by Michael Athans. / Caption title. "This report summarizes the developments to date (November 1 1978) ... ." / Travel support provided in part by National Science Foundation Grant NSF/ENG77-07777

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / This mini-dissertation is about ways by which a South African bank may improve alignment of information systems and business strategies.

by Michael Athans. / "November 30, 1978." Caption title. / Travel support provided in part by National Science Foundation Grant NSF/ENG77-07777

As condições desafiadoras enfrentadas pelas empresas no atual cenário econômico e político, aliadas às rápidas mudanças na qual a tecnologia de informação se insere, exigem a maximização do uso dos escassos recursos como forma de sobreviver no mercado. No caso específico das empresas estatais, a motivação primordial é reduzir o desperdício dos recursos públicos, através do seu uso racional. A Governança de TI surgiu como subconjunto da Governança Corporativa e sob a influência do Planejamento Estratégico de Sistemas de Informação. A Governança de TI é o alinhamento estratégico da TI com o negócio, para que o máximo de valor de negócio seja alcançado. O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar a abordagem da Governança de TI existente em uma empresa estatal fornecedora de bens e serviços de TI para o governo estadual. Através de um estudo de caso exploratório concluiu-se que a empresa possui traços da Administração Pública Burocrática, como a hierarquia funcional, o formalismo e a presença de fortes controles administrativos. A mudança do corpo diretivo a cada quatro anos, devida à troca de governo, introduz novas diretrizes e novos funcionários não-permanentes com estratégias diferentes da administração anterior. Não foi encontrada uma estrutura de decisões permanente capaz de resistir às oscilações da política governamental. A mudança do cenário político influencia a estrutura de poder interna da organização, numa intensidade além do que seria esperado se existisse um mecanismo de decisões consolidado. / Challenging conditions in business and political landscape in which enterprises are inserted, allied to information technology fast diversity of changes, demand actual maximization of scarce resources in order to survive in market. Similarly, in governmental enterprise environment, the prime motivation is to reduce public resources waste through its rational use. IT Governance emerged as a subset of Corporate Governance and under the influence of Information Systems Strategic Planning. IT Governance is the strategic alignment of IT and Business to achieve maximum business value. This study aims to analyze the existing IT Governance approach in a governmental enterprise that provides IT products and services for a state government. Through an exploratory case study one concluded that the enterprise has traces of the Bureaucratic Public Administration, as functional hierarchy, formalism and the presence of strong administrative controls. The every four year board change, due to government changes, introduces new guidelines and new non-permanent employees with different strategies from those of former administration. A permanent decision structure capable of resisting to governmental politics oscillations hasn’t been found in the enterprise environment. Political scene change biases the organization internal power structure in intensity beyond the one that would be expected if there was a consolidated decision mechanism.

As condições desafiadoras enfrentadas pelas empresas no atual cenário econômico e político, aliadas às rápidas mudanças na qual a tecnologia de informação se insere, exigem a maximização do uso dos escassos recursos como forma de sobreviver no mercado. No caso específico das empresas estatais, a motivação primordial é reduzir o desperdício dos recursos públicos, através do seu uso racional. A Governança de TI surgiu como subconjunto da Governança Corporativa e sob a influência do Planejamento Estratégico de Sistemas de Informação. A Governança de TI é o alinhamento estratégico da TI com o negócio, para que o máximo de valor de negócio seja alcançado. O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar a abordagem da Governança de TI existente em uma empresa estatal fornecedora de bens e serviços de TI para o governo estadual. Através de um estudo de caso exploratório concluiu-se que a empresa possui traços da Administração Pública Burocrática, como a hierarquia funcional, o formalismo e a presença de fortes controles administrativos. A mudança do corpo diretivo a cada quatro anos, devida à troca de governo, introduz novas diretrizes e novos funcionários não-permanentes com estratégias diferentes da administração anterior. Não foi encontrada uma estrutura de decisões permanente capaz de resistir às oscilações da política governamental. A mudança do cenário político influencia a estrutura de poder interna da organização, numa intensidade além do que seria esperado se existisse um mecanismo de decisões consolidado. / Challenging conditions in business and political landscape in which enterprises are inserted, allied to information technology fast diversity of changes, demand actual maximization of scarce resources in order to survive in market. Similarly, in governmental enterprise environment, the prime motivation is to reduce public resources waste through its rational use. IT Governance emerged as a subset of Corporate Governance and under the influence of Information Systems Strategic Planning. IT Governance is the strategic alignment of IT and Business to achieve maximum business value. This study aims to analyze the existing IT Governance approach in a governmental enterprise that provides IT products and services for a state government. Through an exploratory case study one concluded that the enterprise has traces of the Bureaucratic Public Administration, as functional hierarchy, formalism and the presence of strong administrative controls. The every four year board change, due to government changes, introduces new guidelines and new non-permanent employees with different strategies from those of former administration. A permanent decision structure capable of resisting to governmental politics oscillations hasn’t been found in the enterprise environment. Political scene change biases the organization internal power structure in intensity beyond the one that would be expected if there was a consolidated decision mechanism.

