University IS Plan
Wew! I can’t imagine myself being asked by the university president to make the IS plan for the university. Just imagining it make it so tough. Haha Well these would be the possible steps I would have to propose in implementing an IS plan for the University.
1. Identifying the problem and needs
2. Ask for suggestions from the experts
3. Provide quality system- implementation
4. Monitor maintenance
5. Grant flexibility for possible enhancements
Now what is IS planning?
Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) is the process of aligning an organization's business strategy with effective computer-based information systems to achieve critical business objectives. SISP is a top concern of major executives and considerable resources (time and money) are spent in SISP activities. Many SISP initiatives are not successful due to the difficulty of implementing the recommendations. A significant problem is the Specification Gap between the description of the recommended systems and the detail needed for actual system implementation. Existing SISP methods do not provide sufficiently rigorous representations to specify detailed system recommendations. Box structures are proposed as a solution to this problem and a SISP process with embedded box structure methods is presented. We have used this innovative process in two SISP projects with large organizations. Partial results from one of the projects are presented as a case study to illustrate the use of box structures and their benefits
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/HICSS.2000.926735
Information has emerged as an agent of integration and the enabler of new competitiveness for today’s enterprise in the global marketplace. However, has the paradigm of strategic planning changed sufficiently to support the new role of information systems and technology? We reviewed the literature for commonly used or representative information planning methodologies and found that a new approach is needed. There are six methodologies reviewed in this paper. They all tend to regard planning as a separate stage which does not connect structurally and directly to the information systems development. An integration of planning with development and management through enterprise information resources - which capture and characterize the enterprise – will shorten the response cycle and even allow for economic evaluation of information system investment.
For a long time relationship between information system functions and corporate strategy was not of much interest to Top Management of firms. Information Systems were thought to be synonymous with corporate data processing and treated as some back-room operation in support of day-to-day mundane tasks (Rockart, 1979). In the 80’s and 90’s, however, there has been a growing realization of the need to make information systems of strategic importance to an organization. Consequently, strategic information systems planning (SISP) is a critical issue. In many industry surveys, improved SISP is often mentioned as the most serious challenge facing IS managers (Pavri and Ang, 1995, Beath and Orlikowski, 1994; Martin, 1993; Porter and Miller,
1985).
Planning for information systems, as for any other system, begins with the identification of needs. In order to be effective, development of any type of computer-based system should be a response to need--whether at the transaction processing level or at the more complex information and support systems levels. Such planning for information systems is much like strategic planning in management. Objectives, priorities, and authorization for information systems projects need to be formalized. The systems development plan should identify specific projects slated for the future, priorities for each project and for resources, general procedures, and constraints for each application area. The plan must be specific enough to enable understanding of each application and to know where it stands in the order of development. Also the plan should be flexible so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary. King (King, 1995) in his recent article has argued that a strategic capability architecture - a flexible and continuously improving infrastructure of organizational capabilities – is the primary basis for a company's sustainable competitive advantage. He has emphasized the need for continuously updating and improving the strategic capabilities architecture.
http://viu.eng.rpi.edu/publications/strpaper.pdf
Every year, $300-700 million dollar corporations spend about 5% of their gross income on information systems and their supports. That's from about $15,000,000 to $35,000,000! A significant part of those funds support enterprise databases, a philosophy of database system applications that enable corporations to research the past, control the present, and plan for the future.
Even though an information system costs from $1,000,000 to $10,000,000, and even through most chief information officers (CIOs) can specify exactly how much money is being spent for hardware, software, and staff, CIOs cannot however state with any degree of certainty why one system is being done this year versus next, why it is being done ahead of another, or finally, why it is being done at all.
Many enterprises do not have model-based information systems development environments that allow system designers to see the benefits of rearranging an information systems development schedule. Consequently, the questions that cannot be answered include:
* What effect will there be on the overall schedule if an information system is purchased versus developed?
* At what point does it pay to hire an abnormal quantity of contract staff to advance a schedule?
* What is the long term benefit from 4GL versus 3GL?
* Is it better to generate 3GL than to generate/use a 4GL?
* What are the real costs of distributed software development over centralized development?
If these questions were transformed and applied to any other component of a business (e.g., accounting, manufacturing, distribution and marketing), and remained unanswered, that unit's manager would surely be fired!
We not only need answers to these questions NOW!, we also need them quickly, cost effectively, and in a form that they can be modeled and changed in response to unfolding realities. This paper provides a brief review of a successful 10-step strategy that answers these questions.
Too many half-billion dollar organizations have only a vague notion of the names and interactions of the existing and under development information systems. Whenever they need to know, a meeting is held among the critical few, an inventory is taken, interactions confirmed, and accomplishment schedules are updated.
