Information System Infrastructure Research Articles

Understanding information systems infrastructure in engineering SMEs: A case study

The benefits of integrated enterprise-wide information systems (IS), such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, are widely accepted. The implementation of such systems in large organisations is established with many in their second or third generation. However, in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) the maturity and extent of their IS infrastructure is less clear. In engineering SMEs, this infrastructure needs to support not only business processes but also the activities of design and manufacture. In this case study, our goal is to provide a better understanding of current IS infrastructure, the functional elements of IS infrastructure, integration and expenditures are explored in ten engineering SMEs. A model of IS functionality is developed and used to identify and classify functional elements within the firms and to compare and contrast the IS infrastructures. The findings are contrasted with the SME literature and conclusions and implications developed.

Information Systems Security Assurance Management at Municipal Software Solutions, Inc.

Based on an actual company, this case focuses on Business Continuity Planning issues for a small but growing software company, Municipal Software Solutions, Inc. (MSS). The firm experienced a catastrophic fire which completely eliminated all aspects of the information systems infrastructure, including the software product code repository, the client access infrastructure, the hardware operations center, and the software design facility. Fortunately, no one was harmed, and the firm survived despite the fact that it did not have a formal disaster recovery plan in place. MSS was very lucky. The case can be used in conjunction with coverage of risk assessment concepts in the context of the availability component of systems reliability and trust of services management. Accordingly, it is appropriate for use in courses covering information systems security, accounting information systems, or IT audit.

Exploratory Study on Value of Information Systems to Electrical Construction Companies: Resource-Based View

Many practitioners and researchers believe that the application of information systems in the construction industry lags behind that of other industries such as the manufacturing industry, because the construction industry is mainly composed of small to medium size companies. Besides, to many people, the value of information systems to their business is vague and elusive. Existing studies on the value of information systems are not specifically focused on small to medium size specialty contractors such as electrical contractors. In addition, with an intention to demonstrate the value of information systems to the improvement of operations or business of all relevant companies, those studies typically do not look into the impact of information systems on the competitive advantage of individual companies. This paper argues that such a generalization of the value of information systems, although valuable to both practitioners and researchers, may have overlooked the fact that the value of information systems needs to be reflected through improved competitive advantage of a company and the competitive advantage is company specific. Thus, the examination of different effects of information systems on individual companies can generate useful insight into the value of information systems because such a strategy leads to a better understanding of the relationships between information systems and the competitive advantage of individual companies. With such a perspective, this study applies a case study strategy to study five small to medium size electrical construction companies based on the resource-based view theory. The case studies show that the observed electrical construction companies are well equipped in terms of physical information infrastructure in relation to their business objectives regardless of company size. However, their capabilities of strategically integrating information systems with their business plans and with their external business partners are general lacking, compared with their physical information system infrastructure. This is partly because many electrical contractors do not fully understand that there are many different forms of information systems that have different impacts on gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. This paper then conjectures that the existing imbalanced application of information systems may not lead to the improved competitive advantage of electrical construction companies, which in turn prevent many contractors from clearly seeing the value of the information systems. Thus, the paper further points out that a plan for the systematical implementation of information systems in a company is very important. However, the successful development of such a plan depends on a better understanding of electrical contactors on the concepts of information system capabilities, competitive advantage, and their relationships.

Information systems and the allure of organisational integration: a cautionary tale from the Irish financial services sector

In this paper we draw on evidence from an in-depth, longitudinal, interpretive study of an ambitious attempt to implement a large-scale information systems (IS) infrastructure (the ILCUTECH Standard Information System (ISIS) project) within the Irish credit union movement, to explore some of the difficulties and contradictions associated with information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled organisational integration. We argue that, in their enthusiasm for facilitating IS innovation, the leadership of the movement neglected more deep-seated organisational issues that were, to that point, largely unarticulated. In an attempt to get to the heart of these issues, we synthesise a distinctive theoretical perspective that draws mainly on institutional theory. This helps untangle the complex institutional heritage of the credit union movement, which resulted in the emergence of an interesting hybridity of institutional logics and latent contradictions. These contradictions provoked the emergence of a particular kind of institutional entrepreneurship, which was deeply implicated in reshaping institutionalised ways of thinking and doing. We emphasise the political nature of the change process and argue that the institutional arrangements for governing the ISIS project, which also underpinned the governance of the broader movement, were not well suited to manage the risk associated with such an enterprise. We conclude by suggesting that the case described might be an example of the workings of a broader kind of change dynamics around ICT. Specifically, the scale and scope of the change project acted as a trigger that brought tensions underlying existing competing institutional logics to a head, thus provoking institutional reform.

