Information Technology Security as Scored by Management Budget

In information technology security as scored by management budget, the author examines information technology (IT) security in the context of organizational management, business, complexity leadership theories, and current IT security scholarship. Based on well-known organizational power and politics theory as well as accounting, budget, and management literature, the chapter examines what is known about the impact of power and politics on IT security and the importance of budgetary gamesmanship as illustrated by understanding that the budget as a game, the politics of allocation within an organization, the influence of budgetary bias and how it shapes what CISOs must understand and master, the unfunded mandate impediment through which each the organization picks winners and losers under the auspices of “doing more with less.” The author suggests a future framework for IT security-management-budget review that includes measures that track expenditure versus the power alignment and how to gauge the net effect on an organization's information-technology security posture.

Latinos, African Americans and the Coalitional Case for a Federal Jobs Program

In the late 1970s, amidst growing unemployment in black and Latino communities, the newly-formed Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) supported the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in its call for full employment in the run up to the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1 978. Never fully implemented, the act has been de facto an unfunded mandate for close to 40 years. Only recently has it been resurrected by a handful of lawmakers, while both discussion and support for a national jobs program has begun to gain steam in the media and the general public. With support from labor market research and other empirical evidence, we propose and outline for a bold policy: a National Investment Employment Corps to provide a permanent job guarantee for all citizens with the purpose of maintaining and expanding the nation's physical and human infrastructure. Given the disproportionate effect of the recent economic downturn and labor market bias on African Americans and Latinos, we argue that a National Investment Employment Corps program would address the employment needs for blacks and Latinos by assuring full-employment and simultaneously ensuring long-term benefits for the nation's well-being.