Design and Implementation of Task Management Lifecycle Concepts based on Process Mining

In a globalized world, knowledge work and especially Knowledge-intensive Business Processes (KiBPs) become increasingly important in highly developed countries. As a consequence, knowledge workers increasingly require an appropriate system support. Due to the more complex nature and the different characteristics of KiBPs, the Business Process Management (BPM) approach established to support traditional business processes, cannot be applied to KiBPs in the same way. As knowledge workers often rely on paper-based task lists (e.g. checklists, to-do lists) to collaboratively manage their work, a system supporting KiBPs should provide digital task lists based on a lifecycle to achieve a sustainable support. This thesis discusses new concepts to enable an improved KiBP lifecycle support for task management through the application of process mining techniques. The KiBP lifecycle features the definition of so called collaboration templates, the instantiation of these templates to collaboration instances at run time and the evaluation of collaboration records. In particular, collaboration records are leveraged to automatically derive appropriate templates and to optimize existing templates. In this context, an optimization approach for task list templates is proposed that incorporates the most frequently applied changes into the corresponding template using a change mining technique. Furthermore, an approach to automatically generate a task list template based on the records of comparable, completed task list instances through the application of a cluster mining algorithm is proposed as well. Additionally, the issue of providing knowledge workers with valuable task recommendations at run time is discussed and an approach addressing this problem is presented. Finally, selected excerpts of the implementation are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approaches as a proof-of-concept prototype

Records Management in the Context of Business Excellence

U članku se analizira proces upravljanja zapisima u kontekstu poslovne ili organizacijske izvrsnosti kao poželjnoga koncepta upravljanja u poslovanju suvremenih organizacija. Obrađuju se tri interna dokumenta koje se preporuča izraditi u svakoj organizaciji i koje se smatra bitnim preduvjetima za postizanje izvrsnog upravljanja zapisima: interni akt o upravljanju zapisima, klasifikacijski plan i popis zapisa organizacije s rokovima čuvanja. Budući da sadržavaju obavijesti o vrstama, načinu odvijanja i izvođenja pojedinih aktivnosti u okviru procesa upravljanja zapisima, ta se tri dokumenta promatra kao sastavne dijelove dokumentacije sustava upravljanja kvalitetom. Ukazuje se na pozitivne učinke koje njihova primjena, osim na upravljanje zapisima, ima i na postizanje zadanog sustava kvalitete i obavljanje poslovnih procesa organizacije u cjelini.The paper analyzes the process of managing records in the context of business or organizational excellence as a desired management concept in contemporary organizations’ business. Assuming that most of business functions, processes and associated activities result in records creation, and that these records are needed for their carrying out, it is considered that excellent records management is one of the bases of performing every other business function and process. The paper tries to show how excellent records management, as a support (secondary) process, influences the optimization and rationalization of organization’s business as a whole. In the context of Porter’s generic strategies and information ecology, it examines records managementas a part of organization’s unique value chain, and shows how costs of records management, adjusted to (match) business’s real needs, can lower the costs of organization’s products and services, i.e. increase its profit and net worth. It elaborates on three internal policies that every organization is advised to create (some organizations are bound to do so by law) and which are considered important prerequisites for maintaining excellent records management: internal records management policy, classification scheme, and disposition schedule. Since they hold information on types, methods and performance of particular records management activities, these three policies are examined as integral parts of quality assurance system documentation. Emphasis is put on positive outcomes of their implementation when it comes to records management and maintaining quality assurance goals, as well as conducting organization’s business functions and processes. In terms of the given context, the paper is not limited to a particular type of organization (e.g. categorized creators and custodians under state archives’ supervision, organizations subject to Regulation on Records Management) and its recommendations are considered to be applicable in every organization that maintains or aims to maintain business or organizational excellence. All these organizations, whose goal is maintaining excellent records management process, are encouraged to benchmark the process internally and externally, and to implement policies within current normative framework that regulates records management, regardless of being subjected to these policies or not

Data mining in medical records for the enhancement of strategic decisions: a case study

The impact and popularity of competition concept has been increasing in the last decades and this concept has escalated the importance of giving right decision for organizations. Decision makers have encountered the fact of using proper scientific methods instead of using intuitive and emotional choices in decision making process. In this context, many decision support models and relevant systems are still being developed in order to assist the strategic management mechanisms. There is also a critical need for automated approaches for effective and efficient utilization of massive amount of data to support corporate and individuals in strategic planning and decision-making. Data mining techniques have been used to uncover hidden patterns and relations, to summarize the data in novel ways that are both understandable and useful to the executives and also to predict future trends and behaviors in business. There has been a large body of research and practice focusing on different data mining techniques and methodologies. In this study, a large volume of record set extracted from an outpatient clinic’s medical database is used to apply data mining techniques. In the first phase of the study, the raw data in the record set are collected, preprocessed, cleaned up and eventually transformed into a suitable format for data mining. In the second phase, some of the association rule algorithms are applied to the data set in order to uncover rules for quantifying the relationship between some of the attributes in the medical records. The results are observed and comparative analysis of the observed results among different association algorithms is made. The results showed us that some critical and reasonable relations exist in the outpatient clinic operations of the hospital which could aid the hospital management to change and improve their managerial strategies regarding the quality of services given to outpatients.Decision Making, Medical Records, Data Mining, Association Rules, Outpatient Clinic.

