Information Systems and Its Data, Technology, People, and Organizational Components - Assignment Example

Information Systems Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Name Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Instructor Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date Contents Contents 1 Define the term “information systems” (IS) and explain its data, technology, people, and organizational components. 2 List and define five types of information systems used in organizations Information systems are classified into five classes; 3 Peter Drucker has defined the knowledge worker and knowledge society. What are his definitions? Do you agree with them? What examples can you give to support or disprove these concepts? 5 4.0. Compare and contrast data warehouses and data marts. 6 5.0 List and explain three benefits of using extranets. 7 6.0 List and describe three emerging topics in consumer-to-consumer e-commerce. 8 7.0 List and describe the two main types of software licenses 8 8.0 Describe four types of intelligent agents. How can they be used to benefit organizations? 9 9.0 Describe risk analysis as it relates to information systems security and explain three ways to approach systems security risk. 10 9.1 Quantitative risk analysis 11 9.2 Qualitative risk analysis 11 9.3 Identifying the threat 12 10. Compare and contrast information accuracy, information privacy, and information property 12 11.0 Reference 13 Define the term “information systems” (IS) and explain its data, technology, people, and organizational components. Information systems are the methods and means through which people and organizations utilize technologies, gather, process, store and use information aimed at facilitating planning, control, analysis and decision making in business and organizations. An information system has components namely (Cheesman & Daniels 2001): 1.1 Technology – this include hardware and software. Hardware includes the machinery that is the computer itself and all other support equipments. Software is computer programs and manuals that support them. 1.2 Data - this is a representation of information in a simplified manner suitable for communication, interpretation or processing. This is very vital for decision making which are the main purposes of information systems. 1.3 People – for an information system to be useful people are the vital component. They are important for they determine the success or the failure of the entire information system. 1.4 Organization – information systems must be pegged on an organization otherwise they will be of no use or will have no impact on the desired objectives. List and define five types of information systems used in organizations Information systems are classified into five classes; 2.1 Office information system (OIS) - this is the information system which uses hardware, software an networks to facilitate work flow and enhance effective communication among workers. In other words it can be described as office automation whereby employees perform their duties/tasks electronically rather than manually. These tasks include creating graphics, sending messages, and accounting just to mention a few. These information systems uses spreadsheets, databases, presentation graphics, web browsers and supports the use of communication technologies like facsimile, video conferencing, electronic data exchange. Finally it supports hardware like computer equipments, video cameras, speakers, scanners and fax machines (Hirschheim & Smithson 1988). 2.2 Transaction processing systems (TPS) - this is a transaction that captures and processes all the data generated from all the day to day transactions in an organization. These transactions may be reservations, payments, deposits or even orders. In other words this involves recording all the business activities taking place in the organization (Hirschheim & Smithson 1988).. 2.3 Management Information system (MIS) – after all the transactions have been recorded, the management use the information processed as an aiding tool for their management activities. Therefore this is an information system that produces accurate and timely information that helps the management make vital decisions, solve problems, track activities or even supervise the entire organization’s activities. For this system generates reports each every now and then, it is also referred to as management reporting system (MRS) (Hirschheim & Smithson 1988).. 2.4 Decision Support System (DSS) – this is a system specially designed to enable end users make decisions when that need is due. It is worth noting that they use data from both internal and external sources so as t have effective results. They use statistical analysis, capabilities, spreadsheets and graphics whereby the data extracted is evaluated for better results (Hirschheim & Smithson 1988).. 2.5 Experts systems (EI) - these are information systems that stores human expert’s knowledge and then imitate that for decision making as a helping hand to those with less expertise. They are made of two components; knowledge base and inference rules. As for the knowledge base, they have subject knowledge and experiences of human experts. For the inference rules this are set of logical judgements and knowledge base when the user commands the system to perform tasks. In other words they are called artificial intelligent which are human intelligence to computers (Hirschheim & Smithson 1988).. Peter Drucker has defined the knowledge worker and knowledge society. What are his definitions? Do you agree with them? What examples can you give to support or disprove these concepts? Knowledge is an important aspect in an organization. Knowledge is the key resource for individual firms and the key driver of competitive advantage for developing nations, competing in knowledge based organization, living with knowledge communities and societies (Drucker 1993a). Drucker agues that, knowledge workers increase that productivity of manual workers and that it is emphasised that it is acquired through systematic learning, through formal schooling (Drucker 2001). He went ahead to state that change in the society can only be enhanced by information. In any given organization and the current technology dynamism, knowledgeable employees are very important for driving the production. I therefore agree with Drucker about knowledgeable worker. Knowledge is an asset for the value of such companies depends mostly on the ideas, insights and information in the heads of the employees. As for information societies referred to a competitive society which has no reason not tom perform for knowledge is universally accessible (Drucker 2001). A company like IBM relies on the knowledge in the minds of her employees for acute performance. Many organizations especially those dealing with software development like Microsoft can cope with their business if employees are not an asset to them. By this I mean that, knowledgeable employees are what makes this company sell and make competitive software and keep their end-users satisfied 4.0. Compare and contrast data warehouses and data marts. A data mart is a precise, subject oriented, repository of data designed to answer defined questions to a specific set of users (Eckerson & Wayne. 