IMS Forum

Announcement

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:48:00 +0000

Hi all, start from 1 of June 2008, this weblog is officially deactivated, and has been removed to kmvirtual see you there.

Thank you

Role of Knowledge Portals in Knowledge Management

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 10:17:00 +0000

What is the role of knowledge portals in knowledge management? How to improve the effectiveness of knowledge portals as knowledge management strategies?

Lay Iwan Setiawan

Knowledge portals can be defined as “gateways that streamline access to information, thereby easing the task of transforming data into knowledge and helping in efficient knowledge management” (Kim, Chaudhury, & Rao, 2002, p. 57). The role of knowledge portals in the knowledge management framework is as the technological infrastructure that allows effective and efficient knowledge sharing. Knowledge portals are usually built on the organizations’ intranet.
Kim, Chaudhury, and Rao (2002) argue that portals have three functionalities: searching, transactional function, and communication. Knowledge portals operate in two areas of these functionalities, which are information/knowledge searching and communication. As one of technological infrastructures of knowledge management, knowledge portals provide one-stop access for knowledge workers to get information or knowledge from knowledge repositories. Through knowledge portals, knowledge workers could search for and access documentation, such as best practices, work procedures, etc. Not only they could search for information/knowledge, they could also share their knowledge and experience by posting articles onto the portals.
The other functionality of knowledge portals is communication. Knowledge portals provide a virtual place for knowledge workers to meet, communicate, and share knowledge thus supporting the creation of community of practice (Baalen, Bloemhof-Ruwaard, & Heck, 2005). Knowledge portals provide knowledge workers with discussion forum and other collaboration tools through which knowledge workers could ask questions and share knowledge with other knowledge workers. Even for multi-national companies, knowledge portals allow knowledge sharing to happen among their employees who are located in different geographic locations. Thus, knowledge portals help overcoming organization structural limitation when implementing knowledge management initiatives.
By providing access to knowledge repositories and allowing knowledge sharing, knowledge portals give opportunities to knowledge workers to re-create the knowledge and innovate. This will help building a learning organization (Teo, 2005) which always capable of increasing productivity and creating innovation to better face the highly dynamic business environment.
However, to implement an effective knowledge portal is not an easy task. A research by Desouza and Awazu (2005) shows that most employees and knowledge workers avoid using knowledge portals and only use it as a last resort to find information or knowledge. Desouza and Awazu argue that poor KM system maintenance is the main cause for this. In other word, good KM system maintenance is needed to improve the effectiveness of knowledge portals so that knowledge workers and other employees are willing to use knowledge portals optimally. In order to do this, they suggest keeping the knowledge up-to-date (preventing multiple versions of the same knowledge) and well-structured. This is true. If there are multiple versions of the same knowledge, employees will be confused in choosing which one to use. Whereas, if the knowledge repositories are not well-structured, employees will be very difficult to find the knowledge they need. No matter how useful the knowledge, if the employees cannot find it then it is of no use.
While Kim, Chaudhury, and Rao (2002) suggest that to improve the effectiveness of knowledge portals, organizations should focus more on people instead of technology. People should be encouraged to use the portals. This is true since people are the main drivers of all knowledge management initiatives, including knowledge portals. If no one is willing to share their knowledge through the portals, then when someone is trying to look for something there, he or she will find nothing and will consider the portals as useless. When this happens, no one will use the portals anymore. To encourage knowledge sharing through the portals, organizations could offer incentives schemes, recognition awards, or other awards. For example, the employee contribution in the portals could be taken into account for assessing employee performance and determining the amount of yearly bonus.
In summary, the role of knowledge portals in knowledge management is providing technological infrastructure for effective and efficient knowledge sharing to achieve organizational learning through knowledge re-creation and innovation. To improve the effectiveness of knowledge portals, organizations should well-maintain their KM systems and should focus more on people rather than technology.

References

Baalen, P. V., Bloemhof-Ruwaard, J., & Heck, E. V. (2005). Knowledge Sharing in an Emerging Network of Practice: The Role of a Knowledge Portal. European Management Journal, Vol. 23, Iss. 3, pp. 300-314.
Desouza, K. C., & Awazu, Y. (2005). Maintaining Knowledge Management Systems: A Strategic Imperative. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 56, Iss. 7, pp. 765-768.
Kim, Y. J., Chaudhury, A., & Rao, H. R. (2002). A Knowledge Management Perspective to Evaluation of Enterprise Information Portals. Knowledge and Process Management, Vol. 9, Iss. 2, pp. 57-71.
Teo, T. S. H. (2005). Meeting The Challenges of Knowledge Management at The Housing And Development Board. Decision Support Systems, Vol. 41, Iss. 1, pp. 147-159.

Knowledge Management and Organizational Risk Management

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 10:08:00 +0000

Is there a relationship between knowledge management and organizational risk management? If so, how can knowledge management be used to mitigate risk?

Lay Iwan Setiawan

The world is full of uncertainty. Because of this uncertainty, organizations sometimes fail to identify risks or to handle risks properly. Knowledge management has a strong relationship with organizational risk management. Knowledge about past experiences, such as past failures, could be useful for managing current and future potential risks. Organizational knowledge would allow organizations to sense potential risks and respond to the risks properly (Webster, 2007).

Knowledge management can mitigate risks in many ways. Firstly, knowledge management promotes better communication among all elements in the organizations. All employees are encouraged to share information and their knowledge. Typically, employees are encouraged to share something positive, such as knowledge about know-how. However, knowledge management could and should also be used to encourage them to share emerging risks and mistakes. “No blame culture” and openness should be promoted so that employees are free to share “bad news” before the situation become unrecoverable (Webster, 2007). This will increase organizational awareness towards the emerging risks and will lead active involvement from all employees to mitigate the risks.

Secondly, the utilization of information technology in knowledge management initiatives together with the culture of documenting mistakes could greatly facilitate the effort to minimize risks. Those mistakes could include failure to recognize risks and failure to respond properly to risks. If mistakes identified in every past project and past operational process are well-documented in lessons-learned database, the risks of repeating the same mistakes could be minimized. That is, risks associated with certain activities or operations could be easily identified and could be more properly handled. In his article, Verhaegen (2005) show how an organization uses a collaboration portal through which their employees from around the globe share knowledge about risks. Employees from the region where a risk has developed share their knowledge to employees from the other region where the same risk is still emerging. Therefore, the efforts, time, and money that have been invested by one region when figuring out how to manage and mitigate the risk can also benefit other regions.

Finally, risks could also be mitigated by improving employees’ risk management knowledge and skill through in-house knowledge transfer programs, such as in-house trainings and seminars. Otterson (2005) argues that usually knowledge to manage risks already exists in the organizations but not yet being identified. In order to increase their capability in managing and mitigating risks through knowledge transfer programs, organizations should first determine what kind of knowledge is needed to manage and mitigate risks, and identify employees who possess this knowledge as well as their area-of-risk-management-expertise (e.g., warehouse operation risk, IT project risk). From these employees, information about the important learning materials should be gathered. These learning materials would then be organized and institutionalized into core competencies needed to create best practices in risk management. Then, in-house trainings or seminars for employees could be carried out using these learning materials. To determine the success of the knowledge transfer programs, employees should be tested before and after the learning experience to evaluate the improvement of their risk management knowledge and skill.

References

Otterson, S. (2005). Transferring Catastrophe Risk Management Knowledge. Risk Management, Vol. 52, Iss. 5, p. 46.
Verhaegen, T. (2005). Knowledge makes risks manageable. Business Insurance, Iss. 3, pp. 16-17.
Webster, M. (2007). Risk Management Report and Tool Kit. Credit Control, Vol. 28, Iss. 1, pp. 68-70.

Is organisational/corporate memory a valid concept?

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 02:37:00 +0000

Lay Iwan Setiawan

Ackerman and Halverson (2000 cited in Nilakanta, Miller & Zhu, 2006, pp. 85-86) define organisational memory as “the collection of historical corporate knowledge that is employed for current use through appropriate methods of gathering, organizing, refining, and disseminating the stored information and knowledge.” It could be inferred from the definition that organisational memory is as old as the organisation itself, it has been built in a continuous manner, and it could be used to deal with current situation or problem.

Organisational memory is a valid concept because it satisfies three conditions. First, proper use of organisational memory would deliver benefits to organisations. Organisational memory allows organisations to reflect on previous experiences and most importantly to learn from past successes and failures. Through these learning processes and proper utilization of organisational memory, best practices could then be created and implemented to improve efficiency and effectiveness. A study by Zhang, Tian, and Qi (2006) showed that organisational memory improves organisational performance, which is a key criterion used for measuring the level of operation of an organisation.

Second, improper use or loss of organisational memory would bring negative impacts to organisations. Improper use or misinterpretation of organisational memory could result in problems raised due to mishandled situation. Such improper use of organisational memory could happen when the organisational knowledge is used in a different context (Nevo & Wand, 2005). Similar mishandled situation could also happen as a result of organisational memory loss. When there is no evidence of past experiences on which organisations could reflect, there would be chance for past failure to be repeated. Unfortunately, as Lahaie (2005) argue, since most of organisational knowledge is in the form of employees’ tacit knowledge, certain degree of organisational memory loss could not be avoided when a long-term employee leaves.
Finally, the concept of organisational memory is applicable in order for organisations to benefit from it. In the past, the process of gathering, organizing, refining, and disseminating organisational memory is done only through face-to-face mentoring (tacit) and physical artifacts (explicit), such as printed documents. Today, the presence of information technology greatly improves these processes. Database technology allows easy storing and retrieval of organisational explicit knowledge, while networking technology eliminates space boundary to allow electronic collaboration to share tacit knowledge. In their article, Nevo and Wand (2005) demonstrate how information technology can greatly facilitate organisational memory management.

In order to get optimal benefit from organisational memory, organisations should carefully justify the extent to which they should utilise their organisational memory. As Nevo and Wand (2005) argue, knowledge in organisational memory is very much context-sensitive. Therefore, that knowledge would only be useful under certain circumstances. Not understanding the original context of the knowledge would result in inappropriate solutions due to misinterpretation of the knowledge. Moreover, the ever-changing of business environment would make some part of the organisational memory/knowledge become irrelevant to current conditions. Thus, it is very important that organisational memory includes the sequences of actions, reasons why the actions are needed, under what circumstances the actions are needed, and the results of the actions (Nilakanta, Miller & Zhu, 2006). Having all of these aspects in their organisational memory, an organisation could justify more easily how they are going to use their organisational memory by assessing the similarities between today and past context, and projecting the expected outcomes based on past outcomes. When some parts of the organisational memory are no longer relevant, organisations should only utilise the other parts which are still relevant and then refine the organisational memory based on current context for future use.

References

Lahaie, D. (2005). The Impact of Corporate Memory Loss: What Happens When A Senior Executive Leaves? International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 18, Iss. 4/5, pp. R35-47.
Nevo, D., & Wand, Y. (2005). Organizational Memory Information Systems: A Transactive Memory Approach. Decision Support Systems, Vol. 39, Iss. 4, pp. 549-562.
Nilakanta, S., Miller, L. L., & Zhu, D. (2006). Organizational Memory Management: Technological and Research Issues. Journal of Database Management, Vol. 17, Iss. 1, pp. 85-94.
Zhang, L., Tian, Y., & Qi, Z. (2006). Impact of Organizational Memory on Organizational Performace: An Empirical Study. The Business Review, Vol. 5, Iss. 1, pp. 227-232.

Basic Foundation of Controlled Vocabulary

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 03:37:00 +0000

In today's information world, the fastest to get information is important. Many organization try to get the latest information to help their decision making process. Search skill ability is highly needed to get the best information. In the past period people still depend on the search engine to find their information.However, in todays world we can't depend on search engine since there are a million information that been produced everyday. So, it is more difficult to get information that suitable for organization purposes.

The concept of semantic web emerge to solve this problem, this concept is first develop by Berners Lee. Through the semantic web, people doesn't need to depend on search engine to find the information since the website itself has ability to be founded and more smart. This is possible because the use of controlled vocabulary.

What is controlled vocabulary? this term is widely used in library and information retrieval field. Controlled vocabulary is giving a single word or phrase on many different concept descriptions. This is need highly consistency on the part of the individual indexing the database and the use of pre-determined terms.

"If you are careful to call the same thing, or the same concept, by the same name everywhere on your site, you are using a very simple controlled vocabulary."(Leise,2007). So by giving something a consistent name is key point of controlled vocabulary.

In library and information science controlled vocabulary is a carefully selected list of words and phrases, which are used to tag units of information (document or work) so that they may be more easily retrieved by a search.[1][2]. Controlled vocabularies solve the problems of homographs, synonyms and polysemes by ensuring that each concept is described using only one authorized term and each authorised term in the controlled vocabulary describes only one concept. In short, controlled vocabularies reduce ambiguity inherent in normal human languages where the same concept can be given different names and ensure consistency.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Controlled_vocabulary)

It’s likely you are already familiar with the concept of controlled vocabulary. Phone book Yellow Page listings are arranged using controlled vocabulary. For example, a search for "Car Dealers" leads you to a note to “see Automobile Dealers." At a basic level, this is how a controlled vocabulary system works.(http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/)

There some advantages applying controlled vocabulary in information retrieval such as increases recall and improves precision.On the other hand controlled vocabulary disadvantages are inflexible and slow to change, and it is difficult for users to guess. (Johanson, 2007)

Comparing to free or natural language that widely used in internet search engine such as google and yahoo that give the users flexibility to use any word or phrase, the use of controlled vocabulary sometimes is a bit difficult and more strict, and if user use the wrong term it may result error.However if users use the right term, the result will appears in the item and all related item.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Controlled_vocabulary

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/

Johanson, G. (2207) IMS5016:Information seeking methods and objects. 21 March 2007.

Laise, F. (2007)What Is A Controlled Vocabulary?
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/
what_is_a_controlled_vocabulary_

Knowledge management in goverment organisation

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 09:11:00 +0000

by: Fatha budi anugrah

Knowledge management is a rising issue in every organization whether that’s a profit organization or non-profit organization such as Government. To implement Knowledge management (KM) in government institution is not easy as implementing KM in profit organization that has a clear purpose to gain profit as much as they can. In Government organization, their goal is to give the best service to the taxpayer. This
paper will discuss about why government has to implement KM in government institutions.
Some people believe that knowledge is power (Misra, et al., 2003), because some people thing that with more knowledge they will have more competitive advantage (Saussois, 2003). That also work in government institution the more knowledge the government has, the more power they could obtain. In organization, knowledge is not just set on individual but knowledge or the true power of organization is on the collective knowledge in organization, this is where the true power of organization hold (Misra, et al., 2003). There are three characteristic of knowledge (Misra, et al., 2003)
1. Knowledge give meaning to information, lot of information is useless without the right knowledge.
2. People are the producer and the consumer of knowledge, people not only create knowledge but they also the consumer from an existing knowledge.
3. Knowledge consists of tacit and explicit knowledge. There is knowledge that cannot be written in piece of paper.
Nowadays people are more and more critical to government policies. Government has to be more smart and could give the best service to their customer which is the taxpayer or the society. With implementing KM government could create a closer social bond and communication with their society (Ho, et al., Sep2006). According to Misra (Misra, et al., 2003)in his journal there are four reason why government should implement KM.
The first reason is that Knowledge functions as the main source for government. Government has to take for the welfare of its society (Misra, et al., 2003). To be able to take care this problem government has to implementing KM, with implementing KM government could hold information from the past and use their knowledge and also learning from that process to provide best service to society. by implementing KM it is believe that it will change how people interact with their government (Chang Koh, 2005).
The second reason is Government has the same type as distributed enterprise. Government has a central government and local government and in central government they have the authority that managed by the head government such as law, with implementing KM, they could get a better result for give the best service to society. For example, make document available online to share knowledge with other local government (Saussois, 2003).
The third reason is there are frequent transfers for staff within government organization. The knowledge worker is able to move within the organization or outside the organization. Knowledge worker are, people who perform task that cannot measured with scientific measurement (Saussois, 2003). The lost of this knowledge worker is a big lost to organization, because this people hold a lot of knowledge about how to do the jobs. Moreover, in some organization nobody cares about how people solve the same problem in the past (Saussois, 2003). With implementing KM there is a chance to solve this problem.
The last reason is there are demands for government to move into anticipatory government. People nowadays become more and more responsive to government policies. Some people doubt that Government learns from their experience (Etheredge, et al., 83). Or maybe government not knowing the resource that they have (Saussois, 2003). This is made government has to produce a better policies with implementing KM it is believe that government could create a better policies and give better services to the society.
In conclusion, it is not easy to implement KM in government organization, but the situation and the pressures from society has made government aware about this issue and have to considered to implementing KM in the future. With KM it is believe that it will increase the good relation between government and people.

References

Chang Koh Sherry Ryan, Victor Prybutok CREATING VALUE THROUGH MANAGING KNOWLEDGE IN AN E-GOVERNMENT TO CONSTITUENCY (G2C) ENVIRONMENT. [Journal] // Journal of Computer Information Systems. - 2005. - pp. Vol. 45 Issue 4, p32-41, 10p, 2 charts, 1 diagram.

Etheredge Lloyd S and Short James THINKING ABOUT GOVERNMENT LEARNING [Journal] // Journal of Management Studies. - 83. - pp. Vol. 20 Issue 1, p41-58, 18p.

