Challenges in developing MIS – Case from ...

Challenges in developing MIS – Case from Government sector Kengatharaiyer Sarveswaran [email protected]

Samudaya Nanayakkara [email protected]

Asoka Perera

Prasad Perera

[email protected]

Shantha Fernando

[email protected] University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka

[email protected]

Abstract Management Information Systems (MISs) are used to manage the processes, people, resources, finance, technologies and services of an organisation. An MIS has been developed continuously since 2007 at the University of Moratuwa based on its Learning Management System implemented in 2003. Currently Examination, Human Resource (HR), Welfare and Finance modules of MISs are online and these modules have contributed to the increase of productivity and efficiency of relevant staff and divisions of the university. Throughout the development, MIS team faced many challenges such as compliance to the government rules and regulations and challenge of convincing end users. The scope of this paper is to share the challenges faced throughout the MIS development, how the problems were handled and the successes of the MIS at the University of Moratuwa. It was identified that the use of Agile model to in-house develop this MIS contributed to the successes.

1.0 Introduction Information systems (ISs) are becoming an indivisible part of human society. Information systems fall into a wide spectrum depending on the problem domains they are expected to operate in. Internet based ISs are used effectively in cases where the operating environment is distributed. Internet based technologies and systems are fast becoming a necessary ingredient for business success in today’s dynamic global environment [1]. 1.1 Management Information systems (MISs) The continuous emergence of new, innovative technologies in Information Technology enables entrepreneurs and technology-savvy firms to create new business models, build new business processes, and transform the day to day conduct of business. MISs are one such kind of IS domain that is used to manage processes of an organization, people, resources, finance, technologies and services [2]. When types of interactions increase, the number of inputs and outputs of the system also increase. As a result, the complexity of the system also increases. It has also been identified that software complexity shall be given in as N*I*OP, where N=Project depended factor, I – number of inputs and O-number of outputs. [7] 1

1.2 Agile Software development There are best practices that can be used in software engineering. Waterfall model is one of the famous and well known practices, using which, many software have been developed. Other practice that emerged recently is Agile model. In contrast to waterfall model Agile model follows the evolutionary development practice, and agile software development takes very short life cycles. This cycle may not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available release, with minimal bugs, at the end of each short cycle and this cycle is repeated till all the problems are addressed [8].

2.0 Related work Many attempts have been made in developing & launching MISs. Many universities and other academic institutions around the world are using MISs to improve their quality and efficiency. In Sri Lanka, the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka (UGC) is implementing a MIS to connect all the universities in Sri Lanka. This is called the “Higher Education Management Information System” (HEMIS) [3]. From their documentation, it has been identified that the functionalities of the proposed HEMIS are not satisfying the unique functionality requirements of University of Moratuwa. Many Universities around the world have tried commercial MISs and identified that customizing an existing MIS is not appropriate. For instance, many Universities in US were trying to customize and use “PeopleSoft ERP” system. However their efforts were unsuccessful [4].

3.0 MIS at University Of Moratuwa In 2003 the University of Moratuwa started developing a Learning Management System, LearnOrg. Because of the unique and dynamically triggering requirements and because the University possessed the expertise in this area the system was finally decided to be built inhouse. Later, due to the onset of Open Source technologies and the licensing issues, LearnOrg was migrated to an Open Source platform which uses PHP and MySQL. Subsequently, the Open Source Course Management System known as Moodle was integrated with LearnOrg in early 2006. Bundled with Moodle and Open Source technology adaptation, the LearnOrg 2.0 was released. LearnOrg 2.0 facilitated students in all their subject registration and carrying out blended Learning [5].

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Due to increasing student intakes, and the difficulties administrators and academics had in maintaining vast amount of information, it was decided to computerize all the activities of University of Moratuwa. A group of academics from the University of Moratuwa initiated a research on possible solutions. Purchasing commercial ERPs proved to be infeasible for the university because of the budget constraints and procurement procedures. It was also deemed that a commercial ERP would not be flexible enough to cater to the dynamic requirements of University of Moratuwa. Based on all these considerations, it was decided to develop an Open Source web based system in-house. Initially Examinations, Human Resources, Welfare, Finance and Procurements modules were selected to be incorporated into the system. In early 2007 the development of the MIS started at the University and few people were also recruited as dedicated developers for MIS project. After the initial studies, the project plan was drafted and the requirements were gathered from the University administrative departments and academic departments. Due to the sensitivity of the data, many protocols were followed in the phase of requirement gathering and designing. A pilot project was hosted in early 2009. Few departments were selected in such a way that less staff training and less implementation of infrastructure were required. Personnel in these departments already possessed a substantial level of computer competency for the pilot run. The pilot system was run real-time parallel to the existing former manual processes of these departments. During the pilot run some issues were identified. The infrastructure, roles and responsibilities, and computer competency of staff that are essential to successfully launch this system with university-wide coverage were analyzed. After the pilot run, the system was put into production and other departments of the University of Moratuwa also started using the system. The staff who was expected to use the systems was trained. Additionally user manuals were prepared to equip the users to get accustomed to the system swiftly and easily.

