Information Management System

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyse how a pre-requisite programme and key performance indicators can be developed within an information management system in order to manage food safety, animal welfare and business performance criteria effectively in the poultry meat supply chain and seek to deliver continuous improvement. Design/methodology/approach -Desk research was carried out in order to develop the research model. Competitive benchmarking with a group of broiler growers was used to determine the most appropriate performance indicators that could differentiate both operational and financial performance. Findings -Supply chain benchmarking is more than a comparative analysis of cost structure, indeed it can be argued that if not effectively implemented, benchmarking techniques can focus too much on historic data rather than identifying and implementing current best practice, knowledge transfer and being able to initiate change within the business cycle. Effective livestock benchmarking requires a detailed understanding of the processes undertaken in order to determine the ideas and information that needs to be shared both vertically and horizontally in the chain which in turn will deliver compliance with stakeholder requirements and drive continuous improvement.

The implementation of a transaction-based model in comprehensive medical rehabilitation settings can increase efficiency, reduce costs, facilitate up-to-the-minute patient progress tracking, and improve overall quality of care. In this model, all rehabilitation-related data are captured and contained as standardized data sets, providing a consistent means with which to monitor patient, clinician, resource, and program performance. Data about each discrete transaction or "event" in the course of a patient's rehabilitation are retained at the most granular level, permitting unlimited capabilities for advanced analysis. Using these events as building blocks, management reports may be generated to support decision making for the individual served, for similar groups of patients, for different resource configurations (e.g., treatment teams, alternative therapies), and for the organization as a whole.

Implementing information management system is still a challenging task for any organization. A lot of surveys are conducted to find out the root causes of implementation problems and propose new methods that can improve and simplify this process. In this paper we suggest using an ontology-based decision support system to avoid some implementation challenges.

E-governments are becoming a common phenomenon in the society today as public agencies rapidly embrace new technologies to streamline and reinvent their aging bureaucratic functions. However, due to the sheer diversity of stakeholders involved in governmental operations, practitioners are finding it difficult to manage the dynamism in customer relations that coexists with the migration of public services onto the virtual environment. In an attempt to shed some light for e-government development, this paper studies one such initiative in Singapore from a customer relational perspective. Through the study of how one public organization adapts to the dynamic customer relations brought about by e-government, the case is able to discern the governing factors for successful government-stakeholder relations in an e-government community. An important contribution of this study is the proposal of a development model of relationships in the public sector, which will then be able to suggest how relationships can be effectively managed so as to achieve an e-government future.

e-Government systems differ from commercial information systems (IS) in that they frequently encompass strategic goals that go beyond efficiency, effectiveness and economy, and include political and social objectives such as trust in government, social inclusion, community regeneration, community well-being and sustainability. Designing e-Government systems that help to meet these objectives is a significant challenge for the future. This paper develops an evaluative design framework for e-Government projects that complements traditional approaches to IS evaluation. The framework is based upon Moor's concept of public value. It focuses upon citizens' and clients' experiences of service provision and service outcomes as contributors to the formation of public trust. Trust is shown to be related to the extent to which people feel that an e-Government service enhances their sense of being wellinformed, gives them greater personal control, and provides them with a sense of influence or contingency. The framework's development and validation are founded upon analyses of a two live case studies in south-east England and London, U.K.

Background: Proteomics' requirement for simultaneous measurement of multiple markers is now possible with biochip array technology. Many laboratories utilise in-house, manual procedures for biochip fabrication and sample testing. Reproducibility and standardisation of biochip processes is vital to ensure quality of results and offer the best tool for elucidation of complex relationships between multiple proteins in diseased conditions.

The aim of this paper is to present the descriptive results of the survey responses that explore the perception of advanced information systems among four European countries: i.e. Denmark, Finland, Germany and Greece. The study evaluates the potential time savings associated with office tasks for information management and the likely adoption of advanced farming systems and precision farming practices. The survey results suggest that there are differences in weekly hours allocated to office tasks and its distribution across countries. However, there seems to be a potential benefit for introducing labour saving farm information management systems in relation to budgeting procedures, field planning and paperwork to deal with subsidy applications and public authorities. More than 40% of the respondent farms from Germany, Denmark and Finland seem to be unsure about usefulness of computers in dealing with official institutions and consumers. The extent to which the finding is linked to the budgeted time allocated to office tasks is worth pursuing.

