Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2007. / "Publication number: AAT 3281715."

Thesis (MTech (Public Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, [2017]. / The study is located within a Project Management paradigm. The South African national Department of Education’s (the DOE) approach to e-Education and its directive issued in 2004 to integrate Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s) into teaching and learning forms the premise of this study. In 2009, the Western Cape Government adopted the Modernisation Programme to bring the provincial government on par with international best practice, to ensure that government officials are fit for their respective purposes. The challenge for the Western Cape Government was its ability to implement a project management approach to all activities performed by all stakeholders and role players in the project implementation process. The core objective of the study was to develop a theoretical framework to monitor and control projects and practices within selected provincial government departments in the Western Cape, with specific reference to the Department of the Premier (DotP) and the Western Cape Education Department, in order to achieve and provide an improved project management approach to monitor and control projects when implementing strategy and, in turn, enhance effective and efficient service delivery. A qualitative research approach was used, as the researchers were keen to hear verbal accounts around the experiences and perceptions of selected individuals within the Department of the Premier and Western Cape Education Department around the MSPiL Training Project in particular, and how it is monitored and controlled. Applicable literature was consulted which indicated the complexity of project management in the public sector as it relates to monitoring and control of projects. Methods/mechanisms, procedures and systems for defining, planning, scheduling, controlling, organising, monitoring and evaluating project activities to enhance service delivery, were forwarded. One of the core findings of the study was that an agile project management approach/methodology is best suited to an environment that has faster turnaround times with more streamlined, speedier approvals and processes, red tape reduction, as well as more direct communication channels. The aforementioned lacked in the South African public sector. A recommendation forwarded is that the Department of the Premier, Centre for e-Innovation’s (Directorate GITO: Education, Cultural Affairs and Sport) project office and a task team that specifically deal with the MSPiL project should clearly understand their department’s requirements whilst defining, planning and managing projects to improve project management maturity, as well as constantly communicate the roadmap, benefits and progress at both project/programme, departmental and provincial level by 2019, since this is when the Western Cape Provincial Strategic Plan reaches its end. This will assist the department and its MSPiL project team to improve project tasks and activities for future projects with similar characteristics.

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2017. / In Information Technology (IT) service management, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has been established as a standard and framework for managing IT services within private and public sector. However, in South African public sector, the value of this framework including the capacity management process has not been determined. The aim of the study was to assess the capacity management process within the service design stage of the ITIL framework in managing IT services at a selected public organisation in South Africa. Assessing capacity management in the context of this research was to judge whether it adds value to the organisation. Main questions asked were: to what extent has ITIL been implemented in the public sector in South Africa?, what benefits have been achieved through the implementation of ITIL in the public sector in South Africa? and how effective is the capacity management process of ITIL in the South African public sector? The study adopts a qualitative approach based on primary and secondary data. A purposive sampling method was used to collect data through interviews of ICT officials in Pretoria and Western Cape regions. It is evident in terms of the findings that capacity management within the organisation is practiced, but the organisation still has challenges in managing the process. Findings reveal challenges around user account management, ICT skills shortage and capacity constraints, information, network monitoring tools, and ITIL implementation. DeLone and McLean theoretical framework was used to analyse the capacity management process to explain the findings. A lack of clear ICT planning among the leadership is a contributing factor. Lack of adhering to standards, procedures and processes make it almost impossible to manage capacity. Efforts to address the technical and organisational challenges such as technical skills and stakeholders immediately reporting the users that need to be terminated on systems prohibit the success of capacity management process. Drawing the conclusion, it is recommended that efforts to address challenges should move beyond just ICT, into a comprehensive action by all stakeholders in respective of inter departmental units and executive who make decisions. Solutions should be embedded with ICT being able to manage technology, auditing of processes, and capacity to ensure excellence through reduced risk, increased efficiency, confident forecasts, and cost effectiveness is essential.

