Construction And Implementation Of The Open Government: A Guide Essay.

Survey

Explain about the Basic Situation of Construction and Implementation of the Open Government.

Upgrade Report

Administrative system requirements are mostly identified for the whole organization and implemented at every hierarchy of the company. If the software is not upgraded for bringing about a change in the organization then the improvement in the organization may be limited to a particular section of the company. Whenever there is an attempt to identify administrative system requirement then it should have a systems thinking approach which considers the whole organization as a single unit. In order to achieve success through this strategy one needs to upgrade their software modules. If the company does not go with the system upgrade then it will not be able to cope up with the changing business eco-system which it wants to cater. There may be complex processes in the organization which cannot be handled by the present software module and if not upgraded the entire system may collapse. (Zhang & Zhang, 2007).

Requirements gathering are the procedure to investigate into the needs of a proposed software system by interacting with employees, final users, software users and others stakeholders in the same eco-system.

The numerous ways through which it can be done are as follows:

Interviews – Interviews are effective channels to gather requirements. Companies may organize different types of interviews such as:

Structured interviews, where each information to collate is pre-decided, their content of discussion follows a fixed pattern

Non-structured interviews, where information to collate is not pre-fixed, more flexible and less opinionated.

One-to-one interviews which are organized between two persons across the table.

Surveys – Companies may undergo surveys among numerous participants by investigating about their expectation and needs from the upgrade

Questionnaires – A document with pre-defined set of objective questions and respective options is handed over to all stakeholders to answer, which are collected and compiled.

All these processes would enable to understand the requirements of various employees and also fathom their expectations from future upgradation.

The factors among many which should guide the decision for selecting a recommendation are as follows:

Economic feasibility – There should be a proper cost-benefit analysis conducted before selecting the option for software upgrade. The extent of performance improvement in the long run resulting into increased revenue metrics must exceed the cost of upgradation just for the upgrade being considered.

Technical feasibility – This factor focuses on the fact that whether the company has enough technical resources like hardware, software, or network capability to support the application from an open source platform. If not then the company should stick to proprietary software. Also future technology changes in the industry need to be taken into account.

Preliminary Expenditure Budgets

Strategic feasibility – The company must also consider the strategic impact of going for the upgrade. It might earn them a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace and change the industry dynamics as a whole.

Implementation Timeline – The upgradation and change management might have certain implications in terms of intangible costs such as employee dissatisfaction and an occasional dip in performance. In order to avoid this, a proper change management and training schedule needs to be planned, which would be a critical consideration for overall cost.

Software licensing requirements have several legal and regulatory constraints regarding intellectual property which needs to be taken care of. If pricing constraints are looked at with the perceived benefits then having a mixed approach seems to be ideal.

Some of the common influences of outsourcing the software licenses or going for open source software are as follow:

Cost savings: The functions, services or products which are not core competency of the organization are generally outsourced to vendors who are efficient in that process or function. This leads to significant cost savings for the organization.

Employee level: Since organization gets rid of the non-value adding process in an organization through outsourcing, it also helps in optimizing staffing levels.

Focus: Outsourcing helps in better honing the skills of the employees through steep learning curve on the core competency of the organization without focusing on the other aspects. This leads to better productivity without utmost focus on quality.

Flexibility: Outsourcing helps in freeing up of resources which can be used in other processes thereby imparting greater flexibility to the organization.

However there are also certain disadvantages like lower degree of control on quality, decreased company loyalty, a complex bidding process, etc. (Vegoda & Dyro, 2006).

After a critical analysis of the three options at hand it seems that a mixture of open source and proprietary licensing would be better software.

There are several methods to ask for quotation whiles the most popular and broad ways to classify them are as follows:

Request for Information (RFI) – This method is used to gather information from various suppliers before taking any decision regarding the sourcing of the material, product or services. This is particularly applied when there is stiff competition among the supplier which is large in number and information asymmetry exists among them. A typical RFI contains the following sections:

• Table of contents
• Introduction and reason for RFI
• Explanation of scope
• Abbreviations or terminology
• Elaboration of further process which may be a RFP or RFQ

Request for Proposal (RFP) – This method is applied when one has decided on a particular product or service for sourcing and asks various suppliers to submit proposals so that they can be compared among themselves for their suitability. A typical RFP contains the following sections:

• Table of contents
• Confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement
• Primary data regarding vendor and the procedure
• Scope and limit of the project
• Expected time span
• Elaborate design data and requirements
• Commercial necessities
• Budget
• Examination and decision criteria
• Submission methodology