This ad hoc information systems plan was possible only because all design and development was centralized, the only computer was a main-frame, and the past was acceptable prologue because budgets were ever increasing, schedules always slipping, and information was not yet part of the corporation's critical edge.
Well, today is different, really different! Budgets are decreasing, and slipped schedules are being cited as preventing business alternatives. Confounding the computing environment are different operating systems, DBMSs, development tools, telecommunications (LAN, WAN, Intra-, Inter-, and Extra-net), and distributed hard- and software.
Rather than having centralized, long-range planning and management activities that address these problems, today's business units are using readily available tools to design and build ad hoc stop-gap solutions. These ad hoc systems not only do not interconnect, support common semantics, or provide synchronized views of critical corporate policy, they are soon to form the almost impossible to comprehend confusion of systems and data from which systems order and semantic harmony must spring.
Not only has the computing landscape become profoundly different and more difficult to comprehend, the need for just the right--and correct--information at just the right time is escalating. Late or wrong information is worse than no information.
Information systems managers need a model of their information systems environment. A model that is malleable. As new requirements are discovered, budgets modified, new hardware/software introduced, this model must be such that it can reconstitute the information systems plan in a timely and efficient manner.
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5262
1. Identifying a very clearly defined and specific problem is the first critical step to successfully implementing the problem-solving process. The strategy of improving the quality of services involves solving problems in order of priority. Why is it important to prioritize problems?
Resources and time are limited. You can't solve all the problems at the same time, so your efforts should initially focus on the most important problem.
To gain experience and acquire expertise with the problem-solving process, the first problem you work on should be one that is easily studied and resolved. Choose a problem with plenty of data easily available.
If the resolution of the first problem is successful, that solution can be reproduced easily at the local or national level, and even more so if it corresponds to the priority policies of the institution.
What?
A problem occurs when there is a difference between what "should be" and what "is"; between the ideal and the actual situation. A problem:
·expresses the difference between the hoped for and the actual situation;
·is directly or indirectly related to the health of the population;
·is expressed in terms of processes, effects, impacts, and satisfaction.
How?
You can select a problem by using one of the following techniques:
· a direct observation technique, such as a user survey
· a consensus technique like a prioritization matrix , which uses brainstorming as a first step
· a data analysis technique, such as using a control chart
http://erc.msh.org/quality/identify.cfm
2. Ask for experts suggestions
Though you are to provide plans you still have to ask for the experts advise because they know what is best for they have already gone through a lot.
The need for resources is a many-faceted issue. Some organizations are reluctant to commit to web accessibility, fearing that they do not have the necessary resources to follow-through on the commitment. Other organizations casually commit to accessibility without any intention of supporting this commitment in any real way. The process of making an accessible web site is not expensive, but it takes time to learn the techniques, and some kind of training is usually necessary, whether in the form of outside consultants, courses, workshops, or books. Ignoring the need for this kind of support will likely lead to frustrated web developers who feel that they have received a mandate with no knowledge of how to comply with it.
In some cases, the development process can be expensive, as in the case of accessible multimedia. If no resources are set aside for this sort of task, chances are low that the developers will produce an accessible product. However, in the overall scheme of multimedia development, the cost of adding accessibility features is relatively low. The multimedia product itself is expensive to produce.
It is always difficult to procure the money and other resources for large projects, but if the top level of an organization commits to accessibility, this provides justification for adding any costs associated with accessibility into the budget of projects. The leadership of the organization could even require that accessibility be a part of web projects. This will work best, of course, if the leadership actually sets aside some money for this purpose. Nobody likes the concept of unfunded mandates. At the very least, the leadership should provide educational resources, because once people learn the techniques of accessibility, it becomes an integral part of the web development process, rather than an expensive add-on.
At WebAIM, for example, we strive to make all of our content accessible. We could not easily give an accurate estimate of the amount of "extra time" that is required to make our content accessible. This time is not extra. It is required time. It is part of the process which we cannot separate out from the whole. And the truth is that the time We spend incorporating the accessibility features of our web content is minimal.
The real cost, and the real time investment in the development process is the up-front time of learning accessible design techniques. If an organization invests in training resources, most of the other development resource needs will diminish if not disappear.
3. Provide quality system suited for users- implementation
In the context of new devices and with a variety of network technologies that allow access to the Internet, the providers of e-learning materials have to ensure that the users have a positive experience using their e-learning systems and they are happy to re-use them. Adaptive Hypermedia research aims to provide personalised educational material that ensures a positive learning experience for the end-users. However, user experience is dependent not only on the content served to them, but also on the user perceived performance of the e-learning system. This leads to a new dimension of individual differences between Web users: the end-user Quality of Experience (QoE). We have proposed a solution for Adaptive Hypermedia Systems (AHS) that provides satisfactory end-user QoE through the use of a new QoE layer. This layer attempts to take into account multiple factors affecting QoE in relation to the delivery of a wide range of Web components such as text, images, video, audio.