Appropriate e-services as well as revenue generation capabilities are key to the deployment and the sustainability for ICT installations in poor areas, particularly common in developing country. The area of e-Health is a promising area for e-services that are both important to the population in those areas and potentially of direct interest to National Health Organizations, which already spend money for Health campaigns there. This thesis focuses on the design, implementation, and full functional testing of HealthAware, an application that allows health organization to set up targeted awareness campaigns for poor areas. Requirements for such application are very specific, starting from the fact that the preparation of the campaign and its execution/consumption happen in two different environments from a technological and social point of view. Part of the research work done for this thesis was to make the above requirements explicit and then use them in the design. This phase of the research was facilitated by the fact that the thesis' work was executed within the context of the Siyakhula Living Lab (SLL; www.siyakhulaLL.org), which has accumulated multi-year experience of ICT deployment in such areas. As a result of the found requirements, HealthAware comprises two components, which are web-based, Java applications that run in a peer-to-peer fashion. The first component, the Dashboard, is used to create, manage, and publish information for conducting awareness campaigns or surveys. The second component, HealthMessenger, facilitates users' access to the campaigns or surveys that were created using the Dashboard. The HealthMessenger was designed to be hosted on TeleWeaver while the Dashboard is hosted independently of TeleWeaver and simply communicates with the HealthMessenger through webservices. TeleWeaver is an application integration platform developed within the SLL to host software applications for poor areas. Using a core service of TeleWeaver, the profile service, where all the users' defining elements are contained, campaigns and surveys can be easily and effectively targeted, for example to match specific demographics or geographic locations. Revenue generation is attained via the logging of the interactions of the target users in the communities with the applications in TeleWeaver, from which billing data is generated according to the specific contractual agreements with the National Health Organization. From a general point of view, HealthAware contributes to the concrete realizations of a bidirectional access channel between Health Organizations and users in poor communities, which not only allows the communication of appropriate content in both directions, but get 'monetized' and in so doing becomes a revenue generator.

Please read the abstract (Summary) in the 00front part of this document / Thesis (DPhil (Public Administration))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA) / unrestricted

This thesis discusses the opportunities of using open data particularly from the perspective of commercial organizations. At first, the concept of open data is generally described including the relationships with related concepts. The thesis also mentions the general benefits and estimated economic impact of using open data. Next, it is described the current situation of open data activities in the Czech republic, the current possible sources of open data and also the possible business models for open data. The practical benefits of this thesis include the visualized outputs from the content analysis of national open data catalogues data.gov.uk and govdata.de, which demonstrate what kind of published datasets are available in those catalogues as an example for the Czech republic and also the conclusions of the performed pre-survey on demand for open data in the Czech republic. Based on this and similar surveys around the world, it was found that there is a big interest on open data from the commercial organizations and the biggest issue is its insufficient availability.

Thesis deals with the elimination of risks in government. It contains analysis of processes municipal administration and risk analysis . On the basis of these analyzes are for some identified risks designed and implemented measures to reduce them. The measures include the design and implementation of applications to support risk management in government.

