iLLuMiNaTa - The Enlighten One's

Identify an information environment of your choice and write an essay to address the following questions: (3000 words).

• What should be your role within this environment?

• How can the principles of information organization and representation help you in performing this role?

• What are the challenges facing you in performing the role? How will you address these challenges?

I find this topic very ambiguous, at first, I thought this topic means evaluating some information environment group yet I was wrong. After some inquiry about this topic here is my reply to this post.

Looking back to the days before my high school graduation, I am so interested to be an “interior designer” in the future. Yeah! To be an INTERIOR DESIGNER! After searching what universities offer such course but sadly, I found not even one here in Davao. I feel so sad during that time. It’s so funny how I chose to take up Bachelor of Science in Information Technology in college. Knowing the fact that it is so unrelated with interior designing made me laugh, what made me decide to take up this course? Well, one of the career guidance conducted by Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in their presentation they list the top 10 most in demand jobs abroad and the top 1 among all other is IT specialist may it be programmer, web designer etc. all related to the Information Technology. After assessing myself if I really want to take up the said course and I said yes. I took the USEPAT or the University of Southeastern Philippines Admission Test, passed it, interviewed by our instructor of this subject (lolz), admit myself to this university and yes, I am now a certified IT student!!!(Hooray!)

To be an official student in this university is not easy, it’s quite tough. But, as time passed by, being a student in this university specifically under the Institute of Computing is tougher. It gives you a lot of pressure, sleepless night, formulating your algorithm even in your dreams and it’s very challenging! Indeed very, very, very challenging! I can sometimes say that programming is killing me! (haha!) Well, I am still alive and kicking, surviving, striving to a good programmer or analyst someday.

Going back to our topic, the information environment I chose is two, first, is the university I am currently in and the second one is my dream company where I will work in the future.

This is the definition of Information Environment I found in the internet, it is any organization having information system circulating in their environment. A lot structures nowadays, adopts this concept since we are living now in the world where computers (Information Technology) is the most commonly used in any establishment.

The information environment is the aggregate of individuals, organizations, and systems that collect, process, disseminate, or act on information. The actors include leaders, decision makers, individuals, and organizations. Resources include the materials and systems employed to collect, analyze, apply, or disseminate information. The information environment is where humans and automated systems observe, orient, decide, and act upon information, and is therefore the principal environment of decision making. Even though the information environment is considered distinct, it resides within each of the four domains. The information environment is made up of three interrelated dimensions: physical, informational, and cognitive.

This university I am currently in contributes a lot in developing a young programmer or an IT Analyst. One of the university mission is to able to produce competitive graduates and for them to be able to attain that said mission they hire the best instructors to train, to supervise, to instruct, to develop proficient graduates to be deploy in different fields and in our case in IT world. As an Information Technology student, we are to deal with IT people and IT world. The two meets at a common point which is business. We will be the bridge of the IT world and business may it be a construction business, trucking business, banking business etc. When I say IT world, I mean global affiliation of organizations that are capable to compete with each other.

So how can the principles of information organization and representation help me in performing this role? There are three principles of knowledge organization that I have known of. First is that, knowledge needs to be organized for communities. Second is that, in designing tools to support the organization of knowledge, guiding principle must be that of user orientation and predominant usage. And lastly, standardization and networking provide infrastructures, which facilitate effective and efficient access to information and documents.

What are the challenges I may encounter in performing my role? There are so many aspects to be consider first would be the readiness of the organization to adopt changes, second is the resources to be able to made these changes possible (all possible resources may it be skills, intellect, staff etc.), third is the integrity and security of the of the system, fourth is the cooperation of the human resources to these changes, fourth is the time – the timeliness of the said project and lastly the financial issues, let’s not be hypocrite to be able to establish, develop, maintain and implement an information system requires financial support and remember this is costly.

If there are obstacle that hinders you from doing what is supposed to be done think of these quotations.

“If you can’t go under, go over;
If you can’t go through, go round.
If you can’t go right, go left;
If you can’t get an angle, take two plates and make it.
If you haven’t the right material, go get it.
If you can’t find it, make substitutions;
If you can’t substitute, improvise; if you can’t improvise, make an innovation; but above all, get the job done!”

There’s no such thing as IMPOSSIBLE, only CHALLENGING.

If want thing to be done so badly, there are many ways how to kill a cat. Stop complaining. Start doing what should be done. Utilize your time wisely. Be responsible with your actions.

Subject: Assignment 2 (Due: July 7, 2009, before 01:00pm) Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:30 am

Based on the organization(s) that you visited, what do you think are the risks associated with business and IS/IT change? (1000 words)

(Before anything else I would to apologize for the late reply post regarding this topic.)

When there is a change a risk is expected and business world is not an exception to this aspect. In business, taking risk is not new strategy if want to improve and to be able to compete to the fast evolving world of technology. An efficient strategy to be able to cope up with this scheme, changing or implementing an Information System is advisable.

What is an Information System?

Everything will be clearer if I’ll define first what an Information System is. So, according to our class discussion an Information System is more than technology, more than a computerized system that enables to automate all business processes. An information System is the combination of PEOPLEWARE + HARDWARE + SOFTWARE. It focuses in three dimensions which are the management, organization and technology.

Why Information System?

Business world is a very competitive phase of the real situation of today’s living. To be able to have an edge with other business firm, having an Information System is a great help. With this, an organization can automate its business processes, it is very useful in coordinating organization’s activities, how it support the decision making, synchronization of knowledge from different management levels, functions and business firms. This also gives more importance to the customer relationship; automate the flow of information to manage and coordination of the organization to its other business partner if any.

What are the risks associated with IS/IT change?

• Integrity risk, this refers to the information being vulnerable. While developing a new system the information is expose and a great possibility that it is incomplete, inaccurate and unreliable. The organization sets the standard requirements and policies to be use in the process of development of the said system thus data gathering must be collected cautiously, for this affects the system consistency. This aspect should not be bypass, for this may result to IT failure.

• Organizational risks, pertain to the resistance of the people within the organization to use the available technology. The end-users may find reluctant to operate it due to unfamiliarity of the system. The users and technology should cooperate hand in hand in this way we can say the system is fully utilized and the IT benefit is maximized.

• According to what I have read from the internet another risk is the business risks. This focuses on the financial or the monetary risks in an organization. Changing the Information System of an organization requires a lot of resources in the process as well as time yet the results or the success is not guaranteed. This attempt may improve the functionalities, efficiency and competence of the company’s system yet it may also pull it down resulting to bankruptcy.

• Security jeopardy is another thing to be considered. In here, the exposure of the significant and confidential information is at stake. There must be an access control and data manipulation restriction especially to those hackers which are not authorized to gain access to the company’s information.

• Another threat that must be considered is the Technical Risks. Here, we are talking about the capable of the end user of manipulating the said information system. It is said to be the one of the reasons why implementing an Information System in an organization fails because of the end-users. Lacking of the capability, skills, knowledge and ability to maximize the functions of the designed system and how to use it, the system would be useless and will only a liability to the organization. Thus, this requires intensive training and orientation of the system to all its users, which also means this will another process for the organization to make and this also include some financial aspects.