The e-Government agenda is being pursued throughout the world to one degree or another, but it has added significance in Central Europe. The region is just beginning to emerge from a period of far-reaching political and economic transformation following the collapse of repressive communist systems. For these countries, e-Government is more than simply a new channel of delivering services; it offers an opportunity to achieve a quantum leap in transparency and efficiency of administration, which the region's leaders have promised their citizens since the early 1990s. Turkey is currently working hard to catch this opportunity. Turkish Government has initiated the Urgent Action Plan in December 2002 to remedy long-lasting economic problems and to improve social and well-being of the country. One of the basic components of this plan is 'e-Transformation Turkey Project' which aims to carry Turkey into Information society. One of the two purposes of this study is to define and to prioritize the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) groups and their subfactors for e-Government in Turkey. The other purpose is to determine and to evaluate the alternative strategies for e-Government applications at the national level in Turkey. We use the SWOT approach in combination with analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to achieve this task. The strategies have been prioritized and sensitivity analyses of the obtained results have been made using a software.

Project sponsorship is assumed to be critical to the success of information systems development and implementation. However, there is limited research on the effect of vendor-based sponsorship on the management of information technology (IT) projects. This paper contributes to that emerging body of evidence. Drawing on literature on psychological contract, management control and project sponsorship, the authors propose that vendor-based sponsors influence project performance in two main ways. One is to protect project quality by renegotiating contract with the client; and the other is to resource the project. Based on a survey of senior managers in IT services vendor organisations, it reports that project sponsorship improves the quality, but not the cost or timeliness, of vendor delivery of IT projects. The findings suggest that IT services vendors can improve their project delivery capability by appointing project sponsors.

The mobile ecosystem is characterized by a large and complex network of companies interacting with each other, directly and indirectly, to provide a broad array of mobile products and services to end-customers. With the convergence of enabling technologies, the complexity of the mobile ecosystem is increasing multifold as new actors are emerging, new relations are formed, and the traditional distribution of power is shifted. Drawing on theories of network science, complex systems, interfirm relationships, and the creative art and science of visualization, this paper identifies key players and maps the complex structure and dynamics of nearly 7000 global companies and over 18,000 relationships in the converging mobile ecosystem. Our approach enables decision makers to (i) visually explore the complexity of interfirm relations in the mobile ecosystem, (ii) discover the relation between current and emerging segments, (iii) determine the impact of convergence on ecosystem structure, (iv) understand a firm's competitive position, and (v) identify interfirm relation patterns that may influence their choice of innovation strategy or business models.

There is a plethora of theories to explore the disciplines of business, management and sociology, with institutional theory being widely used to explore a range of research challenges. In the area of Information Systems (IS), the use of institutional theory remains in its infancy, with much potential for adoption. Much of the rationale underpinning the proposed research is that a systematic review and synthesis of the normative literature may support the direction of further research and the use of institutional theory in exploring pertinent research challenges facing the IS community. This study also serves to signpost cross-disciplinary research, and thus opens up a whole new research paradigm. Therefore, this article seeks to provide a bibliometric analysis and a comprehensive and systematic review of the literature pertaining to institutional theory to ascertain the current ‘state of play’ of the theory. Information on a series of variables was extracted after conducting a revie...

New technologies, notably service oriented architectures and Web services, are enabling a third wave of business process management (BPM). Supporters claim that BPM is informed by complexity theory and that business processes can evolve and adapt to changing business circumstances. It is suggested by BPM adherents that the business/IT divide will be obliterated through a process-centric approach to systems development. The evolution of BPM and its associated technologies are explored and then coevolutionary theory is used to understand the business/IT relationship. Specifically, Kauffman's NKC model is applied to a business process ecosystem to bring out the implications of coevolution for the theory and practice of BPM and for the relationship between business and IT. The paper argues that a wider view of the business process ecosystem is needed to take account of the social perspective as well as the human/non-human dimension.

The worldwide diffusion of Electronic Commerce shifts the exchange relationship between buyers and sellers from the face-to-face model to the face-to-screen model; and it is, therefore, important for organisations to consider the Web attributes that attract users. Yet, conceptualising, empirically testing, and refining tools for measuring the easiness and usefulness of transactional Web sites are lacking. The present study tries to fill this gap in the literature by describing the development of two tools for measuring perceived easiness and usefulness in a Web context. The findings of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses reveal that the two instruments demonstrate sound measurement properties and would be useful to organisations interested in setting up an electronic business, and to scholars interested in Web research.

openEHR archetypes and templates Biobank information management system a b s t r a c t Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of applying the openEHR archetype approach to modelling the data in the database of an existing proprietary biobank information management system. A biobank information management system stores the clinical/phenotypic data of the sample donor and sample related information. The clinical/phenotypic data is potentially sourced from the donor's electronic health record (EHR).