The effectiveness of our QoE layer has been tested in comparison to a standard educational AHS and the results of these tests are presented in this paper. Different educational-based evaluation techniques such as learner achievement analysis, learning performance assessment, usability survey and correlation analysis between individual student performance and judgment on system usability were applied in order to fully assess the performance of the proposed QoE layer. Results of the tests showed that the use of the QoE layer brought significant improvements in terms of user learning performance, system usability and user satisfaction with the personalised e-learning system while not affecting the user learning achievement.
http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2284052
4. Monitor maintenance
n the early days, home computers were largely self-referential; people used them because they were interested in them. Now, computers are usually used for real-world tasks, yet they still need some navel-gazing attention at times!
The basic routine maintenance tasks are:
·Data backup
·Malware management
·File system maintenance
User data is unique to the installation and cannot be replaced 'off the peg', and for that reason it is the central concern of system management. There's a more rigorous coverage of data management, safe computing and malware elsewhere on this site; this is an easy how-to.
To backup is to create a redundant copy, so that if anything should happen to the original file, you have recourse to the backup. The process can be as simple as copying files to diskettes, but this soon becomes a problem where files are too big for diskette, where there are too many files, or where too many diskettes are required.
A better solution is to use an archiver (such as WinZip) or a backup utility to create a single compressed file from a collection of data files, and to split this over as many diskettes as required. This uses fewer diskettes and allows large files to be backed up even if the file is larger than a diskette can hold.
For large data sets, you may need to use a bulk storage medium such as tape, Zip disk, CDR or similar. These are generally faster and more reliable than diskettes.
The systems I set up will usually have a facility to backup data and core system files to the hard drive, and another to copy the most recent of such backups to diskettes. You should use this whenever you have done more work than you would want to redo from scratch. If your work is saved outside the designated data subtree then it won't be backed up by this process; you will have to make your own arrangements to back it up (WinZip, copy, etc.)
There's more on safe computing and malware. Malware includes viruses, worms, trojans, and increasingly invasive commercial applications, and management has several parts:
· Risk avoidance and evaluation - choice of applications and system setup
· Risk avoidance and evaluation - user education and safe computing practice
· Risk detection and destruction - choice and use of antivirus software
· Keeping abreast of malware - antivirus updates and ongoing user education
Simply running an antivirus utility is not enough, even if it is kept up to date!
For best performance, you can use on-demand rather than on-access antivirus scanners - but this requires the user to know when to use this, and act accordingly.
Updating an antivirus generally involves these steps:
· Go to antivirus vendor's web site via (say) Internet Explorer
· Navigate to the download section of the site
· Download any updates that are relevant, noting where these are saved
· Extract files from downloaded archive to the antivirus program directory
Some Windows-based antivirus utilities may automate this process to some extent, by accessing the Internet directly from within the program. You should check for updates at least once a week, and make sure your antivirus data files do not become more than a month out of date.
Much can be done during system setup to improve the survivability, maintainability and recoverability of the file system and its data, as discussed on the data management page. Thereafter, there are three tasks required on a regular basis:
· Check that sufficient free space is available; ideally 50M+ on C: volume
· Check the file system for errors, and manage these
· Defragment the file system once it is known to be error-free
The tools used here are Windows Explorer (or its "My Computer" incarnation), ScanDisk, and Defrag. If free space is low, you can clear .TMP files from the Windows base directory.
http://cquirke.mvps.org/9x/maintain.htm
5. Grant flexibility for possible enhancements
While insufficient flexibility of an information system to support a business process precludes the use of the system in certain cases, excessive flexibility of an information system can limit the usability of the system (Silver 1991), in addition to presenting an unnecessary investment. Despite a wealth of research on flexibility and its impacts on organizations and business processes (esp. manufacturing), the value of flexibility of an information system and the price at which it comes have rarely been included into the analysis, with the result that guidelines to determine an appropriate level of flexibility of an information system to support a given business process have not been developed. To support decisions regarding information system flexibility, the current paper presents an optimization model to relate business process characteristics (uncertainty, variability, and time−criticality) with two basic types of information system flexibility (built−in flexibility to use the information system and flexibility to change the information system). Based on an analysis of the model, we conclude that the focus of information system management should be on flexibility to change the information system in order to support processes of high uncertainty, while situations of low uncertainty tend to call for a focus on built−in flexibility to use the information system. The model also shows that very high process variability can limit the value of investments in an information system altogether, thus, improving the importance of careful flexibility and investment management, while a high level of time−criticality generally tends to increase the benefits of using an information system over manual
processing.
http://www.business.illinois.edu/Working_Papers/papers/05-0112.pdf
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