Commercial Information Systems Research Articles

Commercial farm management information systems - A demand-oriented analysis of functions in practical use

The functions of farm management information systems (FMIS) are mostly examined without considering purchasing statistics as an indicator for their actual use and crucial information for FMIS developers and politics. Thus, the present study analyzes categories and functions of commercial FMIS purchased by farmers within a subsidy program for digital technologies in the German federal state of Bavaria. The FMIS were categorized and linked to eleven general functions. Correlations between supplied FMIS functions and farmers’ purchase decisions were evaluated. Finally, the distribution of FMIS functions and categories were weighted by the number of purchases to reflect their demand. The distribution of categories and functions were also compared to previous studies to show current trends. From October 2018 to June 2020, 52 different FMIS were purchased 569 times, dominated by ten FMIS covering 85 % of purchases. The most purchased FMIS targeted the crop domain. Farmers tend to use office and mobile software versions in combination more often. Although web applications seem to increase, native applications, developed for use on a particular platform or device, were still the most inquired application type. There is evidence that certain functions increase farmers’ willingness to use FMIS when they are available. The most purchased FMIS functions were ‘quality assurance’, ‘inventory’ and ‘finance’. The availability of the functions ‘traceability’ and ‘quality assurance’ clearly increased, confirming a positive trend already predicted in a previous study in 2015. In conclusion, functions providing an automated and site-specific mapping, monitoring, and recording of farm processes and production materials to comply with legislative standards were highly requested by farmers, presumably due to increasing cross-compliance requirements of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union. Future FMIS should therefore include functions for recording and evaluating site-specific agri-environmental measures to support result-based payments and related decision-making.

A practical approach to learning Linux vulnerabilities

Operating systems based on the Linux kernel are widespread in the microcomputer, mobile, server, and supercomputer market. They have become an integral part of commercial and government information systems in which confidential information, personal data and trade secrets are stored and processed. Thus, the Linux kernel is a critical object in such systems, because its compromise leads to the compromise of the entire system or an substantial part of it. In most cases, an attacker compromises the kernel by exploiting vulnerabilities, despite the protection mechanisms built into the kernel. And in order to find and eliminate them, an information security professional must have the appropriate skills. Such skills can only be learned through practice. In this paper, we propose a practice-oriented approach to exploring the variety of Linux kernel vulnerabilities in order to acquire the skills to find, analyze and fix them by an information security professional. The proposed approach made it possible to transfer the laboratory practice to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

빅데이터에 기반한 공적개발원조에 관한 연구

Korea(R.O.K) is actively participating in the so-called concessional Overseas Official Development Assistance (ODA) project for developing countries. In this regard, this study examines the experience of constructing and utilizing Korea's commercial district information system based on various big data, and checks the experience under the 'Korean ODA model in the ICT sector' related to the 'ODA based on big data' of the OECD.
 Through this, this study emphasizes that the development of new ICT businesses and the expansion of added value are an opportunity to support the low-income class in recipient countries and to grow into emerging and developing countries, and also suggests that it can be a useful opportunity to enhance competitiveness. As an example for this, it examines the possibility of establishing a system for providing various information that can increase the added value of the tourism business in Kyrgyzstan.

Analysis of Planning System Digitalization of Non Cash Sales of Electric Equipment Companies (Case Study in CV. Sinar Elektronik)


 
 
 CV Sinar Elektronik is a trading company that distributes electrical equipment like a cables, sockets, switches and etc. As a trader engaged in trading, it is important to pay attention to the information on the sales system. Sales are the main component of business processes so the exhibition can run smoothly and rhythmically. A great sales system and system will produce the right information for users. The operating system researcher conducted an analysis of the CV Sinar Elektronik distribution system and procedure which had several drawbacks and caused problems. The first problem is the lack of sales order number information and shipping information on sales orders, dust particles can be used as transaction identifiers. The second problem is that hive customers don't have a credit limit. The last problem is the absence of a customer complaint collection system. This study to analyze and evaluate the computerized information system of the sales cycle of CV Sinar Elektronik. This type of research information is qualitative and uses kick-the-bucket information sources obtained within the company. The data collection methods used are interviews, observation and documentation. The result of this research is the design of an automated commercial information system, the improvement of the techniques and documents of the CV Sinar Elektronik.
 
