Proposed Solutions

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In this section we consider some possible solutions to help overcome the risks discussed earlier. Several risk factors are intertwined and have a common solution. Overcoming these risks depends heavily on government organisations performing more risk-oriented practices. This in turn depends on the existence of high awareness of risk among the IT community and upper management in Oman. We have grouped the factors that are intertwined and have common solutions below and a summary of which can be found in Table 5. Although these issues have arisen in the Omani situation we believe that they are generally applicable to other developing countries especially GCC countries which share many social, economical, and cultural characteristics with Oman.

Table 5: A Summary of Risk Factors and Corresponding Recommendations

Risk Factors

Recommended Solution

Limited expertise

Non-technical IT management

Poor training

Develop a plan to train the local people.

Promote a high-skilled IT technical management

Lack of IT technical awareness risk indifference

Emphasise IT literacy in omani government organisations

Create awareness that risks are ever present

Lack of unified IT strategy

Lack of public oversights

Create a coherent IT strategic vision at the national level

Create a single government agency that is responsible for setting guidelines and standards for IT acquisition at the national level. Emphasise enterprise computing

Poor IT infrastructure

Create a vision for a powerful and modern IT infrastructure and implement it.

Form a task force to network government information systems

Limited use of project

Lack of collaboration

Wider collaboration and communication between business, management approaches, academia and government

Improve IT curricula at local colleges and universities

Reliance on localised systems solutions

Bureaucratic decision making

Promote investments in IT systems Arabisation

Take a fresh look at the government business process

Promote popular management practices

Embrace e-commerce and e-government

Limited Expertise, Non-Technical IT Management, and Poor Training

Develop a plan to train the local people. A lot of financial and organisational support is now a must, as far as training is concerned. Separate budgets must be allocated for training. Jordan (2000) argues that top management should treat IT training as a strategic issue, the same way they treat information technology, finance, and marketing. For instance, as a rule of thumb, 25% of every IT project cost and time must be allocated for training (over and above the project cost). Furthermore, promoting high-skilled IT technical management will help IT planning and reduce the risk of IT acquisitions.

Lack of IT Technical Awareness and Risk Indifference

Give more emphasis to IT literacy in Omani government organisations. A strong and wide IT awareness base can be built by introducing computer science as an optional subject at secondary schools and introduce the use of the Internet. The benefit of this approach is that in the future there will be a large body of IT systems-aware people in the community in which advanced training courses can be built.

Create awareness that risks are ever present. It must not only be in the minds of senior management. It must be in the minds of the organisation or even the society at large. We should not underestimate the receptivity of society. People can deal with risks if they're told about it (McBrierty, 1999). The importance of risk awareness and the difficulties encountered when managing risks are widely covered in literature (see Carr, 1997; Kontio & Basili, 1997; Boehm & DeMarco, 1997).

Lack of Unified IT Strategy and Lack of Public Oversights

Oman needs to have a coherent IT strategic vision at the national level, fully informed by the future needs of the country, with clearly defined economic and social agenda. More than eight years ago improving IS strategic planning was found to be at the top of Omani chief executives' concerns (Badri, 1992). This vision still needs to be translated into detailed strategies that could be implemented by the different government organisations.

There should be a single government agency that is responsible for setting guidelines and standards for IT acquisition at the national level. It is important that the Omani government initiate policies that encourage innovation in IT and encourage widespread IT use among government agencies. Several developing countries have used this approach in order to promote the role of IT in economic development. The most successful examples are Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea where government agencies have coordinated IT policies since the 1980s (Palvia & Palvia, 1996). Furthermore, other developing countries (i.e., Malaysia, Bahrain, Jordan, South Africa, and Egypt) have created IT steering bodies for the same purpose. Unlike developed societies, organisations in small developing nations look for the government to set the vision and take the lead in setting computerization as a national goal, setting standards, providing the infrastructure, and promoting IT awareness. The need for an integrated policy towards informatics and telecommunications was one of the issues facing IT in developing countries (Palvia & Palvia, 1996).

