Intelligent Information Systems

Author(s):  
John Fulcher

Information Systems (IS), not surprisingly, process information (data + meaning) on behalf of and for the benefit of human users. Information Systems comprise the basic building blocks shown in Figure 1, and as such can be likened to the familiar Von Neumann computer architecture model that has dominated computing since the mid 20th Century. In practice, IS encompass not just computer system hardware (including networking) and software (including DataBases), but also the people within an organization (Stair & Reynolds, 1999). Information Systems are ubiquitous in today’s world–the so-called “Digital Age”–and are tailor-made to suit the needs of many different industries. The following are some representative application domains: • Management Information Systems (MIS) • Business IS • Transaction processing systems (& by extension, eCommerce) • Marketing/Sales/Inventory IS (especially via the Internet) • Postal/courier/transport/fleet/logistics IS • Geographical Information System (GIS)/Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) systems • Health/Medical/Nursing IS The roles performed by IS have changed over the past few decades. More specifically, whereas IS focussed on data processing during the 1950s and 1960s, management reporting in the 1960s and 1970s, decision support during the 1970s and 1980s, strategies and end user support during the 1980s and 1990s, these days (the early years of the 21st Century) they focus more on global Internetworking (O’Brien, 1997). Accordingly, we nowadays find extensive use of IS in e-business, decision support, and business integration (Malaga, 2005). Let us take a closer look at one of these–Decision Support Systems. A DSS consists of (i) a (Graphical) User Interface, (ii) a Model Management System, and (iii) a Data Management System (comprising not only Data/Knowledge Bases but also Data Warehouses, as well as perhaps incorporating some Data Mining functionality). The DSS GUI typically displays output by way of text, graphs, charts and the like, enabling users to visualize recommendations/advice produced by the DSS. The Model Management System enables users to conduct simulations, perform sensitivity analysis, explore “what-if” scenarios (in a more extensive manner than what we are familiar with in spreadsheets), and so forth.

Author(s):  
Matthew W. Guah ◽  
Wendy L. Currie

Several historical shifts in information systems (IS) involved strategies from a mainframe to a client server, and now to application service provision (ASP) for intelligent enterprises. Just as the steam, electric, and gasoline engines became the driving forces behind the industrial revolution of the early 1900s, so the Internet and high-speed telecommunications infrastructure are making ASP a reality today. The current problem with the ASP model involves redefining success in the business environment of the 21st century. Central to this discussion is the idea of adding value at each stage of the IS life cycle. The challenge for business professionals is to find ways to improve business processes by using Web services. It took mainframe computers a decade or two to become central to most firms. When IBM marketed its first mainframe computer, it estimated that 20 of these machines would fulfil the world’s need for computation! Minicomputers moved into companies and schools a little faster than mainframes, but at considerably less costs. When the first computers were applied to business problems in the 1950s, there were so few users that they had almost total influence over their systems. That situation changed during the 1960s and 1970s as the number of users grew. During the 1980s the situation became even tighter when a new player entered the picture—the enterprise (McLeord, 1993). In the 21st century, information systems are developed in an enterprise environment (see Diagram 1). Beniger (1986) puts forth a seemingly influential argument that the origin of the information society may be found in the advancing industrialisation of the late nineteenth century. The Internet is simply a global network of networks that has become a necessity in the way people in enterprises access information, communicate with others, and do business in the 21st century. The initial stage of e-commerce ensured that all large enterprises have computer-to-computer connections with their suppliers via electronic data interchange (EDI), thereby facilitating orders completed by the click of a mouse. Unfortunately, most small companies still cannot afford such direct connections. ASPs ensure access to this service costing little, and usually having a standard PC is sufficient to enter this marketplace. The emergence of the ASP model suggested an answer to prevailing question: Why should small businesses and non-IT organisations spend substantial resources on continuously upgrading their IT? Many scholars believed that outsourcing might be the solution to information needs for 21st century enterprises (Hagel, 2002; Kern, Lacity & Willcocks, 2002; Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2002). In particular, the emergence of the ASP model provided a viable strategy to surmount the economic obstacles and facilitate various EPR systems adoption (Guah & Currie, 2004). Application service provision— or application service provider—represents a business model of supplying and consuming software-based services over computer networks. An ASP assumes responsibility of buying, hosting, and maintaining a software application on its own facilities; publishes its user interfaces over the networks; and provides its clients with shared access to the published interfaces. The customer only has to subscribe and receive the application services through an Internet or dedicated intranet connection as an alternative to hosting the same application in-house (Guah & Currie, 2004). ASP is an IT-enabled change, a different and recent form of organisational change, evidenced by the specific information systems area (Orlikowski & Tyre, 1994). ASP has its foundations in the organisational behaviour and analysis area (Kern et al., 2002).