Computing in Civil Engineering—Lessons Learned from the 2007 ASCE International Workshop on Computing in Civil Engineering

On July 24–27, 2007, a group of approximately 150 researchers and practitioners met in Pittsburgh for the 2007 ASCE International Workshop on Computing in Civil Engineering to present and learn about current research and developments on IT/AIS: Information Technology Support to Advance Infrastructure Systems Management. The conference was geared toward academics and professionals who are interested in computing in a wide range of civil engineering research areas, such as sensing and sensor systems, mobile/wearable computing, data modeling, management, mining, and life-cycle assessment and sustainable infrastructure. The three keynote speakers presented fascinating and forwardlooking talks that provided insights on the future directions of the major conference topics. Dr. Steven B. Chase, the chief scientist of the Federal Highway Administration, talked about the role of information technology in the management of an aging highway infrastructure. He introduced the limitations in the data collection practice of bridge inspection and bridge management, and particularly in visual inspections. He then presented example applications of smart sensing technologies that help create smarter bridges. Dr. Dan M. Frangopol, the Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture at Lehigh University, introduced a method for the integration of monitoring and maintenance management of civil infrastructure systems under uncertainty from a life-cycle perspective. He explained the importance of maintaining a satisfactory long-term performance not only of individual bridges, but also of the overall highway network. He presented a novel analytical and computational framework for network-level bridge maintenance management using optimization. This framework integrates time-dependent structural reliability prediction, highway network performance assessment, and life-cycle cost analysis by prioritizing the maintenance resources to deteriorating bridges through simultaneous and balanced minimization of three objective functions: maintenance cost, bridge failure cost, and user cost. The resulting multiobjective optimization problem is solved by a genetic algorithm. Dr. Edward J. Jaselskis, former program director at the National Science Foundation responsible for managing the information technology and infrastructure systems program, talked about

Corporate Expectations of the IT Department in an Age of Terrorism: Ensuring “Battle Readiness”

ABSTRACT Contemporary businesses face many new and unprecedented challenges including the threat of terrorism. The impact of a terrorist attack can undermine an organization's success and survival. A significant area of organizational vulnerability to acts of terrorism involves the information systems infrastructure of the organization. This article discusses the mission-critical expectations that corporate executives have for their information technology departments with respect to securing and protecting these essential resources.

Health information technology and physician perceptions of quality of care and satisfaction

To examine across seven countries the relationship between physician office information system capacity and the quality of care. Multivariate analysis of a cross-sectional 2006 random survey of primary care physicians in seven countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States. coordination and safety of care, care for chronically ill patients, and satisfaction with practice of medicine. The study finds significant disparities in the quality of health care between practices with low information system capacity and those with high technical capacity after controlling for within country differences and practice size. There were significant physician satisfaction differences with the overall experience of practicing medicine by information system level. For policy leaders, the seven-nation survey suggests that health systems that promote information system infrastructure are better able to address coordination and safety issues, particularly for patients with multiple chronic conditions, as well as to maintain primary care physician workforce satisfaction.

Information security: policy, processes, and practices

Information security is everyone's concern. The way we live is underwritten by information system infrastructures, most notably the Internet. The functioning of our business organizations, the management of our supply chains, and the operation of our governments depend on the secure flow of information. In an organizational environment information security is a never-ending process of protecting information and the systems that produce it.This volume in the Advances in Management Information Systems series covers the managerial landscape of information security. It deals with how organizations and nations organize their information security policies and efforts. The book covers how to strategize and implement security with a special focus on emerging technologies. It highlights the wealth of security technologies, and also indicates that the problem is not a lack of technology but rather its intelligent application.

지역클러스터에서 공급망관리를 위한 협업적 정보시스템기반의 구현방향

Basically within a special regional area, a regional cluster seems to be based on core competencies of individual intra-cluster companies and collaboration among them. Information infrastructure has been emphasized as on one of competitive factors of a regional cluster, and it can be organized using collaboration system architecture integrated with each company's internal systems for efficient supply chain operation. As one of technical methods to prepare the system infrastructure supporting the collaboration of companies in a regional cluster, the Web Services can be effectively used. In this paper, a collaborative information system infrastructure for a regional cluster is suggested within the scope of supply chain management. And the efficiency of the proposed alternative is appraised with the features of a regional cluster.

