Information System Infrastructure Research Articles

A Firm-Level Framework for Planning Electronic Commerce Information Systems Infrastructure

:Many firms fail to properly plan their electronic commerce information systems (ECIS) infrastructure before embarking on electronic commerce. Poor planning is often attributed to lack of a framework. Most of the frameworks used for information systems planning were developed before the recent surge of electronic commerce. Each of these frameworks emphasizes one aspect or theme of the business. In the context of Ecommerce, a firm-level framework is needed that integrates several themes and recent concepts from the discipline of information systems (IS). The six components are organizational E-commerce strategy, business processes transformation, information technology management, information management, customer management, and organizational knowledge management. The framework emphasizes the significance of framework components and their interrelationships to planning an ECIS infrastructure. The main objective of the framework is to draw management attention to issues and opportunities associated with the six components of the framework. An illustrative approach is outlined to develop a method based on the framework. Firms can use the framework to develop a customized method for their ECIS infrastructure planning.

Expert opinion [accounting

The infrastructure of a corporate enterprise information system is concerned with acquiring, transferring, converting, and selling economic resources such as cash, inventory, and supplies. Accounting systems with individual computerized modules, such as: payroll, accounts payable and receivable, job costing, order entry, and general ledgers, have traditionally tracked such data, and accounting system designers usually have had a preemptive call on the basic schemes used to type economic data. This is because of a need to meet either statutory reporting requirements for governmental agencies, or private reporting requirements for creditors and shareholders. If accountants use these preemptive privileges to force traditional account coding onto the organization database as its fundamental classification architecture (that is, to require early bookkeeper filtering of transaction data), then many dysfunctional effects arise. Our remedy for these deficiencies is to apply the REA (economic resources, events, and agents) conceptual model when analyzing, designing, implementing, and operating an enterprise information system. REA specifically incorporates the semantics of economic objects into a firm's information architecture. Such embedding facilitates an information system's initial design, as well as couples its production use with knowledge based decision support systems.

How is Information Technology Shaping the Economy and Society?

Advances in information technology reinforce the economic and social changes that are transforming business and society. A new kind of economy – the information economy – is emerging where trade and investment are global and firms compete with knowledge, networking and agility on a global basis. A corresponding new society is also emerging with pervasive information capabilities that make it substantially different from an industrial society: more competitive, more democratic, less centralized, less stable, better able to address individual needs, and friendlier to the environment. These changes dictate, for all countries, a major adjustment to harness information for economic and social development. This adjustment requires urgent new policies, regulatory and institutional reforms, and investments. Through this adjustment, countries must achieve macro-economics balance, political stability, and growth amidst global information flows, competition, trade and investment. Advanced countries are rapidly adjusting. Developing countries in Africa must also adjust or risk exclusion from the global economy and severe competitive disadvantage for their goods and services. Fortunately, the information revolution creates both the challenge and the means for countries to adjust to new ways of doing business and to put in place the needed infrastructure of telecommunication and information systems. The information revolution also creates extraordinary new opportunities to attack vexing problems of poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation.

Is One Taxonomy Needed for Health Care Vocabularies and Classifications?

The use of vocabulary in nursing is a relatively new phenomenon. It has only been in the past 20 years that we have developed and refined the nursing nomenclatures and classification systems. However, as we become more knowledgeable about the information system infrastructure of health care in this country, the linking of vocabularies from disparate sources becomes more critical. We are now part of an international network of health care, where the term we use in one country greatly influences the impressions of other countries of our health care system. This paper describes some of the challenges to the nursing profession, in allowing us to maintain our local vocabulary, as we integrate into network and universal vocabularies in the future. It discusses some of the new technologies that facilitate the linkages. It defines some of the endpoint of our vocabulary in identifying the outcomes and quality of care that is delivered by the nursing profession. A model is proposed that demonstrate the linking required to move classifications from the point of care, through networks, and into universal levels.