Report

Implementation of any system upgradation requires efficient application of change management in an organization. While monitoring the implementation of any system up gradation, top managers should be brought on board before the implementation. Then there should be personal interaction with the frontline officers who will directly be affected with the change and explain the benefits for the chosen system up gradation. The next step would be announcement of the key features and benefits of the system change to the entire organization (Adler, 2006). Throughout the process care has to be taken to ensure the employees are being given proper training and they are comfortable with the new technology and it is not creating obstacle in their daily work. As mentioned earlier implementation of any new technology or system up gradation in an organization requires successful implementation of change management principles. There is every possibility that some problem arises in spite of necessary precautions and in that it would not be wise at pointing out the defects in the system. The news should be broken after pointing the benefits that have been achieved through the system upgradation and the excellent job that has been done by the entire team entrusted with the job of implementation. Then it should be mentioned that further modifications are required in order to achieve complete successful implementation of the system upgradation. (Strehl, 2003).

There should be proper risk management plans applied in the organization in order to deal with a problematic situation arising during system upgradation. The contingency plan must be supported with proper disaster recovery plans so that its effect is limited on the output or production. There should be parallel systems in place which needs to be up and running to minimize the downtime and cost associated with it. Apart from that the system upgradation can be implemented on a test basis only on few systems to avoid large scale disasters and downtime (Stern, 2011).

Organizations need to evolve over the years to remain relevant in the market. The need for technology change occurs when there are visible problems at different sections in the organization. The productivity reduces and cost optimization is not achieved then it augurs the requirement of new technology. The various stakeholders need to be consulted to identify the flaws in the organizational processes and ways to improve them through new technology. The industry best practices have to be identified and implemented in the organization. There is a requirement for announcing the benefits of the new technology to the whole organization (Parikh & Basu, 2016). The implementation of a system upgrade is always involved with certain user issues or problems that are not used to using the version of the software. This can be mitigated through proper training and development so that the employees feel comfortable while using the software. There can seminars and workshops for training purpose, standard operating procedures can be established. There will always be a section of the employee who has some level of prior exposure to the software who can be roped in for training process and can help their fellow colleagues in gaining expertise in the new system (Joshi, 2010). There are several support options that can ensure smooth implementation of system upgrade with much effect on productivity. The supplier help can be taken for few days even after the implementation of the system upgrade through their trainers and experts so that they can help the employees of the organization. As mentioned earlier few employees who have prior exposure to the software can pitch in to help their colleagues. Finally the system upgrade can be implemented in phases so that the training can be implemented with a more focused approach that later become a resource for the organization for further training of their colleagues (Dobosz & Szymański, 2011).

The following KPIs can be utilized –

• Increase in revenue in 1 year
• Increase in revenue in 5 years
• Cost of upgradation
• Cost of training, scheduling and change management
• Employee satisfaction over the complete implementation and adaptation period
• Client satisfaction post implementation

Conclusion

Hence, it is clear that administrative system requirements are identified for the entire system of organization and even implementation is to be done for each hierarchy in the company. Requirements gathering procedure is used for understanding the need of any proposed software system. Few of the decision making steps revolve around technical and economic feasibility and also as per the requirements. Few of the benefits of outsourcing software are flexibility, cost saving and optimizing the employee level.

It can be said that company needs to keep evolving with respect to technology in order to stay in the market and the need for changing technology becomes high when problems become visible in different levels of organization.

References

Adler, J. (2006). Basic situation of construction and implementation of the open government information system in Chongqing municipality. Government Information Quarterly, 23(1), 48–57. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2006.02.002

Dobosz, J. & SzymaÅ„ski, B. (2011). An implementation of relational interface to an information retrieval system. Information Systems, 6(3), 219–228. Doi: 10.1016/0306-4379(81)90024-7

Joshi, K.. (2010). Reorganization of the work system for successful information systems implementation. Information & Management, 19(4), 271–284. Doi: 10.1016/0378-7206(90)90036-h

Parikh, J. & Basu, A. (2016). Effect on system performance due to Upgradation of 2G/3G system to LTE. International Journal of Wireless and Microwave Technologies, 6(1), 11–22. doi:10.5815/ijwmt.2016.01.02

Stern, A.. (2011). Supporting the need for electronic medical records (EMR) system implementation for diabetes management within a general internal practice setting. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, 7(1), e11. doi:10.1016/j.sapharm.2010.09.028

Strehl, F. (2003). Implementation of a new performance appraisal system and the problems of organizational change. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 59(1), 83–97. Doi: 10.1177/002085239305900106

Vegoda, P. R. & Dyro, J. F. (2006). Implementation of an advanced clinical and administrative hospital information system. International Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing, 3(4), 259–268. Doi: 10.1007/bf01724394

Zhang, J. & Zhang, H. (2007). Design and implementation of sales management information system. Modern Applied Science, 1(4), doi:10.5539/mas.v1n4p60