For years Penghu has been actively developing its tourism gaming (gambling) industry since its location, climate, and soil quality have hindered the development of its agriculture, fishery, and local industries and resulted in slow economy and reduced population. Its tourism industry had not developed well despite the unique natural sceneries and local history; therefore, the local government placed hope on the gambling industry in the wish of attracting foreign investors. For the past two decades, the local effort of legalizing off-shore gambling -- the only and the most important force behind this policy, has never ceased. The scenario adopted in this study is that the draft of the "Offshore Islands Development Act" that serves as the legal basis of Penghu's development of the gambling industry has been approved by the Legislative Yuan and is supported by the majority in a public vote. Being the only area where legalized gambling is allowed, the local government of Penghu and the central government immediately start to work on the applicable legal basis and regulations. Born and raised in Penghu, the researcher of this study also cares very much about this topic and thus wishes to come up with the recommendations for optimal local development. In this study the "Nominal Group Technique" (NGT) of "Interactive Management" (IM) was utilized for the purpose of getting everyone's opinions across in a democratic manner and reducing egocentric and arbitrary perspectives. Through NGT, an interactive seminar is held where "feasible and specific recommendations for the influences of Penghu's gambling industry on its economy and society" are provided. The 2-stage Seminar is held based on the unique procedures of NGT: Identify problems, clarify problems, vote and select problems, and come up with 12 specific strategies: 1. Invest a certain portion of the gambling revenue in the local environment in order to maintain the local landscapes and culture. 2. Establish a Penghu Gambling Committee or a dedicated authority that carries out its duties objectively and wins public trust and support. 3. Give a certain portion of the jobs in the gambling industry to the local residents whose households have been registered in Penghu for at least 5 years. 4. Make timely plans that are dedicated to Penghu's environment and surrounding. Gambling authorities should hold studies on the size of the gambling market. 5. Establish a security system between a service provider and a security authority and invest more in software/hardware for crime prevention. 6. Reinforce personnel training and industrial-academic collaborations in order to provide more jobs. 7. Establish a Supervisory Committee that is in charge of analyzing/evaluating relevant policies and formulating tasks. 8. Formulate strategies that protect the development of local industries and create a win-win situation for them and foreign inventors. 9. Penghu County Government should formulate a public-supervision system for the gambling industry in order to prevent corruptions and political manipulation. 10. Complete the infrastructure and public transportation as quickly as possible. 11. Actively help Penghu's traditional industries and develop tourism with the gambling industry and create a win-win situation. 12. Evaluate the influences of the population-carrying capacity on infrastructure and ecosystems and determine the responses. After comparing all the strategies, the inter-strategic relationships are reinforced using "Interpretive Structural Modeling" (ISM), and the ISM software was used to draw the diagram of the structural enhancement. After the second-stage discussions and revisions, the final, revised Diagram of Enhanced Structure was completed that clearly shows the causal relationships between each strategy and how they are ordered and ranked. The main contribution of this study is the information found provides the government with a clear, prioritized set of instructions that help the authority understand how the 12 strategies work and what they actually achieve. Through the 2-stage interactive seminar, questionnaire surveys were conducted twice on the participants in order for us to understand their expectations for the actual procedures, participation, understanding, and interactions in the seminar, and such information helps us understand how satisfied they are towards the interactive learning and whether they have actually achieved the expected results through independent thinking, diverse perspectives, debates, listening, group discussions, brain storming, and communication. In other words, we wish to find out how effective participation, problem-defining and clarifications, and consensus-reaching benefit the entire effort.

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Hamad Medical Corporation, the main healthcare provider in the state of Qatar, sponsored this study to investigate the use of electronic records management as the basis for a novel information management system in its Nursing Department. To assess the viability of an electronic records management system a questionnaire survey of a representative sample of the staff and interviews with key post holders were under taken. Results obtained indicated a wide spread dissatisfaction with the existing manual system. However, introduction of any computer-based technology requires great care. To assist with identifying any issues with this technological change, Soft System Methodology (SSM) was employed to discern what changes could be made to improve the current problematic situation found in the Nursing Department. In fact the change archetypes uncovered (procedural, attitudinal, structural and cultural) formed an innovative input into obtaining a roadmap for development of the electronic staff records system. This roadmap was facilitated by the use of Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM): In fact the roadmap was an ISM intent structure. The roadmap suggested that change could be affected by having written policy documents and the top goal to be achieved reflected an improvement in manpower placing and budgetary forecasts. The use of a multi-methods approach meant that as well as this study's main objectives being reached, the process encompassed some methodological innovations. This study is the first to use the output of SSM to facilitate the NGT and ISM interactions. Equally, it is the first study of its sort to be applied to the Nursing Department at HMC, Qatar, which is an example of a cross-cultural eastern philosophical tradition. The methods used here revealed some significant findings, and have helped in the development of an electronic records management system for use at HMC, Qatar.