Conclusion

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This chapter has addressed the cultural and organisational factors that surround the deployment of IT systems in Omani government organisations. A clear understanding of the issues involved is a prerequisite to successful implementation. Some of the risks that have been observed are not unique to Omani government organisations and have been cited in the literature. However, we believe that their impact in Oman is much greater because of the low familiarity with IT systems.

A fundamental solution to the above problems is to create a countrywide IT vision and share it and publicise it within the Omani society. This will create higher awareness of the importance of IT in the economic and social well-being of the country. A remaining obstacle of creating a society-wide awareness of IT and risk management is that of the unavailability of computer literature written in the Arabic language. This is a formidable barrier to the widespread understanding of the benefits and limitations of IT systems in the Arab world.

Directions for Future Research

This article is part of an on-going multi-phase research effort that aims to develop a deeper understanding and evaluation of the above-mentioned factors. A different research method is being used at each stage. In Phase I (reported here), factors were identified from experiences working in IT projects in Oman and from the various viewpoints of the expert delegates that attended the workshop on "government information systems success and failure" (Al-Wohaibi, 1999) coupled with review of the literature. This helped us identify risk factors that are of interest. In Phase II, a questionnaire will be mailed to all government organisations in Oman requesting them to rate the impact of the above factors in their organisations. This will enable us to evaluate the relative importance of these and understanding of why certain factors are perceived to be more critical to Omani government than others. Phase III of our research is to undertake detailed case studies of IT projects selected from the Omani government. In-depth interviews with IT managers, system analysts and selected users will be used to explore and establish relevancy of the factors that were earlier identified by the questionnaire. Data gathered from the case studies along with review of literature will enable us to design an appropriate model to enable IT decision makers in Oman to minimise these risks. The fourth and final phase of the research will be to test this model on a wider range of projects in Oman.



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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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