Government can also look into the possibility of establishing Software Technology Parks with attractive schemes for participants and must encourage software exports. Oman imports numerous software professionals every year, and one way to retain talent here is to build a strong local IT industry. This would also attract investments from leading global IT players in the country's IT economy. Examples of similar international initiatives includes the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project designated as a hub for the development of multimedia products and services in Malaysia, and the Dubai Internet City which is to be launched in November 2000. Government organisations, similar to big enterprises, can't work efficiently without moving to so-called "enterprise computing", integrating and sharing their data through the enterprise data model (Boreisha, 1999).

Poor IT Infrastructure

Create a vision for a powerful and modern IT infrastructure: without it a country can't survive in the modern world. In their model of global information technology environment, Palvia and Palvia (1996) grouped countries into four categories based on the issues that dominate the IT environment. The authors stated that the IT environment in under-developed countries is dominated by infrastructure issues, operational issues in developing countries, management and control issues in newly developed countries, and strategic issues in developed countries. The placement of Oman into the underdeveloped or developing country category is subject to debate, yet the provision of a strong IT infrastructure is a pre-requisite for the proliferation of IT services in Oman. It is necessary to have strong government commitment on expanding the telecommunications infrastructure and reforming the regulatory environment (Avgerou, 1996).

Form a task force to network government information systems; with participation from leading private sector IT services firms. Networking government databases means data could be accessed across government departments, and analysis can make a difference in the quality of policies that are initiated and implemented for promoting economic development (Bahtnagar & Patel, 1988). Examples may be drawn from other neighbouring countries like United Arab Emirates (where telecom, Internet and IT have been given a tremendous boost recently) and the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh (where the entire administration is automated and networked) (Bahtnagar & Patel, 1988; Arunkumar, 1999).

Limited Use of Project Management Approaches and Lack of Collaboration

Local universities should make it compulsory, as part of the degree curriculum, to have an "Industry Practice School". This program should be planned with close coordination between the academic community, government departments and the local IT industry. Under this scheme, every student of IS/Engineering would undergo a minimum of three months apprenticeship in a local company or government department. The project output from this must form part of the final examination. Students will benefit by gaining practical experience and would get to know the working environment in the private and public sectors. This should be a part of a larger drive for wider collaboration and communications between the local computer and information science departments and their customers, the government departments and the local IT industry. Oman has only one university and a few private colleges offering diplomas. Thus, with its small population it would be both feasible, in the interest of the government, and under its jurisdiction to adjust its policies in favour of supporting wider IT collaboration and networking among government entities. It would make local IT and computer science departments more in tune with the requirements of the new economic environment in the information age and ensure that their curricula would be refocused to reflect the demand for the relevant courses. The field of IT is changing rapidly: concepts such as object-oriented analysis and design, e-business, and Web- based applications development are embraced by academic schools worldwide and transformed into courses within their curricula; Oman needs to incorporate such topics into its local university and colleges. This approach should attract good students who will be the IT decision-makers of the future.

Reliance on Localised Systems Solutions and Bureaucratic Decision Making

Promote investments in IT systems Arabisation. This could be done by the collaboration of the Arab world to push the research in these areas. Avgerou (1996) suggested other research and development areas in IT for developing countries in general. Moreover, institutions world-wide should be encouraged to research these issues. There should be a pool of expertise in the Arab world to guide and direct progress in translation techniques. Emphasis on IT training could be the solution to the Arabisation issues, as today the IT knowledge and Arabic knowledge seem to be mutually exclusive. Local software talent must be groomed to develop software in Arabic. At the same time, we must remember that in the fast-shrinking global economy and a highly networked world, English is the vehicle of information interchange. While Arabic interfaces are required at operational levels of IT systems, English awareness must be fuelled at a more intensive pace among government departments.

Furthermore, the diffusion of IT in the public sector in Oman is dependent on the government investing in management reform. Government organisations must take a fresh look at their business processes to make them more in tune with popular management practices. E-governance and e-commerce are very big and immediate threats to the traditional ways of conducting business and administration, and it is in the interest of the entire economy that the government moves rapidly to embrace these new global practices.



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Advanced Topics in Global Information Management (Vol. 3)
Trust in Knowledge Management and Systems in Organizations
ISBN: 1591402204
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 207

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