[Colloq] REMINDER: Talk by Haim Levkowitz, UMASS Lowell today at 1:30pm in 166WVH

[kirsten at ccs.neu.edu]

The College of Computer and Information Science presents:


Title: The Personal Data Vault: where all your documents will reside and be easily managed
Speaker: Haim Levkowitz
Date/Time: Monday, June 4th at 1:30pm
Location: 166 WVH


Abstract:
Most paper documents are on their rapid way out of our lives. It won't be long until you will not be able to obtain documents, such as bills, statements, tax forms, and most other documents in paper format mailed to your home or office. As these words are being written, more and more institutions encourage you to switch from paper to "e-docs"; some offer incentives (e.g., mutual funds will wave the annual $12 IRA maintenance fee). Soon, the model will be turned up-side-down: The default will be electronic documents, and (maybe) you will be offered the option to purchase (for real $s) paper-based document services.

Users typically have to deal with statements from several bank accounts, half-a-dozen to a dozen credit cards, doctors'  and dentists' bills, medical explanation-of-benefit (EOB) documents, tax forms (1099, W-2), to list just a few. Those of us who have made the switch from paper to e- have encountered a myriad of user ids, passwords, security challenge questions, interfaces, and formats from their different providers. Further, each provider has a different policy regarding the "depth" of history they will maintain for you, mostly ranging from six to twelve months. The IRS requires you to keep tax documents readily available for at least five, and sometime seven years.

Users who choose the e-doc option are faced with the chore of downloading, storing, and backing up these documents, a task most of them are not up to. Management of access, retrieval, storage, and organization of these documents will soon become a real nightmare (if it hasn't yet).

Our Personal Data Vault initiative is developing a safe and secure, easy-to-use equivalent to a physical vault, where users can store, retrieve, and route documents utilizing simple, easy-to-use interfaces.

The Vault performs semantic analysis of incoming data, which arrives in machine-readable format, and, based-on user-specified rules (e.g., "forward copy of tax forms to accountant") routes documents to their designated destinations, (but to no one else!). Secondary forwarding (a well-known email problem) is restricted to owner's approval.

We present the overall architecture, and discuss challenges and opportunities. Research challenges span the areas of the Semantic Web, cloud deployment, mobile access, security and privacy, data synchronization, and more. In addition, penetration and adoption challenges include automatic machine-readable data acquisition, and overcoming users' fear.

The huge opportunities are driven by the fact that there is not going to be a substantially different way to deal with our information!

Bio:
Haim Levkowitz, PhD, is Associate Professor of Computer Science, Co-Director of the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research, and Director of the Human-Information Research Group at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is currently directing eight doctoral students. He will be a Fulbright Scholar to Brazil (August-December 2012) and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, SP, Brazil (August 2012 to August 2013). This year he is celebrating the 40th anniversary of his career as a computer professional, spanning hardware and software, industrial, entrepreneurial, and academic experience.



Kirsten Anderson
Northeastern University
College of Computer & Information Science
202 West Village H
360 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 373-8685
(617) 373-5121