Ho Li-Hsing and Chuang Chen-Chia The Application of Knowledge Management and Customer Relationship Management of ROC Government [Journal] // Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge. - Sep2006. - pp. Vol. 9 Issue 2, p63-71, 9p.

Misra D.C, Hariharan Rama and Manie Khaneja E-KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS [Journal] // Information Systems Management. - 2003. - pp. Vol. 20 Issue 2, p38, 11p.

Saussois Jean Michel KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENT: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME. [Journal] // OECD Papers. - 2003. - pp. Vol. 3 Issue 9, p2-13, 12p.

Information management strategy

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:54:00 +0000

Monash University’s information management strategy case study

As a big university that has many students all around the world and up to 10.000 staff Monash University deal with a huge number of information everyday. The complexity of information needs good information architecture to manage it. Information architecture is deal with information environment design and the management of information design process. (Morrogh, 2002). The efficiency and effectiveness to manage information is one of key success in information management in Monash University. How the huge number of information can be managed so it will be usefull for entire university. Bad information management will affect to people who will access it, for instance the unmanaged information cause the longer time to search and if people search through intranet, it will increase cost. Another risk is lost of data and produce bad decision. (Bailey, 2007).
There is a strategy to ensure Monash University’s information management to meet its sustainability. Such as evaluate the current system and it is usability. This means that how the current information management system can meet the requirement. Evaluation involves all users such as student, staff both new and current, graduate student to asses the current system and determine what improvement that should be taken. That kind of user also involve during the implementation, this is important because they will use this information management technology.
There some progress change in Monash information management strategy such as the migration of Monash intranet into my-monash. This migration is to fulfil the user need to access many kind of information in Monash University. My monash also offer secure information to each user by giving user name and password and can be accessed from everywhere. Monash University also ensure that information should be accessed by anybody who needs it, anytime, anywhere, and anyhow.
Monash University information management also improving support for collaboration activities for staff and user, giving desktop video conferencing, enhanced telephony service for staff.
To meet user and business needs Monash University deliver information through web technology which is much easier and effective to access by all type of user. Monash University use user centre approach to deliver their information. Monash develop main Monash web site, my-monash portal and enhance research directory. Through this system it is easier for user to find sort of information that they need. And for business purposes the use of web technology can help manage web content efficiency.
To encourage innovation among their user Monash University Information management strategy is measured by there is a planning for individual and workgroup practice, conduct seminar, forum and case study as a media for learning and sharing. Following by training to develop new skills supported by manual how to use such a technology. Through these method hopefully can encourage user to use new technology and always increase their ability while dealing with information management innovation technology.
Good information management is key success for every organization In globalization age people need information more that everything. Good information management create a good decision making that make organisation sustain in globalization age. Monash University still struggling with their information management strategy to competes with other organization world wide.

References:

Bailey, N, (2007). IM, Monash University and Monash’s IM strategy. Lecture Notes IMS5033.

Monash University Information Management Strategy (2006) http://monash.edu/staff/information-management
/strategy/imstrategy-julyupdate-
complete12aug06.pdf

Morrogh, E, (2002). Information architecture: from craft to profession. Boxes And Arrows. Retrieved May 16, 2007 from World Wide Web:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/
information_architecture_from_
craft_to_profession

business case

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:50:00 +0000

Faculty of Social and Political Science (FSPS) is a part of well known educational organization that exists in East Java city center. This faculty was held around 50 years ago, and until now have seven departments, with more than 1000 students, 130 lecturers, and 70 administrative. FSPS has almost 50 classes, that been used from 7 am until 4 pm, from Monday to Friday. There is no empty class during that period. It’s mean that the lecturers cannot late or absence during the lecture periods. Because, one lecturer comes late to the class, it will affect the next lecture since the limitation of the number of the class.
The faculty did not want to expand the building because it is costly and spend a lot of time. The faculty argues that the number of class is still appropriate to support study. The problem only occurs when there are many lecturers who not disciplines and not come on time. Many lecturers think that they can teach in any day and any time. It probably happen when the faculty have small number of students, but the increase of the department and students push the lecturer and administrative to obey the timetable that available in the faculty.
On the other hand, the administrative staffs also have the same attitude with lecturer staff. They supposed to help the teaching and prepare for the equipment from the class, white board, LCD projector, and manage the timetable. Many administrative often came late to the campus and going home before the time. It is very difficult to detect their attendance because there is no prove about the attendance time. Once, the staffs come late to the campus, and they have responsibility to prepare the teaching equipment, the result was, the lecture will delay approximately 10-15 minutes, and if the lecturers come late as well, it will increase the delay until 30 minutes.
For some company / organization the attendance has become the important thing, because it influences the effectiveness and productivities of the employee. As a part of well known educational organization, FSPS need to improve their professionalism by giving good service to the customer, and build the better image to the public. Many students enroll to this faculty because it’s credibility and good teaching method.
As the oldest educational organization, FSPS is unbeatable by the other university. It’s easy for FSPS to open new department and still got a lot of student every year. The fact that there are many new and well manage universities that appear as a competitor makes the FSPS try to fix their internal management.
Another problem is very difficult to record the staff’s work overtime. Lazy staff can easily fill the manual presence by cheating the report, asking friends to fill the presence, or many other ways. In contrast, the hard worker staffs feel that they did not get the significant reward on their work. This problem will trigger the gap between the lazy and hard work staffs.

Project Description

The objective of this project is to increase time efficiency, reduce employees’ indiscipline, and maximize the use of classes and teaching method. This project will apply biometric fingerprints sensor as a tool to record time attendance for the employees. So the head of the faculty can make a decision to solve the late coming problem or absence matter for the employees. The head of the faculty also can make a new role in order to reduce this problem. Because, the old presence system is not working properly, and many employees try to manipulate their time attendance.
This new presence system hopefully will help the decision maker to control their staff. Biometric fingerprints sensor will avoid recording the wrong time, this tool also give the real time automatically when the staff put their finger in the sensor. The staff also can’t cheat their attendance by write the fake time attendance or use their friends to write their time attendance.
The scope in this project is including the problem and organization environmental analysis, make the new design of the presence system, choosing the user friendly product, give training and user education about the new presence system. Monitoring the project whether it work proper or not. Including fix the problem that may occur after implements this technology. To avoid the failure while implement the new technology, the organization also hiring the tools provider to maintain the new technology. So this project will guide the user to implement their new technology from the beginning until the system settle.
The goal of this project is to maximize the use of the classes, so in the future if the faculty intends to expand their departments they will be have the empty class. The fix timetable also can easily create without any staffs that come late anymore. The only serious problems that may threat the project work appropriately are cultural and behavioral. Most of the staff are old and have been working for more than 20 years, and they used to work in the relax environment (no time restricted and fix timetable). It supported by the cultural (east / Javanese cultural) that say if time is not important, and is common to come late. This became the big challenge for the project implementation.
The players of this project include the project consultant, consultant here is a group of people who analyst and investigate all of the things that involve in the project making. The faculty leader and management, have role to determine the requirement of the project goals. The biometric fingerprints provider is a company who provide both fingerprints sensor equipment and service for the maintenance. Staffs are a user of the fingerprints sensor. The staffs in this case consist of lecturers, administrative, and the decision maker.
This project will be estimated for six month length. Start from analysis, consultation, choosing the product, data input, implement the technology, and user education or training. The full timeline is enclosed in apendix1.

Environmental Analysis

Biometric fingerprints presence has been applied in some organizations, for example is the pharmaceutical company in the capital city. This technology support the organization activities and the employee also work at the real time. The employees don’t need to be afraid with time miscalculate, because the biometric fingerprints record their attendance and overtime data accurately.
In this organization, presence is been used to measure the salary increasing according to time attendance. The management always checks the attendance of each employee, so they can determine the salary increasing or promote the staff to the higher level.
The time restricted and high level of discipline influence the work efficiency. There is no time wasting and many works can be done on time. The financial benefits, organization didn’t spent extra money to pay the overtime works.
Another example is the use of card presence check in one of educational organization still in capital city. This method is based on manual method of presence, and use the ID card punch as a tool to check the employee attendance. Even though the accuracy level is high, but many human errors can be appears. For instance, because card is not a part of human body, so it can be easily removed from one place to another. Employee still can use the card without coming to the company. The employee can ask his collogues to screen their ID, so the data said that employee is attend but in fact they are not coming to the office.

Problem Analysis

• Many employee come late to the work place
• Still use paper based presence
• Lack of class because of unmanaged time
• Some of lecturer are finish too early because the class will be used by another lecture
• There is no strict regulation about the working hours and penalty
• Strong cultural influence (late is better than never)
• Difficulty managing classes since the increasing the department and student number
Those problem occur because less of self discipline and professionalism, staff feel that they don’t have responsibility to the organization. The head of the faculty have strong tolerant to the staff who not discipline. There are no penalties or memos to remind the indiscipline staff. The result is, the staffs feel free to do anything.
The elements which create those problems are human, regulation, and culture. Human include the staff, the head of the faculty and management.
The impact of these problem is increasing the operational financial, for example, some lectures are held at night because lack of class. It is mean that the faculty should hire additional administrative staff, apply the overtime payment for the lecturer and additional staff, pay for electricity and security.

Available Options

Table 1. Current Presence Method
Tool Advantages Disadvantages
Paper based presence • Inexpensive
• Easy to use (user friendly)
• Didn’t need special technology• • Higher risk of data manipulating
• Inefficient
• No documentation
• Need staff to watch the presence paper
• Lack of consistency
• Easy to make error

FSPS use paper based presence system to record their employee attendance. The employee put their attendance time every time they come to the office and when they give a lecture.

Table 2. The Options
Technology Advantages Disadvantages
ID Card Presence • Less expensive
• Easy to use
• Only need the ID card and card reader
• Efficient
• Accurate
• Widely used • The ID card, can be used by other staff
• Many human error
Biometric Fingerprints • Efficient
• Accurate
• Easy to use
• Use finger as a unique identification
• Have a special software
• Can not be replaced by the other staff
• Avoid • More expensive
• Need special training

After comparing card presence system to biometric system, we decide to implement the biometric fingerprints presence system. The biometric system reduces the misused of the card among the employee. Below, is the specification of two different biometric fingerprints product.

Table 3. Biometric Fingerprints
Product Time-tronic X-100 Punch Clock
Name of provider Ravirachtech.com Sidikjari.com Veritask software
Country of origin India Indonesia USA
Fingerprints Capacity < 100 can be upgraded Up to 1500 4000
Identification speed < 1 second 1,4 second Not mention
Price Not mention +/- AU$ 720 US$ 2599
Picture
Photo: http://ravirajtech.com

Photo: http://www.sidikjari.com

Photo:http://veritasksoftware.com

From those three different types of biometric fingerprints presence tool, we decide to use the home country product, which is X-100. We assume that the X-100 is the best choice because the provider is in domestic area, so it’s easy to make a consultation and can get quick repair if there is something wrong with that tools.
X-100 suitable for small organization with 150-200 employees. The installation is easy and simple, supported by Indonesian language guide book. It is very helpful, and if the company didn’t understand how to install it, they can ring the provider, and then the provider will give some guidance and if possible they can flight directly within 30 minutes.
FSPS can put the X-100 machine in three different places, but still have one computer control. This tool will be put in three different entrances for every building, in order to help the employees reach the closest machine to their office. The map is enclosed in appendix2.

Description

For middle size organization FSPS choose the medium standard technology to support their presence system. This machine is enough to fulfill the organization objective. We not choose the other product because of the location of those product are far away from the organization home base. On the other hand, the time-tronic from India did not support with installation services and consultation, they only sell the product by mail. Punch clock is perfect machine for big company, they offer many software application from recording the time attendance, calculate the salary, extra time calculation. Beside the geographical distance, the price of this machine is very expensive. We think that the FSPS doesn’t need this multi task machine immediately.
As we know that almost 50% of the employees are the old people that never been touch by the technology. This issue becomes the big consideration why we choose X-100 machine. It’s easier to train the employees with simple and friendly machine. The internal technicians also get the benefits by implement this machine, they can maintain the machine independently.
The process while using this machine is quite easy. Every staff who come to the office should put their finger to the machine that been placed in the entrance of each building. For the lecturers they should show their attendance by touching the sensor machine every time they will give and after class.

General Business Benefits

There are two benefits while implement the new technology to support the organization. Those benefits consist of tangible and intangible benefits. A tangible benefit is the benefits that can be measured by the amount of money. It is obvious that the new presence technology will reduce the additional cost especially for overtime staff. For example, for the laboratory staff, they will receive the overtime salary if they work from 5-7 pm. This happen because the unrestricted time table, many lecturers change their laboratory schedule. The overtime staffs usually receive Rp.20.000 /hour. For more detail information will describe bellow.
Table 4. Tangible Benefits
Item Before implement new technology After implement new technology
Laboratory staff 2 people x 2 hours x 3 days x 4 weeks x Rp.20.000 = Rp. 960.000 per month Save approximately Rp.960.000 per month
Casual worker 3 people x 2 hours x 3 days x 4 weeks x Rp.15.000 = Rp. 1.080.000 per month Save approximately
Rp. 1.080.000 per month
Electricity Rp. 500.000 for overtime Save approximately
Rp. 500.000 per month
Cleaning service 2 people x 3 hours x 5 days x 4 weeks x Rp. 10.000 = Rp. 1.200.000 Save approximately Rp. 1.200.000 per month
Total per month Save Rp. 3.740.000 or
AU$ 550 per month
AU$ 1 equal to Rp. 6.800
The intangible benefit is the uncountable benefit. This benefit can’t be measured by number. This benefit can be seen by the improvement of the staff work and the increasing of discipline. No more late staff is the big goal the implementation of new system.

Costs

Tangible cost while implement the biometric fingerprint presence. The costs are including buy the new machine, install biometric presence software, supporting tools such as, computer with Windows XP program, CD/RW, consultation cost. Following that cost for training the staffs and the technicians. Additional cost will be needed for maintenance and evaluation the machine. The costs will be described in the table below.
Table 5. The Project Cost
Item Item number Amount
Biometric fingerprints presence machine type X-100 3 @AU$ 720 = AU$ 2160
Set of Computer Pentium IV, 512MB DDR2, DVD/CD-RW, 40GB, Windows XP 1 AU$ 1000
Installation fee (software and machine) - AU$ 350
LAN for the fingerprints sensor machine 3 AU$ 200
Consultation fee 3 @AU$ 150 = AU$ 450
Staff training 200 employees + technicians @AU$ 15 = AU$ 3000
User education - AU$ 300
Launching program 1 AU$ 500
Maintenance 12 months @AU$ 100 = AU$ 1200
Total Amount AU$ 9160 or
Rp. 62.288.000
AU$ 1 equal to Rp. 6800
The intangible cost consists of the organization operational down-time during the implementation of new presence machine. Some staff should leave their task to help the applying of the system. The internal IT technician should learn about new system, and leave their regular job. Administrative and lecturers should spend their time to learn about the new system. The head of the faculty and management also leave their work because they have to meet the consultant regularly. All of the operational down time can is uncountable. This is part in the cost of new system implementation.

Feasibility

Table 6. Feasibillity
Topic Rating (1-10) Method Used To Determine Feasibility
Operational 9 Will it do the job required
Political 6 Will users accept the change to business practice
Technical 9 Is the technology available locally; has it been tasted
Schedule 9 Will it fit with current timetables; is there a deadline
Economic 7 Cost/Benefit analysis
Legal 8 Are there any legal/contractual barriers

We can predict that the operational level of this machine is almost 90%, after we assessed the machine and the provider credibility. Some organization also applied the same machine and the result is satisfactory. For political aspect, we are afraid that the users still have difficulties to adjust with new presence system. That is a normal thing, because they used to use the old method for a long time. But, we are so confident that the users will change after certain period. The only thing to do is give user education to the user regularly. This technology is available locally, and come from reputable biometric fingerprints presence provider. This technology is widely use in small and large organization. The schedule of the project is for sic months long, there is a strict timetable and deadline. The longer the project the more money will spend, so the faculty and consultant should work as mention on schedule. The actual purpose of this project is not economical benefits, but to increase the professionalism and credibility of faculty staff. Even though in the future the cost benefits will appear but that’s not the primary things. However, the implement of new technology in the faculty will give significant cost benefits in the future. There is no legal barrier when the faculty tried to implement new technology.

