P.D.D. Dominic

A comparison of Asian e-government websites quality: using a non-parametric test

This research conducts tests to measure the quality of e-government websites of five Asian countries via web diagnostic tools online. We propose a methodology for determining and evaluating the best e-government website based on many criteria of website quality, consisting of linear weightage model (LWM), analytical hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP), and one new hybrid model (NHM). This NHM has been implemented using combination FAHP and LWM to generate the weights for the criteria which are better and more fairly preferred. The results of this study confirmed that most Asian websites are neglecting in performance and quality criteria. By applying the hybrid model approach it has resulted in significant acceleration of implementation, raised the overall effectiveness and enabled more efficient procedure. To compare the ranking methods, a combination of Friedmans test and Dunns multiple comparison procedure is adopted. When applied to the methods presented here, these tests indicate that AHP, FAHP, and Hybrid method methods perform better than LWM.

Lean principles in IT services: a case study on implementation and best practices

Lean methodologies are adopted into the information technology (IT) industry to eliminate waste and maximise business value to the customers. The global services models today provide ample scope to apply lean practices to IT services delivery and thereby to create robust partnerships between the vendors and the customers. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the best practices in lean methodology as applicable to the IT service delivery and to exemplify the implementation in the context of a case study. The best practices mentioned in the paper are confined to our prioritisation of the observations and to identify the candidates that inject waste into the operations. A case study approach has been adopted to summarise the understanding and findings of our research. Many areas that inject waste into the IT services have been highlighted with supporting recommendations to eliminate such non-value added work.

A Structural Equation Modeling Approach for the Adoption of Cloud Computing to Enhance the Malaysian Healthcare Sector

The investments and costs of infrastructure, communication, medical-related equipments, and software within the global healthcare ecosystem portray a rather significant increase. The emergence of this proliferation is then expected to grow. As a result, information and cross-system communication became challenging due to the detached independent systems and subsystems which are not connected. The overall model fit expending over a sample size of 320 were tested with structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS 20.0 as the modelling tool. SPSS 20.0 is used to analyse the descriptive statistics and dimension reliability. Results of the study show that system utilisation and system impact dimension influences the overall level of services of the healthcare providers. In addition to that, the findings also suggest that systems integration and security plays a pivotal role for IT resources in healthcare organisations. Through this study, a basis for investigation on the need to improvise the Malaysian healthcare ecosystem and the introduction of a cloud computing platform to host the national healthcare information exchange has been successfully established.

A comparison of Asian airlines websites quality: using a non-parametric test

This research conducts test to measure the quality of Asian airlines website via web diagnostic tools online. We propose a methodology for determining and evaluating the best airlines website based on many criteria of website quality, consist of linear weightage model (LWM), analytical hierarchy process, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and one new hybrid model (NHM). This NHM has been implemented using combination FAHP and LWM. The result of this study confirmed most of Asian websites are neglecting performance and quality criteria. By applying hybrid model approach has resulted in significant acceleration of implementation, raised the overall effectiveness and enabled more efficient procedure. To compare ranking methods, a combination of Friedman’s test and Dunn’s multiple comparison procedure is adopted.

Strategic IT alignment with business strategy: Service oriented architecture approach

Enterprises are moving fast to transform into service orientation to maintain their competitive advantage. In order to meet rapidly changing demands, and achieve true agility an enterprise needs strategic IT alignment with business strategy integrated with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). As enterprises transform service oriented enterprises, the challenge of aligning IT strategy with business strategy and the use of IT to meet customer demands becomes an important research issue. The primary aim of this paper is to develop a model which explains the interplay between strategic alignment dimensions of governance, communication, and architecture enabled by SOA, and enterprise agility. The model was tested using survey data collected from 202 Malaysian service industries. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling AMOS 5 to test the model fit. Using maximum likelihood estimation analysis, the model fit for data was achieved. The key results were that the factors of alignment via governance, alignment via communication, and alignment via architecture are good predictors for enterprise agility.