 

Leveraging Axiomatic Design and Research Information Systems to Promote Research Outcomes at Public Universities

Due to the ever-stringent regulatory standards and financial pressure imposed by governments worldwide, public universities are striving to produce and deliver high quality knowledge by leveraging various organizational and technological tools. Despite their prominence and proliferation, research information management systems (RIMS) cover only the research management life-cycle of the institution and thereby presume that the scholars are actively engaged in research and are committed to feeding the system with accurate research data, which may not be the case at public universities. In this paper, we propose to leverage Axiomatic Design and Research Information Systems to support the entire research production life-cycle. The architecture of the proposed system is described in terms of a set of software modules, which may be incorporated into an open-source or a commercial Current Research Information System (CRIS). This will extend the CRIS functionality to cover the research production life-cycle in addition to the research management life-cycle making it well suited for developing research capacity at public universities.

Algorithmically embodied emissions: the environmental harm of everyday life information in digital culture

This conceptual paper introduces the notion of algorithmically embodied emissions to highlight how everyday choices facilitated by commercial algorithmic information systems such as commercial search engines, social media and recommender systems contribute to the climate crisis and other forms of environmental destruction. The proposed concept is developed by integrating terminology from the fields of information studies, critical algorithm studies and environmental impact assessment, and by examining a strategic selection of examples. Through the examples, the authors show that semantic interpretation of queries as well as the information architecture involve normative dimensions with implications for the climate crisis and other forms of environmental destruction. The paper proposes a terminological framework that integrates conceptual considerations from environmental impact assessment, environmental communication, information studies and critical algorithm studies to articulate how algorithmic information systems are co-constitutive of environmental harm. The paper further suggest to extend environmental impact assessment to include algorithmic harms in order to take into account how responsibility and accountability are distributed among different actors with profoundly different conditions and opportunities to exercise them.

How Patents Influence Market Value of Industrial Enterprises' Assets?

Scientists and engineers are continuously patenting innovative ideas such as inventions, industrial designs, and utility models. It is therefore relevant to pose the question of the influence of intellectual property in the field of innovative technologies on the market value of the assets of industrial enterprises.
 We analyse the dependence of the results of intellectual activity in the field of advanced technologies on the capitalization of innovative industrial production after the adoption of the developed technologies. We consider patent landscapes, analyse research publications, and study the dependence of financial indicators on the results of intellectual activity at enterprises producing computers, optics and electronic equipment.
 Our research methodology is based on the statistical analysis of the dependence of the financial results of industrial enterprises on the actual application of the results of intellectual activity to the technological process. We define the object of analysis by citing research articles and surveys from the WoS database. The patent landscape is assessed using data from commercial information systems such as Orbit Intelligence (Questel) and Amadeus (Bureau van Dijk, Moody’s Analytics) that make it possible to visually show the links between patent activity and technological trends in the computer and electronic technology industries.
 The research results shall be useful for assessing the effectiveness of employing patents in manufacturing and the prospects of improving production technologies for the formation of corporate innovative technological policy.
 We conclude that the use of information on patent trends is an effective tool for increasing the competitiveness of enterprises producing electronic equipment. The priority financing of innovative technologies ensures the sustainable development of the manufacturing industry and have a positive impact on the profitability of enterprise assets.

Enabling Workforce Optimization in Constrained Attribute-Based Access Control Systems.

