Information System

Information system involves the combination of hardware and software based technology and people’s professional skills to enable the software and hardware work with procedures to facilitate these functions to support an overall strategy of the entire enterprise. Information management system can also be referred as information technology (IT) management also in reference to both hardware and software (Benson, Ribbers, & Blitstein, 2014). Over the past few years, use of IMS has grown tremendously especially in regard to running and promoting business operations. In the following paragraphs, I will analyze through and analytical critique on how some of my classmates have responded in regard to business operations in use of IT systems.

Critique of Jason Harding- Response

            In his response, Jason Harding asserts that ISM assists the department of planning’s mission in to promote their partnership with other Baltimore County agencies in the provision of business solutions to enable efficient delivery of government services. He further notes that the aim of the OIT office is to provide support to over 20 County agencies that employ more than 8,000 employees with IT and software application management and support throughout the year.  In addition to this, he continues to remark that the office also gets involved in providing necessary support to important applications in public safety to most county government agencies. All this is in the interest of facilitating the county departments’ operations in such areas as wireless networking, e-commerce, document imaging and geographical information systems. All these IT solutions are geared towards making Baltimore County to be IT compliant.

In this response, Jason has been categorical in illustrating how the office of technology (OIT) has been instrumental in providing IT solutions to the Baltimore county government in its operations. He has also clearly explained how the county government makes use of these IT skills in promoting its services and operations and conducting business. To this point, the OIT has done a good job in the IT sector. However, Jason has not been able to vividly explain whether the OIT has also been involved in training key personnel within the Baltimore County to be IT specialists so that they can run their own operations without depending on outsiders. Since IT is not just about software and hardware alone but also the people involved, we then need to know how much OIT has been involved in ensuring that people and key staff are imparted with adequate IT skills to run their own operations.

Critique of Richard Slaysman Response

            Richard Slaysman opens his response by evaluating the role of the CACI IT team as that of providing assessment of IT security plus audit functions to FISMA in order to promote compliance and support in the development and maintenance of documentation for the Accreditation and Certification (C&A) as a requirement by the Federal Information Management Act (FISMA). Their role then is to ensure that C & A security requirements are up to date and that systems meet prerequisite security essentials as stipulated by DHS 43001. This also involves the performance and review of technical security assessments of the computing environments to enable identification of areas of vulnerability and non-compliance with laid down information assurance procedures and regulations so as to offer mitigation strategies. To this end, CACI ensures implementation of proper access controls, creation, updating and assessing compliance of system authority, providing information security expertise to system development teams and ensuring a proper Plan of Action & Milestone reports are upheld and that security susceptibilities are trailed and resolved.

            Richard has really tried in evaluating the role of CACI to FISMA in his response. However, what he fails to point out clearly in his entire response is how secure and efficient this IT system is and to what level does it promote the business operations of the FISMA. We know that IT is really require in promoting business operations but without checks and adequate security features, IT can as well ruin business operations (High, 2014). So he should have pointed out his picture. But ideally, he has tried to illustrate and point out major features.

Port logistics group Response

            Finally, in Port Logistics Group, they state that their company exploits to promote their management to come up with decisions that can ensure that every process is done in a timely manner, with fewer or minimal errors at a reduced cost. The aim of this mission is to ensure that the management attains customer satisfaction and offer a competitive advantage over others.

            This is indeed a good way of exploiting IMO but what the author has not illustrated is how they exactly execute this strategy. What if other companies also employ the same strategy? What if their system is hacked? How do they reach out to their customers? All these points could have been necessary to illustrate the point clearly. But in a nutshell, the points are clear but more clarity needs to be shed to ensure that there are no system flaws.

References

Benson, R.J., Ribbers, P.M., and Blitstein, R.B. (2014) Trust and Partnership: Strategic IT: Management for Turbulent Times. Preface and Chapter 1 (in eReserves)

High, P.A. (2014) Implementing World Class IT Strategy: How IT Can Drive Organizational Innovation. Foreword and Chapter 1. (in eReserves)