Esta pesquisa investigou o emprego da informação no sistema de trabalho das Equipes Saúde da Família (EqSF), nas Unidades Básicas de Saúde (UBS), visando identificar que fatores interferem no emprego da informação em um ambiente de alta complexidade, de difícil controle e descentralizado. Para responder essa questão, foram identificados o processo de tratamento e o uso das informações. Tem como objetivo também compreender a discrepância entre a intenção do uso e o uso efetivo das informações e suas causas. Foi utilizado o método de estudo de casos múltiplos e, para isso, foram estudadas sete EqSF que fazem parte de três UBS, gerenciadas por uma Organização Social (OS), a Fundação da Faculdade de Medicina da USP, na região oeste do município de São Paulo. As EqSF são grupos multiprofissionais que promovem a atenção básica e a prevenção à saúde para os pacientes de determinado território. Buscou-se compreender como, nesse contexto, são feitos a captura, o registro, a disponibilização e o emprego das informações, já que elas são recursos relevantes para a produção de serviço desses profissionais e são coletadas tanto no domicílio do paciente quanto na UBS. Para realizar o atendimento dentro dos níveis de qualidade previsto pela OS e Secretaria Municipal de Saúde (SMS), os profissionais criam diversos sistemas de informação paralelos (cadernos, planilhas, etc.) de uso individual, uma vez que os sistemas eletrônicos da SMS e do Ministério da Saúde não atendem suas necessidades e as informações que contém nem sempre são usadas. Isso acontece devido ao não alinhamento entre os sistemas de informação e a infraestrutura disponível (BOSTROM; HEINEN, 1997a), requisito que é superado por meio de esforços individuais e coletivos. Essa situação corrobora as considerações de DeLone e McLean (1992, 2002, 2003) que afirmam haver uma relação entre o uso da informação e a satisfação do usuário com a qualidade do sistema, a qualidade da informação e a qualidade do serviço informacional. Os profissionais costumam memorizar dados para registro posterior, possibilitando redundância, erros e perdas de detalhes. As informações são registradas de acordo com o interesse do profissional e não há um sistema estruturado para a consolidação das informações. / This research investigated the use of information in the work of the Family Health Teams (EqSF), the Basic Health Units (UBS), to identify factors that interfere with the use of information in an environment of high complexity, difficult to control and decentralized. To answer this question, it was identified the treatment process and use information. It aims also to understand the discrepancy between the intended use and effective use of information and its causes. We used the method of multiple case study and, therefore, we studied seven EqSF three that are part of UBS, managed by a Social Organization (OS), the Foundation of the Faculty of Medicine, USP, in the western region of São Paulo. The EqSF are multidisciplinary groups that promote primary and preventive health care for patients of the territory. We sought to understand how, in this context, are made to capture, registration, delivery and use of information resources as they are relevant to the production of professional service and are collected in both the patient\'s home and in UBS. To perform the service within the quality standards set by the OS and the Municipal Health Secretariat (SMS), professionals create several parallel information systems (notebooks, spreadsheets, etc.). Individual use, since the electronic systems of SMS and Ministry of Health did not meet their needs and the information it contains are not always used. This is due to non-alignment between information systems and infrastructure available (BOSTROM; HEINEN, 1997a), a requirement which is overcome through individual and collective efforts. This situation confirms the considerations of Delone and McLean (1992, 2002, 2003) who claim to be a relationship between information use and user satisfaction with system quality, information quality and service quality of information. Professionals tend to store data backlog, enabling redundancy, errors and loss of detail. Information is recorded according to the interest of professional and there is no structured system for the consolidation of information.

In the context of evaluating effectiveness of information systems, the public sector requires a specific approach for measuring indirect benefits such as strategic / political value. There is not yet a holistic approach and no unified adaptive and time-variant model addressing the problem. In this thesis, Strategic Management Model developed and partially applied at the Ministry of Finance, Turkey, is described. The model is based on the public value delivery chain, from strategic goals to accountability reporting. Public Financial Management Value Space is built step by step, and a method is defined on the Value Space for effectiveness assessment through calculation of five value components, namely the Agency Value, User Value, Political Value, Strategic/Social Value, and Environmental Value, using weighted summation of key goal and performance indicators. Value space is mapped to ontology, then to the object model for flexible system implementation. The assessment calculation method, resulting in a single value allows for a-posteriori benefits assessment, allows not only for cross-comparison of programs, agencies, functions, etc. by fixing the values on the dimensions of the value space under analysis, but also standardization and consolidation. Economy, efficiency and effectiveness are linked as an extension of the assessment model by introducing the expenditure component of the budget. The model has been applied to two case studies of Information System investments at the Ministry of Finance, and a cross-comparison of these initiatives has been provided.

Thesis (D. Phil.(Information Science))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-250).