Track: Software Technology
Minitrack: Spreadsheets: The Dark Matter of Corporate IT

Spreadsheets are ubiquitous. They have rapidly embedded themselves into nearly every aspect of organizational practice. Silently they make up for the bulk of "IT mass" and they are nearly invisible. But how well do we understand this most fundamental of organizational elements of from the IS perspective? In response to Sarbanes-Oxley and other compliance regimes, corporations have been looking more empirically at their business functions. What they are seeing is a very heavy use of spreadsheets in compliance-related regimes. This use greatly exceeds the use of packaged solutions which are generally reserved for handling the riskiest work. Companies are also realizing that their governance of spreadsheets is negligible and that a large majority of all operational spreadsheets that are inspected have significant material errors whose impacts are not assessed. The goal of this minitrack is to bring together spreadsheet researchers from information systems, computer science, modeling, and software engineering to share their research and develop a coherent discipline for spreadsheet research and practice.

Topics and research areas include, but are not limited to:
* Studies of spreadsheet practices and policies in organizations
* Studies of error rates and the efficacy of various error reduction rates
* Defect/error detection in spreadsheets
* Alternatives to spreadsheets for modeling and logic testing
* Spreadsheet productivity
* Software engineering practices for spreadsheets
* Spreadsheet security
* Spreadsheet analysis
* Spreadsheet design
* Spreadsheet Verification and Validation
* Spreadsheet use risk assessment
* Spreadsheet workflow
* Spreadsheet testing (process and methods)
* Spreadsheet programming
* Spreadsheet integration with IS
* The spreadsheet as system user interface
* Research areas for spreadsheets
* Studies of spreadsheet use in organization
* Spreadsheet diffusion and innovation
* Spreadsheet technologies
* Reporting and data visualization
* Spreadsheet collaboration
* Distributed development of spreadsheets
* Intra-organizational usage of spreadsheets
* Policy and process issues
* Cultural differences and similarities in spreadsheet use
* End-user development
* Longitudinal studies of spreadsheet use
* Spreadsheet engineering
* Spreadsheet optimization
* Impact of use of spreadsheets
* Spreadsheet modeling
* Novel spreadsheet applications

Co-chairs:
Raymond R. Panko (Primary Contact)
Department of IT Management
University of Hawaii at Manoa
2404 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
Phone: +1-808-956-5049
Email: Panko@hawaii.edu

Dan Port
Department of IT Management
University of Hawaii at Manoa
2404 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
Phone: +1-808-956-7494
Email: DPort@hawaii.edu