An Information System for Improving White Collar Productivity in a Steel Manufacturing Works

In the Japanese Steel Industries, computers were applied to the manufucturing planning in the middle of 1970's and afterwards the total information systems of the steel plant in the field of manufacturing management have been developed. In consequence, productivity in the field of manufacturing has been improved. Furthermore, recently, the white-collar productivity in the field of management has been recognized as a major problem to be solved to cope with the international competition. In this paper, we propose the concept, its applications and infrastructure of information systems to improve their productivity. These days, as a result of decision making down-sizing, the problem-solving approach of white collar staff will be changed from the legacy "deterministic approach" to the "biological approach", in which we solve problems by way of iterative hypotheses and verifications. We propose one-stop-shopping and seamless information systems which are suitable for white collar activities.

A Network-Centric Information System Infrastructure for Extended or Virtual Enterprises

Abstract The terms extended and virtual have been used in articulating the 21st century global manufacturing enterprise strategy. One of the key requirements is to develop an Information System (IS) infrastructure to control the interoperability of the distributed, heterogeneous and concurrent systems in the participating organizations. This article presents a network-centric IS infrastructure to help describing global communication support for these inter-organizational enterprises with the background of modern information and communication technology. Intranet/Extranet is focused on as an available technology.

An Inter-Organizational Information System Infrastructure for Extended (or Virtual) Enterprises

Abstract The terms “extended enterprise” and “virtual enterprise” have been used in articulating the 21 st century global manufacturing enterprise strategy. One of the key requirements is to develop an Information System (IS) infrastructure to control the interoperability of the distributed, heterogeneous and concurrent systems in the participating organizations. This article presents an innovative IS infrastructure to help describing global information technology support for these inter-organizational enterprises with the background of modem information and communication technology. Three types of technology are focused on: Data warehouse, Process warehouse and Intranet/Extranet.

A reference model for manufacturing enterprise system by using object modelling technology (OMT) method

Business process models are often useful to both information system and management in manufacturing enterprises. Many models are proposed to describe activities in manufacturing operations. Some of them describe manufacturing activity models in CIM system architecture[1-5]. These models combine business process models with information system infrastructure, and represents business activities in hierarchical function-oriented modeling approaches.Recently, the benefits of object-oriented (OO) modeling technologies are often discussed to information/operations management. Many OO models are proposed for manufacturing enterprise information systems. Majority of them are product models for concurrent engineering focused on CAD/CAM system [6,7], or operations models of real time shop-floor control and scheduling systems [8-10]. There are also modeling researches focused on Production Planning and Control (PPC) applications considering resource management in factory. These works propose OO manufacturing enterprise models [11], or BOM data model[12]. These are challenging works, but they do not include various factory management operations such as planning, ordering, logistics, administrations, maintenance, customer service, and others. Implementation of manufacturing enterprise information models requires modeling of the business operations in factory management. SEMATECH model is a good example such as the above approach, but, its business domain is focus on semiconductor manufacturing system[13]A modeling strategy is required to implement a general factory business process model. This paper describes a generic modeling strategy and a methodology through an implementation of a novel OO business process model.

Executive information systems: An evaluation of current UK practice

Executive information systems (EIS) have become an established part of the information systems infrastructure for large organizations. A review of how UK organizations have applied EIS was undertaken, the results from the study are presented and discussed. The findings show many successes in the implementation of EIS, such as the accessibility to managers of the organization's information resources. The monitoring of internal activity by middle management was identified as the principle application of EIS. However, to deliver their full potential, EIS need to be used by senior management to analyse the organization's strategic goals. By comparing the development methods in the study with the theoretical and experiential approaches shown in the literature, the paper shows how the techniques currently utilized could be improved to provide executives with better technological support.

Designing a city-wide information system in the People's Republic of China

The development of a city-wide information system in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a huge and complicated project, especially when it is done as a national model. The structure and functions of PRC cities are quite different from those of Western cities, thus the architecture and infrastructure design of city-wide information systems possess special and unique characteristics. This paper introduces the background of developing a national city-wide information system as a national pilot. The paper presents unique features of a PRC city-wide information system development, and describes the planning and implementation process of a new form of a city-wide information system's architecture and infrastructure.

