Monthly Archives: March 2012

Note the main things you have learned in Part 1

I’ve skimmed over most of the activities in this block so far out of necessity. There’s been some interesting material and the course notes have made me consider aspects of IS that I wouldn’t have thought about.

For instance, I thought I had a good grasp on the difference between data and information. Previous OU courses have covered this: data are facts or bits of knowledge that are offered without context (like “16″ or “Dave”) and information is data with added context (within conceptual frameworks). So, information would be, perhaps, seen on a page that collects together bits of data and displays it in a way that a user can understand it.

However, this block considers the difference between abstract data and data of interest. If someone collects together bits of data for consideration – in a database perhaps – then this is called “capta”.

Capta are a subset of data deemed to be of interest to a specified group of individuals who share the same theoretical and conceptual frameworks for
these items and also have some interest in them.

I’d never heard of capta before and I’m yet to be convinced of its usefulness as a term and concept, but we’ll see. I don’t have a problem using data and capta interchangeably but I think there may be issues with definitions later on during analysis if I’m not aware of the difference.

It’s important to consider information in context, so perhaps this extra definition will be helpful.

The rest of Part 1 of the block was very interesting and gave me some extra meat to my IS sandwich. I will now consider other aspects of a system to be part of an IS – development teams etc – that I might not have considered before. The course materials also pushed looking at stakeholder biases during analysis, which is something I really need to work on. I will also need to work on understanding how I know things from my own experiences. Our experiences colour our views on things. This is something that is being covered quite a bit in the course and I lost marks in TMA01 due to me not mentioning this.

That will do for now. Onwards with Part 2.

Describe an Information System with which you are involved

This activity requires me to construct a system map of an IS. Due to my prior tardiness I’m going to miss that bit out, although I’ll come back and revisit it if necessary.

I’m going to describe an ancient IS from a previous employment. This was back in the ’90s before large-scale computer systems were the norm. The site where I worked had a collection of “dumb” terminals – there were visual display units that had a rudimentary screen and keyboard and only had enough on-board processing to display information from a central computer mainframe. Each dumb terminal was connected to a local telephone point using a technology called “data over voice” (DOV). There was a DOV box on each end of the telephone line.

In the computer room was a BT Krone frame where these telephone lines ended up. The data from the connected DOV box was fed into the core of the IS in some fashion (I can’t quite remember this aspect of it) so that the dumb terminals could connect to the mainframe. The mainframe itself stored this data on some utterly ancient Winchester disks. There were two computer guys that maintained the mainframe and I was involved in the maintenance side of the dumb terminals (among other things).

Some of our more remote locations used a modem to connect to the mainframe. Comms guys may be impressed by the ultra-fast 2k4 modems we had at our disposal. I’m never going to complain about the slowness of my 10Mbps Internet connection at home, that is for certain.

The IS had a purpose – it supported the work of the various locations – and it did it well. For 1990.

How would you distinguish Information Technology from Information Systems?

I’m guessing that most people wouldn’t think that there’s much – or any – difference at all. They may be right, but I would probably argue that ISs are made up of various bits of IT equipment. An IS is a more holistic approach to IT, maybe. I think most people’s idea of IT is that of computing but the communicating of data/information is part of that too.

So, perhaps they are different but very similar. Maybe…

What does an Information System mean to you?

An Information System, to me at least, is a system for collecting and distributing information. These systems usually use some form of computing and there is normally some “doing” going on in there too, such as calculating with numbers or producing documentation.

These ISs normally have a stated purpose or purposes and intended clients. They can be extremely large scale – perhaps with millions of potential clients – or just a few, but they are always used to do something useful to someone, somewhere.

ISs are also held together with some form of communications technology (e.g. Ethernet) and can be distributed over large geographical areas.

Recall a failure in your life and your reactions to it

Which one to choose? So many failures…

OK, so I’ll use something recent, something that I would term a failure, but is more a partial failure: my inability to get my first assignment in on time.

I felt immensely disappointed that I wasn’t able to find enough time to go through the block activities and that I needed a further two weeks to get it done. I’m also rather worried about the workload. I have two modules running concurrently and I’m having to cut corners on both courses in order to meet the mandated time-scales. There are only so many hours in the day and I’m finding this quite difficult to organise, but I’m still enjoying the learning experience overall.

My missed goal made me quite stressed, and this gave me some physical symptoms. Nothing serious, but I’d rather I didn’t feel so stressed about it. Some stress is good for you but I had a bit too much for a while there, and I’m anticipating some very busy periods coming up in June (when I have my M257 exam) and in September/October when my project needs to be submitted.

I did take on board some systems concepts in order to work through this problem. I had to reflect on what I wanted out of the course and modify my expectations as a result. I’d really wanted to get through all the activities and provide a strong assignment but this wasn’t possible, so I resolved to do what I could and eventually submitted a less than perfect but acceptable paper. This is something that my tutor covered in our recent tutorial – if we don’t have time to do everything we want to do then we have to reduce the output quality of our work. It’s a good pragmatic solution. I want to do better but I can only spend so many hours a week going over the material.

TMA02, I suspect, will also be less than perfect as a result. Only two weeks or so to go before I have to hand that in, and I’m only on activity 2!

What is your position regarding Information Systems?

This activity seems to be getting me to declare my perspective on Information Systems before we head into analysis the rest of the block. Well, I work with Information Systems for a living, so I guess I’m an active stakeholder in such things. I test software and this software is generally part of a larger system.

My current role is testing an application which is used to carry out complex tasks for a large NGO. It’s a government-sponsored contract and the Information System my company has created for the NGO is quite complex, involving about a dozen or so third-party applications (Oracle, .NET, that sort of thing) and a large server farm. There are terrabytes of information involved and complex financial rules. It’s a mess (in the systems thinking sense), although parts of it are well understood by various system stakeholders even though very few people can view it as a whole.

I am very comfortable working with computers and I think I have a good affinity in the general IT area. I’m weaker at certain specifics (I wouldn’t say I’m an IT expert) but I’m a geek and I like geeky things. Information Systems are constructs that I know a bit about and something that I’d like to know a lot better.

The course notes mention a whole range of IS disasters that have affected various large companies (British Gas, Scottish Power etc) and I am not at all surprised that these things happened. Maybe those planning these large ISs failed to think holistically or gave hopelessly optimistic cost/time estimations? Whatever happened, I am looking forward to learning more about ISs is general and systems thinking concepts relating to them specifically.

Connecting with a history in your own context.

At the beginning of this part of the block, I invited you to consider one of your own role(s) and situation(s) that could be kept in mind as you worked through the part. With this in mind, are you able to think of a practice that is carried out unquestioningly? Are you able to engage in any elementary archaeology to uncover some of the history of this practice?

One easy thing I can think of is the practice of washing your hands after going for a pee. I imagine that most of us think that this is a good thing. I certainly do. I certainly don’t want to be accidentally inserting certain fluids into my mouth, or passing them onto other people. There are germs involved.

I do wonder, though, that we might be creating weakened immune systems as a result of this practice. Are we too obsessed with cleaning everything that our bodies aren’t exposed as frequently to immune system-boosting bacteria?

I don’t really have time to “engage in any elementary archaeology” with this, but it’s certainly become something that you’re told to do from an early age. It’s to stop the spread of infection, I get that, and I’m still going to wash my hands after using the toilet like I always have done.