This research paper undertakes to outline factors of Information Management that organisations should consider when attempting a restructuring process. Conversely, valuable information and knowledge are often mislaid, overlooked or discarded to the eventual detriment of an organisation during the processes of downsizing, rightsizing, restructuring, reorganisation, reengineering, transformation or change. In the global economy organisations are always striving to keep ahead of competition and ultimately to improve their net profit. Information is at the very core of any organisation, its ads value, structure and power to an organisation. Information Management assists with the locating, storing and use of corporate information. A means of controlling and structuring corporate information is via the use of the Information Management elements. A case study using an organisation that is in the process of change and transformation was performed. Potential loss of knowledge and information was identified and examined. The organisation’s implementation of an information portal was highlighted as an effective way to minimise the loss of knowledge and information during the period of change. / Professor A.S.A. du Toit

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 186-196). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

The central concern of this study is to identify the role of power and politics in systems implementation. The current literature on systems implementation is typically divided into two areas, process modelling and factor based studies. Process modelling classifies the implementation into a linear process, whereas factor based studies have argued that in order to ‘successfully’ implement a system, particular critical factors are required. This literature misses the complexities involved in systems implementation through the human factors and political nature of systems implementation and is simplistic in its nature and essentially de-contextualises the implementation process. Literature has investigated some aspects of human factors in systems implementation. However, it is believed that these studies have taken a simplistic view of power and politics. It is argued in this thesis that human factors in systems implementation are constantly changing and essentially operating in a dynamic relationship affecting the implementation process. The concept of power relations, as proposed by Foucault (1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982), have been utilised in order to identify the dynamic nature of power and politics. Foucault (1978) argued that power is a dynamic set of relationships constantly changing from one point in time to the next. It is this recognition that is lacking from information systems. Furthermore, these power relations are created through the use of discourse. Discourse represents meaning and social relationships, forming both subjectivity and power relations. Discourses are also the practices of talk, text and argument that continuously form that which actors speak. A post-structuralist view of power as both an obvious and hidden concept has provided the researcher a lens through which the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system can be observed. The framework aimed to identify the obvious process of system selection implementation, and then deconstruct that process to expose the hegemonic nature of policy, the reproduction of organisational culture, the emancipation within discourse, and the nature of resistance and power relations. A critical case study of the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at the University of Australia was presented providing an in-depth investigation of the implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system, spanning five years. This critical case study was analysed using social dramas to distinguish between the front stage issues of power and the hidden discourses underpinning the front stage dramas. The enterprise-wide learning management system implemented in the University of Australia in 2003 is a system which enables academic staff to manage learners, the students, by keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. Through telling the story of the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at the University of Australia discourses emerged. The key findings from this study have indicated that the system selection and implementation works at two levels. The low level is the selection and implementation process, which operates for the period of the project. The high level is the arena of power and politics, which runs simultaneously to the selection and implementation process. Challenges for power are acted out in the front stage, or public forums between various actors. The social dramas, as they have been described here, are superfluous to the discourse underpinning the front stage. It is the discourse that remains the same throughout the system selection and implementation process, but it is through various social dramas that reflect those discourses. Furthermore, the enactment of policy legitimises power and establishes the discourse, limiting resistance. Additionally, this research has identified the role of the ‘State’ and its influence at the organisational level, which had been previously suggested in education literature (Ball, 1990).

Undergraduate honors paper--Mount Holyoke College, 2007. Dept. of Computer Science. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-139).

M.Inf. / Information is a vital resource for every enterprise for innovation and effective decision-making. In other words, information is vital in all spheres of national development. It is vital for development planning and for building an internationally competitive economy. People need information to participate in a democratic process and thus without information the best and most idealistically development plans are likely to fail. As a result of the importance of information in an enterprise, it requires to be managed effectively in order to establish whether the information assets of a particular enterprise are in line with business objectives or not. Information auditing techniques such as InfoMapp have been developed in order to guide an auditor on how to go about auditing information resources of a particular enterprise. Cicira College is a teacher’s training college and its information assets need to be managed and audited like other resources. Hence this study has been undertaken to establish whether the information assets available at Cicira College meet its goals and objectives. The InfoMapp method developed by Burk and Horton has been used to conduct the information audit at Cicira College. This technique has been chosen because of its ability to match the information assets with strategic planning.

The purpose of this project was to develop an E-government plan to achieve the Ministry of Interior of Thailand's objective to better serve its citizens in the next 5 years by utilizing and taking advantage of the use of information technology and communication networks.

