Evolving Information Systems and Technology Research Issues for COVID-19 and Other Pandemics

This paper examines some of the issues for research needs from information systems and information technology researchers, elicited as part of the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate a number of issues, including facilitating work while social distancing, contactless commerce, person recognition, when wearing masks or in other crisis situations, COVID-19 apps and their impact on issues such as privacy, crowdsourcing, donating data, tracking cases, etc. We also investigate the notion of people that have had COVID-19 and thus may not be vulnerable to the disease, versus, those that are still vulnerable to the disease. In addition, we examine several supply chain issues, such as changing patterns of supply and demand, fragile supply chains and autonomic supply chains. Further, we investigate a number of emerging issues and the roles of data, big data, and analytics in the area of changing and evolving work and their impact on organizations and electronic commerce. Finally, we conclude with a consideration of the merging of life and work and the issue of work-life balance.