Risks
Table 7. Risks
Description Likelihood Impact Mitigating Action
Socialization new technology may difficult to the all staffs Medium High Give reasonable explanation and future benefits about the new technology
Lack of IT staff in the faculty Medium High Hire IT staff to maintain the new technology
It’s hard to implement the new technology to the old generation Medium High Give individual training and guidance
There will be a gap between the old and new generation in the organization Low Medium The head of the faculty should become the bridge for this situation
Spent more money to maintain and upgrade the technology Medium Low Arrange regular budget

Issues
Table 8. Issues
Description Priority Resolution Action
The biometric fingerprint is a new thing for the staffs, and this will make them shock. So user education is needed High Give longer time for trial so the staff can adjust with new system
Many employees still influenced by the Javanese culture High Give reasonable example about the punctual and professionalism
Many lecturer assume that they can teach in any time, not depend on the timetable High Give the new over view about the mission and vision of the faculty
Some staff are didn’t have knowledge about technology Medium Give short training about how to use technology

Assumptions

• There is a special staff to maintain the new technology
• The faculty hire an Effective Working Consultant to help them reduce the ineffective and late problem among the employee
• The currency is in Rupiah and Austalian Dolar
• AU$1 equal to Rp.6.800
• The main computer control is in building 1
• Staff can use any biometric fingerprint machine in the buildings
• The result of the presence machine will be assessed by the head of the faculty.
• The machine is applied for all of the staff including the head of faculty
• This machine will be used for the first year, and after asses the usefulness of this machine, we will continuo to use it.
• There is no contact with the provider, the provider only support the product and help maintain

Conclusion and Recommendation

Conclusion
Late and less commitment is one of problem that occurs in some organization. Many way will be taken to reduce these problem, however some organization still struggling to implement what kind of technology that suitable to their organization. Faculty of Social and Political Science have applied the new technology to solve the late and less commitment problem. This technology is chosen because the root of the problem is that there is actual present system. Many employees use this opportunity to manipulate their attendance time, so the head of the faculty and management have difficulty to determine which on time and late employee.
The benefit of implementation of new technology is mostly intangible benefits. This benefit will appear for the future such as the professionalism of the staff. Professionalism in working place will lead them in to good quality in education, also make the staff feel more confident to face the challenge. The risk of this project can be minimizing with a good communication between faculty leaders and staff.

Recommendation
• Use domestic technology provider, its easier to solve problem
• Use credible technology provider
• Examine the other organization that have the same technology
• Use simple technology to accommodate various of users.
• Stick with the timeline to avoid over budget.
• Hire IT staff to maintain the technology.
• Give proper training to the users.

Word count: 3488

References

Biometric Employee Punch Clock™ 2.4. http://www.veritasksoftware.com/ biopunchclock.html

Time-TRONIX Desktop.http://www.ravirajtech.com/time-tronix-desktop.html

X100.http://www.sidikjari.com/p_x100.php

recordkeeping & business information systems

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:49:00 +0000

• Pleasantville City Council develops new system which is an integration system between EDRMS and their core of information system. In this case the core of information system that been use is property and rating system. Therefore this core information system deals with management of ratepayers & residents, and some specific functions, such as name & address, rates, building, animals, health, infringements. Property & rating system also manage of property valuations that include information about property and valuation details. The EDRMS is needed in order to manage this core information system especially to store the data so the council can maintain and re-use those data for any purposes. Because the information system can not stand alone as a record management system and EDRMS helps to fulfill the information system record function. In this case, the business information system also has function as record management by build EDRMS into their business system application.

• Business requirement for integration between ERDMS and property & rating system is that the new system should capture any information within property & rating from imaging & hardcopy documents, e-mail, council web content management, maps, plans, and drawings, conversion from hardcopy systems in electronic from. The use of EDRMS should support use and re-use electronic information object such as electronic document (templates, email, e-faxes), audio visual (videos, digital photographs, sound files), images, electronic output, resource from external source, and community ideas.

• The record in property & rating system include all of e-mail sources, the transaction details, the resident details, property details, the web templates, digital images, ratepayers transaction details, valuation details, and costumer complaints.

• By applying EDRMS we can store and manage those kind of record by centralize records repository so users can share information easily, integrated system to managed all those kind of records, for email record we use email management system to integrate all of the email records. Email management should support early archiving, late archiving, and simultaneous archiving scenarios. We also use web content management system to manage and store every web contents in website.

• EDRMS assist business information system in such a way for instance support the business information with recordkeeping functionality, and capture the business information object as a record. This is will help the council to maintain their record in order to increase their works and Performa to serve their community.

Sources:
http://www.opentext.com/2/strategic-partners/
part-strat-sap2/part-strat-sap-integration-strategy.htm

http://www.edocmagazine.com/print.asp?ID=32227

docuShare version 6’ capability assessment

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:47:00 +0000

DocuShare is web-based software application that delivers content management and help knowledge workers to maximize their working and support knowledge sharing. DocuShare adopt the Enterprise content management application to help organization deal with a huge number of documents. DocuShare products offer document management and image capture, support organization web-Blog and Wikis, flexible user access and security, integration imaging and scanning devices, and enterprise scalability. Furthermore, DocuShare also can capture scanning images and deliver through e-mail. The docushare product that been assess here is docushare version 6, the assessment based on the Xerox docushare official website and docushare tutorial in Monash University website.
In general, this product can widely use in all size of the organizations. The bigger the organization the more recommended to use this record and document system, and DocuShare offer many facilities that needed by those big organisations . However, for small organization they still can use this system but it will cost a lot of money since their record and document transaction is not as busy as the big organization. DocuShare also support document routine activities in all formats such as MS office, HTML, PDF, JPG, GIF, and many more. This application is equipped with online help that will help user to operate it.
In my opinion this system is very user friendly, even though a user needs to use it many times to recognize and remember how to operate the system. For instance, a user should remember how to change the document and change access or how to store the document in the right place. It is quite easy when we try to add collection, document, calendar, bulletin board or URL as well as when we would like to edit the collection or document position, name, and even renew it without losing the old document. We also can determine how many times we can renew document without delete the old one. For example, if we decide 4 times, it means that after the document had been renewed fourth times, the first old document will automatically deleted.
The user interface of DocuShare is easy to understand, the menu position is in the top of the page. There also many icons that been used but we can recognize what the icon is after we put the thumb nail in the symbol and then there is a description about what the symbol function is. For example, ‘lock’ icon mean that the document is lock, ‘file folder’ icon for collection, ‘note and pencil’ icon for properties, and so on.
Item captures ability. DocuShare can capture different item type such as files, document, emails, facsimiles, images, plans, and drawings. Once item had been captured, they will be given a name, identifier, and a unique number. This unique number is automated arranged on sequential order. The latest document has position on the top of page, however the collection is arrange by alphabetical order, and if there is a new collection they will be given a ‘new’ icon in the collection’ name. Those documents can be duplicated but they have different unique number. We can give the collection and document with the same name and even content, but they can not have the same unique number. This is one of weakness of DocuShare, if we search document or collection by name there will appears more than one item that have the same name.
The most powerful feature of DocuShare is when capturing the scanned image, DocuShare able to scann 350 documents in one minute, and directly locate those documents to particular collection. The more advance of this application is DocuShare able to send the scanning images directly through email and stored in the desirable places. (http://docushare.xerox.com/products/docushare.html). The scanned view is in PDF format and can be printed without adjust the paper size.
Another important strength of docushare is in security and user access. DocuShare provides enterprise-wide access control, in this case the administrator has a control for the entire document environment in the enterprise, such as the content publication and distribution, give limitation to user for access to particular document, secure content contribution, and implementation and definition process. DocuShare also allow up to four multiple distinct access level to different user. This is very helpful to avoid people who do not have authority to access particular document.
DocuShare provides search box for document enquiries. There two types of searching, first is basic search where user who has authorized can type any keyword of the document in a particular collection or in all collections. Second, the advanced search, in this search box there some criteria that should we type to constraint the search result. The advanced search box contain of keywords, the collection place, the document type, object type, the search result limitation, and arrange result by order such as title, date, and type. There is no indication that we can use bolean logic in document search, but through the advance search engine can search multiple item type in one search.
According to DocuShare assessment in online tutorial, I hardly found any information about item disposal. However, I assume that disposal process is been scheduled by the people who has authority, and Docushare provide that function based on organization requirement.
Overall, DocuShare is a recomended and reliable web-based application system with many functions, and very helpful to manage document in any format for all size of organization. DocuShare also emphases their application in capturing any format, and provides advance security and various user accesses. So the organization can secure their document and support their knowledge worker to gain the ultimate productivity.

Word count 927

References:
http://docushare.xerox.com/products/docushare.html
http://km-svr.sims.monash.edu.au:15080/docushare/
en_US/help/user/tutorial/html/User_Tutorial.htm

system administrator’ task

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:46:00 +0000

System administrator have important role while develop EDRMS in organization. System administrator should fulfill the organization requirement. Every organization has their own requirement in EDRMS based on their characteristic. For general task system administration has responsibility to make sure the EDRMS meet the requirement. System administrator also responsible whether the EDRMS working properly or not. Have knowledge about EDRMS software and software provider. Furthermore system administrator should involve in all system planning, assessing, installing, testing, implementation, and user training. So system administrator knows everything about the system, this is will help the organization if in the future there are some trouble or the organization need to enhance the system they already have record about the existing system.
There just the general framework of system administrator. Following this is a list of tasks that will be doing as a system administrator.

1. Assess and provide the organization with EDRMS user friendly product, so it’s easier to adopt.
2. Make sure that the product is easy to get and operate (windows, menus, web browser, short keys, etc).
3. Provide the easy learning modular.
4. Design a software requirement that fulfill the organization need.
5. Make rules how the record will be capture, maintain, disposal, retrieve, and disseminate.
6. Describe the boundaries of the system, what will the system do and don’t.
7. Make rules for document storage.
8. Design the document tracking system, who can use the document
9. Generate the report of the system activity
10. Determine the access method and security system
11. Provide the hardware such as computer to read document, printer, and barcode reader to retrieve document.
12. Designing user’ training system including methodology and material

Those tasks above are not on logically order, but I think those tasks should be done by system administrator. In my opinion system administrator not only develop and implement the system, but they also maintain the system, correct it if there is an error, enhance it if there is a new technology, so those list is just like a cycle, there is no end because system administrator always learn a new thing and try to implement to support the existing system.

References:
South Australian across government preferred supplier panel for the provision of electronic document & records management system—RFP no.06/0211 Accessed 2, April 2007 from World Wide Web http://www.archives.sa.gov.au/files/
management_EDRMS_functionalcompliance.pdf

document computing: delphy white paper

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:44:00 +0000

How close to realization is the scenario they paint in my experience?

According to the text (Delphi white paper), the report was made in 1994, more than a decade ago. The concept of intelligent document, e-document and single point of access that emerges attracts the attendees. As sited in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_document , intelligent document is general term to describe web document that have multifunctional better than paper document. This document usually in electronic form and they are interactive. Intelligent document is more promising in the future because it form can change by request , so it’s suitable for supporting business process, improve customer service, and make a quick decision making. Following that the single point of access will help user to gain the information in various form in the same time.
Nowadays e-document management system is widely used by some organization especially big organization. Based on my experience, as a customer for the one of Australian organization that has already implemented the intelligent document system, that’s very helpful for us as user. For instance, when we register our self to the hospital, the staff will automatically put our data into the online form, they record our name, address, health history, insurance number, picture, what disease that we got, our signature, and many more. They put our data in one single form, so if the doctor needs data about their patient they just simply look at the online document on their computer, or if the administrations need information about the patient for payment matter they don’t need to open the file cabinet and search by name. This document is not fixed anymore but the staff can add some new information, change the information about the patient, change address, phone number, insurance number, etc. How much time and money that organization saves by use intelligent document, the improving of customer services, it’s precious. As a customer I feel the improvement of services is very satisfaction. It’s just a simple experience about of being part of the implementation of electronic document, so if we look back to 1994 when this concept was made and now we realize that the concept is real.
However, in another personal experience while dealing with document, the concept of intelligent document is very far from my documentation activity. In my organization where I was working a year ago, e-document is hardly use. Many documents are still on paper based. My organization is a big and well known in my home country, but we still use paper based to record the staff history, student detail, financial report, lectures timetable, and most of organization activity. That was very irritating while we deal with the new information or when we need to change the old document, in this case we should make a new document with a new record and dispose the old document. Lost of document are a common thing and the possibility of misuse the document is increase. So in this condition document is static.
Some paper documents are now converted into electronic one, but still not solve the problem because of inconsistency. Converting the paper document into electronic document is a proof that the organization try to apply the modern electronic document management concept, even though it’s very simple process while many modern documentation concept is appear such as intelligent document, online document, and web document. The new concept of the e-document is hardly implemented because of the lack of knowledge workers, lack of financial support, and management support.
To answer this question I have two different experience of the realization of the modern concept of document. One experience is very close to the realization concept even though I just the outsider of the organization, and another experience I have involve with the organization that very far away with the modern concept. For my own point of view, electronic document is 100 times more helpful. But we can’t expect all of the organization in the world will change from paper based to electronic document easily because every organization has their own nature, culture, and goals. But sooner or later, every organization needs to change to e-document management.

Reference:
Intelligent document, Retrieved March, 12 2007 from the World Wide Web:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_document

(1994). The document is the process. Delphi White Paper. NY: CMP Publications Inc.

selection and implementation Of technology for recordkeeping

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:36:00 +0000

Introduction

City West Water ltd.
City West Water is a water retail company in Melbourne and owned by Victorian Government. The purposes of City West Water Company are to provide drinking water, sewerage, trade waste and recycled water services. Their customers approximately 276.000 residential and 31.300 non-residential (industry and commercial), their service area include Melbourne’ Central Business District (CBD) area, inner and western suburbs. 34% of their customers are non English speaking language. Actually this company has relative with South East Water and Yarra Valey Water Company, City West Water, comparing to those companies, City West Water only cover small area and customers.
The company vision is a truly sustainable water business, and the mission is to guarantee affordable and safe water for today and tomorrow, while their values are integrity, leadership, innovation, and respect.
The company is operated by board of directors that appointed by their stakeholders, the Victorian State Government. Those directors have skill in business and many range expertises such as management, engineering, financial, legal, and environmental. This company employs 230 staffs who work in many range areas such as customer service, conservation and environment, engineering, trade waste, recycling and development, cleaner production and finance.
The company stakeholders consist of customers, the community, staffs, suppliers, government, and others. Those stakeholders are involves in company planning and decision making in such a ways, such as through community liaison committee and customer and community engagement committee.
The company’ service is user based, and as a utility company City West Water is the only company that provide water for Melbourne CBD area and western suburbs, so the customers who live in that area didn’t have other choice. This issue is become challenge for the City West Water, how to give a good service, how to treat the customers complain, how to increase their services, and how to satisfied customers. There is no competitor doesn’t mean that they don’t give a better service to customers.
Those aims can be reach if City West Water has good recordkeeping and document management system. In this case, the recordkeeping and document management can help improving services, make a good decision making both for company and customers. Document and record for this company is the important thing. The transaction between customer and company, the customers’ document, the supplier document, customers complain document, payment document, staff, report, annual report, meeting report, problem solving report document, and many more.
Document for every company become urgent aspect that should be managed. The emerging the new technology tries to help to solve the document managing problem. In the past time the document is kept in the filing cabinet, for big company need a big number of filing cabinet and need longer time to retrieve their documents, now many company are helped by the recordkeeping software that been sold broadly.

Existing Recordkeeping System

This City West Water Company still has traditional and un-manage electronic recordkeeping system. This company has centralized hardcopy filing system, and managed by the records management department. These systems only capture 60% of hardcopy document of organization and mostly correspondence, memos, reports, minutes of meeting, email, file notes, etc. The company has already electronic recordkeeping system called FileMan that dealing with individual document in record department. This document is indexed electronically by title, date, owner, and location. The company only uses MS office products (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Project), email, MS access database to create and distribute their document.
The company has intranet to distribute general information and electronic forms, and internet website to communicate with public and customers. The electronic documents are saved in various location PC drive, personal drives on network, shared drives on network, and on laptop. There is no special regulation and procedure about the electronic document. File clean up is done periodically by instruction of the IT department, and there is no file back up for laptop and PC drive.
Now the Board of Directors facing the legal, business, and governance risks by not managing its information appropriately across the company. A strategy is developed in 2007 to implement a robust recordkeeping infrastructure to bring the organization into digital recordkeeping world.

Parties Involved

1. The board of directors usually these people only access final report document in such area. Those documents are used for decision making, analysis, and planning process. These people didn’t deal with single form document.
2. Staff: customer service, these staffs usually access the customers detail document, the bill information, the application forms. Customer service also interacts with customers and dealing with phone, email, and letter document.
3. Finance department, this department deal with employees’ payroll document, customers’ payment document, and company financial document. The customer’s bill payment document also can be accessed by the customer service.
4. Engineering deal with customers’ document about water installation, document about water service area.

The Problems

1. There is no procedure and regulation how to tread the document (back up, disposal, clean up)
2. The existing recordkeeping only deal with email, and hardcopy document, however the company deals with voice document, image, map, and web document.
3. The company document is mostly hardcopy, and it’s difficult to convert all of that document into electronic. The only way is use scanner, and it will takes time and money.
4. This company only uses MS office and email as their document author, however they need another version if they want electronic document, such as PDF, html, xml, Mpeg, JPG
5. The document not integrated, for example the document location is in some places.
6. There are no rules about electronic document, when they should be cleaned up, back up, and disposal.

Project Description
As a project manager that has duty to select and implement the new recordkeeping system in City West Water company. This is because the old recordkeeping system (traditional and unmanaged electronic) can’t support the company purposes such as service improving, user satisfaction, fast generate and trace report document, capture any document formats.
First of all before doing product selection the company should make a requirement about what they need and assess the problems occur.
System Requirement

1. To increase their services the company need to spread their services by web based system. Which is every customer can access the city west water services anytime from everywhere. In this case the company should provide their web site with various document authors such as in contact us menu, user can use phone, email, letter, or visit the company to make enquiries. The company should provide tools that can capture those formats.
2. The PDF format also needed for forms, report, maps, company plans, company information rather than use MS office. This format is easier to manage than MS office.
3. The new system should compatible with the existing system, it’s mean that we don’t need to change the whole system but add with the new system. We still can use MS office and add with PDF software to change MS office document into PDF.
4. The new system should user friendly, this is because we don’t need to make user confuse about the significant changing.
5. The new system can convert the hardcopy into electronic form. We can use scanner and rendering tools such as PDF, JPEG.
6. The system should manage intranet and internet web sites.
7. The system should capture tacit and intangible knowledge for company purposes.
8. Support transaction management.
9. The system should can capture voice (phone message), meeting report, e-room (Instant messaging), and chat room.

