Global Information System - Coursework Example

Global INformation system A Thesis Presented to In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor [Master] of Education by Masako Yamaha January 2008 Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 1.1 Introduction 4 2.1 Global Information System 4 3.1 Organizational and Architectural Issues or Factors 5 4.1 Security in Global Information System 7 5.1 Technical Standardization 8 6.1 Conclusion 12 References 20 Executive Summary The global information system is a buzz word which we have to listen in our life. A global information system is a system which is developed in a global context. The global information system helps in delivering data over the globe. In the paper we have discussed the various issues regarding global information system. The major focus of the system is the strengths and weaknesses of GISs who are owned and not owned by the organizations. The organizational and architectural issues are there in the main context of the paper the issues like managerial, strategic, technological etc. The different standards are also taken into account for interoperability of the components of GIS. Introduction With the advent of electronic age different global information systems are developed, on World Wide Web owned by none, collaboratively by different organizations and also different global information systems are developed by single organization for fulfilling the specific needs of a particular organization. Systems in both the cases are working as a support tools and offering search facilities for extracting information. Global Information System provides a global coverage and different current strategic services which are based on knowledge (R. Richardson, A.F. Smeaton). Most of the Global Information Systems owned by different organizations are only in the use of government officials and its access to general public is prohibited but it’s not the case in World Wide Web. The Owned GISs provide maximum privacy. GIS is accessible only through password or computer IP recognition. Geographical Information System (GIS) is a global information system owned by different organization especially in mobile computing and has its immense importance in mobile computing. In mobile computing the GIS helps in accessing time and location independently. The global information system in mobile computing provided significant contribution in advancement of hardware and communication. The GIS is based on intelligence and analysis undertaken as a result of massive field collection (HUMINT); and on extensive research and analysis, using primary and open sources intelligence (OSINT), including considerable "open-but-difficult source" OSINT. Global Information Systems In our research paper we will have to consider the two major Global Information Systems i.e. WWW and GSM. The revolution of Information Systems aroused after the advent of World Wide Web. This helped in rapid distribution and storage of data and the availability of data in the whole world. World Wide Web is providing different databases or encyclopedias which are a common example of World Wide Web. Numbers of different Information Systems were designed for different knowledge purposes. Some of the available www based GISs are Google Scholar, Wikipedia, PubMed, Web of Science, and many more (Matthew E. Falagas, Eleni I. Pitsouni, George A. Malietzis and Georgios Pappas, 2008). The key words are used to search and to check the usefulness of different global information systems. Most of the global information systems are providing maximum efficiency in terms of their search facilities. The GIS PubMed and Google Scholar are accessed for free while the others who are proprietary global information systems are not accessed by general public. In the field of medicine the National Library of Medicine introduced its first Global Information System MedLine in 1971. Institute of Scientific Information of Thomson Scientific is another Global Information System for scientific knowledge. ISI is providing sufficient information regarding science to its audience since 1960s. Electronic databases have become popular in medical data research due to the advent of WWW in medicine. The organizations have tried their best to improve the retrieval modes of data when using Global Information Systems. The GIS Scopus covers a wider Journal range than others but the contents of data are limited to the recent years only (Matthew E. Falagas, Eleni I. Pitsouni, George A. Malietzis and Georgios Pappas, 2008). Organizational and Architectural Issues or Factors There are different factors which are taken into account with respect to architecture of Global Information System in terms of technology and management e.g. No specialized hardware. No arcane interfaces. Computers sit on the desktop or in a shirt pocket, not on the raised floor of an isolated data processing center The Web is here, there, and everywhere Software is finally affordable The folks in the executive suite know about GIS Proprietary databases have given way to commercial software IT directors don’t run when they see a user request for GIS. The software actually works. The organizations have to take decisions based on the overall requirements or goals of a user of GIS. Different organizations or institutions have issued different reports regarding GIS. In most of the reports or research papers researchers have given beneficial conclusions and advices. The institutions are adopting a proper planning or criteria for their institutional needs. The managers have to find out the risk areas involved like architecture, design, development, security and satisfaction of users of GIS (Leonard L. Berry, A. Parasuraman, 1997). Further the management has to face different issues like to find out a way to match global information system strategy to global business strategy. What are the ways which can help in establishing a relation between GIS and global business? There are the managerial issues regarding the technical platforms for the implementation of Global Information Systems because in different locations the platforms have to vary so to cope with technology variance is a matter of severe concern. The different technology platforms induce the issue of worldwide sharing