Bureaucratic institutions not only provide mechanisms to coordinate work activities in the public sector, but also serve to enforce the democratic values of equality and impartiality. This paper explores how recent approaches to e-government neglect these important dimensions of bureaucracy and proposes an alternative approach to e-government. This paper sets the wider new public management reform context to help explain some of the difficulties the NHS IT Projects are running into by 2007. The e-bureaucratic form is proposed as an e-government solution, which, while taking advantages of the information and communication technology as means of coordination, also help to enforce the values of equality and impartiality underpinned through the actions emanating from bureaucratic structures.

Anesthesia Information Management Systems (AIMS) display and archive perioperative physiological data and patient information. Although currently in limited use, the potential benefits of an AIMS with regard to enhancement of patient safety, clinical effectiveness and quality improvement, charge capture and professional fee billing, regulatory compliance, and anesthesia outcomes research are great. The processes and precautions appropriate for AIMS selection, installation, and implementation are complex, however, and have been learned at each site by trial and error. This collaborative effort summarizes essential considerations for successful AIMS implementation, including product evaluation, assessment of information technology needs, resource availability, leadership roles, and training.

Since DeLone and McLean (D&M) developed their model of IS success, there has been much research on the topic of success as well as extensions and tests of their model. Using the technique of a qualitative literature review, this research reviews 180 papers found in the academic literature for the period 1992-2007 dealing with some aspect of IS success. Using the six dimensions of the D&M model -system quality, information quality, service quality, use, user satisfaction, and net benefits -90 empirical studies were examined and the results summarized. Measures for the six success constructs are described and 15 pairwise associations between the success constructs are analyzed. This work builds on the prior research related to IS success by summarizing the measures applied to the evaluation of IS success and by examining the relationships that comprise the D&M IS success model in both individual and organizational contexts.

This paper first provides a historical perspective on approaches to developing infonnation systems and argues that there are major weaknesses associated with the conventional waterfall model and the methodologies which followed. The paper suggests that a contingency approach to information systems development has much to offer and looks at Multiview, which is described as an exploration in infom1ation systems development. Some strengths and weaknesses of this contingency approach an~ highlighted and a new version of Multi view offered. This description enahles a further discussion of infom1ation systems development and suggests that human and organisational aspect are at least as important as the technical ones which tend to he emphasised. Information systems development is seen as first a social process, though it will contain technical aspects. This social process is examined in more detail illustrating the arguments, for example, with different views of the systems analyst and the problem situation in this process. Such a broad approach also suggests that the area of which infom1ation systems development is a part, is multi-disciplinary where technology and computing are hy no means dominant.

Institutional theory has proven to be a central analytical perspective for investigating the role of social and historical structures of information systems (IS) implementation. However, it does not explicitly account for how organisational actors make sense of and enact technologies in their local context. We address this limitation by exploring the potential of using institutional theory with sensemaking theory to study IS implementation in organisations. We argue that each theoretical perspective has its own explanatory power and that a combination of the two facilitates a much richer interpretation of IS implementation by linking macro- and micro-levels of analysis. To illustrate this, we report from an empirical study of the implementation of an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system in a clinical setting. Using key constructs from the two theories, our findings address the phenomenon of implementing EPRs at three levels: the organisational field, the organisational/group, and ...

This paper suggests ways to facilitate creativity and innovation in software development. The paper applies four perspectives-Product, Project, Process, and People-to identify an outlook for software innovation. The paper then describes a new facility-Software Innovation Research Lab (SIRL)-and a new method concept for software innovation-Essence-based on views, modes, and team roles. Finally, the paper reports from an early experiment using SIRL and Essence and identifies further research.

South and Southeast Asian countries have undertaken demersal trawl surveys to measure the fisheries potential of their waters throughout the 20th century. However, ensuring full use of, and easy access to the resulting data is a challenge in developing countries. The "Fisheries Resource Information System and Tools" (FiRST) was developed through a regional collaborative effort across eight South and Southeast Asian counties to meet these needs. FiRST is a data management system for scientific trawl survey data and includes data summary and visualization tools, an analytical routine to estimate biomass, and data import/export modules. The FiRST software has also facilitated the establishment of a regional database, 'TrawlBase', which contains more than 20,000 hauls or stations from scientific trawl surveys in 10 countries conducted between 1926 and 1995. The regional database is an important regional resource for coastal fisheries management complementing national fisheries catch statistics.