Project Scope

The scope in this project is including the problem and organization environmental analysis, select the appropriate product with the company needs, choosing the user friendly product, and implement the new recordkeeping system by installing the product, give training and user education about the new recordkeeping system. Monitoring the project whether it work proper or not. Including fix the problem that may occur after implements this technology.

Selection Steps

This process usually happens after we determine the requirement. The purpose of selection is to get the right solution to the problem. In this case the problem is how to manage document in various formats and how to convert hardcopy document into electronic document and how distribute them. There some steps how to select the new recordkeeping system:
1. Based on requirement definitions
The selection of the new recordkeeping system refers to the organization’ recordkeeping needs. After assessing the organization’ need then we provide some solutions. Those solutions are systems that will answer the organization problem.
2. Determined procurement strategy
The second step is determined procurement strategies by issuing tender, product, and vendor evaluation. This evaluation purposes is to select the best product and vendor. There are some options in tendering, open tender, restricted tender, open request for information (RFI), and direct approach and negotiation with vendor.
3. Tender process
Tender process is by advertising or approaching vendor. In this case the organization announces that they need new solution to their problem. If the organization has already known about the product solution and who’s the vendor, they can directly approach the vendor.
4. Comparing the product that been offered by vendors
In this step, we asses some product that offered by vendors. Compare product strengths and weaknesses, product price, product specifications, and product availability. Comparing products have purpose to get the best product that suitable with organization’ needs. Compare product can be conducted through on site demonstration, reference site visits, and prototyping.
5. Assessing vendors
Assessing vendors is the important thing since vendors should provide good product and maintain their product. Vendor capability and expertise is important issue for organization who like to develop new system. To determine whether a vendor is capable or not is by their previous clients, how their treatment to different problem in organization and what is the solution offered.
6. Final selection by choose the product and vendor
The next step decides which product and vendor that we will implement to our organization. After assessing and evaluating many area of the product we can say that we have already found our suitable solution.
7. Contract and negotiation
After decided which vendor and product that we use, then we make a contact about how the system will be implemented. In this contract both company and vendor have agreement about the system implementation scoop. In this stage the company could negotiate whether they can upgrade the system or not.

Selection Process by City West Project Manager

After defining what system that they need, a project manager try to capture all of those requirements as his/her based to select and evaluate what kind of system that can fulfill those requirements. The next step this project manager issuing tender, product, and vendor evaluation. Rather than use open tender method City West prefer use open request for information (RFI), this is because to limitation the number of vendors if they use open tender but City West still don’t have experience in new recordkeeping product to do direct approach. According to Wikipedia RFI has description as a standart business process whose purpose is to collect written information about the capabilities of various suppliers. Normally it follows a format that can be used for comparative purposes.
So in this stage City West don’t need to advertise their tender, they just approaching some vendors (3 or 4 vendors) who have product solutions (ECMS) and request the information about the product and then comparing them. City West only use local vendors because it’s easy to approach and geographically quite close. This method is quite cheap and City West have more time to asses their written information about the vendor and itch product. After they decide which vendor who fulfills the criteria, the City West starts to approach them to see the real product. City West do the reference site visit and ECM demonstration by the vendors. Finally they can decide which vendor with ECM product that suitable for their company and make a contract.
The City West choose the ECM after they assess some technology in recordkeeping, such as EDRMS, Web content, knowledge management system, etc which as they only solve part of the problem, however when using ECM, this system promise that they can solve a whole company recordkeeping problem starting from capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver. This system also deal with so many kind of document formats.

Implementation Steps
According to Hoffer et.al, 2002. There some steps during the new system implementations.:
1. Installing the new system
Once we get the new recordkeeping product then we install it to the company’ existing system. Installing is a process changing from current system to the new system. There some techniques that can be used during the installation. There are direct installation which is change the old system completely when the new system come, parallel installation is running together both old and new system until the management decide that old system is not necessary, single location installation is use one part of the system as a prototype to implement the new system and phased installation gradually change the old system to the new system. It depends on the organization how to use one of the installation methods, organization should consider with their staff ability and their technology before installing the new system.
2. Testing the new system
Testing is very important thing during the system implementation. Testing has purposes to make sure that new system working properly. Testing can be done in various ways such as inspections testing, desk checking, unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and stub testing. The most common method is unit testing and integrated testing which are in unit testing each module is tested alone however in integrated testing all modules are tested as a whole part.
3. User training
User training is to make sure that the staffs have knowledge and ability to operate new system. Support staffs with appropriate ability so they feel confidence interact with new system. According to Nelson and Cheney in Hoffer, 2002, there are seven common methods for computer training, tutorial, course, computer aided instruction, interactive training manuals, resident expert, software help component, and external source.
4. Documentation
Documentation contain of policies, procedures, practices all of the component recordkeeping system. This documentation function as a guide for users how to use/operate the system or if in the future there are some errors in the system so the technician can easily determine the problem. Another reason is when a staff who has responsible to maintain the system gone, and the new staff who replace them can easily understand what the system specification are. Documentation also contains roles and responsibilities of the users, record management policy, and identify unacceptable practices and function.
5. Communication
This stage is talking about how to communicate the new recordkeeping system to the employees. There some issues that appear in this communication stage such as what is the purpose of the new system, what is the policies and procedures of this system, individual and group responsibility to the system, and many more.
6. System evaluation
System evaluation purpose is to examine the new system whether they work properly or not.
7. System maintenance
System maintenance has a function to keep system work properly. System maintenance should be done continuously.

The Solution Product
Enterprise Content Management

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a collaboration system between electronic document management system (EDMS), electronic recordkeeping management system (ERMS), collaboration system, workflow / business process management, and web content management. This collaboration system is become enhance because it ability to capture both structure and unstructured data. Comparing to EDRMS that only can capture hardcopy, picture, email, and electronic document, ECM is more complex, they can capture any digital content such as pictures, text, reports, video, audio, transactional data, catalog, and code. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Content_Management)
This solution is suitable for City West Water Company that needs to change their traditional document management system into digital document world. The ECM also can manage web content such as intranet and internet. If previously City West Water did not manage their electronic recordkeeping system, through ECM their document will be captured, classified, indexed, automatic disposal system, provide searching, retrieval, and rendering. ECMS also protect itself against non-compliance, law-suit, and uncoordinated departments.
ECM provides rendering tools such as PDF, JPEG, TIFF, HTML, and messaging system (email and instant messaging). For example a document bay be transfer from another format, such as MS Word document transferred into PDF format, or MS Word transferred into HTML document format. ECM also provides collaboration tools such as e-room, discussion list, and listservs. (Ellis J, 2007). ECM also can capture document by scanning process. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Content_Management)
Through the ECMS City West Water feel confident that they can move from traditional recordkeeping system into electronic, this is because the ability of the system to accomplish the company goal is very high. According to Objective the ECM system can solve very specific business problem, such as recordkeeping, correspondence management, virtual project office, process improvement, etc.
The problem may occur is converting the previous hardcopy document into electronic, it will takes a lot of time since most of company document are in hardcopy document. On the other hand, staffs are very busy to learn the new recordkeeping system and maybe they don’t have time to manage old company documents.

The use of ECMS in City West Water Company:

• Rendering electronic form (application, complain, member, etc)from MS word into PDF
• Rendering MS Word into CAD drawing (map, picture)
• Manage e-mail, instant messaging, phone (voice) enquiries in contact us menu.
• Managing static and dynamic content of websites
• Managing traditional (hardcopy) document into electronic by using scanner machine and rendering document tools.
• Make a good procedure on document disposal and document back up system, so not every staff who should delete some file after they’ve been ordered by the IT department.
• Capture all staffs tacit knowledge (by using intranet, e-room, and periodically meeting) and transfer them into explicit knowledge so they can share knowledge easily.
• Manage the customers detail document

The strengths of ECM system

According to www.wikipedia.org
• The system can capture:
1. Manual to electronic and digital format
2. Use various technology to process scanned document (OCR, HCR, ICR, OMR, Barcode)
3. Document imaging, forms processing, paper form, e-form, web form
• The system can manage
1. Documents management
2. collaborative systems
3. Web content management
4. Record management (file and archive management)
5. Worklflow (eq. production workflow, ad hoc workflow)
• Have a long term storage media
1. WORM optical disc
2. WORM tape
3. WORM hard disc
4. Storage network
5. Microfilm
6. Paper
According to www.objective.com, the ECM has some strengths:
1. Control the vast quantities of enterprise content
2. Make effective and accountable decisions
3. Promote company product and services
4. offering central point access, management, control, and security

The Issues

Some issues that occurred while implementing ECM in City West Water Company are, first, there may be a gap between the staffs and technology (ECMS), even though there will be training conducted but it still possible if staffs fell confuse and ‘shock’ with sudden changing. When in traditional recordkeeping system they put document in filing system and mostly deal with hardcopy document, now through the ECM they should operate very complex system and totally new. That is challenging and scaring.
Second issue is budgeting. This ECMS must be very expensive system because it collaborate some system into one big system. City West Water Company should take a risk to implement this system with assumption this system is very helpful managing their document now and in the future. So they agreed that this system is worth for the next future, this is a long term system implementation.
Third issue, City West Water Company is not a very big company, they only employ 230 staffs and dealing with small service area. Even though ECM never claimed that their system only suitable for big company, the fact that ECM can be implement both in small and big company bring the opportunity for the City West. However, even though City West not a big company, but dealing with a big number of customers makes their company busy. The transaction with customers and stakeholders, company meeting, many reports in many areas makes their document management activities never end.

Conclusion

Recorkeeping system selection and implementation cannot be neglected if we want the new system working properly. Selection become a crucial time, because when we misinterpret the organization requirement we will cannot select the appropriate system. Before select the new system we should understand what the organization needs, what is the limitation of the system and the scope, and the organization budget.
The ability to evaluate some solutions product and credible vendor is important, because there are so many vendors that offer and promote recordkeeping product. Through a tender we can make a limitation and evaluate the contestant vendor. In this case, City West use open request for information (RFI) when they select the vendor and product.
The implementation of the product also important because how the new product interact with staff, and old system in real time sometimes not working properly. This process should be anticipated both by vendor and project manager.

Word count: 5332

References
City West Water. https://www.citywestwater.com.au/
default.aspx

Ellis, J.2007. Evaluation and selection RDBMS. Week 6 tutorial notes.

Enterprise content management. Accessed April 10, 2007 from World Wide Web:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Content_
Management#Manage

Hoffer JA, et.al.2002. Modern system analysis and design. 3rd Ed. Prentice Hall International

Objective :http://www.objective.com/Solutions/
index.html

Request for Information. Accessed April 13, 2007 from World Wide Web:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_For_
Information

Step G – Implementation of a recordkeeping system. Accessed April 12, 2007 from World Wide Web:http://naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/
dirks/dirksman/step_G.html

strategic plan for electrinic library services

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 03:30:00 +0000

This report is about strategic plan for public library electronic resources in the City of Monash Victoria. Monash Public Library needs to develop a strategic plan for their electronic resources in order to improve their services and functionality. The objective of this report is to give a clear strategic plan recommendation regarding to electronic resources to manager of Monash Public Library, so he/she can use it as a tool to determine the future policy within the library. The library manager needs this strategic plan to decision making about what sort of action that should be taken to improve library services, particularly in electronic resources services.
This report will cover some area such as City of Monash overview that supported by statistical data including the number of population, the number of internet and computer user, and so on. Monash Public Library details such as technology and information infrastructure. This report also gives detail strategic plan especially in library electronic resources.
The report also evaluates the current library electronic resources and determines what sort of strategic that will be needed for the future. This recommendation based on statistical data about City of Monash current population and forecast population. Population statistic data is needed for make a strategic plan in library electronic resources.

II. Background

Aims of strategic plan preparation
There are some preparations that should be considered before we draw a strategic plan for Monash Public Library e-resources. Such as:
- Identify library mission and its goals.
- Identify the library community and stakeholders.
- Identify the current situation in the library, for example management, IT, IS, and IM infrastructure, resources, and services.
- Analysis what will happen on the next ten years or more in the library e-resources.
II.1. Monash Public Library Manager
Title : Manager of Community Information & Arts
Name : Ms. Jenny Ruffy
II.2. Monash Public Library community profile
There are range community of the library from educational community (school, students), sport and hobbies, leisure, religious, ethnic, disabled people, economy and business, music and arts, and many other communities that can be search through Monash Public Library database. All of those communities are within City of Monash area.
II.2.1. Library community in brief:
- Students from playgroup, primary, secondary, and high school, college student, and higher education student or university.
- Council staffs.
- Small business around the City of Monash.
- Teenagers without internet at home.
- Poor people.
- Children and parent
- Ethnic minority group such as Arabian, Chinese, Italian, Indonesian, India, French, Germany, Greek, Vietnamese, Polish, and Korean.
- People who speaks in different language.

Library community statistical data (2001):
Table 1. Population Data
No. Category Number
1. City of Monash total population 155,061
2. Infants 0 to 4 years 7,796
3. Children 5 to 17 years 23,182
4. Adults 18 to 64 years 100,960
5. Senior citizens 85 years and over 2,394

Table 2. Population Forecast
Forecast 2006 2011 2021
Total population 165,250 171,971 178,838

Table 3. Internet User
No. Internet usage Number
1. Home only 34,800
2. Home and at work 14,516
3. Home and elsewhere 5,655
4. Home, work and elsewhere 1,363
5. Work only 10,292
6. Work and elsewhere 353
7. Elsewhere 5,955
8. Uses the internet total 72,934
9. Do not use the Internet 76,185

Referring to population and internet usage statistical data in the City of Monash it is clear that the requirement of electronic resources is very high. This is proved by the percentage of the internet users almost 50% of the overall population, and most of them are use the internet at home. Furthermore, according to population forecast for the next ten to twenty years the number of population is increase gradually. This is a chance for library to enhance their electronic resources in the future to accommodate the community’ information needs.
The library resources also should cover any age and any subject that may interest for the communities, such as resources in some different language, leisure and hobby collections, as well as educational resources.
II.3. The reason why library should prepare the report
- The community is dynamic, library should anticipate the growing number of community and their demand in good information. In the past year people only need computer to help their task, but now they need internet connection to connect them world wide. So it is important to prepare strategic plan as a guide for library next steps.
- Library is growing organization, library is not static organization that only exist as part of community. Library support community with its ability to provide community with good information. If in the past time library only provides print material but now library more focus on electronic resources. That’s why library need a good strategic plan to gain their success.
II.4. Library overview
Monash Public Library located in City of Monash region that covers Ashwood-Burwood, Chadstone, Clayton-Nothing Hill, Glen Waverley, Hughesdale, Mount Waverley, Mulgrave, Oakleigh, Huntingdale, and Wheelers Hill. Monash Public Library has five branches that spread around the City of Monash. There are Clayton, Glen Waverley, Mount Waverley, Oakleigh, and Wheelers Hill branch.
The library has integrated catalogue system, membership card, and booking system. This is really help for those libraries to communicate with each other. The only catalogue helps users and library to maintain their resources however for users the integrated catalogue help them to find the collection that they want.
Table 4. Monash Public Library in brief (2004-05)
Item Number
Full time staff 35
Part time staff 15
Casual 44
Print Collection 274,899
Electronic resources 21,212
Income per annum 5,218,687
Registered borrowed 104,259
Virtual Visits 61,116
Static library visits 1,046,384
Opening hour /week 388
Non-print material loan 461,473
http://www.dvc.vic.gov.au/web20/rwpgslib.nsf/
GraphicFiles/AnnualSurveyPubLibs200405.pdf/
$file/AnnualSurveyPubLibs200405.pdf

III. Electronic Resources
III.1. Monash Public Library e-resources current situation
Preparing strategic plan for library electronic resources we should understand what electronic resources is. Electronic resources are a term for electronic information stored online, on CD-ROM or database.
(http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&defl
=en&q=define:Electronic+resources&sa=X&oi=
glossary_definition&ct=title). Another definition of electronic resources is every document in electronic form that need special equipment to be used, it is include digital documents, electronic serials, databases, patent in electronic form, and networked audiovisual documents.ISO/DIS2789 (http://equinox.dcu.ie/reports/pilist.html).
To build better strategic plan recognizing the strengths and weaknesses and understand the library current situation especially the electronic resources is important. To asses that the electronic resources in Monash Public Library we use three measurement which are IT infrastructure, IS infrastructure, and IM infrastructure before drawing the strategic plan.
• Information Technology infrastructure
Technology becomes an important thing in the information world. In library context technology helps to deliver their electronic sources from acquiring, create, store, and distributing. Monash Public Library uses several technologies to support their services such as computer, internet connection, and telephone. Below is library information technology infrastructure table.

