of this article. But it is important to note that it is foolish to embrace crowdesourcing without heeding the many warnings about the risks associated with it (Caddle and Yeates, 2008). When using it, you have to institute many mitigation measures to counter the associated risks. References Alessandro D'Atri, Maria Ferrara, Joey F. George and Paolo Spagnoletti. (2011). Information Technology and Innovation Trends in Organizations: ItAIS: the Italian Association for Information Systems. USA: Springer. Caddle, James and Yeates, Donald. (2008). Project Management for Information Systems (5th edition). Pearson-Education. Godara, V. (2009). Risk assessment and management in pervasive computing: operational, legal, ethical, and financial perspectives. IGI Global snippet. Klososky, S. (2011). Enterprise Social Technology: Helping Organizations Harness the Power of Social Media, Social Networking, Social Relevance. Texas: Greenleaf Book Group. McDermid, Donald. (2008). Ethics in ICT: An Australian Perspective. Australia: Pearson- Education. Noveck, Beth Simone. (2009). Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Read More