Accelerating positive change in electronic records management: an empirical toolkit of solutions

The AC+erm project aims to investigate and critically explore issues and practical strategies for accelerating positive change in electronic records management. The project’s focus is on designing an organisational-centred architecture from three perspectives: people, process and technology. This paper introduces the project, describes the methodology (a systematic literature review, e-Delphi studies and colloquia) and presents solutions for improving ERM developed from the people and process e-Delphi responses. ERM is particularly challenging and the solutions offered by the Delphi participants are numerous, and range in scale and complexity. The only firm conclusion that one can draw is that the majority of the solutions are people-focussed ones. The Cynefin framework is introduced as one approach for providing a conceptual overview to our findings on ERM. The sample solutions presented in this paper provide a toolkit of ‘probes’ and ‘interventions’ for practical application in organisations

Developing information architecture through records management classification techniques

Purpose – This work aims to draw attention to information retrieval philosophies and techniques allied to the records management profession, advocating a wider professional consideration of a functional approach to information management, in this instance in the development of information architecture. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws from a hypothesis originally presented by the author that advocated a viewpoint whereby the application of records management techniques, traditionally applied to develop business classification schemes, was offered as an additional solution to organising information resources and services (within a university intranet), where earlier approaches, notably subject- and administrative-based arrangements, were found to be lacking. The hypothesis was tested via work-based action learning and is presented here as an extended case study. The paper also draws on evidence submitted to the Joint Information Systems Committee in support of the Abertay University's application for consideration for the JISC award for innovation in records and information management. Findings – The original hypothesis has been tested in the workplace. Information retrieval techniques, allied to records management (functional classification), were the main influence in the development of pre- and post-coordinate information retrieval systems to support a wider information architecture, where the subject approach was found to be lacking. Their use within the workplace has since been extended. Originality/value – The paper advocates that the development of information retrieval as a discipline should include a wider consideration of functional classification, as this alternative to the subject approach is largely ignored in mainstream IR works

A Service Component-based Accounting and Charging Architecture to Support Interim Mechanisms across Multiple Domains

Today, telematics services are often compositions of different chargeable service components offered by different service providers. To enhance component-based accounting and charging, the service composition information is used to match with the corresponding charging structure of a service session. This enables the sharing of revenues among the service providers, and calculation of the total cost for the end-user. When multiple independent service providers are involved, it is a great challenge to apply interim accounting and charging during a service session in order to minimize financial risks between business partners. Another interesting development is the trend towards outsourcing accounting and charging processes to specialized business partners. This requires a decoupling between provisioning and accounting and charging processes. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive component-based accounting and charging architecture to support service session provisioning across multiple domains. The architecture, modeled in UML, incorporates an interim accounting and charging mechanism to enable the processing and exchange of accounting information needed to update intermediate charges for separate service components and the user's credit, even during the service provisioning phase

Examining the issues & challenges of email & e-communications. 2nd Northumbria Witness Seminar Conference, 24-25 Oct 2007 Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.

These proceedings capture the content of the second Witness Seminar hosted by Northumbria University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences. It followed the success of the first witness seminar in terms of its format and style but differed in that it focused on one topic - managing email and other electronic communications technologies from a records perspective. As before the witnesses were invited to share their views and opinions on a specific aspect taking as their starting point a pertinent published article(s). Three seminars explored the business, people and technology perspectives of email and e-communications, asking the following questions: What are the records management implications and challenges of doing business electronically? Are people the problem and the solution? Is technology the problem or panacea? The final seminar, 'Futurewatch', focused on moving forward, exploring new ways of working, potential new technologies and what records professionals and others need to keep on their radar screens

Records management capacity and compliance toolkits : a critical assessment.

This article seeks to present the results of a project that critically evaluated a series of toolkits for assessing records management capacity and/or compliance. These toolkits have been developed in different countries and sectors within the context of the e-environment and provide evidence of good corporate and information governance. Design/methodology/approach - A desk-based investigation of the tools was followed by an electronic Delphi with toolkit developers and performance measurement experts to develop a set of evaluation criteria. Different stakeholders then evaluated the toolkits against the criteria using cognitive walkthroughs and expert heuristic reviews. The results and the research process were reviewed via electronic discussion. Findings - Developed by recognised and highly respected organisations, three of the toolkits are software tools, whilst the fourth is a methodology. They are all underpinned by relevant national/international records management legislation, standards and good practice including, either implicitly or explicitly, ISO 15489. They all have strengths, complementing rather than competing with one another. They enable the involvement of other staff, thereby providing an opportunity for raising awareness of the importance of effective records management. Practical implications - These toolkits are potentially very powerful, flexible and of real value to organisations in managing their records. They can be used for a "quick and dirty" assessment of records management capacity or compliance as well as in-depth analysis. The most important criterion for selecting the appropriate one is to match the toolkit with the scenario. Originality/value - This paper aims to raise awareness of the range and nature of records management toolkits and their potential for varied use in practice to support more effective management of records

Greening information management: final report

As the recent JISC report on ‘the ‘greening’ of ICT in education [1] highlights, the increasing reliance on ICT to underpin the business functions of higher education institutions has a heavy environmental impact, due mainly to the consumption of electricity to run computers and to cool data centres. While work is already under way to investigate how more energy efficient ICT can be introduced, to date there has been much less focus on the potential environmental benefits to be accrued from reducing the demand ‘at source’ through better data and information management. JISC thus commissioned the University of Strathclyde to undertake a study to gather evidence that establishes the efficacy of using information management options as components of Green ICT strategies within UK Higher Education environments, and to highlight existing practices which have the potential for wider replication