Table 5. Information Technology Infrastructure
No. Item Number
1. ADSL internet access
2. PC + OPAC 53
3. PC + internet 53
4. No of booking 125,097
5. Time booked 62,549
6. Internet access PC/10.000 population 3,3
7. Internet terminal/10.000 member 5,1
Source: annual survey public library services in Victoria 2004-05

Monash Public Library use ADSL internet access for all branches. The library has 53 PC including OPAC and internet access. So there is no special PC for OPAC or internet only. Library user should made a booking first if they want to use the internet facility and they only can use for 60 minutes (maximal usage) per day. Monash Public Library produce 125,097 number of booking per year and time booked is 62,549 hours per year.

• Information System
Current Monash Public Library electronic resource system is members only usage. If people want to access those electronic resource they should registered as a library member. While they register either manual or online they will be given an ID number from the library. The user that had been registered should create password for online access, and show the ID number if they borrow collection manually. See library information system below.
Once user registered as a member they can use every service within the library both manual and online. Such as search the library catalogue, place a booking, renew item borrowed, use online resources, and borrow electronic resources for two weeks with maximal six items.

• Information Management
Information management also has important roles in public library, where information is collected, managed, delivered, and maintain for user purposes. The composition between print and electronic information resources in Monash Public Library is still dominated by print resources. Total print material collection is 274,899 exemplar and electronic resources collection 21,212. (annual survey public library services in Victoria 2004-05).
How to manage content is very important, since public library has important role in society, so selected good and suitable collection for community is one of major think that should be done carefully by the librarian. They do not just spent a big budget for collection that may harm or useless for the users.
Below is table of content mapping on electronic resources based on the material, such as DVD, CD ROM, video, and online resources.

Table 6. Electronic resources in 2004-05
No. Item Acquisition Collection
1. Talking book 528 4,141
2. CD ROM 139 1,438
3. CD music 1,072 4,987
4. DVD film adult 1,413 2,380
5. DVD film children 837 1,247
6. Video film adult 239 2,171
7. Video film children 342 4,282
8. E-databases/virtual online 15 23
9. Newspaper & serials 444 444
10. Newspaper & serials in LOTE 56 56
11. Other non print material 0 43
Total 21,212
Source: annual survey public library services in Victoria 2004-05

Most of Monash Public Library collection is for leisure activities such as DVD film for adult, CD music, and video film & talking book for children. This is because the library should deliver their function as an educational as well leisure & hobbies places. So people who come to the library can bring their children to learn while they enjoy the movie. However Monash Public Library still use old term which is as a recreational and entertainment rather than as a gateway of knowledge providing. (Johanson, 2007). For further information about electronic resources is described below.
Table 7. Online resources and usage
Online resources Use @ Library Use @ home
ABS online •
Biography resource centre • •
Choice online •
Encyclopedia Britannica online • •
Global books in print • •
Grove art online • •
Health & wellness resource centre • •
Infotrac-one file • •
Macquarinet •
Oakleigh cemetery • •
Oakleigh & Waverley streets directory • •
Oxford Dictionary of national bibliography • •
Oxford reference online • •
OZJAC courses & careers •
Proquest • •
What do I read next? • •
World book online • •
OPAC • •
Link to other library • •
Source:
http://www.monlib.vic.gov.au/online.html
According to the online resources type above it is clear that not all the online resources can be accessed at home. Some of them are accessed in library only and some of them are can be accessed either at the library or at home. It would be good if all of those online resources can be accessed everywhere so people doesn’t need to book for internet using in library.

III.2. Monash Public Library e-services strategic plan
Improvement in technology infrastructure is very important, since technology become a tool to deliver information to the community, especially computer and internet access. Now Monash Public Library only has limited number of technology that been use while the population is gradually increase in the future. However, the number of people who live in City of Monash area and don’t have access to technology is quite significant. The data said that almost 50% of population are has internet access both at home, work, school or other places. The library planning is to increase the percentage of people who use computer and internet. The strategy is by increasing the number of PC with internet access in the library. With the increasing number of PC hopefully users do not have to make booking appointment to use internet. User can use internet anytime, and this is very helpful for those who do not have internet access at their home.
Besides provides PC with internet access for online resources the library should increase the number the other electronic resources such as educational CD ROM, DVD documenter and general knowledge.

Table 8. Electronic Services Strategic Plan
Current e services e-services offered action
The number of internet users in City of Monash is almost 50% Increase the internet user by provides more PC with internet access Long term plan
The number of PC with internet access in Monash Public Library is 53 Increase the number of computer in the library from 53 into 100 PCs. Short term plan
Applied booking system before using the internet Minimize booking system to encourage user to use internet Long term plan
Provides a huge number of DVD and video film. Provide more educational DVD, documenter, and general knowledge Long term plan
More print material oriented Increase the number of electronic material rather than print. Short term
Most of print material are fiction collection both for children and adult Digitalize those fiction material collection Long term

IV. Main Feature of Proposed Strategic Plan
IV.1. Mission
• Monash Public Library electronic services strategic plan has a mission to provide City of Monash community with good quality and quantity information through electronic resources especially online resources.
• Monash Public Library would like to increase the number of internet user in the City of Monash community from approximately 50% at this moment into 80% for the next ten year.
• Support community learning with enhances electronic resources.

IV.2. Situation Audit
Monash Public Library has five branches that spread around City of Monash. There are located in the suburbs center and easy to reach by public transport. For example Monash Public Library Clayton branch located right in the Clayton shopping centre. It has a large parking space, open seven days a week, and has a seminar room. The library only has one floor that consist of information and circulation desk, print material collection that use most of the library space, few computers with internet access, electronic material such as DVD, CD, and video, reading and discussion space. The library seems very compact with everything that settles there.
User can use the internet access in library by appointment only and with maximal time 60 minute per day.
IV.3. Environmental Appraisal
The strategy is improving electronic resources by giving more computers with internet access in the library. This is will affect the library environmental especially the computers will need more space in the library. If possible the library should expand their building to accommodate the increasing number of information technology infrastructure.
The huge number of print material need very big space in library, and almost 70% of library space is been used for print material. However the other 30% is for computer, reading room, and staff desk, and electronic resources such as DVD, CD, video, and CD ROM
Besides the physical space, staff environment also will influenced by strategic plan. The library staff should capable to use online resources and services. Staff also can encourage user to maximize the electronic resources and services usage. Librarian should response every enquiry as soon as possible. For example, in current situation librarian need almost two days to response the Ask Librarian services, in the future they should give assistance directly.
IV.4. Vision and Goals
The vision and goals of this strategic plan is to help library to improve their services in electronic resources. So the library can be accessed 24 hours a day. This strategic plan can act as guidance for library to reach their goals. We hope through the strategic plan library can take any act that will help them to prepare some changing in the future.
IV.5. Strategic Option
The strategy that been offered is to increase the number of technology infrastructure in the library so users do not need to make a booking requirement before they use it. However, after we assess the environmental appraisals and the human resources this strategy also has disadvantage impact. For that reason, there is another strategic that will be offered to the library.
The other strategy is to improve online resources so users can access it from home, school, working place, and other places. If library enrich their online collection and ensure that those collection can be accessed from other places it is very helpful for the users. They do not need to book the library internet and they can use it any time. However, this strategy has disadvantage effect, which is user who do not have internet access are hardly to use the library collection.
For future plan those strategy should be considered, because of the fast growing of the technology especially internet push the society to use it. And library should facilitate their society by providing that service.
IV.6. Action Plan
This strategic plan will involved every people as the public library stakeholders. The City of Monash council and state government as financial donators for public library has a big role for strategic implementation. The library manager and senior librarian who responsible to the library information infrastructure and decide which information that appropriate for library mission. Information technology manager deals with technology infrastructure for library, such as computers and its connection. The information system analyst has roles to ensure the online resources can be accessed properly by the users, and all online and electronic resources is well accessed, for example, the flow of online booking system, the use of ID system for home access, the loan system, etc.

V. Strengths & Weaknesses
V.1. Strengths
• Through this strategic plan proposal library can help the City of Monash to increase the number of people who use internet, this mean that City of Monash society is aware of technology especially information technology (internet).
• The strategic plan proposal will help student to access much knowledge to support their education and preparing them to university degree.
• This proposal is easy to understand and implement by the people who involve in the strategic plan.
• This proposal is giving clear data, mission, and goal in the future.
V.2. Weaknesses
• The strategic plan proposal will need a lot of budget since the main core is to increase the technology infrastructure and electronic resources.
• This is long term strategic plan, and it is possible that this proposal plan not appropriate in the future, for example the changing council and state policy will affect the strategic plan.
• The diversity of the society will affect the strategic plan especially if the library will make a great changing.

VI. Recommendation
Public library has function as “a living force for education, culture and information, and as an essential agent for the fostering of peace and spiritual welfare through the minds of men and women”.(UNESCO’s 1994 Public Library Manifesto) in Johanson, 2007. Public library has an important role to facilitate their society with knowledge world. In the past time the public library success measurement is by the physical visit to the library, however in the technological world where people can visit library virtually is the key success of the library.
Public library should provided 7/24 information for their society. This mean there is no closing time for the library. With information technology this is goals will be success. Users do not need to wait until the library open, but they can visit the virtual library anytime for 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
With 7/24 paradigm the library manager should prepare their online and electronic resources as their main core of the library. When traditional library still struggling with print collection, the virtual library should change their print material into electronic and online resources. This is very hard work for the library manager since the community has different background (education, language, culture, economic, etc).
The public library changing especially in electronic services should accommodate every level of society and library manager should be very careful to socialize and assist the society with helpful information.
Library manager should communicate with some expert regarding to the strategic plan, such as with librarian, information system analyst, council and state, information technology expertise, and society as users.

References:

Annual survey public library services in victoria 2004-05
http://www.dvc.vic.gov.au/web20/dvclgv.nsf/allDocs/
RWPC74AAD6AEB604BE3CA2571700031DBB4?OpenDocument

City of Monash Demographic:
http://www.idconsulting.com.au/
monash/commprofile/
Default.asp?bhcp=1

Definitions of electronic resources on the web. http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&defl=
en&q=define:Electronic+resources&sa=X&oi=glossary_
definition&ct=title

Equinox (2000). Library performance measurement
and quality management system performance
indicators for electronic library services.
http://equinox.dcu.ie/reports/pilist.html

Johanson, G. (2007). IMS5016: The virtual library:
reference and collection management.
Lecture 7, 18 April 2007. Monash University, Melbourne.

Monash Public Library website:
http://www.monlib.vic.gov.au/

note: the table is very messy, still dont have time to fix it.

knowledge management initiative strategy

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 02:47:00 +0000

Strategic of Implementation Knowledge Management Initiative
In Educational Organization

Organization Overview
Airlangga University is one of well known educational institution in East Java Indonesia. The university was erected in 1948 and has 11 faculties including Faculty of Social and Political Science. In this report I only use one of part of the university faculty as my organization which is Faculty of Social and Political Science (FSPS). This faculty was erected around 50 years ago a few years after the university opened, and until now have seven departments which is Sociology, Anthropology, Politic, Communication, International Relation, Library and Information Science, Tourism, and Library Technician department. FSPS has more than 1500 students, 130 lecturers, and 70 administrative, has approximately 50 classes, labs, library, student rooms, and lecturer offices that divided according to each department. The office hour is from 7 am until 6 pm, from Monday to Friday.

Organization Mission
FSPS has mission to deliver high quality education that supported by competent and credible lecturers.

Building Architecture
FSPS has three separate building but still in the same area. The main building has three floor which is contain of lecture class, in the third floor, library and lecturer room in the second floor, and administrative & labs, student’s activity rooms in the first floor. In the other two building which is smaller contain of classes, lab, lecturer room, and administrative. So there are separated lecturer rooms in FSPS and they are not easily to make contact. The head of faculty is in the main building where the instruction is made and deliver.

Structure Organization
The FSPS is led by a Dean which has three vices, Vice Dean I that responsible with academic, research, lecture and curriculum, Vice Dean II dealing with human resource and administration, and Vice Dean III that have duty to make relationship with other organization and dealing with student activities, student’s parents association (IKOMA) FSPS also has a head administrative (under Vice Dean II) that handle finance, teaching support facilities, maintain classes, and so on. Every department has department coordinator that responsible for teaching activities within their department. For structure organization details, see table below.

FSPS Structure Organization

______ Instruction line
-------- Relationship line

FSPS use hierarchical top-down organization system which is instruction is come from the leader; Dean down to the Vice Dean and course coordinator and finally instruction end in lectures and staff. Feedback from bottom position also need some steps before it reach the organization leader. So lecturer and staff rarely make a contact with the dean.

Staffs
There are two kind of staff that been employed in FSPS, first the staffs with general administration skill which is usually has skill in economic and finance, management, computer, and clerical. Second is staff that categorized as knowledge worker who has different expertise that responsible in teaching. Teaching staff are categorize as a knowledge worker as cited in searchCRM.com that define knowledge worker is anyone who doing their task by using knowledge, and according to Peter Dracker academic professional, researcher, and teacher are include as a knowledge worker. (http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/
sDefinition/0,,sid11_gci212450,00.html). Devenport add knowledge worker is people who have high degrees of expertise, education, or experience, and the primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation, distribution, or application of knowledge. (Devenport, 2005). In this report I only assess knowledge management process among lecturers/teaching staff.
Referring to the statistical data about the number of lecturer in FSPS is 130 on the other hand the administrative staff is 60, it is obvious that the organization is really depend on their knowledge workers. Moreover, the main purpose of this organization is to deliver knowledge through education and training. Organization will die if there are no knowledge workers. However, recently the administrative staff has move to knowledge worker since their working use the information technology such as computer, telephone and fax, and mobile phone to help their task.
Besides high dependency to their knowledge workers, the organization also has high dependency on its market. The market is the high school graduate students who intend to continue their study to higher degree, particularly in East Java and East of Indonesian. This is a great challenge for FSPS since many competitors arrive in East Java and for the future FSPS should manage and maximize their human resource knowledge.

Organization Task
According to Burstein & Linger, (2005) task is a substantially constant organizational activity with outcomes that include tangible output that are central to the organization’s viability and the internal outcomes that are potential drivers of organizational change. The organization task is to deliver higher education in several social science subjects. The teaching method is class based system which is student should be come to the university to be taught, there also laboratory support to develop student’s understanding. Another task are doing research regarding staff expertise, this has purpose to enhance the staff’ knowledge and to enrich the faculty with source material.
The task is quite different in individual level and organization level. In organizational level, there is a policy that define how’s the task should be done, both in technical task such as the teaching duration, teaching material & tools, and knowledge task is about the content of material, teaching strategies. In this organizational level the purposes of teaching activity is to gain organization’s goal as an education organization. Furthermore, in individual task level is about the individual understanding to translate the organization task. Every individual has different approach to understanding the task even though there is a task policy in organization. Those individual have their own expertise and experience that will be combined to achieve organization’s output.
For FSPS the crucial knowledge to reach the goal is the existence of expertise in many social science fields. FSPS need many human resource who expert on such a field of study, and improve the available human source to enhance their expertise by using knowledge management initiatives.

Knowledge management structural

Organizational Design
Organization Design is a formal, guided process for integrating the people, information and technology of an organization. It is used to match the form of the organization as closely as possible to the purpose(s) the organization seeks to achieve. Through the design process, organizations act to improve the probability that the collective efforts of members will be successful.
( http://www.inovus.com/organiza.htm).
FSPS organizational design is viewed in some perspective, there are:
Environmental context
The environmental situation in organization is a bit competitive and individual. They rarely talking about their expertise in particular subject, this is because they do not want other staff know what they have and what they did not have. There is no similar working hours make staff rarely meet each other. Lecturers only came to the office according to their lecture timetable. The relationship between staff and lecturers not well maintain since some lecturers feel that they have more knowledge.
Organizational structure
FSPS use hierarchical structure to deliver the task. This method is used to ensure the uniform of the task. Usually tasks are given in paper based from the Vice Dean and delegated to lower level (department coordinator) organization structure, and finally the course coordinator give the task with some instruction to the lecturers. In this stage both tacit and explicit knowledge involve, when the task is given in explicit way and how the staff capture the task with their tacit capability, and then try to do the task with their tacit and explicit knowledge that they have. Paper-based are chosen because it is quite formal and ensure the task uniform.

Organization Culture
Organizational culture indicates the extent to which the organization encourages formal and informal learning, supports sharing and managing of knowledge. (Burstein & Linger, 2005). This organization not quite support knowledge sharing culture, it is proved by there is no formal approach in knowledge management initiative, and there is no appropriate facility that supports the aim.
Staffs are responsible to upgrade their own knowledge, leader did not give support both material and immaterial. So, many staff still has old knowledge and organization is very poor of ideas. Even though there is some knowledge management initiative in organization but encouragement from the leader is less.
The trust culture also needs to be built among the staff member to increase open and willing to share knowledge. In FSPS the degree of trust is still low, since some staff did not know how to share and what to be shared. Many staff are feel be tested and curious if any staff member who asking about particular knowledge.
Organizational space/physical design
According to Nonaka with ‘ba’ concept, there are three type of space, first is physical space, virtual space, mental space, and combination of them. (Burstein & Linger, 2005). Mostly every staff & lecturer does not have their own individual office, only Dean and his Vices who has own individual office. Every department has a big office that been used for all the staff & lecturer within each department. Staff & lecturer only provided with a desk and filling cabinet and in every office there some computers that will be used collectively. The desk is very close one to each other, it is approximately less than three meter apart. In this condition, the knowledge sharing process is widely open because every staff is easily meet and shares their ideas.
Each department office has a common room where located in the front of the office. This common room is usually used as an informal meeting place during break time and while waiting the before teaching. Every department has their own meeting room and main meeting room in the faculty for all of the employees.
FSPS did not use virtual space for knowledge creation and sharing. Mostly knowledge sharing are done by face to face on the office. This is because there is no support in technology by the faculty.