As condições desafiadoras enfrentadas pelas empresas no atual cenário econômico e político, aliadas às rápidas mudanças na qual a tecnologia de informação se insere, exigem a maximização do uso dos escassos recursos como forma de sobreviver no mercado. No caso específico das empresas estatais, a motivação primordial é reduzir o desperdício dos recursos públicos, através do seu uso racional. A Governança de TI surgiu como subconjunto da Governança Corporativa e sob a influência do Planejamento Estratégico de Sistemas de Informação. A Governança de TI é o alinhamento estratégico da TI com o negócio, para que o máximo de valor de negócio seja alcançado. O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar a abordagem da Governança de TI existente em uma empresa estatal fornecedora de bens e serviços de TI para o governo estadual. Através de um estudo de caso exploratório concluiu-se que a empresa possui traços da Administração Pública Burocrática, como a hierarquia funcional, o formalismo e a presença de fortes controles administrativos. A mudança do corpo diretivo a cada quatro anos, devida à troca de governo, introduz novas diretrizes e novos funcionários não-permanentes com estratégias diferentes da administração anterior. Não foi encontrada uma estrutura de decisões permanente capaz de resistir às oscilações da política governamental. A mudança do cenário político influencia a estrutura de poder interna da organização, numa intensidade além do que seria esperado se existisse um mecanismo de decisões consolidado. / Challenging conditions in business and political landscape in which enterprises are inserted, allied to information technology fast diversity of changes, demand actual maximization of scarce resources in order to survive in market. Similarly, in governmental enterprise environment, the prime motivation is to reduce public resources waste through its rational use. IT Governance emerged as a subset of Corporate Governance and under the influence of Information Systems Strategic Planning. IT Governance is the strategic alignment of IT and Business to achieve maximum business value. This study aims to analyze the existing IT Governance approach in a governmental enterprise that provides IT products and services for a state government. Through an exploratory case study one concluded that the enterprise has traces of the Bureaucratic Public Administration, as functional hierarchy, formalism and the presence of strong administrative controls. The every four year board change, due to government changes, introduces new guidelines and new non-permanent employees with different strategies from those of former administration. A permanent decision structure capable of resisting to governmental politics oscillations hasn’t been found in the enterprise environment. Political scene change biases the organization internal power structure in intensity beyond the one that would be expected if there was a consolidated decision mechanism.

Planning and engineering activities in small-scale power systems are, in most of cases, driven by immediately pressing factors such as short-term demand, system costs, expected revenues, and local development priorities. Often, the decision to go ahead with the investment in such systems is based on the outcomes of single-attribute spreadsheet type analyses and linear optimization runs where key parameters such as demand growth, interest rates, capital costs, and fuel prices are assumed to remain constant throughout the study period. The least-cost plan thus obtained is subject to changes in the above parameters requiring continual re-evaluation and assessment to bring the project up to date. An alternative method is hereby presented in which the uncertain parameters in a seemingly deterministic model were identified ahead of time. The range of values that each of these parameters could assume as well as the respective probabilities were elicited from the experts and incorporated in a decision analysis problem designed to generate the least-cost policy. The decision analysis process resulted in a robust evaluation of generation options under investigation when compared to the results of the deterministic analysis. Moreover, options ranked least in the deterministic analysis became quite competitive when uncertainties were included in the analysis. / Master of Science

Planning of today's electric utilities demand careful consideration of issues such as environment, demand-side management, non-utility generation, and new technologies which are subject to different constraints and uncertainties. Utilities have long developed and used models for their short and long-term planning, most of which are single purpose, large, data intensive, and do not fully account for uncertainties. New techniques have emerged to deal with uncertainties in utility planning. Among them, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been more successful in assessing uncertainties, and found to be well structured and applicable to individual as well as group decision makers. However, the results of this method are merely point estimate values. It is the objective of this research to identify a methodology which is capable of evaluating uncertainties with relative ease and accuracy without the need for a large volume of data and complicated software packages. The Analytic Hierarchy Process has been extended to estimate the variance of the error in judgments and therefore the confidence interval of values instead of point estimate values. A simulation study was carried out to check the accuracy of error variance (QI) in confidence interval calculations. The results showed that QI has a linear relationships with the variance of weights. The extended AHP method is applied to three case studies, including 1) Third party generation bidding evaluation criteria, 2) Identification and evaluation of different load management programs on utility peak reduction, and 3) Oil price prediction for electric utilities. This method promises to be an effective decision making tool for evaluating uncertainties in electric power system planning. / Ph. D.