Use of Informatics and Information Technologies in the Clinical Research Enterprise Within US Academic Medical Centers

BackgroundData on the state of information systems infrastructures used in the clinical research enterprise of academic medical centers are limited and mostly anecdotal. What has been published is slowly beginning...

ENGLISH

The paper discusses lagging behind of the developing countries (with special reference to India) in taking initiatives and carrying out projects for developing, promoting and implementing information literacy (IL) education and training programmes and projects. Pointing to the IL situation in both academic and corporate context as well as in the context of business and management education, it emphasises that without a push of external help through financial aid and professional expertise. India would not be able to properly address, both the IL issue and the prerequisite issues of upgrading and developing their information and information systems infrastructure. It proposes strategy for addressing the IL issues which would help individual institutions to intensify and broaden their existing activities in the field of IL promotion and implementation and start new ones wherever necessary. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/djlit.28.2.169

Constructing IS success: revisiting actor networks in post implementation perspectives of enacting technological effectiveness within Commonwealth Games, Manchester 2002

Modern day organisation of major sporting events involving large number of participants, organisers and spectators invariably require a significant level of Information Systems (IS) support. Whilst planning and developing some of the IS infrastructure might be based upon past experiences yet implementing and ensuring a fit between expectations and experience of IS use is dependent on obtaining local conditions. The Commonwealth Games (CWG) held in Manchester in the year 2002 was no exception. It was successfully staged, bringing glory and honour to various actors involved at different levels of organisation. The primary objective of this paper is to explain success by deconstructing perspectives of key actors responsible for ICT infrastructure development and delivery within CWG 2002. Contrary to many public sector projects, successful IS/IT implementation at CWG was an imperative. In most similar situations, scope of evolutionary development is limited. This paper begins to analyse the evolution of success at the point where CWG had been successfully concluded. This paper argues that contrary to popular expectations of fixed goals and objectives, it was the evolutionary creation of solutions that were a serious contributor of eventual success of CWG. Using an Actor Network Theory (ANT) framework, this paper demonstrates the important role that perceptions of success tend to play within such large scale implementation of IS/IT. It is expected that organisers, scholars of IS success, public sector specialists and the like, would then be able to discern the role of alignments of actor networks for large organisational challenges like the CWG. Names of subjects have been changed to preserve anonymity.

User requirements of mobile technology: results from a content analysis of user reviews

Advanced mobile technology continues to shape professional environments. Smart cell phones, pocket computers and laptop computers reduce the need of users to remain close to a wired information system infrastructure and allow for task performance in many different contexts. Among the consequences are changes in technology requirements, such as the need to limit weight and size of the devices. In the current paper, we focus on the factors that users find important in mobile devices. Based on a content analysis of online user reviews that was followed by structural equation modeling, we found four factors to be significantly related with overall user evaluation, namely functionality, portability, performance, and usability. Besides the practical relevance for technology developers and managers, our research results contribute to the discussion about the extent to which previously established theories of technology adoption and use are applicable to mobile technology. We also discuss the methodological suitability of online user reviews for the assessment of user requirements, and the complementarity of automated and non-automated forms of content analysis.

Lean information management: Understanding and eliminating waste

This paper deals with the development of a new approach for supporting the improvement of information management and the overall information systems infrastructure. In particular, the paper discusses the application of lean thinking to information management; where information management can be considered to involve adding value to information by virtue of how it is organised, visualised and represented; and enabling information (value) to flow to the end-user (customer) through the processes of exchange, sharing and collaboration. The potential benefits of lean thinking are discussed and the fundamental barriers for its application to information management are highlighted. These include the need to characterise the nature of waste and establish the five principles of; value, value streams, flow, pull and continuous improvement in the context of information management. It follows that the core contribution of this paper is the development of an understanding of these critical elements and the creation of a conceptual framework for a set of lean principles within the context of information management. This framework offers a unique and arguably generic approach for supporting the retrospective improvement of information management systems and the overall information systems infrastructure.

