Day 62 - Interviews with Dr Leong Mun Kew and Dr Mahendran Maliapen

Day 62 - Wednesday / Daisy 2 days to go


Today I have an interview with Dr Leong Mun Kew who is the Deputy Director, Institute of Systems Science, National University of Singapore and Dr Mahendran Maliapen, Director, Academic Informatics Officer and Associate Professor (Adj), School of Public Health and School of Computing, National University of Singapore.


I meet with Dr Leong Mun Kew at the in the SkyGarden at a Japanese restaurant. Within a few minutes we hit it off and were discussing everything and a myriad of topics on technology, to Enterprise Architecture and the challenges and tribulations within government and government institutions. Many of our experiences were very similar and it was interesting to discuss many of these topics with a kindred spirit. We had many similar ideas and approaches in the way we both had worked and addressed issues within our own respective jobs and career. 


I was fascinated in a lot of the research that Dr Leong Mun Kew had done in the area of hand writing recognition and voice recognition. Some very interesting and funny anecdotes he recounted, especially with working on a certain project and at the crunch point finding out one point that was not considered. Many lessons learn't especially in the area of usability and testing for all eventualities. Dr Leong Mun Kew then dropped me off at the National University Health Systems building where I then meet Dr Mahendran Maliapen who is the Director, Academic Information Officer and Associate Professor (Adj), School of Public Health and School of Computing.


I was shown through a number of systems which had been designed to be delivered on mobile devices and the work that he had done to secure the devices and how he had addressed the responsibility of managing the data in the control of the user. The biggest issue with mobile applications especially with the data is who is responsible for the security of the data. Many times this falls back onto the organisations and where there is a breach it the organisation that is left to manage the fall out. In the model that Dr Mahendran had developed they saw it as a service that people wanted but that if they wanted the convenience then they had to take on the responsibility of managing the data. Before anyone can access the data they have to agree to a number of terms but especially the responsibility of the device and data where their's personally. After a few minuteness of though I understood how powerful this was. It gave the practitioners the flexibility but also the responsibility of the management and access to the data and the device. If in the situation a device was lost they were responsible to notify IT of that loss within 24 hrs. 


The next couple of days was relaxing with my wife before heading home to Perth. Our son Thomas then meet us at the airport and took us home. This is the end of the blogging for this trip but after two days I then headed off on another trip for the FutureGov Conference.