Maintaining the confidentiality of computerized mental health outcome data.

The emergence of managed behavioral health care has increased the value of data describing outcomes of mental health treatment. At the same time, increased development of the national information infrastructure and other computer linkage systems has facilitated the flow of information among a wide network of data systems. These two developments create a dynamic tension between the need to share information and the need to protect the privacy of mental health clients and the confidentiality of their computerized records. This problem is exacerbated by the cost associated with potential solutions. Unfortunately, policy development in this area has lagged behind rapid developments in technology. The mental health administrator must balance the three components of this conflict (the increasing need for information transfer, the protection of confidentiality, and cost) without a great deal of guidance. This article offers recommendations that may help the mental health administrator manage this conflict.

Advancing America's Health

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object." As the process of health system reform moves forward, attention and resources must be directed toward advancing America's health. To direct attention toward health, the US Public Health Service is developing strategies that: Restructure the health care system to focus on the health of populations. Define and strengthen the public health system. Ensure public health agencies and health care plans collaborate to respond to local community needs. Build infrastructure—information systems, research, workforce—to advance health. Realize responsible social policies. I call this fivefold strategy "reinventing public health." Although Congress did not enact comprehensive health system reform this year, the American health care system is experiencing profound change, particularly in the private sector. A major part of the health care system is moving away from

Information systems for development planning

Inadequacy of information resources and information processing is considered to be one of the major obstacles to effective development planning. Despite the enormous potential provided by information technology, developing countries face severe problems in creating effective information systems infrastructure to sustain national development planning. This paper explores the nature of the development planning activity and its information requirements and examines various initiatives that have been taken to meet the information and information processing needs of development planning. It then discusses some of the main problems of the current situation and makes suggestions for the development of an information systems infrastructure for development planning.

The strategic positioning of information systems in post-acquisition management

Although corporate growth through acquisition continues to be a popular strategy for the 1990s, the failure rate of acquired companies remains high at 50 per cent. This paper focuses on post-acquisition integration of information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) and its impact on post-acquisitive performance. Based on the results of detailed case studies and a preliminary survey, it is found that managers involved in pre-and post-acquisition decision-making often fail to adequately consider the strategic importance of IS/IT in contributing to the acquisition outcome. IS integration is often driven by the immediate requirements of operational consolidation, and organizations fail to invest in the establishment of IS infrastructures to support longer-term corporate requirements. It is suggested that the reactive status accorded to IS coupled with an observed lack of organizational learning prevents organizations from exploiting IS effectively for the achievement of acquisition success.

Technology Transfer in Medical Information Systems: The Potential for “groupware” and its Implications

The practice of medicine is intrinsically a cooperative activity, involving not only a number of individuals but requiring access to a wide variety of types of data, produced and maintained by different people. Achieving seamless, integrated access to these data requires a new infrastructure of information systems that supports the construction of applications designed to incorporate and use external information resources. The term groupware may be used to connote this collective set of information resources and tools for access to them. Groupware will generate a variety of new kinds of products and services with implications for medical libraries, electronic publishing, and academic and professional collaboration.

Network for the Hungarian R & D community

The Hungarian Information Infrastructure System (IIF) for research and development is a network based system used by the Hungarian academic community and the researchers of industrial design and development institutions. Services are provided by other industrial sectors as well. The development of the system was decided on in 1986. The system is operational since February 1989. The number of end systems is gradually increasing. At present about 40 institutions are connected to the network. This figure is going to reach 150 by the middle of the next year. The following design topics are discussed in the paper: the data network, the services and the migration plans. Our ultimate goal is to provide Open Systems compatibility with the European systems for our users.

Major features of the infrastructure of China's Sci-Tech information system

The Chinese sci-tech information system, established thirty years ago, is in many ways different from the Western systems. Analysing the infrastructure of the system, this paper presents the four major features of the system: nationalized ownership, dependence on administrative bodies, emphasis on the service for scientific research, and lack of control and coordination.