Do the Skills of Non-IT Business Graduates Overlap with those of IT Specialists?

Given questions surrounding the skills portfolio for IT professionals, this study investigates the types of IT-related skills that non-IT business graduates use in their early careers. The relative importance of these skills for non-IT specialists can indicate areas in which specialist IT personnel are required and can assist ITeducators of both specialists and non-IT specialists in focussing their curriculum design

Moving Beyond Educational Outcomes for a Major in Information Management: Exploring Strategies for Actor-Network Construction

Developing a curriculum based on an “outcomes-based education” paradigm presents the opportunity to demonstrate how a program of study is of value to business graduates. However, without taking the wider socio- political context of the program into account, a suitable curriculum can be developed which fails to demonstrate value. The first part of this paper reports on the progress of a project that aimed to develop educational outcome statements for an Information Management major in an undergraduate degree offered by an Australian Business School. Using concepts derived from Actor-Network Theory, the project is then examined in terms of how a variety of competing interests might be aligned into a stable network. This analysis contributes to the IS discipline through suggesting alternative strategies for raising the profile of the discipline within the wider community

Information systems support for citizen-oriented administration-citizen relationships

Within public sector organisations, managers are faced with questions regarding the best means of exploiting information systems for strategic advantage whilst avoiding any negative impacts that those systems may have on their relationships with the community at large. Contemporary reforms in public administration have been directed towards changing public sector agencies from being inwardly focused and inflexible to being open and responsive to the needs of citizens. In this thesis, the potential roles which can be played by information systems in supporting “citizen-oriented" administration-citizen (COAC) relationships are explored. The issues surrounding administration-citizen relationships are complex and therefore require wider examination than can be achieved using traditional management information systems frameworks. Through the use of a descriptive/interpretive approach, a framework is developed which can be used as an investigative tool in information systems planning by identifying opportunities for information systems supporting COAC relationships. The framework provides for a representation of the infrastructure, systems and environment of relationships between citizens and public sector agencies. It is based on interpretive studies of: theoretical models of exchange; public administration theory; the administrative structures, procedures and practices in place in the Western Australian and Australian public sectors; and experience in Western Australian public sector agencies. Five guidelines, suggesting issues for debate within individual public sector agencies in the process of planning information systems to support citizen-oriented relationships, are derived from the framework

ICT4D Project Sustainability: An ANT-based Analysis

The difficulty of sustaining ICT4D projects in developing nations is a formidable issue encountered by project managers. Addressing this issue is vital given reasons such as the opportunity cost of IT investment failure in developing-world contexts. This paper presents a study which explores the sustainability of ICT4D projects via a case study of a large-scale, nation-wide, government sector ICT4D project that targets agricultural development in a developing nation in South Asia. In exploring project sustainability, ANT concepts are employed to extend analysis beyond the typical influencing factor and sustainability dimension-based interpretations and visualize and explore project sustainability as a dynamic phenomenon involving the evolution of critical relationships in actor-networks. The study identified two types of networks (i.e. global and local) and nine critical relationships that influence ICT4D project sustainability. Its key contribution is a theoretical approach for enabling ICT4D project sustainability based upon the construction and sustenance of critical relationships