A site description directory plays a central role as a catalog for a network of research sites. Such a directory represents a keystone element in an information management system. A directory contributes to community communications both through documentation of member information and relationships as well as through design feedback elicited from participants in the ongoing process of developing the catalog system. Presentation of a description directory for networked research sites via web interfaces permits distributed, remote site data input and access. There is a dual challenge in creating an extensible directory design: first to capture relevant content and second to incorporate such a system within the work practice of the community represented to ensure its continued evolution. We present here a directory designed for the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network community

The design of large and complex enterprise integration solutions is a difficult task. It can require solutions that are unique because of constraints from the current set of legacy applications. Design knowledge for enterprise integration solutions is, therefore, difficult to articulate and reuse. In particular, the nature and form of knowledge for conceptual design of integration solutions is difficult to pin down. In this paper, we investigate whether design knowledge for enterprise integration in the form of patterns can be reused to develop systems integration solutions, and whether such reuse leads to more effective design outcomes. The research follows design science guidelines in which we describe a research artifact, and evaluate it to assess whether it meets the intended goals. The results indicate that approaches to facilitate reuse of conceptual design knowledge are feasible in the domain of enterprise integration, and that such reuse does, in fact, lead to more effective design solutions.

After Port Aventura's launch as a theme park in 1995, it continued to invest heavily in new shows, rides, hotels, golf courses, a convention center, and a shopping mall, all with the aim of adjusting to seasonal adjusted demand. This transformation from a theme park to a resort posed new challenges for Port Aventura's executive team. In particular, as a theme park, the analysis of its commercial activity focused on aggregated statistical information about groups of customers. By contrast, as a resort, management now needed to know and target individual customers. Yet, the company's existing information management processes and systems were not ready to support such a one-to-one marketing approach. This case is situated in mid-2009 when the general manager asked the chief financial officer and the director of information systems to find a solution to address the marketing needs of the resort. The case discussion encourages students to identify and assess the business problems and relate them to the existing information management processes and systems. Students will also have to present a proposal that addresses this one-to-one marketing strategy.

South Africa has seen a number of evaluation and monitoring initiatives in the last five years. There is a tendency, however, to embark on or promote ambitious monitoring programmes, with scores of indicators, and this is simply not sustainable in practice (which is evident from the fact that at present very little monitoring happening). It is better to start with something simple, and to build up from there. In reality the only successful ongoing rural water supply monitoring programme which has been observed in the field is that which was conducted from 2001 to 2005 by Service Support Agents under contract to the Alfred Nzo Municipality.

The business model concept is becoming increasingly popular within IS, management and strategy literature. It is used within many fields of research, including both traditional strategy theory and in the emergent body of literature on e-business. However, the concept is often used independently from theory, meaning model components and their interrelations are relatively obscure. Nonetheless, we believe that the business model concept is useful in explaining the relation between IS and strategy. This paper offers an outline for a conceptual business model, and proposes that it should include customers and competitors, the offering, activities and organisation, resources and factor market interactions. The causal inter-relations and the longitudinal processes by which business models evolve should also be included. The model criticises yet draws on traditional strategy theory and on the literature that addresses business models directly. The business model is illustrated by an ERP implementation in a European multi-national company.

In the past several years many organizations have initiated enterprise-wide information management systems projects, using such packages as SAP, Peoplesoft, and Oracle. These projects often represent the single largest investment in an information systems project in the history of these companies, and in many cases the largest single investment in any corporate-wide project.

Background: In recent years, the genome biology community has expended considerable effort to confront the challenges of managing heterogeneous data in a structured and organized way and developed laboratory information management systems (LIMS) for both raw and processed data. On the other hand, electronic notebooks were developed to record and manage scientific data, and facilitate data-sharing. Software which enables both, management of large datasets and digital recording of laboratory procedures would serve a real need in laboratories using medium and highthroughput techniques. Results: We have developed iLAP (Laboratory data management, Analysis, and Protocol development), a workflow-driven information management system specifically designed to create and manage experimental protocols, and to analyze and share laboratory data. The system combines experimental protocol development, wizard-based data acquisition, and high-throughput data analysis into a single, integrated system. We demonstrate the power and the flexibility of the platform using a microscopy case study based on a combinatorial multiple fluorescence in situ hybridization (m-FISH) protocol and 3D-image reconstruction. iLAP is freely available under the open source license AGPL from http://genome.tugraz.at/iLAP/. Conclusion: iLAP is a flexible and versatile information management system, which has the potential to close the gap between electronic notebooks and LIMS and can therefore be of great value for a broad scientific community.

It is well known that executive information systems (EIS) are high risk systems to implement and maintain. Factor research is the most commonly used framework for studying the causes of EIS failure yet there is no conclusive evidence that the factors suggested in the information systems (IS) research literature ensure system success. This paper reports on a case study of a failed EIS in a large New Zealand organization and compares this case with the success factors found in the research literature. One of the ® ndings is that the broader issues surrounding the failure were more signi® cant than the more narrowly focused factors suggested by the factor research approach. These broader issues include the social, cultural, political and economic context of the system as a whole. Another ® nding was that many of these broader contextual issues were not directly controllable by the EIS project team. This paper will have implications for all those who have to develop or are involved with the development of EIS.

