Tom G. Gough

Comparative analysis between the public and private sectors on the IS/IT outsourcing practices in a developing country: a field study

This paper presents an overview of a national case study exploring the IS/IT outsourcing phenomenon in the public and private sectors of a developing country. Kuwait has been used as an example of a developing country and the data collection for this study was done there. The primary data on IS/IT outsourcing practices, obtained for the first time in Kuwait, were collected by means of survey questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews supported by organisational documentation. Several public and private sector organisations were selected to participate in the investigation. The main findings of the study suggest that there are differences between the two sectors in their motivation and risk factors evaluation behind the adoption of an IS/IT outsourcing business strategy. The findings also provide an insight into how outsourcing practices, as an information system strategy, are motivated and managed in the context of a developing nation.

An Integrated Framework for Information Systems Planning and its Initial Application

This paper outlines an approach to information systems planning (ISP) that addresses not just the technical problems encountered in ISP but the whole range of problems which derive from social systems, organizational processes, formal organizational arrangements, technology and the external environment. The approach is designed to improve the effectiveness of the high-level planning processes for information systems (IS). A five-phase framework is proposed. The first phase, the perception phase, aims to provide the managers with an environment that enables them to recognize the strategic value of IS and that activates them to participate in strategy formulation. The second phase, the evaluation phase, involves the evaluation of the organizations systems. The third phase, the selection phase, is focused on analysing the data collected from previous phases in order to select feasible projects. The fourth phase, the construction phase, is responsible for producing a set of preliminary IS plans. The fifth phase, the review phase, aims to ensure that ISP effectiveness is further enhanced by ongoing adjustments to the plans. The paper includes brief comments on the initial application of the framework in the Mingchi Institute of Technology.

TeleHealth paradigm for Kuwait’s healthcare

Technological developments have shed optimistic light on the future of telecommunications in healthcare. However, problems still prevail in the healthcare industry and the need for an effective solution in a rapidly evolving technological environment is imperative in the coming years. This paper defines the problem within healthcare delivery worldwide and theoretically explores a typical medical scenario in Kuwait, utilising the grounded theory method. It traces the social processes within medical work and network and attempts to understand the underlying relationships between the two. Analysis of the scenario leads to an understanding of the concepts and categories, enabling the interpretation of a theory that forms the basis of an architectural model, resulting in the proposition of a new telehealth paradigm, the pay‐per‐use concept. The research question focuses on the appropriateness of such a concept for the healthcare industry. Anticipates that the proposed new conceptual framework will be the evolving IT solution in healthcare delivery.

Incorporating Social Transformation into the Information Systems and Software Development Lifecycles

All approaches to information systems and software development assume lifecycle models, which have a significant impact upon the perspective adopted for design and development. In recognition of the limitations of conventional software engineering lifecycles, the Information Systems (IS) community has focused upon gaining recognition of organizational and human issues in systems design. The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community has also tried to introduce user-centered practices into software engineering, but its success has been limited because it has augmented existing lifecycle models that are document or risk-driven. Yet, user-centered design can only be fully realized through the adoption of a user-centered model of the information systems lifecycle as the basis for developing ICT-based systems. This paper explains how several of the limitations of current IS and HCI theory and practice can be overcome by modeling development lifecycles in terms of social transformation. The paper then presents an information systems development lifecycle based upon social transformation and illustrates how a user-centered software development lifecycle can be integrated into the IS development process.

A blackboard-based framework for the development of cooperating schedulers

The authors present the design and implementation of a software framework using the blackboard model. This blackboard-based framework is an abstract interface used for the development of cooperating schedulers in a distributed system. The significance of this work is threefold: first, the interesting features of the blackboard model was applied to the area of software modeling; second, an abstract interface was built to distinguish blackboard modeling issues from scheduling issues; and third, a blackboard-based scheduler was implemented efficiently using lightweight processes.<<ETX>>