1998). Data warehouses store snapshots and aggregation of data collected from different source systems. Each source system could store the same data but in different format, suing differing editing rules and value lists. For instance gender code can be stored as male/female, 0/1 or even M/F. it is also worth noting that users can still use data warehouse to perform their analysis while else data marts are subject of a data warehouse, which has a small amount of detailed data and a generous part of summarized data (Eckerson & Wayne 1999). A data mart can be implemented quickly because the data had previously been collected and integrated in a data warehouse (Nielsen 1993). It is effectiveness is dependent on the contents of the data warehouse but there can be independent data marts but are only used for temporary solution. In a few words, a data mart depends on a data warehouse for it to be of useful advantage to the organization. 5.0 List and explain three benefits of using extranets. An extranets is a business’ owns private website which s confidential business network that uses the same underlying structure and network protocols as the internet but as for this one it is protected from unauthorised users by firewall (Chaffey et al 2006). It enhances communication in the workplace and more so it provides a common knowledge base and storage area for everyone in the organization. Workers are also given easy access to the company’s data, systems and emails in their computers. Moreover, since they enable workers have easy access via internet they can work from any location by using the web browser. It benefits the organization is many ways which in most cases they depend on the reason it was installed. They include; 5.1 Reduced cost – this is effected by making manuals and technical documentation available online o trading partners and customers. 5.2 Effective collaboration – business partners mostly members of a project team can work online on common documentation 5.3 Flexible working – to the staff for it allows remote access to important business information 24 hours a day irrespective of their location. 6.0 List and describe three emerging topics in consumer-to-consumer e-commerce. Consumer to consumer e commerce also referred to as person to person in one of the businesses conducted over the electronic networks and mostly over the internet. This business takes place when the buyer and the seller are miles and miles away from each other. Having that this business happens through the internet, there are challenges that have raised eye blows and need to be addressed namely 6.1 Location based m-commerce – this is a more personalized service based on a user’s location. Through cellular network and global positioning system. When using blue tooth which you must be within a specific distance or transmitter sending content to all available locations.. 6.2 M-Commerce –It is defined as any electronic transaction or information interaction conducted using a wireless, mobile device and mobile networks that transfers real value in exchange for information, service or goods. for example the use of smart phones which support high speed data transfer. . 6.3 Mobile entertainment – This is the case where by, smart phones or mobile devices get entertainment products remotely.. 7.0 List and describe the two main types of software licenses A software licence is a legal document that accompanies a program or software. Without a licence one cannot distribute or modify without the permission from the author. A free software licence however, gives an individual some rights to modify and release the modified program. This happens when an individual who is the copyright holder is given some rights to copy and distribute the code under some given conditions. There are three main licences involved namely; 7.1 Limited license (LL) – this is where by the software purchased has limits or restrictions on the number of copies available for installation. They are mostly dictated on the number of computers they can be installed. 7.2 Unlimited site license (USL) – this is whereby the software purchased has no limit on how many installations can be made. However, they are sometimes available to a specific people like the state funded department and staff. Many of these are readily available for downloading even from the internet. 7.3 Volume purchase Agreement (VPA) – this is the case when software is bought in bulk at a subsidized price. In most cases they are available for specific vendors who buy much software at the reduced price even after the initial copies are distributed. 8.0 Describe four types of intelligent agents. How can they be used to benefit organizations? An agent is something that can be seen as perceiving it environment through sensors and acting upon the same environment but through effectors. For instance a human agent has eyes, ears and other organs for sensors, hand, legs mouth and other body parts for effectors (Turban , Aronson & Liang 2005). A robotic agent substitutes this with cameras and infrared for sensors and various motor for effectors. An intelligent agent therefore is software entities that can execute functions in an autonomous, proactive, social and even adaptive fashion. The functions they can perform range from comparing, learning and collaboration just to mention but a few. There are several categories of these agents namely; 8.1 Reactive agents - these are the kind that responds to stimulus response manner to the present state of the environment in which they are embedded. They are characterised by functionality, task decomposition and their capability to operate on representations that look like sensor data. 8.2 Information agents – these in other words are referred to as internet agents. They perform the role of managing, manipulating or collating information from different sources. They defined in accordance to their performances such as being proactive, dynamic, adaptive and cooperative and they tend to put up with ambiguity, omission and errors from the user (Turban , Aronson & Liang 2005). 