A Decision Support System for Information Technology Policy Formulation

The implementation of an effective ICT policy requires the development of material and intellectual resources to support good decision making by humans.   In this paper, we examined and analysed Information Technology (IT) policy development process with a view to developing automated system supporting such process.  The data used for this work were obtained through purposeful interview of five professionals and experts who are familiar with IT policy formulation in Nigerian environment.  Some of the experts had earlier participated in policy design and formulation process at national level.     The Hierarchical Input Process Output (HIPO) model was used to analyse various input (contributions of professionals and experts) and output (agreed resolution of the professionals and experts) of the system.  The information obtained from the experts was represented using rule base techniques.  The overall system was designed using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and implemented using the Visual Prolog version 7.0.  The metrics used for evaluating the system includes: processing time, decision process efficiency and cost effectiveness.   We compared the result of our system with that of the traditional manual system in use.  Our result showed that the DSS for policy formulation process enhances the decision output significantly when compared to the manual process where no DSS is used.  Moreover, the quality of policy produced by our DSS system is more consistent when compared with the manual process.

Towards Development of an Indigenous African Language-based Programming Language

Programming languages based on the lexicons of indigenous African languages are rare to come by unlike those based on Asian and / or European languages. It is opined that an African native language-based programming language would enhance comprehension of computer-based problem solving processes by indigenous students and teachers. This study intends to attempt a design and implementation of an African native language-based programming language using Yoruba as case study. Yoruba is the first language of over 30 million people in the south-west of Nigeria, Africa; and is spoken by over one hundred million people world-wide. In preparation towards actual implementation of a prototype of the intended programming language, a mini token recognizer has been developed in QBasic. Keywords— Native language-based programming languages, Yoruba language, Digital divide, Information and communication technology, prototype implementation.