Reward structure
The reward structure is not well developing in organization. For instance, every creativities including doing research, develop new skills, improvement of teaching strategies, well prepare of teaching material is low and sometimes none rewards. (Taylor, 2006). This is proven by the increasing staff who like to share their knowledge and translate their tacit to explicit knowledge so every staff can use it.

Information Infrastructure
According to (Pironti, 2006) in www.wikipedia.org, information infrastructure as all of the people, processes, procedures, tools, facilities, and technology which supports the creation, use, transport, storage, and destruction of information.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_infrastructure).
Information infrastructure has a strong relation how information organized.
FSPS information infrastructure creation is usually by monthly meeting between the organization management and department coordinator, and administration staff. The meeting discusses improvement in the faculty. The result will be announced by course coordinator and administration to staff by oral.
From external, the faculty management has relation with stakeholder such as customer (student, IKOMA), and other similar organization. There frequently has a informal and formal discussion, involve in particular project, and join in the some club and society to expanse the relation.
Some staff joins in the mailing list that has the same relation with their expertise, but this is purely individual initiative not from faculty management. This method is only done by creative employees. The reason why not many people join in the particular mailing list because they are elder employee and do not know how to use technology.

Technology Infrastructure
Technology may be become the most important tool for knowledge workers to increase their productivity. Technology can solve time and distance problem, so knowledge workers can doing many task in the same time. For FSPS, technology is very important thing too, but the availability is not maximal. FSPS only use a few number of computer. As a comparison, every staff & lecturer office only has 3 or 4 computer that should be used by 15-20 people. And every office has one cable telephone and fax, so if there any call the administration staff called the person first. The fax machine also not integrated, if there is a message delivery by fax, we should go to the main administrative office to grab it.
Internet connection in the faculty is not supported with high speed connection, which is very difficult for advance use. For example of advance use is search for articles to support teaching, use teleconference, IM (instant messenger), and using audio visual. Staff & lecturer mostly use internet for sending email to their colleagues who live long distance, for short distance they usually use telephone.
Faculty web-site is not well maintaining, and very lack of information. Many of the entries are out of date and the web site is rarely up dated.
Meeting room facilitated by white board and a computer, and LCD projector is available by requirement. Classes’ facility is only OHP projector that put in every class and LCD and computer is available on requirement, so not every lecturer uses LCD to present their material to the student.
The most used technology in the faculty is telephone. Some meeting reminder is done by phone as well as gives latest information from the organization management to their employees.
Actually technology is not synonymous with knowledge management (Burstein & Linger, 2005), and knowledge management still can be done without technology. The use of technology is only for support the knowledge management process and it useless if the employee willing less to use it. (Lakin, 2001).

Knowledge Management Functional Design

Organizational Sense Making
Sense making is how people sensory and interpretation about particular information. Every people has different sense making about information and this is involve their action after receive that information. Sense making is more subject matter for individual and likelihood factor is quite strong. (Naismith, 2007). Sense-making also as an action to recognize and define hidden event. (Burstein & Linger, 2005). So every individual should understand the task that been given to them and what is all about. Because through sense making they will know what the next step to do.
In FSPS the individual sense making about their task are quit similar because the task are came from the faculty. After having task the individual try to do the task according their individual knowledge. The difference is the way they to do the task, they implement many different approach and methodologies. For example, a lecturer has task to deliver teaching in particular subject, for this task every lecturer has the same sense making which is ‘they should teach’. However, for the technical, every lecture will use different technique to complete their task. Which technique is the best, nobody knows unless their share the experience and discuss what is the weakness or strength in each technique. So it can be said that sense making influence the learning process for the employee.

Organizational Learning
Actually term organizational learning is only a symbol of learning organization. If organizational learning is a passive so learning organization is a real action of learning activity that been done by organization. Organization itself can not learn, but component within organization who can learn. For instance, we can say that an organization learn if the component in organization always make a changing and learn a new things so the organization can improve their Performa.
The learning process in FSPS including: regeneration program for every new lecturer. Every new lecturer not allowed teaching straight away but they should following the training program. New staff should attend in every class where in the future they will teach that subject, this is approximately six to twelve month. In the class new staff can learn the teaching method & strategies, and much important knowledge according to their specialty.
Monthly internal seminar. This seminar has purpose to enrich the staff with any other knowledge and discuss about the latest issues. One of the expertises in the faculty gives a speech for all the faculty staffs (lecturers) about latest issues in their field of study. Unfortunately this program is not working since there is rarely expertise who likes to present their material. Employees suppose to be learning to each other from this forum.
Send staff for school, seminar, training, and short course. This is formal knowledge management strategy that been scheduled by the faculty, but the implementation of this activities is rarely happen because of the complicated procedures and lack of financial support so some staff feel lazy to do that.
Share ideas within staff in department, this purpose also to enrich lecturer knowledge by sharing their expertise and knowledge. But this is still difficult to realize since lecturers only come to the office when they have class, most of lecturers have their own individual activities
Most of organizational knowledge is in tacit knowledge where the owner is hardly to deliver it for the whole organization. Lecturers usually give their knowledge by oral not in written, sometimes this is useful but mostly people will easily to forget.

Organizational Memory
Just like human, organization also has memory that can be used to keep, retrieve, and forget important knowledge. Organizational memory not only has role as knowledge repository but it more complex. Organizational memory is a set of collective knowledge that been managed and maintained as a guide for the future act by provides basic learning about success and failure from the past. (Burstein & Linger, 2005).
Most of organizational memory FSPS is not recorded well. Some of best practice strategies in teaching technique and teaching material are not recorded properly. This is become a problem when the particular lecturer not coming or there are the lecturer changing. The undocumented those tasks will lead the difference approach in the task, and will influence the outcome.
The expertise detail also hard to detected and human resource department only record very basic information such as name, address, and educational background. Those data are recorded in computer database and also in print version. Print version is for employees purposes that appear in employee directory.
There also very poor records in academic result such as course curriculum, course material, assignments, exam, and so on. As an educational institution those sorts of things are very important to measure the successful of education process.
The good thing in organizational memory is FSPS has internal paper based journal that publish every 3 month period. This publication consists of collaboration articles from lecturers both from FSPS and outer organization. This is very helpful to keep them in the however only in paper based so everybody can use it.

Analysis

Above are six components that build knowledge management initiative in organization. Each component has strong dependency to each other. The successful knowledge management is assessed whether those components working or not. Following this, analytical review will be given according to those six component influence the knowledge management initiative in FSPS.
Overall the organizational design is not support knowledge management initiative. This is because there is no clear policy from the faculty management regarding knowledge management initiative. Leader only give task to the staff and lecturers that should be done in such a way. So staff and lecturer did not feel that they have responsibility in knowledge sharing process in the organization.
The hierarchical organization also increase the gap between leader and employees, however for successful knowledge management initiative the role of leader is important. In department level also has similar problem even though the desk distance is less than 3 meter and theoretically this is can increase the knowledge sharing among employees (Devenport, 2005). In fact this physical design still can not facilitate knowledge sharing because there is seniority in the office, so even physically they are very close but emotionally they can not connect because of senior-junior issues. Another physical design obstacle is building separation, the impact is many people did not know each other because they work in different building, and weekly meeting not guarantee that all of the employees will come.
Those problems are more complex when there are no technologies that support it. Faculty should provide intranet for communication and sharing tool among their employees, intranet can solve the distance problem. Furthermore, because there is no fix timetable for lecturers and they often working from home or other places, it is very urgent to provide an internet portal that can be accessed by lecturers from everywhere. This portal also can be used as a place where they can put their tacit knowledge and translate into explicit so everybody can use it.
The serious impediment came from internal organization it self, where the faculty management and employees not aware that knowledge is very important for organization sustainable. This is because FSPS historical, as a part of oldest university in East Java and very well known to this moment, they feel that there is no potential competitors since the society have a big trust on this university. I think it is a dangerous situation for the faculty since many competitors grow and develop their organizational knowledge to reach a bigger market and FSPS still stood up with old paradigm and use historical glory as their value.
So the solution is FSPS managerial should change their paradigm and start to implement new strategies in organize their organizational knowledge. For instance, managerial can develop formal knowledge management initiative and make all the employees aware by giving a pamphlet or slogan that consist of their new purposes. Managerial should change senior-junior culture into a colleague and family environment, develop reward culture by give incentive for any participation in knowledge management process. Regeneration is important for the faculty, because the senior lecturer should pension on 60 or 65 years old, and on this age most of lecturer has reach Doctoral degree and professor in particular field. If there is no regeneration faculty will lack of credible human resources.
Most knowledge sharing and organizational learning are informal and employees even not aware of this situation. They though that meeting, discussion, and record their task is part of knowledge management initiative. Again the managerial should make their act more formal so the employees know what they should do.
Faculty only use paper based information resource such as reports, employees detail, education materials, that very hard to access. There also database about student detail and lectures timetable but it not online. For who would like to check and look for specific information about student or academic material or result they should go to the administration office to ask or ring them. It takes a few minute or hour to get the information that we need. Of course this information management not supports knowledge management initiative. Once faculty ever asks to the lecturers to document their intellectual knowledge but lecturers hardly do that because they do not know what purpose behind that act.

Conclusion & Recommendations

Conclusion
• FSPS did not implement knowledge management initiative formally.
• Both managerial and employees did not realize how important knowledge asset for organization.
• Organizational design is not support knowledge management initiative.
• Information management in the faculty is not well organized.
• There is no knowledge sharing culture in organization but there is regeneration process which involve senior to junior. It rarely happen knowledge sharing between junior to senior.
• Lack of technology affect the communication process among the employees, especially employees from different building.
• There is no information integrity system that make the information retrieval take a long time and effect of decision making for the leader.

Recommendations
• Need to build knowledge sharing culture among the employees, and change the organizational hierarchical structure become flatter so it can cut the gap between leader and employees.
• Change senior-junior relation and replaced by family and colleague relationship.
• Provide faculty with intranet and internet portal that can be accessed by employees from anywhere and to connect the separate building.
• Made database online for everyone to get faster access to organization information.
• Encourage employees to translate their tacit knowledge into explicit by giving incentive.
• Build the environment that support knowledge management initiative.
• Build trust among employees and remove the individual competitive value, but working together for organization.
• Encourage employees to build community of practice with other employee from different organization to develop their new knowledge, so employee will open minded about the outside world.
• Sharing best practice about teaching methods and solutions.

Word count: 4026

References:

Anonymous. What is organization design?. Retrieved May 3, 2007 From World Wide Web:
http://www.inovus.com/organiza.htm
Burstein and Linger (2005) IMS5027 Unit material, Monash University.
Burstein, F. and Linger, H. (2005). Task based knowledge management approach, (Ed) D. Schwartz, Encyclopaedia of Knowledge Management, Idea Publishing.
Davenport, TH, (2005). Thinking for a living: how to get better performance and result from knowledge workers. Harvard Business School Press, Boston.

Horvath, D, (2001). Knowledge worker. Retrieved May 3, 2007 From World Wide Web:
http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/sDefinition/
0,,sid11_gci212450,00.html

Lakin, S, (2001). BT’s approach to ideas management: why harnessing bright ideas has already saved BT UK€85 million. Knowledge Management Review, 4(1): 24-8.

Naishmith, L.(2007). Issues with sense making. Retrieved May 5, 2007 From World Wide Web:
http://knowledgefutures.wordpress.com/
2007/04/29/issues-with-sense-making/

Pironti, (2006).Information infrastructure. Retrieved May 5, 2007 From World Wide Web:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Information_infrastructure

Taylor, E.Z,(2006). The Effect of Incentives on Knowledge Sharing in Computer-Mediated Communication: An Experimental Investigation. Journal of Information Systems. (20)1: 103-116. Retrieved from

University Web Site. http://unair.ac.id

culture & trust

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Mon, 14 May 2007 03:03:00 +0000

an opinion

trust is the most important thing when employess to do the knowledge sharing. because it's nature that people like to have more knowledge than the other. and sometimes they just keep the important knowlegde that they know and it's beneficial for them if other people don't know. they feel not secure if they share knowledge and feel afraid they wouldn't get as much as they give. so trust among the employees, employess and manager/leader is very important to create sharing knowledge culture. in this case the leader should encourage all the staffs to do knowledge sharing and create trust, for example, make the company just like home which is all of the staff member are family who should help and support each other, and get rid the individual competitive but replace them to group power.the leader also should know the situation in the company, the staff' culture (they might be diferent), how to deal with different culture and unify them.

characteristics of sporting event promotion web-sites

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:47:00 +0000

By: Herfinda Artanti, Budi Anugrah, Nove Hartanto

Introduction

Web based information system has become popular since they can accommodate many kinds of document formats in one page. One page of web can contain text, pictures, sounds, graphics, maps, movies, and many more. Furthermore, many people can access the web-based information through the Internet from all around the world.
One of web-based information system functionality is as a promotion tool. This is because through web system people who like to promote event, product, or services can reach huge number of user in one time. This method is more effective rather than advertisements on TV, newspaper, or pamphlet.
One obvious example of the use of web site as a promotion tool is done by sport event management. The examples of sporting events that use websites as their promotion tool are Melbourne Grand Prix Formula 1, FINA International Championships, Australian Open Championships, and Cricket World Cup. Those events are held in Melbourne Australia except Cricket World Cup, which is held in the West Indies. Those four websites is for seasonal sporting events, it means that the websites only provide information before and during the events.
Following this, we will evaluate the four sporting event promotion websites, which are www.grandprix.com.au, www.australianopen.com.au, www.melbourne2007.com.au, and www.cricketworldcup.indya.com.

1 Purposes and Targets of the Websites
There are four major aspects that should be answered while evaluating the websites.

1.1 The basic purposes of the websites
The major purpose of the websites as event promotion tools is to provide internet users with information regarding the event. The websites need to have the ability to reach a huge number of audiences all around the world.
The other purposes of those websites are to provide complete information and news regarding the sport event, such as general information about the event, event and match timetable, the venue map, venue information, the match result, the match replay (in Australian open website), information about the athletes and teams, how to buy ticket, and many more.
The other side benefit of the website is that they also promote the venues, cities, and countries where the events are held. They support sport tourism, where people who enjoy the sporting atmosphere when they came to the city.
The websites also have other function to provide the online store and online ticket. It is really helpful for people who live across the country and would like to buy tickets, merchandise, or sporting products. Online catalogues are available for customers to download. The catalogue includes products picture, product materials, sizes, specifications, and prices. User also can buy tickets through online ticketing. Those four websites only provide links to other website if the user wanted to buy ticket. The link is www.ticketek.com.au and www.eticketing.co.uk.

1.2 The website targeted user
There is no particular age as for the targeted users. The websites contain general information and everybody who interesting in this sport are allowed to get access. No gender restriction since the sporting event management likes to attract visitor as much as they can.
The potential users are the particular sport fans. Usually the sport fans will look for the latest news of their favorite sports, and the easiest way is by accessing the official websites.
Stakeholders, official sport committee and business are also as potential users for this site. The officials and business members use the website as their commercial sponsor media. Official sport committee, athletes, team also use website as a media to follow the latest news during the event.
Tourists and internet users are the next target after the potential user above. Tourists can be potential website users if we can attract them by the supporting information about the sport events. For example, the brief promotion boards or pamphlets about the event that consist of website address may persuade tourists or internet users to go to the website, and make plans to visit to the sport venues.

2 Websites assessment based on five web-based key technological capabilities areas
There are five key technological capabilities of web that web-based systems can take advantages of. This section assesses the extent to which these five elements are exploited by the websites in order to accomplish their purposes.

2.1 Connectivity of computers and other digital devices
Connectivity is exploited when there are transactions between two digital devices using computer networks to link to people and resources. Connectivity capability includes aspects related to how users get connected to the websites. (Wikipedia.com).
Users can access the websites by using any kind of digital devices such as desktop PC, laptop, PDA, and mobile phones. The sites can be accessed from home, work, internet café, libraries or computer labs, internet café, etc. The transmission types that users use also varied, from dial-up, broadband ADSL, broadband cable, broadband wireless, satellite broadband, to GPRS.
Since the websites are yearly events’ promotion tools, users access the websites mostly during the events is held. Users may access the website multiple times a day (1-5 times) depends on the information they look for. Websites are expected to be able to hold large amount of users at peak time without slowing their performance. Each user may open 5-20 pages per visit.
Other important aspect in connectivity is the website address. It is important to choose the right words that represent the contents of the website. www.grandprix.com.au, www.australianopen.com.au, and www.cricketworldcup.indya.com are good URLs, because they clearly describe what the website is about. On the other hand, FINA’s website address www.melbourne2007.com.au, may confuse users.
Secure transactions are required for users who want to access the secured portals, such as National Federation members and Accreditation (FINA) and Media (GrandPrix).