Performance evaluation on quality of Asian e-government websites – an AHP approach

The concept of website quality is consisting of many criteria: quality of service perspective, a user perspective, a content perspective or indeed a usability perspective. This research conducts some tests to measure the quality of e-government website of five Asian countries via web diagnostic tools online. We propose a methodology for determining and evaluate the best e-government sites based on many criteria of website quality. The approach has been implemented using analytical hierarchy process (AHP), the proposed model uses the AHP pairwise comparisons and the measure scale to generate the weights for the criteria which are much better and guarantee more fairly preference of criteria. Applying AHP approach for website evaluation has resulted in significant acceleration of implementation, raised the overall effectiveness with respect to the underlying methodology and ultimately enabled more efficient procedure. The result of this study confirmed that the e-government websites of Asian are neglecting performance and quality criteria.

The factors associating the adoption of cloud computing: an enhancement of the healthcare ecosystem in Malaysia

The global healthcare industry is continuing to grow, and it is important to realise that healthcare providers will have to continue to invest in IT-based systems to improve overall operations and cross system communications. The study focuses on the relationships between healthcare providers, IT resources and health insurance providers in determining the adoption of cloud computing. The results obtained as result of this study shows that IT resources significantly influence healthcare providers and health insurance providers. The efficiency and clinical services can be improvised with the adoption of the cloud. The findings of this study are presented with reliability analysis, descriptive, factor loading, regression and correlations for IT capability in healthcare services, structural equation modelling is used to determining the overall model fit. Structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS 20.0 is used for model fit testing and SPSS 20.0 is used for analysing the descriptive statistics, hypothesis and assumptions for SEM.

Multiattribute analysis of the offshore outsourcing location decision using a decision support system framework

Todays global business environment, characterised by unprecedented competitive pressures and sophisticated customers that demand speedy solutions, creates a large set of potential suppliers to evaluate and select from. The business landscape is currently witnessing widespread migration of services and functions from developed nations like the USA to destinations like India, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Hungary, Poland, New Zealand and other countries. Several factors influence the outsourcers to offshore effectively and efficiently. This paper presents a structured framework with subjective and objective factors for guiding the outsourcers in making the decision on the proper outsourcing location. Based on this, a Decision Support System (DSS) framework was developed to provide a way for outsourcers and practitioners to have a more comprehensive approach to the outsourcing location decision. The process illustrates the way the system aids management in the offshore outsourcing decision through knowledge support.

User acceptance of online system: a study of banking and airline sector

The use of online systems is emerging very rapidly in developing countries. Internet technology becomes the vital part of every business. This study aims to investigate the acceptance rate of an online system by the user to make their transactions online through the internet. This study is based on technology acceptance model (TAM) and proposed a new model for the online system acceptance. The perceived ease of time is a new additive variable in the existing TAM. The research design was based on a survey approach with a sample of 252 users from airline and banking sectors of Pakistan. A questionnaire was administered to collect data from various banks and airlines. The results of this study revealed that perceived ease of time and all independent variables have the significant effect on user acceptance of an online system.

A new auditing scheme for securing statistical databases

A statistical database (SDB) is a database that is used to provide statistical queries (such as sum, average). Sometimes, by stitching the answers of some statistics, a malicious user (snooper) may be able to deduce confidential information about some individuals. New auditing scheme is proposed to protect online and dynamic SDBs from being disclosed. The core idea is to convert the original database D into key representation database D\, namely sequence of particular values represent each corresponding record in the original database. Also this idea involves converting each new query q from string representation into key representation query q\, and stores it in the Audit Query table. Specific rules will be applied to decide whether the new user query could or couldn’t lead to disclose the SDB. The proposed scheme that will be applied expected to guarantee the security of SDBs and provide precise and accurate responses, besides it need less CPU time and storage space during query processing.