of data and how the different technologies will be made compatible adopting different standards. Another issue is the spanning of the development of a global information system. Whenever we will have to compare these issues with a GIS which is owned and serving as a sole purpose then most of the issues eliminate ultimately from the scenario. The risk of issue like business strategy would automatically be reduced because the whole organization will be following the same business strategy so the whole application will be developed in a single technical platform. There would not be sufficient requirement of maintenance or management of such Global Information System. The researchers have summarized these issues in the form of categories and these categories include managerial and strategic issues, technological or application issues, host country social and cultural issues, host country economic issues, and host country political or legal issues (Erran Carmel, Robert Davison, 1999). Security in Global Information System The most important aspect of GIS is working software. The software ever demands security. So the security of Global Information System is a serious issue because of the increase in computer abuse, computer viruses, computer hacking and cracking (Richard Baskerville, 1993). There is the need of current design methods which also handle the security of GIS and makes the architecture more secure. The GIS owned by single organization are more secure than the systems which are not owned like www. But the security of a GIS is based on the needs of an organization for which the very system is designed. So keeping in view the firm requirements of the organization the architecture of the GIS is designed. In the first phase the conceptual models of the architecture are presented which are based on two phenomenons i.e. static and dynamic. There are different proprietary Global Information Systems available like FishBase, GSM, and many more but the description of all these GIS is not feasible in this research paper. FishBase is a global information system on fishes. FishBase is a sort of relational databases which provides required information to its intended audiences like scientists, students, fishery managers, zoologists and many others. It provides a lot of information about all the known species of fishes. GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications and it plays a vital role in mobile telephone. GSM is an example of a cellular network and it has to connect different phones by searching the cells in the area. The cells are of different sizes and are named as macro, micro, pico, femto, and umbrella cells. These cells are planted in various areas and the coverage mainly depends on the size of the cell which is being used there and in case of WWW the coverage of data or information retrieval mainly depends on the network structure of the whole internet. These cells in GSM are used to cover the different regions in a area and we can compare the cells of a GSM with the cable media of an internet layout. The different cells of GSM system are providing the services in different ways like macro cells which can be rendered as where the base station antenna is installed above average roof top level. GSM provides services which are secure and more reliable while the global systems like WWW are facing the issues of security and ever has to face threats of various types in the form of viruses. The owned GISs are rapidly updated but its not so in the case of others. Technical Standardization The standardization is needed for the interoperability of different components of GIS and also for network security, reliability and quality in terms of services (Ayesha Hassan). In owned GIS the technical coordination of protocols and addresses is easy to manage while in case of GIS like WWW it induces severe hard working. In World Wide Web the technical standards allow the different components to inter operate and work in a more secure and reliable way. A GIS either it is owned or not must adhere to the standards like Open source software adheres to the open standards like: DNS (Domain Name System), ANSI (American National Standards Association), LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), SSL (Secure Socket Layer), SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), X11 (X-Windows Protocol), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), SQL (Structured Query Language), MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) (Huaiqing Wang, Chen Wang, 2001). Conclusion The application and services of GIS is a core revolution in electronic information systems. The GIS is a system through which we can access data internationally over the globe. The critical tasks which are involved in developing and managing a GIS are process and system design, technical architecture and the technical support for the application. References Ayesha Hassan. Internet Governance: Strengths and Weaknesses from a Business Perspective www.wgig.org/docs/book/Ayesha_Hassan%20.pdf Chrisanthi Avgerou, Julika Siemer-Matravers, Niels Bjorn-Andersen. (1999). The Academic Field of Information Systems in Europe. European Journal of Information Systems. Dennis F. Galletta, Albert L. Lederer. Concepts, Theory and Techniques. Some Cautions on the Measurement of User Information Satisfaction. Erran Carmel, Robert Davison. (1999). What is Global Information Technology? Huaiqing Wang. (2001). Open Source Software Adoption: A Status Report. IEEE SOFTWARE Leonard L. Berry, A. Parasuraman. (1997). Listening to the Customer-The Concept of a Service-Quality Information System. SLOAN Management Review Spring. Matthew E. Falagas, Eleni I. Pitsouni, George A. Malietzis and Georgios Pappas. (2008). Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar: Strengths and Weaknesses. The FASEB Journal. 22:338-342 R. Richardson, A.F. Smeaton Using WordNet in a Knowledge Based Approach to Information Retrieval. Richard Baskerville. (1993). Information Systems Security Design Methods: Implications for Information Systems Development. ACM Computing Surveys The Global Information System .http://128.121.186.47/ISSA/gis/index.htm Yair Wand, Ron Weber. Research Commentary: Information Systems and Conceptual Modeling- A Research Agenda Read More