Developing a Pharmacy Information System Infrastructure

This Director' Forum article will focus on the development of a pharmacy information system infrastructure, including the importance of system design and operation, strategic planning for technology improvement, and the emerging role of the pharmacy informaticist. Today these systems are an integral part of virtually every pharmacy operation and essential to effective patient care.

Distributed multimedia information systems: an end-to-end perspective

Emerging Web-based applications require distributed multimedia information system (DMIS) infrastructures. Examples of such applications abound in the domains of medicine, entertainment, manufacturing, e-commerce, as well as military and critical national infrastructures. Development of DMIS for such applications need a broad range of technological solutions for organizing, storing, and delivering multimedia information in an integrated, secure and timely manner with guaranteed end-to-end (E2E) quality of presentation (QoP). DMIS are viewed as catalysts for new research in many areas, ranging from basic research to applied technology. This view is a result of the fact that no single monolithic end-to-end architecture for DMIS can meet the wide spectrum of characteristics and requirements of various Web-based multimedia applications. One size does not fit all in this medium of communication. Management of integrated end-to-end QoP and ensuring information security in DMIS, when viewed in conjunction with real world constraints and system-wide performance requirements, present formidable research and implementation challenges. These challenges encompass all the sub-system components of a DMIS. The ultimate objective of achieving a comprehensive end-to-end QoP management relies on the performance and allocation of resources of each of the DMIS sub-system components including networks, databases, and end-systems. In this paper, we elaborate on these challenges and present a high level distributed architecture aimed at providing the critical functionality for a DMIS.

The Live Usability Lab: Open access archives and digital repositories

The Live Usability Lab: Open access archives and digital repositories

Wide-Area, Four-Dimensional, Real-Time Interactive Transportation System Visualization

The four-dimensional (4-D), wide-area traffic visualization tool provides incident management personnel, emergency management personnel, and the general public with the means to achieve situational awareness in as close to a real-world setting as possible. This research developed a system for visualizing 4-D (in which the fourth dimension is time), real-time transportation data for the entire Earth, although only data for the road networks of Washington, D.C.; Northern Virginia; and the entire state of Maryland are currently in the system. This effort employed a combination of technologies including OpenGL and various modeling techniques to develop a scalable, highly interactive 4-D model using available geographic information system (GIS) and transportation infrastructure data in conjunction with real-time traffic management center data. The prototype system interacts with real-time traffic databases to show animations of real-time traffic data (volume and speed) along with incident data (accident locations, lane closures, responding agencies, etc.) and weather data. A user can “fly” or “drive” through the region to inspect conditions at an infinite number of angles and distances. The program also allows users to monitor the status of and interact with traffic control devices such as dynamic message signs, closed circuit television feeds, and traffic sensors; users can even view the location of a fleet of vehicles equipped with Global Positioning System transponders. Because the system uses standard GIS data and relatively standard transportation databases to derive traffic measures, the system can be scaled to incorporate other states, agencies, or countries.

Information Lifecycle Security Risk Assessment: A tool for closing security gaps

News media continue to report stories of critical information loss through physical means. Most information security programs include physical protection for information system infrastructure, but not for the physical (non-electronic) forms of the information itself. Thus organizations have persistent critical information vulnerabilities that are not addressed by even the most extensive of information systems security programs. An Information Lifecycle Security Risk Assessment, as described in this paper, can be used to extend the reach of information security programs to encircle all forms of critical data from creation to destruction—even data in human memory form. Such an assessment can leverage existing data management and information systems security efforts. By incorporating both electronic and physical information elements, previously unaddressed information security gaps can be identified and mitigated. The end result should be a risk treatment plan which senior management can understand and approve, and which managers and security personnel can execute.

Is Infrastructure: The Influence of Senior it Leadership and Strategic Information Systems Planning

The integration of information systems (IS) across the entire enterprise has become one of the most important technology management challenges in complex organizations. Many companies have placed the development and implementation of a highly integrated IS infrastructure among the top concerns of their overall IT management practice. This paper reports on an empirical investigation of the influence of senior IT leadership and strategic information systems planning (SISP) on the level of implementation of the IS infrastructure. The resulting model shows the importance that SISP plays in the relationship between senior IT leadership and the extent of an integrated IS infrastructure. The findings indicate a moderate relationship between the factors of senior IT leadership (the importance of the CIO and the presence of a varied IS advisory committee) and SISP, and a strong relationship between SISP and three aspects of IS infrastructure (technical integration, application functionality, and data integration).