We are delighted to welcome delegates to the 2001 AUC Academic and Developers Conference to James Cook University and to the Conference itself. The conference is an opportunity to learn, share experience and understand emerging opportunities in the Universities, with a particular focus on Apple's exciting new operating system, MacOS X.

This teaching case discusses the challenges being faced by the technology managers at Indian Railways (IR) in the current scenario of a resurgent national economy coupled with increasing customer expectations. In the face of growing competition from road and low-cost airlines, to retain its customers, IR has responded by changing its business rules. The Railway Ministry expects a rapid response from Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) to incorporate all these changes in the passenger reservation system (PRS). The old PRS, which is time-tested and reliable, and has been serving the customers' needs for nearly two decades, is now proving to be relatively inflexible to match the rapidly changing business requirements. Although the current scenario of a constant need to change the programming logic of PRS has been making maintenance tougher for CRIS officials, they have realized that PRS is a time-tested, proven, and reliable technology. Though they would be happy to replace the old PRS with a new state-of-art system that would provide them greater maintenance flexibility, the repercussions associated with possible failure of the new system are far too serious. The case exhibits the current dilemma being faced by the head of CRIS, the umbrella agency for information technology (IT) implementation in IR: whether IR should continue using the old PRS technology with its inherent shortcomings, or should it take the risk and go in for a wholesale replacement with a new state-of-art technology which would provide greater maintenance flexibility?

Research on the strategic management of Information Technology (IT) resources has mostly focused on the oversight provided by the management team as a means to increase organizational performance. In recent years, boards of directors have also increased their involvement in IT matters, and various theoretical lenses suggest that this oversight too has the potential to influence organizational performance. Hence, this study synthesizes the resource-based and contingency views of MIS with corporate governance theories, and examines key antecedents and consequences of board-level IT governance (ITG) using a multi-method approach. Structural Equation Modelling analysis applied to organization-level data collected from 171 board members suggested that the level of ITG exercised by boards was contingent upon the organization's 'IT use mode', along the two dimensions of need for (a) fast and reliable IT, and (b) new innovative IT. But, the findings further suggested that the contingency approach may be suboptimal because it can cause new ways of leveraging IT to be ignored. High levels of board-level ITG, regardless of existing IT needs, increased organizational performance. This phenomenon was illuminated with applicability checks. Moreover, content analysis and structured interviews with board members further enriched these insights.

Grounded in the diffusion of innovation theory and the technologyorganization-environment framework, we develop an integrative model to study the determinants of post-adoption stages of innovation diffusion, using enterprise digital transformation as an example of technology-enabled innovations. We specify four innovation characteristics (relative advantage, compatibility, costs and security concern) and four contextual factors (technology competence, organization size, competitive pressure and partner readiness) as determinants of post-adoption usage, and postulate usage as an intermediate link to impact on firm performance. We test the proposed model using a dataset of 1415 companies from six European countries. We find that the innovation needs to be used extensively in value-chain activities before its impact can be realized. Among the innovation characteristics, we find that compatibility is the strongest driver, and security concern outweighs cost as a usage inhibitor. Among the contextual variables, technology competence, partner readiness and competitive pressure significantly drive e-business usage, and the structural inertia of large firms tends to slow down its penetration. Collectively, these results indicate that innovation diffusion can be better understood by including both innovation characteristics and contextual factors, whereas earlier literature has traditionally treated the two separately. Finally, we evaluate an international dimension among European countries and tease out important boundary conditions that would not have been evident in a singlecountry dataset. Our results show that careful attention must be paid to the economic and regulatory factors that may result in uneven innovation diffusion even among developed European countries.

The gap between research and practice is strikingly evident in the area of information technology (IT) project risk management. In spite of extensive research for over 30 years into IT project risk factors resulting in normative guidance on IT project risk management, adoption of these risk management methods in practice is inconsistent. Managing risk in IT projects remains a key challenge for many organizations. We discuss barriers to the application of normative prescriptions, such as assessments of probability and impact of risk, and suggest a contingency approach, which addresses the uncertainties, complexities, and ambiguities of IT projects and enables early identification of high-risk projects. Specifically, in a case study, we examine how the project management office (PMO) at one organization has bridged the gap between research and practice, developing a contingency-based risk assessment process well founded on research knowledge of project dimensions related to project pe...