Effective utilization of human capital is one of the key requirements for any successful business endeavor, with reorganization necessary if there are nonproductive employees or employees that are retiring. However, while reorganizing tasks for newer employees, it should be ensured that the employees have the requisite capabilities of handling the assigned tasks. Furthermore, security constraints forbid any arbitrary assignment of tasks to employees and also enforce major dependencies on other employees who have access to the same tasks. Since Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) is poised to emerge as the de facto model for specifying access control policies in commercial information systems, we consider organizational policies and constraints to be modeled with ABAC. Given the increasing size and scale of organizations, both in terms of employees and resources that need to be managed, it is crucial that computational solutions are developed to automate the process of employee to task assignment. In this work, we define the Employee Replacement Problem (ERP) which answers the question of whether a given set of employees can be replaced by a smaller set of employees, while ensuring that the desired security constraints are not violated. We prove that the problem is NP-hard and use CNF-SAT to obtain a solution. An extensive experimental evaluation is carried out on diverse data sets to validate the efficiency of the proposed solution.

A Research on Business Information System and Informatization

Based on the analysis of commercial economic informatization, this paper puts forward the abstract model of commercial information system, which comprises of the environmental system, business system, monitoring system, and emergency system. In addition, it also involves the strain cycle, monitoring cycle, and business cycle. In order to promote a better development in the business economic model under the background of informatization, commercial enterprises should improve their understanding, develop and continuously optimize business economic informatization, as well as create an efficient and safe network security environment for the future.

Digital Transformation of Energy Companies: A Colombian Case Study

The United Nations established 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the fulfillment of the 7th, defined as “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all”, requires energy industry transitions and digital transformations, which implies that diverse stakeholders need to move fast to allow the growth of more flexible power systems. This paper contains the case report that addresses the commercial digital transformation process developed at AES Colombia, through the implementation of a modern platform based on specialized applications that use Industry 4.0 tools. The Chivor hydropower project, a 1000-MW powerplant that covers 6% of Colombia’s demand, which is owned by AES Colombia and constitutes its primary asset, is first described. Then, a description of Colombia’s complex market (energy matrix, trading and dispatch mechanisms, and future projects) is presented. Then, the methodology followed for the digital transformation process using modern tools is described. The project, conceived as a broad framework, comprises applications for the management of hydrological, operational, and market information, commercial information systems and platforms to facilitate consultation and analysis by different users. Such an innovative project in the Latin American context has been developed in order reduce risks and to contribute to a sustainable energy supply for the future.

A Novel Web Application for Rapidly Searching the Diagnostic Case Archive

Academic pathologists must have the ability to search their institution's archive of diagnostic case data. This ability is foundational for research, education, and other academic activities. However, the built-in search functions of commercial laboratory information systems are not always optimized for this activity, leading to delays between an initial search request, and eventual results delivery. To solve this problem, a novel web-based search platform was developed, named Pathtools, which allows our staff and trainees to directly and rapidly search our diagnostic case archive. Pathtools was built with open-source components and features a web-based user-interface. Pathtools uses an SQL database which was populated with anatomic pathology case data going back to 1980, and contains 4.2 million cases (as of July 31, 2020). Pathtools has two major modes of operation, “Preview Mode” and “Research Mode.” Since deployment in February of 2019, Pathtools carried out 33,817 searches in Preview Mode, averaging 0.72 s (standard deviation = 1.7) between search submission, and on-screen display of search results. In Research Mode, Pathtools has also been used to produce data sets for research activity, providing the data used in many abstracts and manuscripts our investigators submitted recently. Interestingly, 75% of search activity is from trainees during their preview time. In a survey of residents and fellows, 83% used Pathtools during the majority of their preview sessions, demonstrating an important role for this resource in trainee education. In conclusion, a web-based search tool can rapidly and securely provide search capability directly to end-users, which has augmented trainee education and research activity in our department.

METHODOLOGY OF CHOOSING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INFORMATION SYSTEM IN HIGHER MILITARY EDUCATION INSTITUTION ACTIVITY