2.2 Document linking via hypertext
The four websites have different uses of hypertext applied. www.cricketworldcup.indya.com and www.australianopen.com.au provide more detailed information compared to the other two websites. Cricket website displays long documents as a whole in one page. Conversely, the Australian Open, Grandprix, and FINA’s websites break the documents into smaller pieces in different pages, and use hyperlink for enabling navigations between pages. The way of displaying information affects how users access the information. The more pieces of information in the website, the number of clicks a user need in order to get particular information also increases (Atchison, M., 2007a)..
All websites also have links to external websites, such as www.ticketek.com.au sponsors’ websites, etc.

2.3 Multimedia representation of information
These four website contain multimedia information, which includes images, video, sound, and animation. In order to make the multimedia contents work, users are required to have the required softwares installed (Atchison, M., 2007a). Multimedia requirements and details of each website are as follows:
• www.australianopen.com.au:
 Media types:
o Radio: .flash
o Video: flash
 Plug-ins: Macromedia Flash Player
• www.cricketworldcup.indya.com:
 Media types:
o Video : .wmp
 Plug-ins: Windows Media Player 7.0 or higher
 Platforms: Windows 2000/2003/XP Home/Pro. No other platforms.
 Browsers: IE 6.0 or higher, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or higher.
 Users need to login to the Videos portal
• www.grandprix.com.au:
 Media types:
o Video: .mov
 Plug-ins: Quicktime
• www.melbourne2007.com.au:
 Media types:
o Podcasts: .mp4 (need to be saved to the computer)
o Video: .mov
 Plug-ins: Quicktime
Download times are depends on how big the file is how fast the data transmission is. Bigger data transmission is preferable. Slower internet access like dial up is not suitable, since it will take a long time to download the files.
+
2.4 Document formatting for display and presentation
The attractiveness of the display or formatting of the information is important to the usability of the websites. All the four sites basically have consistent basic formatting and layout approach. They basically use the same template, with frames on the top, left, and right side of each page. Page banners with events’ logos, images, and titles, navigation bars on the centre top and left side of the pages. Text on the top of each page shows paths users taken to reach the current page, so those users know where they are in the website, so that users’ know where they are.
The most recognisable display aspect in the websites is their display theme. Each website’s colours and theme are based on the events’ logo.
www.cricketworldcup.indya.com has a poor display for advertisement. There are too many big advertisements in every page. The other websites have one or two medium-size advertisements in one page, which are acceptable.
2.5 Document formatting for information searching and retrieval
All the four websites basically have the same structure of displaying information. Information are broken up into pieces, and put in different pages. Summary of information are displayed in the front layer of the websites. Users will need to dig in to the website for more detailed information by using the hypertext and menus provided. Parent and child menus help users to know what is available in the website.
www.australianopen.com and www.grandprix.com.au provides search engine for information retrieval. There is a search field positioned on the top side of every page. Results for both search engines are sorted by relevance. www.australianopen.com is pretty interesting. It has ‘tennis ball’ icons next to every search result, showing how accurate the result is. Results with four tennis balls have the highest accuracy rate. Overall the performances of both websites’ search engines are good.
www.melbourne2007.com.au does not have large information. User can explore the contents of the website and search for a particular information by selecting links provided in the menu bar and cross-references in the pages. www.cricketworldcup.indya.com contains a large amount of information, but it has a very detailed menu bar on the left page side that summarises the content of the website clearly. So it is pretty easy for users to find the information they want.

All the five capabilities are important for the success of the websites. But considering the nature and the purpose of the website are connectivity and hypertext are the most important ones. These websites need to be available at any time and able to hold large numbers of users at the same time. The right use of hypertext is also crucial. Since the purpose of events’ websites is to provide information, we do not want our customers confused and lost in the site.

3 Technological key issues
There are some technological key issues that the web developers need to consider in developing websites.
Connectivity aspect has some issues that developers need to pay attention for, such as; different user has different device and has different way to connect to the Internet. Website developers should build website with minimum requirements that can be used by common user or all user with different way to access internet and with any device such as desktop, notebook, PDA, and mobile phone.
Security is also interesting issue. Developer has to make sure that this website is secure or else people will not visit this website.
The next issue is in choosing the website address. It will be better if the user can know the content of the website by their domain name. A bad example is www.melbourne2007.com.au. Internet users may mistakenly think that it was a tourism website. A better choice of name such as www.finamelbourne2007.com may solve the issue. The developer also should take account that at certain time the numbers of end users who access the site may reach its peak. After one match in Australia Open a large number of people may access that site at the same time to get the latest result for the game.
In using hypertext, developers have to make sure that the words chosen for hypertext are not ambiguous so that users can access information faster because they know what kind of information they can get for a particular hypertext. The developer also has to make sure that all links work properly. Developer must aware that too many clicks will make the users frustrated. If they did not like it, they will leave the site.
Hypertext is very helpful for end user but the developer had to make sure that the end user will not get lost or at least they still know in which part they are on that website.
The third issue is multimedia. The developer can enrich the users’ experiences by getting multimedia instead of just plain text. But developers also have to consider several conditions f multimedia on their web site. For example the developer had to make sure that the file size of their multimedia file could create a bad experience of user because of it will decrease their internet access. And have to made sure that the multimedia file is easy accessible for all user they have to considered what kind of plug in that user need to enable them to access that file.
The next issue is document formatting for display. User interface is very important in deign a web, it might be not the most important but it is the first impression of that website for user, it decide that whether the user stay on that website or they will move to another website. According to Jacob Nielsen (Wikipedia.org, 2007), the guru of web usability, there are five key that have to considered in building a web
• Learnability. Web must be easy to learn.
• Rememberability. The web has to be easy to remember
• Efficiency of use. Keep it simple, requires little work to get information that we need
• Reliability in use. The web has works correctly as what the user expect from the system
• User satisfaction. The final key is that users must be satisfied. (Wikipedia.org, 2007)
The last issue is document formatting for information searching and retrieval. There are few things that developers need to consider for this area. The search engines need to be able to return relevant results sorted by relevance. It also have to provide validations if users input misspelled words, and suggestion for similar words. Time is also an important aspect for the search engine’s performance.

4 Advances in the technology for websites improvements
There many advances in technology that can help developers in improving the websites in order to provide users with better systems.
The growth of technology in electronic devices area nowadays, for example ubiquitous computing, makes it possible for end users to access internet and websites from anywhere and at anytime. It will be easier for the developer to market their products.
The use Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) for HTML displays makes it easier for users to access websites from different devices. Different templates and style sheets are applied to different devices (Atchison, M., 2007a). For example, large text alternative for visually-impaired users or a layout optimized for small displays for mobile phones. A semantic web also could be breakthrough in web technology even it is still considered to be impossible by some people. The idea from Berner Lee to make websites understandable by computer and to make standardization to all websites on the Internet will change the web-based information systems in the future (Atchison, M., 2007c).

5 Conclusions
There are five key technological capabilities of web that web-based systems can take advantages of, which are connectivity, hypertext, multimedia, document formatting for display and presentation, and document formatting for information searching and retrieval. Four sporting event promotion websites were assessed based on these aspects.
In general, the four websites support all the five key capabilities. All the websites can be reached by users easily from anywhere using any devices. Hypertext also plays a big role in information linking and display, with consistent outlook. Two of the websites also has search engines that help the users finding information faster.
However, there are some parts of the websites need to be considered. The first one is regarding the website address name for FINA’s website. The other thing in FINA website is that multimedia was not well supported. GrandPrix website also has poor menu items’ names selections, which sometimes confuses the users. And Cricket World Cup put too many advertisements in one page. These problems can be solved by selecting a better website address and menu item names, as well as display standards.
We cannot judge whether the website is right or wrong, bad or good because every websites has its own purpose and its own way to do it. The important thing we should keep in mind is to develop a website that satisfies its users, which is the one that provides information that can be accessed easily.

References

Atchison, M. (2007a).Web-based system development: element of the web (Lecture notes week 3). Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, School of Information Management and Systems.

Atchison, M. (2007b).Web-based system development: element of the web (Lecture notes week 4). Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, School of Information Management and Systems.

Atchison, M. (2007c).Web-based system development: element of the web (Lecture notes week 5). Melbourne, Australia: Monash University, School of Information Management and Systems.

Connectivity (computer science).(2007). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 14, 2007 from World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Connectivity_%28computer_science%29

http://www.australianopen.com.au

http://www.cricketworldcup.indya.com

http://www.grandprix.com.au

http://www.melbourne2007.com.au

Usability.(2007). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 14, 2007 from World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability

Are incentives in knowledge management important??

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Sun, 13 May 2007 11:59:00 +0000

A staff in ‘ABC’ enterprise refuses to share their intellectual knowledge and to use the available knowledge to support organization human resource. This is because the enterprise did not give rewards for every contribution that he/she given. Knowledge sharing culture that occurs in the enterprise is no rewards culture, and the enterprise argues that staff responsibility is giving their knowledge to organization without any reward because they are already being paid. In this situation staff feel there is no advantages for them whether they share ideas or not. In my opinion, giving rewards or incentive is very important thing in knowledge sharing culture. Incentive also motivates staff to do share knowledge and willing to learn new things. (Does this mean that only they give incentives people will share their knowledge. Is it true of everyone?)
Knowledge sharing is very important for organization, because without knowledge sharing activities organization cannot sustain and organization gradually will loose its competitive edge. (Zhang, 2005). And one of the method that been used by organization to motivate its employees is using incentives scheme.
According to www.wikipedia.org incentive has meaning as any factor (financial or non-financial) that provides a motive for a particular course of action, or counts as a reason for preferring one choice to the alternatives. In knowledge management approach, incentive both material and immaterial is being used to motivate staff to share their knowledge. There are two types of incentives namely intrinsic incentive and extrinsic incentive. Extrinsic incentive consist of material (such as money and goods) and immaterial (career, leadership, working environment, qualification). Intrinsic incentive strongly correlated with the work itself. (Semar,2004).
Feurstein et.al. state that when there is no explicit reward in enterprise incentive scheme, the employees prefer to hide their intellectual knowledge rather that share to public.(Feurstein et.al., 2001). It is obvious that employees more appreciate to share their intellect if they are assured on being rewarded.. Employees also think that their intellect is not free. Muller at.al. adding that incentive brings the positive effect on knowledge sharing. (Muller et.al., 25). Through the incentive scheme employees feel more motivated and challenged to learn and share new things. Employees enjoy take and give environment as well as the increase their creativity. Furthermore Dell and Grayson (1998) in (Taylor, 2006) indicate that incentives can encourage knowledge sharing before developing a knowledge sharing culture. Giving financial incentive also can motivate employee helping each other. (Taylor, 2006).
Incentive can be given both to individual and group employee. The group incentive will motivate the team work task and increase the helps other intensity since one task is done by some people. However, individual incentive or usually called tournament based incentive will increase the individualistic and encourage competition. Bonner et al, 2000 in Taylor, 2006). This is quite complicated for the organization when apply an incentive for its employees, sometimes some employees have a conflict to each other because of competition.
Another opinion, applying financial incentive is ineffective (Herzberg, 1968, Bonner & Sprinkle, 2002) in (Taylor, 2006). It supported by Bock & Kim (2002)and Bock et al (2005) that found an expected reward is unrelated with knowledge sharing attitudes.(Taylor, 2006) . Furthermore, Dixon, 2000 said that financial incentive do not promote knowledge sharing. (Taylor, 2006).
In conclusion, incentive both material and immaterial still becomes the primary method to increase and motivate knowledge sharing activities in organization. Employees feel that rewards & incentives is an appropriate barter method.

References:
Anonymous. Incentive. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from World Wide Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive

Feurstein, M., et.al., (2001). Incentive to share knowledge. Proceedings of the 34th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Retrieved from

Muller, R M., et.al.,(2005). The influence of incentive and culture in knowledge sharing. Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Retrieved from

Semar, W,(2004).:Incentive systems in knowledge management to support cooperative distributed forms of creating and acquiring knowledge. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Knowledge Engineering - IKE'04. Retrieved May 3, 2007 from World Wide Web http://www.inf-wiss.uni-konstanz.de/People/WS/ike04-cc.pdf

Taylor, E.Z,(2006). The Effect of Incentives on Knowledge Sharing in Computer-Mediated Communication: An Experimental Investigation. Journal of Information Systems. (20)1: 103-116. Retrieved from

Zhang, Z,(2005). Managing knowledge assets in organizations: Role of incentives and information systems. DAI-A 66/12, Jun 2006. Retrieved from

Comparison between database search and internet search engines.

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Sun, 06 May 2007 06:29:00 +0000

by:nove anna (April 18, 2007)

Introduction
The information technology enhances triggers community to produce and spread information vastly. Internet is one of new technology that becomes very important to spread the information. Million of people can put any information (data, news, research paper, advertising, and even junk information) through the internet, and people from a whole world can access it. Now people are live in the information overload age, people need time to determine whether information is accurate or not. Some people feel stress with the information overload and they hardly found the information that they want. For instance if typing brain tumours in Yahoo search engine, the result is 866.000 entries and much more entries from Google search 2.280.000, and 3674 entries from Proquest Health and Medical database.
To solve the information overload problem is by using the search strategies. Use the right key words and anticipate the different word term that used by different search engine, such as Google prefer use word tumor rather than tumour, use the appropriate truncation symbols, and the most important thing is understand what information that we are looking for. When start searching try to make the key words as specific rather than in general. If the key word is specific the searching result is limited, so it’s easily to found the right article / information.
The purpose of this report is to help BITS found their right information effectively. Another purpose is to help them to understand the searching process and understanding about the search strategies. This report uses a topic as an example which is Whether mobile phones create human brain tumours. This topic is being chosen because it’s still become controversial topic in the telecommunication technology and medical field. According to Nielsen/NetRating in http://www.dcita.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/
40415/IE_INDEX_2006.pdf
80% of Australia’s population over the age 16 use a mobile phone, both Italy and Sweden become the larger mobile phone user with 84%. The significant increase of mobile phone user is interesting because many scientists doing some research and study about relationship mobile phone and brain tumour.

Discussion

Form 1. Database searching: Proquest & MEDLINE
Search strategies
In the first form, database is being use to search the article about whether mobile phone cause humans brain tumour. For database searching I use Monash library online resource. The first step is by using library database. After opening database page, we determine what the subject that we want to. There are two ways to determine the database subject, first we can go directly to the subject index that been arranged alphabetically, in this topic I chose health sciences subject. The other method is by wrote the subject in the search box, I type health as my subject in the box. On health sciences subject there are six key resources database and 53 support databases. However, through typing health in the search box found 110 databases alphabetically structured. First method is more effective because we are recommended to look at the key databases and then additional databases if we need other information. Usually the recommended key database is the most match database with the subject, so we can start to search the article through those databases. On the second method, there are no priorities which database is the most important because the result is in alphabetical order, for who don’t have experience in health or medicine database this will bring difficulty to determine which one is the best database to help found the right articles. People only speculate and maybe use the first top database because they confuse. So the best is use the first method while determine the database subject rather than by type the database subject.
The databases that been used here are MEDLINE, and Proquest health & medical complete. I chose those databases because it’s recommended by database search engine and well known in health science area. The key words to search the article is mobile phone and brain tumours, the word mobile phone also called cellular phone, tumour or tumor, the use different term is to expand the result. There are many results about the effect of mobile phone on human’s brain tumour in different formats such as pdf, html, or xml, and the article types in the database could be the research article, case study, feature, news, or review article. Even though there are so many entries found but it’s not easy to pick the right one since the article requirement should at least have ten pages or 4000 words. The use of advance search is helping to limited the result. In this case I type mobile/cellular phone AND brain tumours/tumor that should be appear in the title and the format is pdf. This method is quite effective because we only read the title that contains the key words, and if the title matches then we can read the abstract of the article and decide whether that article is important or not.

The Search Result
There are still controversial issues whether mobile phone cause human brain tumor or not. Mobile phone firstly used in Sweden in the late of 80s ( Lennart Hardell et al., 2005). And by early 2000 the number of mobile user is around 500 million world wide (Peter D Inskip et al., 2001). There are two types of mobile phone that widely used in the world, analog (Nordic Mobile Telephone), and digital (Global System for Mobile Communication). Recently analog is rarely used.
Many researchers assume that the radiofrequency radiation when use mobile phone can increase risk in brain tumour. The cumulative of mobile use, the mobile use duration, the position of mobile, the use of ear, and the type of handset also become a consideration of triggering brain tumour. Some researches are held to proof that mobile phone has relation with brain tumour or not.
Research that involving people who diagnosed with tumour such as glioma, meningioma, acoustic neuroma, malignant brain tumour. The research is held in the US, Sweden, and UK with various different respondent. The research method is use case-control. Case is respondent who diagnosed with brain tumour, however control is the people who selected randomly. Both case and control are interviewed or given questionnaire. The interview questions are vary such as when the first time and last time use mobile phone, how long the average use everyday, the cumulative use every week, what the brand of the mobile that they use, what the position of mobile, what ear that they use, how they held the handset, how many times they change the mobile.
The research conduct on 1994-1998 in the US by Inskip et al conclude that there was little or no indication of increase risk of glioma, meningioma, and acoustic neuroma associated with any use or cumulative use of mobile. He added both people who ever having use and regular use has no significant associated with the relative with glioma, meningioma, and acoustic neuroma. This invention is supported by Sarah J Hepworth et al. that conduct research in the UK in 2000-2003. This research also put emphasis on relation the use of mobile phone with glioma in adults. She proof that there is no association between risk of glioma and the use of analog mobile phone. Another supporter is Stefan Lonn et al. who doing research in Sweden in 2000-2002. He also didn’t found any proof that mobile phone related to risk of brain tumour.
On the other hand, Hardell et al. believed that the use of digital and cordless phone increased risk of malignant brain tumour, and the use of comabination of analog and digital phone more increased risk of brain tumour. This result was conclude after they conduct a research during 2000-2003 in Sweden. (Hardell et al., 2005)

Form 2. web searching: Yahoo & Google
Search strategies
I use both Yahoo and Google search engine to do web searching. There are two methods while searching use web search engine. First, use basic search that can be found in www.yahoo.com or www.google.com and second, use the advance search yahoo with http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8 and Google http://www.google.com.au/advanced_search?hl=en and Google scholar as well in www.scholar.google.com . In this case I only use Google basic search by typing mobile phone and brain tumor (rather than tumour). The results are 534.000 titles that contain the key words. Then just doing a quick scanning the entry titles and open the page if the title match with what we looking for. Sometimes those pages refer to a free journal article and sometimes we should pay. While using Yahoo search I also use basic search because it’s easier and we can just put any key words. I use the same key words with Google search, and the result is 463.000 entry titles. Yahoo accept both tumour and tumor term, Google will produce more entries when we use cellular phone rather than mobile phone (1.030.000), while Yahoo produce less entries when use cellular phone (326.000). There is no the same article in the first page in Yahoo and Google. The problem occur similar to database searching when fulfill the articles requirement (10 pages or at least 4.000 words).