4.0 Challenges The MIS development team faced various challenges from the requirement gathering phase until the implementation phase due to technological challenges and human impacts. MIS implementation, specially the Examination module, HR module and Finance module, were in a paradigm shift. Due to this fact MIS team encountered with influences from the staff, particularly from administrative departments.

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The nature of government institutional structure and procedures caused many of these issues. As a government institution, coping with the procedures that are followed in recruitment and salary scale, was the very first problem. Unless people have a passion in working in an academic institution, it is very difficult to recruit MIS developers with very good background knowledge. During the development, the government rules and regulations were priority concerns, for instance, procurement of hardware and software. Critical hardware components such as a server were purchased after a rigorous process. Then the budgetary problems crippled the development process because there were no sufficient funds to recruit professionals. Other major challenge was the requirement gathering and requirement identification process. In the university, most of the processes are not governed by copy-book rules. Regulations and decisions are made most of the time by top management in meetings. In addition to that, different people were following different methods according to the best practice that they themselves have devised. Some staff was not competent in explaining the process, even though they themselves were involved in executing the process. Government rules and regulations change frequently and sometimes the whole structure of a process also changes. For instance, a new circular may change the whole structure of salary schemes for the employees. Because of the highly dynamic nature, the requirement gathering was a difficult task and the system that should be developed also needed to be flexible enough to adapt to any of these changes. Because many of the work procedures that were followed in the University have been practiced for a long time and since those are government regulations, re-engineering was almost impossible. When re-engineering, the staff may feel that the new process may affect their routine work patterns. Due to these issues the full advantage of the MIS was not realized. The requirement gathering processes was complex owing to the reluctance of users in providing information about requirements and the provision of false requirements. Reasons for providing such false requirements may be because they were under the impression of the system eventually replacing their assigned duties, hence making them redundant staff or even personal/political problems. Some staff who has had computer background visualize a certain computerized solution and state their requirements according to that imaginary solution. In certain cases there were no well defined roles. Sometimes work was delegated to other staff who was not authorized to execute the activity and sometimes because of personal 4

problems users were just not willing to accept their role in the system. These implications made the role and responsibility identification task extremely difficult. In addition to that there were no defined policies on responsibilities of divisions. In the implementation stage, it was found that some of the existing systems such as servers and network were not compatible to run some features of MIS. It was difficult to test and validate all functional features because of the out numbers. Therefore it was decided to do a pilot run after an internal testing. When the system was introduced to the staff, some of them were reluctant to use the system because of the lack of trust in computer systems. In addition to that the infrastructure and security policy implementation were hard tasks. There were places lacking network connectivity. The lack of understanding about passwords and security policies caused situations where passwords were even written on sticky notes and pasted on monitors etc. in the open. Moreover, there were few situations where the top management requested passwords from subordinates in order to perform audits. Owing to the shortage of human resources within the MIS team, the requirement gathering, analysis, training, documentation activities were also done by system developers themselves.

5.0 Methodology As Agile practice is a customer oriented, light-weight software development paradigm, suited best for small size development teams in projects under vague and changing requirements [6], it has been decided to use an evolutionary development methodology, Agile, and LEAN thinking [9]. Due to the budgetary constraints and government procedures, only a few enthusiastic dedicated developers were recruited as system developer and Open Source technologies were chosen to develop the system. All the staff was involved throughout the requirement gathering, design, development, implementation and testing phases of each development cycle. It was identified through the Agile and LEAN practice that this sort of practice builds up trust in users of the system as far as the final output of the project was concerned. Several rounds of visits and the site observations were carried out to gather the vague and complex requirements. Regularly scheduled meetings, see Table-1, were held with top management level, middle management level, and operational level personnel. Since

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operational staff heavily interacts with the system, many operational practices were gathered from them so that when the system was introduced, staff would not receive it as an alien system. User role

