Business Impact of Smart Meter Project to Businesses and Individuals. Businesses are enterprises that are run for the purpose of making profits. In this regard, stakeholders take measures to minimize losses so as to widen the profit margin. In order to achieve this, the stakeholders endeavor to source credible and useful data as these are such data which facilitate budgeting as well as strategic planning. The contemporary method of charging consumption has had numerous problems, most of which have proved to be disorienting to businesses. The former monthly per-unit billing charged higher costs where consumption was higher than during the instances where few units were consumed (Momoh 2012, pp. 78).
The preceding argument means that the distributor would charge more when consumption is high. There have been instances where the manual reading of consumption has been delayed, a situation which has forced the consumers to pay an extra amount per unit of consumption than the case would have been had the readings been taken in time. It is for this reason that the smart meter project has been favored as it is hoped to streamline charging.
The impact to the individual consumption will be similar to those of the business’s. Individual consumers will find it rewarding to know and monitor their consumption so as to avoid blackouts. The smart meters will also enable them to estimate consumption of various household gadgets and, probably, substitute the use of the highly consuming ones with the low consumers. This means that the project will mitigate effects of disoriented domestic budgets, and enable the household chores to continue undeterred (Mannino 2007, pp. 34).
Ethical Issues Relating to Privacy and Data Ownership. As it has been discussed in the previous section, there have been instances when distributers have acted unethically by delaying the reading of meters. Indeed, data ownership has been weak all along, and the stakeholders have been seeking to improve the situation for the benefits of the consumers. The customers ended-up being charged extra costs in an unfair manner. The smart metering projects will also enhance connectivity, thereby minimizing the embarrassment that is caused by abrupt power blackouts (Mordini & Green 2009, pp. 23).
With regard to privacy, the contemporary system will be outdone by the smart meters. This is due to reduction of the number of people who will be required to handle the consumption and billing to homes and businesses. The project will enhance privacy since it will not be possible for the personnel of the distributing company to share consumption information. Due to the enhanced privacy and data ownership, it is presumed that the smart meters will be embraced by all the stakeholders involved (Doris & Peterson 2011, 10).
Factors Responsible for the Data Quality Problems of Smart Meters. There will be enhanced data management since the idea of manual reading and calculation will be eliminated. Most activities will be accomplished electronically, and this will result into a reduced amount of miscalculations and losses to both the distributor and the clients. With proper organization of readings and the associated data, the erroneous estimation of reading and charges will reduce; and the two parties, the clients and the distributor, will be satisfied with the readings and the charging (Keil et al. 1998, pp. 83).
Smart meters represent a new technology, a technology that has been adopted in a number of cities in the developed world. The technology is being favored due to its advantage of eliminating redundancy and unnecessary personnel. Such streamlining of activities enhances organization and management in the distributing as well as the client companies. The technology will serve as the foundation for future development in the sector. With such a foundation, there won’t be the necessity of laying further groundwork while expanding (Jepson & Sadasiv 2000, pp. 30).
The Potential Security Issues during the Rolling-out of the Smart Meter Project. While weighing the options during implementation of the smart metering project, the company will commence with the evaluation of its fitness to the organizational and client needs with precision. Firstly, the contracted organization will begin by establishing how much management and control is necessary for implementation to achieve a satisfactory level of data security. As such, it will be of value to endeavor at differencing sensitive data and information from the supportive ones (Myers 2009, pp. 45).
The implementation of the smart meter project will be rolled-out at the convenience of all stakeholders. Proper regulatory measures relating to compliance, privacy and audits will be instituted, so that the stakeholders can appreciate benefits of the project. For effective implementation of the project, there will be selection of the most secure strategy as well as strategy that has the capacity to ease the location of the workload with ease (Johnston 2010, pp. 9).
When considering implementation of the project, the management is making all attempts aimed at having clear vision of the planned outcome as well as the short-term benefits. All perceived security lapses will be addressed, since most client companies consider security as being equitable to reliability. This security is related to the data safety as there are cunning parties that would seek to unlawfully benefit from data that have been acquired unethically. The management will consider tightening the security relating to the consumption data so that it is safe even when being transferred via the communication medium (Perry 2012, pp. 12; Elmasri & Navathe 2011, pp. 12-15).
Types of Information to be contained in the Recovery Plan. When considering implementation of the smart meters, the contracted firm will evaluate the market so as to identify reputable recovery strategies. It will also evaluate the amount of time for the data to wholly recover as this will form the basis of either enhancing the strategy or utilizing it as it is. The recovery plan will consist of the procedures and policies that relate to the preparation of the continuation of the new technological infrastructure, since it will be critical to all stakeholders involved (Riehle 2007, pp. 6).
Disaster recovery will facilitate business continuity as all disruptive events will be mitigated for the purpose of supporting business functionality. Since the smart meter project will be critical, especially to the smooth running of business enterprises, rapid recovery planning will be critical (Fong 2011, 20-21). The recovery plan will, therefore, contain the dates, data and information pieces, as well as the intended use.
Criticism and Justification of the Key Requirements in the Project. Backup strategies introduce new challenges since the duplicated data may fall in the wrong hands. Rival business enterprises may utilize data that has been acquired illegally to blackmail competitors into giving in to their demands. The new technology is aimed at becoming an integral part of business endeavors, and this is the reason as to why it is essential to institute backups. Backups will prevent data losses due to natural disasters, human error and hardware malfunctioning (Flick & Morehouse 2011, 53).
Recovery planning will ensure that critical processes of recovery are utilized, so that the data to be recovered is promptly identified, availed to the recovery timeframe and safeguarded against further losses. The data recovery following a disaster will be viewed as being a subset of the business continuity. The said business continuity will necessitate the identification of the main disruptive events so that the United Energy may come up with strategies that aid business functionalities (Zurawski 2007, pp. 2).
Recommendations on how to Resolve Problems of Security, Data Quality and Privacy. The United Energy will ensure that every customer has a unique method of securing the data relating to his/her consumption. The smart meters project will also utilize such measures as passwords and encryption. In that case, it would be difficult for unauthorized parties to access and use private data without the owner’s consent (Sauer & Horner 2007, pp. 85). High quality of the consumption data will be maintained, so that not to disorient any section of stakeholders. This, together with the measures for ensuring privacy, will have positive impact on the project as a whole (Zurawski 2007, pp. 8).