[pt] O projeto de sistemas móveis em banda larga requer um planejamento detalhado devido à necessidade de maximizar a utilização da largura de banda disponível, maximizar a capacidade da rede, garantir requisitos mínimos de disponibilidade e minimizar os custos de implantação e operação da rede. Este trabalho apresenta uma metodologia de projeto a ser empregada em sistemas móveis em banda larga baseados no padrão IEEE 802.16e-2005 (WiMAX móvel). São apresentadas as novas tecnologias empregadas na elaboração do padrão, o modelo de propagação utilizado no cálculo de enlace, o cálculo da interferência co-canal, o cálculo da porcentagem de cobertura de área, o ganho de subcanalização e o cálculo da capacidade do canal. São analisadas abordagens para redução da interferência co-canal, visando maximizar a capacidade da rede e por fim é apresentado um estudo de caso utilizando uma ferramenta computadorizada de planejamento de redes móveis. / [en] The design of mobile broadband systems requires detailed planning due to necessity of maximizing the use of available bandwidth, network capacity, achieve minimum availability levels and minimize network implementation and operational costs. This work presents a design methodology to be employed in mobile broadband systems based on the IEEE Std 802.16-2005 (Mobile WiMAX). Here are presented the new technologies employed in the standard, the propagation model used for link budget, co-channel interference, coverage area percentage, sub-channelization gain and channel capacity calculations. Approaches for co-channel interference reduction are analyzed aiming to maximize network capacity and at the end a case study is presented using a computerized tool for mobile network planning.

Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) is an important activity for helping Chief Information Executives (CIOs) and top management identify strategic applications and align Information Technology (IT) with business needs. Like all strategic planning, SISP requires measuring how well SISP is done and how planning is improving over time. The measurement of these intangibles is a complex exercise. There have been few efforts undertaken in the Information Systems (IS) literature to formally develop a model for assessing and measuring SISP efforts. In this study, two models were proposed: a five-stage SISP maturity model for defining SISP maturity and another one for assessing the degree of SISP maturity. The five SISP maturity levels were defined as: Rudimentary Planning, Ineffectual Planning, Attainable Planning, Sustainable Planning, and Adaptable Planning. The assessment model was structured as a third-order system, where eight first-order dimensions were termed as Form and Content, Collaboration, Policies, Stakeholders' Designation, Knowledge Bank, Technology, Time Dimension, and Viability. The first-order dimensions were grouped into three second-order constructs, namely Effectiveness, Efficiency and Manoeuvrability, which ultimately characterise the level of SISP success. This model was used to establish a theoretical benchmark for each SISP maturity level. To model the level of SISP maturity, an 'Integral Engineering' approach was established and the Analytic Network Process (ANP) theory was used. The study is a novel approach in using ANP to synthesize the measures of the various SISP constructs into a single overall measure of SISP maturity level. A survey was performed and data collected from 260 Australian organisations to examine the degree of SISP maturity and the relationships among SISP constructs. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the fit between the hypothesized model and the survey data The models were applied to the data collected and the findings suggested that the models fit the data well. While Effectiveness and Efficiency are well recognised planning constructs, Manoeuvrability as a measure of planning dynamics is not acknowledged in the literature as an equally important construct. This study confirmed a strong correlation between Manoeuvrability and SISP success and found it to be more important than the Efficiency construct. The empirical data did not confirm the existence of Rudimentary and Ineffectual planning levels of SISP maturity Australia-wide. SISP maturity in the majority of Australian organisations is at Sustainable and Attainable planning levels. A small percentage of the surveyed organisations have actually reached the highest planning level (Adaptable planning). The empirical data showed that current SISP is lacking strategic dimension and that the recently popularised one-year planning horizon may not be the best choice. Australian organisations did not consider the strategic relevance of IT as the key objective. IT/IS was seen as a business enabler, thus the strategic advan tage associated with IT came as a secondary objective.