This article reveals problematic aspects of choosing and implementation of the information system (IS) in higher military education institution activity. Article gives the description of solving further tasks: describing of operations, which provide main higher military education institution capabilities, choosing commercial information system and determination of integrated IS creation variants, developing of the measures plan for higher military education institution activities automation. During the methodology development, experience of implementation of automation means in commercial, military and educational spheres was taken into consideration. Using of process-oriented approach was proposed. this gives ability to figure the system view of organization (institution) architecture, determine peculiarities of realization of managemant (strategy) processes, main processes in scientific and educational activities and enabling (additional) processes, that within the analysis phase plays the role of basis for definition of functional requirements to IS for meeting higher military education institution demands. For analysis and rating of commercial IS author have chosen quantative multi-criteria method – hierarchy analysis method, which allows to solve ill-structured problems. For IS analysis were investigated and determinate main criteria's for making the decision which can fully meet higher military education institution demands. Results of experts consultation are the base data, which is represented like paired comparison matrix for each hierarchy nodes. Determination of options priority while choosing commercial IS was performed using specialized software «MY PRIORITY 1.0». Results of this analysis can be used for argumentation of IS developer choice. Peculiarity of the given methodology is the complex approach to: identification, formal definition, analysis and improvement of higher military education institution activities; evaluation of automation level, actual needs, peculiarities of creation and IS requirements definition and automation means taking into consideration specific (military) training in higher education institution.

Increasing affordance potency through process improvement: case study of a healthcare system

ABSTRACTWhile the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) has greatly increased in recent years, the ability of healthcare organizations to leverage their EHRs to improve clinical outcomes has not been clearly evidenced. One reason is that most healthcare organizations implement commercial information systems that are designed to support a pre-defined set of clinical work processes. These systems rarely support every clinical work process in the most effective way and must therefore be modified post-implementation to improve operational alignment in order to better meet the needs of the healthcare organization. This paper investigates that process in the context of a clinical process improvement project. We found that EHR adaptations are most effectively enabled when the goals of the organization and the affordances of system features are known to those using the system. This is because the actualization of the affordances, which result in process improvement, arises from the potency of affordances of the system’s features. In this paper we present the case of a healthcare organization that has successfully modified and leveraged its EHR to improve the clinical process that supports the entire spectrum of care for the identification and treatment of alcohol withdrawal patients. We use the post-implementation adaptation of EHRs to extend the theoretical concept of affordance potency for process improvement from a temporal perspective.

ETL Best Practices for Data Quality Checks in RIS Databases

The topic of data integration from external data sources or independent IT-systems has received increasing attention recently in IT departments as well as at management level, in particular concerning data integration in federated database systems. An example of the latter are commercial research information systems (RIS), which regularly import, cleanse, transform and prepare the analysis research information of the institutions of a variety of databases. In addition, all these so-called steps must be provided in a secured quality. As several internal and external data sources are loaded for integration into the RIS, ensuring information quality is becoming increasingly challenging for the research institutions. Before the research information is transferred to a RIS, it must be checked and cleaned up. An important factor for successful or competent data integration is therefore always the data quality. The removal of data errors (such as duplicates and harmonization of the data structure, inconsistent data and outdated data, etc.) are essential tasks of data integration using extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes. Data is extracted from the source systems, transformed and loaded into the RIS. At this point conflicts between different data sources are controlled and solved, as well as data quality issues during data integration are eliminated. Against this background, our paper presents the process of data transformation in the context of RIS which gains an overview of the quality of research information in an institution’s internal and external data sources during its integration into RIS. In addition, the question of how to control and improve the quality issues during the integration process in RIS will be addressed.

Enhancing the Reporting of Radiation Oncology Treatment Details to Central Cancer Registries and the SEER Program: A Report of Pilot Studies in Progress