Orientadores: Claudia Maria Bauzer Medeiros, André Santanchè / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-25T03:19:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vilar_BrunoSiqueiraCamposMendonca_D.pdf: 3275725 bytes, checksum: 4ccdd82eebca5b8da9748c7c515ea4c1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Sistemas de Gerenciamento de Workflows (WfMS -- em inglês) são usados para gerenciar a execução de processos, melhorando eficiência e eficácia de procedimentos em uso. As forças motrizes por trás da adoção e do desenvolvimento de um WfMS são aplicações científicas e de negócios. Esforços conjuntos de ambos resultaram em mecanismos consolidados, além de padrões e protocolos consensuais. Em particular, um WfMS científico (SWfMS -- \textit{Scientific WfMS}) auxilia cientistas a especificar e executar experimentos distribuídos. Ele fornece diferentes recursos que suportam atividades em um ambiente experimental, como prover flexibilidade para mudar o projeto de workflow, manter a proveniência e suportar reproducibilidade de experimentos. Por outro lado, apesar de poucas iniciativas de pesquisa, WfMSs não fornecem suporte apropriado à personalização dinâmica e baseada em contexto durante a execução; adaptações em tempo de execução normalmente requerem intervenção do usuário. Esta tese se concentra em superar essa deficiência, fornecendo a WfMSs um mecanismo de ciente do contexto para personalizar a execução de workflows. Como resultado, foi projetado e desenvolvido o DynFlow -- uma arquitetura de software que permite tal personalização aplicada a um domínio: planejamento de saúde. Este domínio foi escolhido por ser um ótimo exemplo de personalização sensível ao contexto. Procedimentos de saúde constantemente sofrem mudanças que podem ocorrer durante um tratamento, como a reação de um paciente a um medicamento. Para suprir a demanda, a pesquisa em planejamento de saúde desenvolveu técnicas semi-automáticas para suportar mudanças rápidas dos passos de fluxos de tratamento, de acordo com o estado e a evolução do paciente. Uma dessas técnicas é \textit{Computer-Interpretable Guidelines} (CIG), cujo membro mais proeminente é \textit{Task-Network Model} (TNM) -- uma abordagem baseada em regras capaz de construir um plano em tempo de execução. Nossa pesquisa nos levou a concluir que CIGs não suportam características necessárias por profissionais de saúde, como proveniência e extensibilidade, disponíveis em WfMSs. Em outras palavras, CIGs e WfMSs têm características complementares e são direcionadas à execução de atividades. Considerando os fatos citados, as principais contribuições desta tese são: (a) especificação e desenvolvimento do DynFlow, cujo modelo associa características de TNMs e WfMS; (b) caracterização das principais vantagens e desvantagens de modelos CIGs e WfMSs; (c) implementação de um protótipo, baseado em ontologias e aplicadas ao domínio da saúde e enfermagem / Abstract: Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) are used to manage the execution of processes, improving efficiency and efficacy of the procedure in use. The driving forces behind the adoption and development of WfMSs are business and scientific applications. Associated research efforts resulted in consolidated mechanisms, consensual protocols and standards. In particular, a scientific WfMS helps scientists to specify and run distributed experiments. It provides several features that support activities within an experimental environment, such as providing flexibility to change workflow design and keeping provenance (and thus reproducibility) of experiments. On the other hand, barring a few research initiatives, WfMSs do not provide appropriate support to dynamic, context-based customization during run-time; on-the-fly adaptations usually require user intervention. This thesis is concerned with mending this gap, providing WfMSs with a context-aware mechanism to dynamically customize workflow execution. As a result, we designed and developed DynFlow ¿ a software architecture that allows such a customization, applied to a specific domain: healthcare planning. This application domain was chosen because it is a very good example of context-sensitive customization. Indeed, healthcare procedures constantly undergo unexpected changes that may occur during a treatment, such as a patient¿s reaction to a medicine. To meet dynamic customization demands, healthcare planning research has developed semi-automated techniques to support fast changes of the careflow steps according to a patient¿s state and evolution. One such technique is Computer-Interpretable Guidelines (CIG), whose most prominent member is the Task-Network Model (TNM) -- a rule based approach able to build on the fly a plan according to the context. Our research led us to conclude that CIGs do not support features required by health professionals, such as distributed execution, provenance and extensibility, which are available from WfMSs. In other words, CIGs and WfMSs have complementary characteristics, and both are directed towards execution of activities. Given the above facts, the main contributions of the thesis are the following: (a) the design and development of DynFlow, whose underlying model blends TNM characteristics with WfMS; (b) the characterization of the main advantages and disadvantages of CIG models and workflow models; and (c) the implementation of a prototype, based on ontologies, applied to nursing care. Ontologies are used as a solution to enable interoperability across distinct SWfMS internal representations, as well as to support distinct healthcare vocabularies and procedures / Doutorado / Ciência da Computação / Doutor em Ciência da Computação