The Search Result
The articles found from internet search engine are Tumour risk associated with use of cellular telephones or cordless desktop telephones by Lennart Hardell et al., this research article also use case-control study to prove that mobile phone has relation with brain tumour. In his research result Hardell believed that use of cellular and cordless increased risk for brain tumours, manly acoustic neuroma and malignant brain tumour. However, there is no consistent of an increased risk that found for salivary gland tumours. (Hardell et al., 2006)
Another article Mobile phone use and cancer by M Kundi talk about the exposure of microwave radiation effect to the human brain. He also assess the previous research about associated the use of mobile phone with human brain tumor. Furthermore he added that only four of nine studies found evidence of increased risk, while the other five failed. Kundi also criticize that the duration of mobile phone use is too short and lack of proper assessment in most studies. Most of studies use case-control studies method. He conclude that the use of mobile phone that exposure microwaves near the head for a long term may effect and increase risk of cancer. (Kundi, 2004)
The other two articles Cellular telephone use and brain tumors (Peter D Inskip et al., 2001) and Mobile phone use and risk of glioma in adults: case-control study (Sarah J Hepworth et al., 2006) are the same with article that found in database. So it not will discuss here.

Comparison: Web Search VS Database Search

• Searching strategy through web search is easier rather than database search. This is because the web search engine gives absolute freedom for the user to use any keywords. We don’t need to be afraid to make mistake typing the wrong keywords.
• Web search engine gives so many entries, so we can choose it. Web search engine is not that bad. Some people argue that source from web search engine is less credible than database search. Two of four articles from web search are the same with database search.
• The article quality is quite similar.
• In web search engine offer one search box for any subject, however database search contain many subject that sometimes make user confuse to choose where the appropriate database is.
• Not every entry in database is long article, very short article or even news is usually found.
• It’s easy found the latest factual information through web search rather than database.

Conclusion

The use of right keywords is the key success while search an article. Doesn’t matter use web or database search. Even though web search is more tolerant than database, but if you type the right keywords it will help to found article more quickly. Topic interpretation also important while searching. In web search, don’t only open the first and second page of entries, but also open the 3rd, 4th, or 5th, because every web site owner want to put their site in the 1st page of search result even its not relevant, so sometimes when we open 1st page of entries and feel didn’t match at all just try the next page.
Use trial and error searching method, don’t be afraid to type different keyword and see what happen. Sometimes through trial and error we found the unpredictable article. This method is the best way in search strategies.

References:
Hepworth, S.J. et al., (2006). Mobile phone use and risk of glioma in adults: case- control study. BMJ. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from World Wide Web
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/332/7546/
883?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=
&fulltext=hepworth&
searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Hepworth, S.J.et al., (2006). Mobile phone use and risk of glioma in adults: case –control study. BMJ. 332(7546):883-7

Herdell, L. et al., (2006). Tumour risk associated with use of celluar telephones or cordless desktop telephones. World Journal of Surgical Oncology. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from World Wide Web
http://www.wjso.com/content/4/1/74

Herdell, L. et al., (2006). Case-control study of the association between the use of cellular and cordless telephones and malignant brain tumors diagnosed during 2000-2003. Environmental Research. 100(2):232-41

http://www.dcita.gov.au/__data/
assets/pdf_file/40415/IE_INDEX_2006.pdf

Inskip, P.D. et al., (2001). Cellular telephone use and brain tumors. The New England Journal of Medicine. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from World Wide Web http://nejm.org

Inskip, P.D. et al., (2001). Cellular-telephone use and brain tumors. The New England Journal. 344(2):79-86

Johanson, G. (2007). Controlled vocabulary and thesauri. Lecture 4 IMS5016

Kundi, M. (2004). Mobile phone use and cancer. Occup Environ Med. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from World Wide Web
http://www.innenraumanalytik.at/
pdfs/kundi_cancer.pdf

Lonn, S. et al., (2005). Long-term mobile phone use and brain tumor risk. American Journal of Epidemiology. 161(6):526-35

Paperless world??

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Sun, 06 May 2007 06:08:00 +0000

Dhelpi white paper scenario in my personal experience

by:nove anna (March 13, 2007)

According to the text (Delphi white paper), the report was made in 1994, more than a decade ago. The concept of intelligent document, e-document and single point of access that emerges attracts the attendees. As sited in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_document , intelligent document is general term to describe web document that have multifunctional better than paper document. This document usually in electronic form and they are interactive. Intelligent document is more promising in the future because it form can change by request , so it’s suitable for supporting business process, improve customer service, and make a quick decision making. Following that the single point of access will help user to gain the information in various form in the same time.
Nowadays e-document management system is widely used by some organization especially big organization. Based on my experience, as a customer for the one of Australian organization that has already implemented the intelligent document system, that’s very helpful for us as user. For instance, when we register our self to the hospital, the staff will automatically put our data into the online form, they record our name, address, health history, insurance number, picture, what disease that we got, our signature, and many more. They put our data in one single form, so if the doctor needs data about their patient they just simply look at the online document on their computer, or if the administrations need information about the patient for payment matter they don’t need to open the file cabinet and search by name. This document is not fixed anymore but the staff can add some new information, change the information about the patient, change address, phone number, insurance number, etc. How much time and money that organization saves by use intelligent document, the improving of customer services, it’s precious. As a customer I feel the improvement of services is very satisfaction. It’s just a simple experience about of being part of the implementation of electronic document, so if we look back to 1994 when this concept was made and now we realize that the concept is real.
However, in another personal experience while dealing with document, the concept of intelligent document is very far from my documentation activity. In my organization where I was working a year ago, e-document is hardly use. Many documents are still on paper based. My organization is a big and well known in my home country, but we still use paper based to record the staff history, student detail, financial report, lectures timetable, and most of organization activity. That was very irritating while we deal with the new information or when we need to change the old document, in this case we should make a new document with a new record and dispose the old document. Lost of document are a common thing and the possibility of misuse the document is increase. So in this condition document is static.
Some paper documents are now converted into electronic one, but still not solve the problem because of inconsistency. Converting the paper document into electronic document is a proof that the organization try to apply the modern electronic document management concept, even though it’s very simple process while many modern documentation concept is appear such as intelligent document, online document, and web document. The new concept of the e-document is hardly implemented because of the lack of knowledge workers, lack of financial support, and management support.
To answer this question I have two different experience of the realization of the modern concept of document. One experience is very close to the realization concept even though I just the outsider of the organization, and another experience I have involve with the organization that very far away with the modern concept. For my own point of view, electronic document is 100 times more helpful. But we can’t expect all of the organization in the world will change from paper based to electronic document easily because every organization has their own nature, culture, and goals. But sooner or later, every organization needs to change to e-document management.

Reference:
Intelligent document, Retrieved March, 12 2007 from the World Wide Web:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_document

(1994). The document is the process. Delphi White Paper. NY: CMP Publications Inc.

The effectiveness of using intranet as a knowledge management strategy

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Sat, 05 May 2007 07:13:00 +0000

by:nove variant (april 28,2007)

The use of communication technology such as Intranet is one of strategy that been used by some organization to support knowledge management process. Some organizations develop the internet technology to transform knowledge sharing process among the employees. Intranet also can solve distance problem, help to streamline workflow from one area to another area, and organization can conduct training through it. (Taylor, 1997). Some organizations claim that the use of intranet is really effective to cut the time spent. For example, by using traditional training method, an organization can spent one month training program in one particular place. If the organization has three branches, they will conduct the same training three times and with longer time. However, by applying the intranet some organization only conduct training one time and use the same time for all the branches.
Cynthia P. Ruppel and Susan J Harrington in their article ‘Sharing Knowledge through Intranets…’, add that intranet also can be used as a collaboration application such as discussion group, workflow, and document management. (Ruppel &Harrington, 2001). Intranet can become a dynamic and living environment for knowledge management such as support communities of practice, provide staff directories and expertise finder, collaborative environment, and provide a web-blog, wiki, milist for the staff. (Robertson, 2004)
The use of the intranet will be effective and achieve an oranization’s objectives only if the employees are willing to share their knowledge with each other, and the organization can create a knowledge sharing culture among their employees. The technology in knowledge management is only 20% while the other dominant is culture and management issue. (Ruppel & Harrington, 2001). The intranet will be useless if the employees do not use it. This is the manager’s or leader responsibility to encourage their employees to use this technology. A reward culture also becomes an important key to support the intranet success. In this case the role of manager to set up the friendship and working as a family environment, so every employee feels free to share their idea. Kirsner in Rupper & Harrington states that the success of intranet is 60% of communication and only 40% of technology. (Ruppel & Harrington, 2001). The more organization has a sharing culture, the more enhance of the intranet ability as a sharing knowledge tools. The use of intranet as a single strategy to knowledge sharing is not effective, since knowledge management not deal with technology but how to encourage the employees willing to share their ideas and technology then support the knowledge sharing process so the knowledge sharing will be more effective.

References:
Robertson, J, (2004). Intranets and knowledge sharing. Retrieved April 25, 2007 from World Wide Web
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/
kmc_intranetsknowledge/index.html

Ruppel, C P., Harrington, S J.,(2001). Km on intranets and the fifth dimension (ethics). IEEE Potensial, 20(2):19-24.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.ezproxy.
lib.monash.edu.au/iel5/45/20647/00954652.pdf?
tp=&arnumber=954652&isnumber=20647

___________,(2001). Sharing knowledge through intranets: a study of organizational culture and intranet implementation. IEEE Transaction On Professional Communication. 44(1): 37-52

Taylor, M,(1997). Intranets a new technology changes all the rules. Telecommunications. 31(1):39-40

EDRMS strategies for online goverment

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 03 May 2007 22:59:00 +0000

Recordkeeping Implications and Imperatives for Government Online Strategies
and Recordkeeping Requirement

by:nove variant (March, 2007)

The emerging of information and communication technology push government institution to change their services system from traditional based system into modern based system. These changes also happen in government recordkeeping and document system. Traditional government services system still use paper based, however the modern system tried to avoid using paper as less as they can. So, through the government online, both staff and citizen can access government document any time by their web site, and government can communicate to their citizen in 24/7. Government online bring some benefits such as time efficiency for the citizens and staffs, they don’t need to go to the government office if they like to register for the tax file number for example. More transparent, staffs deal with electronic document that hardly manipulated.
There some recordkeeping implications and imperatives strategies that should be done to realize the government online. First, in modern recordkeeping system we deal with electronic document rather than paper, and we should consider about legal matter of these documents. Many document in paper based are converted into electronic, and decision to destroy the paper document is still debatable (should we eliminate whole paper document, eliminate some of them, or still keep it). For instance, the authentic of document signature, email document, transaction document, and any other important document.
Second strategy is preparing recordkeeping infrastructures. This is include prepare recordkeeping methodology, the devices such as computers, scanner, intranet and internet connection, recordkeeping software, and web page. These recordkeeping infrastructures are important to create, manage, stored, and spread the document.
Third strategy is staff reengineering. This gives some new skills to the staff that require to maintaining electronic document. For instance, skill how to convert paper document to e-document, skill how to use document online, how to process online transaction, and many others computer and internet skill.
Fourth strategy is promoting and end-user education. End user means the citizen that use government online services. This is important because the purpose of online government is to improve their services to citizen, and this is useless if the citizen do not know how to use it. So in this case the government should give clear guideline how to access their information.
Fifth strategy is about security. There are two type securities that will be implementing in government online, internal and external security. For internal security, each staff have their own password to access the document so they can’t see any other staff’ document without permission. For external security the e document is equipped with security system, which is the end user can only read and fill the form but they can’t change he document content.
Online government is very vulnerable system since we use internet connection and document become the most important thing, many people in the world can access easily, and they can misuse the document anytime so security become a big issue here. However we can’t avoid not using electronic document, what we need is confident while implementing online system and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
The recordkeeping requirement starting from identifies the document, create information into document, because not all information is document. Classify and stored document so it will be easy to found or retrieve. Maintain the document and keep the document up to date, determine what kind of document that should be disposed.

References:
DIRKS - Step F Design a recordkeeping system, Retrieved March, 20 2007 from the World Wide Web: http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/recordkeeping/design_a_
recordkeeping_system_1977.asp

Kansas electronic recordkeeping strategy: a white paper (1999), Retrieved March, 18 2007 from the World Wide Webhttp://www.kshs.org/government/records/electronic/
electronicrecordswhitepaper.htm

Knowledge management and culture

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Thu, 03 May 2007 11:20:00 +0000

The strategies of knowledge sharing across culture
by: nove variant (april 27, 2007)

The globalization issue and ICT development make some organization expand their business globally. The implementation of the ICT can solve the time and boundaries problem. One organization can communicate to the other organization easily, and the staff can work telecommuting from their home. A global organization may have headquarter in Melbourne, the administrative in Tokyo, and marketing in South Africa, this is just because they want to reach as many markets as they can. The organization not only employs Australian people but people around the world, with different language, different culture, and different experience. Another example is Monash University in Australia has branches in Malaysia, South Africa, and Italia. Australia as a country with western culture while Malaysia is eastern culture brings many differences.
Since the main organization should share their knowledge to the whole branches organization which is have different language, culture, and custom. In my point of view, knowledge sharing among different culture is very difficult and the most challenging for a manager in an organisation. The obvious example is during the lecture, many students are international student with non English speaking language when the lecturer is English speaking. This problem can influence the knowledge sharing quality, some student may only receive less than the lecturer expected. This also happen while delivering the organization task instruction from the main organization to the other branches, there some difficulties to interpret the task. Main organization cannot treat their branches same as they do because the branches’ staff have different culture, language, and experience. For Australian organization may apply open (western centric) knowledge sharing but Malaysia branches may more closed and shy to share their knowledge (not to share centric),(Chowdhury,2006), so the manager cannot apply the same system to encourage knowledge sharing among the staff.
The purpose of knowledge sharing is to gain the individual knowledge and use it as organization assets. Knowledge sharing could be everywhere and by everyone. Everywhere meaning there is no boundaries of time and place. However culture can be a barrier in knowledge sharing process. (Li & Scullion,2006). A manager should aware of this condition because a manager should make sure that knowledge sharing succeeds. According to Yamazaki & Kayes, 2004 in Kayes, Kayes & Yamazaki, 2005 the seven cross cultural learning competencies that helps a manager to share knowledge across culture are:
1. Valuing different.
2. Building relationship in the host.
3. Listening and observing.
4. Coping with.
5. Translating complex.
6. Taking action
7. Managing others (Kayes et.al.,2005).
Ellis in her article ‘Sharing best practice’ states that the organization should ensure that the all organization location (branches) has the same access to follow the instruction and uniform procedures.(Ellis,2001). This indicates that wherever the branches of organization is held they should get the same information and knowledge with the main organization.
Understanding a new culture and custom is a key to knowledge sharing across culture. Through the culture we learn people’s characteristic and diversity. The way people share their knowledge is very different, it depends on their experience and culture. Many organizations are going global and gain success because they learn the host culture.

References:
Chowdhury, N.,(2006). Knowledge management in Malaysia—why sow adaption?. Knowledge Board. Retrieved April 23, 2007 from World Wide Web http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/2643

Ellis, K,(2001). Sharing best practice. Training, 38(7):32-38

Kayes A.B., Kayes D.C., Yamazaki Y.(2005). Transferring knowledge across cultures: a learning competencies approach. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 18(4) pp.87-100

Lehaney B, [et al].(2003). Beyond knowledge management. Idea Group Publishing, London.

Li, S., Scullion, H.,(2006). Bridging the distance: managing cross-border knowledge holders. Asia Pacific J Manage. Retrieved April 23, 2007 from World Wide Web http://www.springerlink.com/content/
63m17w01r628nq52/fulltext.pdf

imagine-john lennon

noreply@blogger.com (noah) — Wed, 02 May 2007 02:20:00 +0000

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

note: we all know that john was a dreamer . he said no possesion, no countries, no religion. i'm so curious whether he had religion or not. sharing the world??haha, the world is mine.