Reporting cancer treatment data to state cancer registries provides a framework for assessing national treatment and outcome trends and the foundation for health services and epidemiologic research. All cancer treatments are reportable to state cancer registries; however, radiation oncology details are generally limited to whether radiation was administered or not, without any details. By establishing standardized, scalable, and easy-to-adopt methods to acquire data derived from commercial radiation oncology information systems (ROIS) we hope to demonstrate that details of radiation oncology treatments can be successfully imported into central registries, thus facilitating new research on radiation treatments and outcomes at the population level. To assess the feasibility and requirements of enhancing and automating detailed reporting from ROIS to registries, we are facilitating the acquisition of radiation oncology data from two leading commercial systems that – combined – represent greater than 90% of US radiation oncology clinics. Independently, the systems will establish a secure interface to export data directly to one central cancer registry. Upon receipt, the central cancer registry will perform a linkage between the ROIS data and the registry data. A set of desired data elements was developed in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program and the project team of radiation oncology experts. The elements include patient demographics, diagnosis code, diagnosis date, treatment site, date of service, primary oncologist, facility, dose per fraction, total radiation dose, total number of fractions, number of sessions, dates of treatment, course dose delivered, frequency, and technique. The pilots will run at least 6 months at one large health system with multiple radiation oncology departments using ROIS from both venders. The two pilot projects will capture the data elements and export them to state registries. Exportable reports are being designed to account for industry standards of the data elements that currently exist in each ROIS. We anticipate presenting results separately after testing, but the goal is to make this process feasible regardless of site ROIS customization. To our knowledge, this is the first effort with collaboration from industry to develop a rich dataset of radiation treatment information to contribute to state and SEER registries. If feasible and scalable, these pilots will enable broad use of standard and efficient ways of reporting detailed radiation treatment data to registries. This reporting would fulfill radiation oncology reporting requirements and capture both initial and subsequent therapy. This enhanced data may be used for research to assess the utilization and outcomes of cancer treatments and improve the lives of cancer patients.

Emergency Physician Use of the Alberta Netcare Portal, a Province-Wide Interoperable Electronic Health Record: Multi-Method Observational Study.

BackgroundThe adoption and use of an electronic health record (EHR) can facilitate real-time access to key health information and support improved outcomes. Many Canadian provinces use interoperable EHRs (iEHRs) to facilitate health information exchange, but the clinical use and utility of iEHRs has not been well described.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to describe the use of a provincial iEHR known as the Alberta Netcare Portal (ANP) in 4 urban Alberta emergency departments. The secondary objectives were to characterize the time spent using the respective electronic tools and identify the aspects that were perceived as most useful by emergency department physicians.MethodsIn this study, we have included 4 emergency departments, 2 using paper-based ordering (University of Alberta Hospital [UAH] and Grey Nuns Community Hospital [GNCH]) and 2 using a commercial vendor clinical information system (Peter Lougheed Centre [PLC] and Foothills Medical Centre [FMC]). Structured clinical observations of ANP use and system audit logs analysis were compared at the 4 sites from October 2014 to March 2016.ResultsObservers followed 142 physicians for a total of 566 hours over 376 occasions. The median percentage of observed time spent using ANP was 8.5% at UAH (interquartile range, IQR, 3.7%-13.3%), 4.4% at GNCH (IQR 2.4%-4.4%), 4.6% at FMC (IQR 2.4%-7.6%), and 5.1% at PLC (IQR 3.0%-7.7%). By combining administrative and access audit data, the median number of ANP screens (ie, results and reports displayed on a screen) accessed per patient visit were 20 at UAH (IQR 6-67), 9 at GNCH (IQR 4-29), 7 at FMC (IQR 2-18), and 5 at PLC (IQR 2-14). When compared with the structured clinical observations, the statistical analysis of screen access data showed that ANP was used more at UAH than the other sites.ConclusionsThis study shows that the iEHR is well utilized at the 4 sites studied, and the usage patterns implied clinical value. Use of the ANP was highest in a paper-based academic center and lower in the centers using a commercial emergency department clinical information system. More study about the clinical impacts of using iEHRs in the Canadian context including longer term impacts on quality of practice and safety are required.

Assessment of a Simplified Connectivity Index and Specific Sediment Potential in River Basins by Means of Geomorphometric Tools

Sediment connectivity is a major topic in recent research because of its relevance in the characterization of the morphology of river systems and assessing of sediment transport and deposition. Currently, the connectivity indices found in the literature are generally dimensionless and need to be coupled with quantitative soil-loss data for land management and design purposes. In the present work, a simple methodology is proposed to assess two different indices, namely, the simplified connectivity index (SCI) and the specific sediment potential (SSP), based on geomorphometric tools that are commonly available in commercial and open-source geographic information system (GIS) platforms. The proposed metrics allows us to easily assess both the SCI and the SSP as functions of the estimated soil erosion per unit area of the catchment and of the inverse distance of each unit area from the river outlet, this distance being measured along the network path. The proposed indices have been devised to express, respectively, the potential sediment transfer ability and the sediment mass potentially available at a given section of the drainage network. In addition to other parameters used to describe the catchment characteristics potentially affecting the river sediment delivery capacity, the SCI and SSP indices can help to refine theoretical models in order to assess the sediment yield (SY) in ungauged river basins.

