Dissertation ideas for final year in Uni?

Hi! I need some dissertation ideas for my final year in Uni. My subject is computing and I've undertaken the following modules:

Programming
Advanced Databases
Web Design/Development
Project Management
Systems Analysis
Computer Systems Architecture
Forensic Computing
IT Management
Networking
Internet Security

I have two in mind:

1. How and why the NHS needs more effective project management within their IT sector.
(This is related to the £12bn write off of the computer scheme, could have lots to talk about here)
www.dailymail.co.uk...

2. How internet security has and is having a huge impact on professional and personal lives in modern times.
(I was thinking mainly of the hacking groups which again, has lots of ethical considerations that I could speak about along with researching the tools/techniques and approaches of hacking.)

Any ideas/suggestions are welcomed. I want to explore all ideas before making a final decision.

Word count needs to be 10-20,000 words so a topic with lots to talk about would be great.

Thanks!

Do the one your most personally interested in, the one that you have some passion about. Doing a dissertation can be a bit of a slog but can be a lot easier if it's something you are passionate about.

reply to post by woodwardjnr


You're right, it will have to be something I'm interested in. I think the hacking would be a good one as I've kept an eye on LulzSec and Anonymous over the last few months. I could even bring it all together and contract it into ethics and even bring WikiLeaks into it.

reply to post by scottlpool2003


Definitely sounds more interesting than tackling the mega beast of the NHS. The whole Anon/lulsec thing is far more dynamic a subject and could provide useful insight to private companies who don't really understand it all.

Will you publish your result ? curious about reading it hehe. I would personally be interested in this:



Creating the means to bring people together into politics , having a "distributed" platform would be a great challenge. It would also involve some elements on security and authentication . I already started to work on it , maybe someone with real IT skills would bring everything to a next level, open to share the code in PHP , just contact me if interested.

If you choose option 1 you'll quickly find the problem lays with the handful of companies that are approached to run these massive programmes. They have brilliant pre-sales staff and superb lawyers that write bulletproof contracts from which the NHS can't withdraw. Once having secured the contract the quality of staff put in the project drops substantially, and they lack of a centralised design compromises the quality of any delivered solution. Although your course undoubtedly tells you about the importance of an agreed design you'll find these giant consultancies feel they don't actually need to model what they are doing and tell you with a straight face. Once started on the project there is no incentive for the consultancies to deliver the final project, in fact it's better if they make a pigs ear of it and then drag out the project ad infinitum charging a fortune for the endless little fixes. One other tactic they will employ is to refuse to allow any form of independent audit of the project, usually hiding behind intellectual property claims. Any scrutinisation of what is being delivered would quickly reveal the dire state of the project.

The saddest thing is that despite project after project failing nothing changes. The same companies get the work time after time, they never learn from their mistakes, and still claim to be shining examples of how projects should be run!

Daniel Bell died this year. I have followed his writings with interest all my academic life. He began to teach sociology at Columbia in 1959, the year I joined the Baha’i Faith. He then taught at Harvard until his retirement in 1990. I won’t give you chapter and verse of his distinguished career which you can easily access on the Internet. I began studying sociology in 1963. I taught it from 1974 until my retirement in 2005. I won’t give you chapter and verse of my quite undistinguished career since I have been a generalist and taught many subjects. I was not the precocious student, nor the specialist academic and prolific writer that made Bell the famous professional in the social sciences. His writings, his life and his ideas would make an excellent, a relevant dissertation topic, somewhat tangential to the IT topics you have listed, but with heuristic connections to IT--it seems to me anyway--and with this new world of technology that the global community has entered in the last 2 decades--to celebrate this great thinker's life and works. I would think that few dissertations take the ideas of one of the major sociologists and connect them to the world of IT. Refreshing and stimulating potentially to a creative IT man.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Five Epochs, 8 August 2011.

I always liked your writings on
ideology and post-industrialism
in your two books listed among
the 100 most important books:
1950 to 2000.....There is an(1)
ambiguity, irony, complexity, &
paradox woven into our very real
world politics, you who were, a(2)
socialist in economics, a liberal in
politics, a conservative in culture.
Thanks Daniel Bolotsky! I’ll write
more about you on another day.

1 The End of Ideology(1960) and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976) were so listed by the Times Literary Supplement.
2 Russell K. Nieli, “R.I.P. Daniel Bell,” The Socjournal: The New Journal of Sociology and Media, 15 February 2011.