Number users Number of meetings

Vice Chancellor

1

5

Deputy Vice Chancellor

1

15

Registrar

1

15

Bursar

1

10

Deputy Registrar

1

8

Senior Asst. Registrar

2

40

Asst. Registrar

2

40

Asst. Bursar

2

20

Academic staff

~40

250

Clerical staff

~25

250

Table-1 : Number of Meetings

The requirements gathered were incorporated into the system engineering phase with out any re-engineering practices so that the staff would not feel any difference with the new system compared to their existing practices. This also was identified as a factor that makes staff trust the system and convince them to use the system. It was identified that Examination related matters, Welfare related matters, Financial matters and HR related matters were the critical areas hence prioritized. During the development, respective staff was consulted to assure the accuracy of the functionality of the system. There were many round of demonstrations held. Due to enormous number of features and the functionalities of the system it was not feasible to do an extensive testing. It was decided to use live users to test the system in a pilot run. Users from Faculty of Engineering were acquired for this pilot run so that the initial training and the infrastructure issues can be minimized. The pilot test was run throughout an academic semester to capture all possible functional scenarios. In order to ensure information availability and validation, staff was asked to carry out their manual procedure while practicing on the pilot system.

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After the pilot run, the system was installed in the production environment and all the faculties were incorporated to the system phase by phase. Many rounds of training were conducted with the staff on the system functionality. User manuals were written in order to provide help to the users. Communication and storage security measures were implemented by enforcing policies and other technical features such as Secure Socket Layer (SSL), Firewalls, physical security, log management etc. Security awareness sessions were conducted to all the staff, especially on policies, roles and responsibilities, importance of password management etc.

6.0 The Success of MIS Present first year students' requirements and the related administrative tasks were successfully managed by the MIS. The MIS catered to the needs of more than 4500 users, see Figure-1, from Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of IT, Faculty of Architecture and relevant administrative divisions. Staffs belonging to all knowledge levels and computer literacy levels were covered by the MIS. Usage of MIS modules

Number of Users

3000 2500 2000

Staff

1500

Students

1000 500 0 Phase-1

Phase-2

Phase-3

Phase-4

Phases

Phase-1 : Pilot run

Phase-2 : Acquisition of Faculty of IT users

Phase-3 : Acquisition of Faculty of Architecture users

Phase-4 : Acquisition of Second year users

Figure-1 : Usage of MIS modules

The operations related to Examination, HR and Finance were handled by the MIS. Operations related statistical analysis showed that and the operations that took months had now taken 7

only a few days to finish. For example, it took only ten days to print the student record books for the most recent intake. Prior to the MIS this activity took more than three months as were written by hand. Additionally since the processes were automated, the information was more accurate and clearer than the manual process. Examination marks were prepared and moderated very quickly than the earlier manual process. The Welfare module of the MIS was used for the bursary selection process. This resulted in a very efficient and easy execution of bursary selection process and took less than a week to complete the process. However, earlier this process took more than 3 months. An HR module made the appointment procedure easy and efficient. New appointments were prepared in few hours.

7.0 Future work In future, the processes such as General Administrative work, Stores, Capital items inventory, Document flow, and extended financial management will be implemented. User experience and security need to be improved further. Security aspects such as digital signatures, multi level user authentication and different authentication mechanisms need to be implemented. In addition to that, hardware performances need to be improved and redundancy measures need to be taken into consideration. Due to practicing the evolutionary theory in the MIS development process, it is required to address the recurring requirements and feedback and the required features need to be developed and implemented on a continuous basis.

8.0 Conclusion The complex and dynamically recurring requirements were successfully addressed by the in house development plan and evolutionary practices which also made development and implementation easy and efficient. It was also concluded that this practice can make the end user satisfied and can ensure the trust on the Management Information System.

9.0 References 1. James A. O’Brien. Introduction to Information Systems, 12th Edition. New Delhi, India: Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing, 2005. 2. Kenneth C. Laudon, Jane P. Laudon. Management Information Systems, 9th Edition. Canada: Pearson Education, 2008.

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3. “About University Higher Education Management Information System.” Internet: http://www.irque.lk/Mis/About-U-HEMIS.html, [Nov. 3, 2009]. 4. W.A.D.J. Weerakkody "Application of BRP in ERP Implementations." MBA in Information Technology, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, 2006. 5. K. Sarveswaran, G.U.I.S. Perera and M.S.D. Fernando. “A Successful Growth of the e-Learning System at University of Moratuwa”. 13th ERU Conference of University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, 2007. 6. G.I.U.S. Perera, M.S.D. Fernando, "Bridging the gap - Business and information systems: A roadmap", in proceedings of 4th ICBM conference, Sri Jayewardenepura, pp. 334-343, 2007 7. Bijay K. Jayaswal, Peter C. Patton, Software Development Methodology Today, Chapter 1, Prentice Hall publication. 2006. 8. Boehm, B.; R. Turner, “Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed”, Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-321-18612-5, 2004. 9. Enhanced Agile Software Development – Hybrid Paradigm with LEAN Practice,

G.I.U.S. Perera, M.S.D. Fernando, ICIIS, 2007.

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