Computer Based Information System

Science-based technology helps to shape our lives, and no technology is more powerful in this respect than that associated with information. But the emerging linked fields of information systems and information technology are still in a very confused state. There is a torrent of technical developments but the concepts which bring structure to the field and make sense of it lag behind. This book seeks to dispel that confusion, and aims to make sense of IS and IT as a whole. Conventional theory bears little relation to the experience most people have with computer-based systems in organizations. Based on real-world experiences in both the private and public sectors, this book from Peter Checkland and Sue Holwell tackles the subject afresh. Information, Systems and Information Systems provides a practice-based approach to the thinking needed to underpin provision of information support in organizations. Starting from fundamentals, the book develops a coherent account of the field. The book is thus a work of conceptual cleansing. It presents a well-argued and tested account of IS and IT which is both holistic and coherent. The sense-making models which emerge can encompass any particular assumptions about the nature of organizational reality and management, whether hard functionalist or soft interpretive ones, though the authors sympathies are with the latter.

Information systems engineering professionals perform the invaluable function of aiding knowledge workers in a variety of judgment and choice activities. Those who use decision support systems are involved in an important number of day-to-day activities— from the design of aircraft flight control systems to management systems that enable better financial decisions. Decision support designers and users should function together to insure the development of appropriate information systems. Decision Support Systems Engineering describes how to establish a decision support system that unites the concerns of both system designers and users. Beginning with an outline of the generic components of a decision support system, readers are given a technologically rigorous, yet clear, tour of its assembly line basics. Data-base management systems, model-base management systems, and dialog generation and management systems are clearly described, with emphasis on how these make a decision support system feasible and practical. Using the framework of a total life cycle systems management process, the book describes approaches for developing appropriate integrated information systems architectures— approaches that take into account user needs and the translation of user needs into system requirements. Hardware and software allocations of these requirements and the subsequent development of suitable hardware and software architectures are methodically detailed. Also considered in-depth is the subject of cognitive systems engineering, which recognizes and seeks to ameliorate inherent potential flaws in human information processing. Presented here are ways in which decision support systems can beused to avoid cognitive information-processing biases and errors.