8.3 Mobile agents – these are softwares capable of roaming wide area networks interacting with host, performing tasks on behalf of the user and getting back after they are done with all the tasks they were meant to perform. They are collaborative with the other agents. They roam within the World Wide Web (www). 8.4 Interface agents – they concentrate on autonomy and learning so that they can perform tasks for their users. They provide a proactive assistance to the user learning to use a particular application such as spreadsheet or operating systems (Turban , Aronson & Liang 2005). 9.0 Describe risk analysis as it relates to information systems security and explain three ways to approach systems security risk. A risk is a potential harm that may occur form some processes or from a future event. From an information system point of view, a risk management is the process of understanding and responding to factors that may result to a failure in the confidentiality, integrity and availability of an information system (Melara et al 2003). An information system harm that hampers the process or some information linked to some accidental event that impacts negatively the process of the information involved. In other words it makes the information not as it was desired. Risk is a potentiality of a threat causing vulnerability and causing some havoc to the information that regards a certain organization. Risk analysis is the process of determining risks and developing a plan on how to deal with them. There is a need to recognize that risks do exist and therefore the biggest task is to come up with ways of dealing with them and containing them (Melara et al 2003).. There are several methodologies that are associated with risk analysis including: 9.1 Quantitative risk analysis This method is based on the loss exposure as a function of vulnerability of an asset to a threat multiplied by the probability of it (threat) becoming a reality. These methods are expected value analysis and are characterised by annualized loss expectancy, Courtney, the Livermore risk analysis methodology and stochastic dominance (Patton 1990). This type on analysis is very important for the identification of specific information system assets that are most vulnerable is carried out, indentify and show where the risk is likely to occur and the damage it is likely to cause 9.2 Qualitative risk analysis These cuts short the time and efforts spent to perform a quantitative risk analysis. The management may just decide that all what is required is an evaluation of the information systems risk posture is required and therefore opt for qualitative risk analysis. This method tries to explain risks in terms of descriptive variables rather than place some cash value on them. This methodology assumes that certain data loss cannot be expressed in monetary perspective. This methodology houses Scenario analysis, Fuzzy metrics and questionnaires. where this methodology is applied, time, efforts and expenses are saved unlike in the quantities methodologies implying that information systems need not to have exact money value and there is also no exact probabilities for the threats (Patton 1990).. 9.3 Identifying the threat for accurate assessment, the source of the risk must be identified. These risks may come be; human threats, natural threats or even environmental threats. When this information is well defined, risk management is effective in the organization to its advantage. 10. Compare and contrast information accuracy, information privacy, and information property Information privacy is the right of an individual to determine for themselves, when, how and what extent of the information is to be made available to others. Bearing in mind of the dynamism experienced in the IT field and the use of web browsers, there is a need to have information privacy failure to which it will result to data destructions, and other computer crimes. Information accuracy requires that the data, processes and operation be accurate for clear information processing. Accuracy is the situation to which data correctly reflects the real world or event being described (Hirschheim& Smithson 1988). In most information systems, they operate under ‘garbage in garbage out’ meaning that if you feed trash to the system, it will output trash. Therefore the information must be accurate if accurate outputs are expected. Moreover if inaccurate information is retrieved then the organization may end up making some decisions that do not comply with the needs experienced. As for the information property is the situation whereby an individual’s information is granted property rights just like any other property. For instance when one comes up with software the copy right granted to him/her gives control over the data to the owner. 11.0 Reference Cheesman, J. and Daniels, J. 2001.UML Components: A Simple Process for Specifying Component-Based Software. Addison-Wesley, Hirschheim R & Smithson S (1988) “A Critical Analysis of Information Systems Evalua-tion”, in IS Assessment: Issues and Changes (eds N Bjorn- Andersen & G B Davis), North Holland, Amsterdam Nielsen J (1993) Usability Engineering, San Diego, California, Academic Press Patton M Q (1990) Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods, second edition, Sage Pub-lications, London Eckerson, Wayne. W. 1998, “Post-Chasm Warehousing,” Journal of Data Warehousing, 3(3): pp. 38–45, Fall. Eckerson, Wayne W, 1999. “Evolution of Data Warehousing: The Trend toward Analytical Applications,” The Patricia Seybold Group,, pp. 1–8. Turban E., Aronson J., Liang Ting-Peng (2005), “Decision Support Systems and Intelligent Systems,” 7th Edition Pearson. Chaffey D., Ellis-Chadwick F., Johnston K., Mayer R. (2006),“Internet Marketing,” Prentice Hall 3rd edition. Melara, C.; Sarriegui, J.M.; Gonzalez, J.J.; Sawicka, A.; and Cooke, D.L. 2003. A s dynamics model of an insider attack on an information system. Proceedings of the 21st International Conference of the System Dynamics Society July 20-24, New York, NY, USA. Read More