Application of automated measurement and verification to utility energy efficiency program data

Trustworthy savings calculations are critical to convincing regulators of both the cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency program investments and their ability to defer supply-side capital investments. Today’s methods for measurement and verification (M&V) of energy savings constitute a significant portion of the total costs of energy efficiency programs. They also require time-consuming data acquisition. A spectrum of savings calculation approaches is used, with some relying more heavily on measured data and others relying more heavily on estimated, modeled, or stipulated data.The increasing availability of “smart” meters and devices that report near-real time data, combined with new analytical approaches to quantify savings, offers the potential to conduct M&V more quickly and at lower cost, with comparable or improved accuracy. Commercial energy management and information systems (EMIS) technologies are beginning to offer these ‘M&V 2.0′ capabilities, and program administrators want to understand how they might assist programs in quickly and accurately measuring energy savings. This paper presents the results of recent testing of the ability to use automation to streamline the M&V process.In this paper, we apply an automated whole-building M&V tool to historic data sets from energy efficiency programs to begin to explore the accuracy, cost, and time trade-offs between more traditional M&V, and these emerging streamlined methods that use high-resolution energy data and automated computational intelligence. For the data sets studied we evaluate the fraction of buildings that are well suited to automated baseline characterization, the uncertainty in gross savings that is due to M&V 2.0 tools’ model error, and indications of labor time savings, and how the automated savings results compare to prior, traditionally determined savings results. The results show that 70% of the buildings were well suited to the automated approach. In a majority of the cases (80%) savings and uncertainties for each individual building were quantified to levels above the criteria in ASHRAE Guideline 14. In addition the findings suggest that M&V 2.0 methods may also offer time-savings relative to traditional approaches. Finally we discuss the implications of these findings relative to the potential evolution of M&V, and pilots currently being launched to test how M&V automation can be integrated into ratepayer-funded programs and professional implementation and evaluation practice.

On Optimal Employee Assignment in Constrained Role-Based Access Control Systems

Since any organizational environment is typically resource constrained, especially in terms of human capital, organization managers would like to maximize the utilization of available human resources. However, tasks cannot simply be assigned to arbitrary employees since the employee needs to have the necessary capabilities for executing a task. Furthermore, security policies constrain the assignment of tasks to employees, especially given the other tasks assigned to the same employee. Since role-based access control (RBAC) is the most commonly used access control model for commercial information systems, we limit our attention to consider constraints in RBAC. In this article, we define the Employee Assignment Problem (EAP), which aims to identify an employee to role assignment such that it permits the maximal flexibility in assigning tasks to employees while ensuring that the required security constraints are met. We prove that finding an optimal solution is NP-complete and therefore provide a greedy solution. Experimental evaluation of the proposed approach shows that it is both efficient and effective.

SISTEM INFORMASI PENJUALAN ELECTRONIC COMMERCIAL STUDI KASUS CV. ZOOM COMPUTER

CV. Zoom Computer is a private enterprise engaged in the sale of electronic goods. To resolve this issue Zoom Computer requires a good system and programmed the system to be more effective and efficient so as to optimize profitability. The problem of this study is limited to the design of electronic commercial sales information system with reference to the theories of commercial electronic design. The methodology in the design of electronic commercial sales information system is to implement the framework Waterfall. Using the programming language PHP and MySQL as a database manager application. CV. Zoom Computer using the Sales Information System Electronic Commercial is expected to facilitate the control and processing, the data inventory, purchasing, and sales and better payments so as to reduce the likelihood of potential errors in checking the information obtained will be faster and more accurate as well as a broad range.