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 432-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeppe Nevers ◽  
Jesper Lundsby Skov

Drawing on examples from Danish and Norwegian history, this article traces the ideological origins of Nordic democracy. It takes as its starting point the observation that constitutional theories of democracy were rather weak in the Nordic countries until the mid-twentieth century; instead, a certain Nordic tradition of popular constitutionalism rooted in a romantic and organic idea of the people was central to the ideological foundations of Nordic democracy. This tradition developed alongside agrarian mobilization in the nineteenth century, and it remained a powerful ideological reference-point through most of the twentieth century, exercising, for instance, an influence on debates about European integration in the 1960s and 1970s. However, this tradition was gradually overlaid by more institutional understandings of democracy from the mid-twentieth century onwards, with the consequence that the direct importance of this folk’ish heritage declined towards the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, clear echoes of this heritage remain evident in some contemporary Nordic varieties of populism, as well as in references to the concept of folkestyre as the pan-Scandinavian synonym for democracy.


Utafiti ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 84-105
Author(s):  
Mona N. Mwakalinga

Through a national cinema theoretical framework, this article interrogates how cinema aided the Tanzanian government in the invention of a national culture identity during the country’s nation-building phase of the 1960s and 1970s. It is argued that in its initial stage of nation formation after Independence, the government used cinema as an apparatus to construct a national identity that confirmed and adhered to the ruling class’s interests and idea of a nation. Thus by controlling how cinema was produced, distributed, and exhibited to the masses through the 1960s and 1970s, the government did not bring about unification of the people; rather it helped in solidifying the primacy of the government. The cinema produced by the government was a cheer leading cinema which provided no space for analysis of issues; further, it was a cinema that denied freedom of expression to its filmmakers and to its audiences.


Author(s):  
Timothy Zick

This chapter examines concerns relating to preserving access to public properties for the purpose of facilitating freedom of expression. Historically, speakers and groups have fought to obtain and preserve First Amendment rights to access and use what are referred to as “public forums”—places that the government owns or controls, but that are held in trust for the people for the purpose of exercising First Amendment rights. The “law and order” mantra of the Trump Era has revived concerns, dating in particular from the 1960s and 1970s, about preserving speakers’ access to public places including streets and parks. Government “law and order” policies and actions, along with various other access limits, raise concerns about the continued viability of the public forum. In addition, during the Trump Era, issues have arisen with regard to speakers’ access to places in the “modern public square,” including official social media sites. President Trump’s decision to block several critics from the comment portion of his Twitter page is only the most prominent example of this new access concern, which will affect dissenters’ ability to communicate with an increasing number of public officials. Preserving access to traditional and digital forums will be critical to maintaining a culture of dissent.


1990 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Marcella

There can be no expression of a desire to return to political power when experience tells us that the result is totally negative for our country and fundamentally so for the armed forces (LAWR, 1986b).— Chief of Staff, Army of ArgentinaThe most remarkable development in Latin America during the economically “lost decade” of the 1980s is the regionwide process of redemocratization. Close to 90% of the people of the region are ruled by civilian governments. The flowering of democratic, pluralistic, and participatory systems is still a noble aspiration, but it is radically different from the bleak political landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, when military governments prevailed. Nor is the appurtenance of civilian government equal to democracy. There is a large variety of civilian-military coalitions possible in a democratic setting.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Devi Pramitha

<span class="fontstyle0">Management Information Systems (MIS) is a field that began to develop since the 1960s. Although there is no single consensus, it is generally defined as a driver's license system that provides information used to support the operation, management, and decisionmaking in organization. Prainformasional in the community, the people in it using a rigid paradigm assisted by intuition, the basis used by them to select the types of information needed is often not obvious because it is colored by the subjective nature of perception. But then in today's modern society, in addition to the paradigm shift that uses a creative<br />approach to merger, also using the scientific paradigm that enables the selection of information can be done quickly and accurately. In the world of education though, MIS become one of the important factors to improve services at the same time saving for education. With advances in the development of education in Indonesia, both from an<br />administrative or technological aspect, the process of education services in Indonesia should be done effectively and efficiently. Therefore, to develop the quality of education needed some support facilities, where one of the supporting facilities is the application of information technology in the field of Management Information Systems<br /></span><span class="fontstyle2">Keywords: </span><span class="fontstyle0">Management Information System, Paradigm Shift, Education</span>


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