CHAPTER 1 –

INFORMATION SYSTEMS

FUNDAMENTALS AND ISSUES

PhD. LAVINIA DOVLEAC

CHAPTER 1. STRUCTURE

1.1. Information
1.2. Information Economy
1.3. Information Architecture
1.4. Storage devices
1.5. Information Management
 What is an Information System?

An Information System (IS) consists of:

 persons,
 data records
 activities that process the data and
information in a given organization, including
manual processes or automated processes.
In computer security,
an INFORMATION SYSTEM is described by
next objects:

Structure

Behavior
STRUCTURE BEHAVIOR

Repositories Messages

Interfaces Services

Channels

A set of logical or physical channels.

NETWORK
THE INFORMATION SYSTEM IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS

is any telecommunications and/or computer related equipment or

interconnected system or subsystems of equipment that is used in the:

 acquisition,  movement,  interchange,

 storage,  control,  transmission,
 manipulation,  display,  reception of voice
 management,  switching, and/or data,

An information system includes:

 software,
 firmware,
 hardware.
 Information Sub-discipline of
systems computer science

An attempt to:
 understand the management of technology
 rationalize within organizations.

Today, RESOURCES
Information and
 people,
Information technology
 money,
have become the fifth
 material
major resource available
 machines
to executives for shaping
 information
an organization.
In the INFORMATION AGE …

the focus of companies has shifted from being:

PRODUCT TO KNOWLEDGE
oriented oriented

Market operators today compete on process and innovation

rather than products.

The emphasis has shifted:

quality and quantity of the production process itself and the
production services that accompany it.
 What is the biggest ASSET of companies today?

INFORMATION

Represented in:
 people,
 experience,
 know-how,
 innovations
Information Systems has a number of different
areas of work:

- Information Systems Strategy

- Information Systems Management
- Information Systems Development.
WHAT DATA MEANS?

There appears a general sense that data is:

"raw information" or "information without context"

WRONG!!!

Information is:
"data with context" or "data with meaning".
DEFINITION OF INFORMATION

Drucker, P.F. (2006)

“Classic Drucker”. Harvard Business Review

Galliers, R.D., Leidner, D.E. (2013)

“Strategic Information Management. Challenges and Strategies
in Managing Information Systems”. Routledge
Example: LIBRARY

Go into the library and take out a book.

You’ll see a barcode which is the ISBN or the accession number, and
the barcode on your library card is "you".

The book is on the stock of the library and the link with the computer
gives the author and title, the date and place and publisher.

The book itself and the database gives a classification number. If you
look on the back of the title page of your book you will find Teora
or Editura Economica.

The catalogue entry might have an abstract, to give you more of an

idea of the subject of the work or whether it is appropriate to your
requirement.
CONCLUSION

 Information is …
a social and organizational process.
NUMBERS

 Counting seems to reach back into the earliest of what

we know about human information processing.

The development of the base ten system, the concept of 0, of

fractions, of negative numbers, of imaginary numbers…
is the story of the development of the complexity of people's
need to socially process information.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

What computers and telephones have done to information?

The first information revolution was the development of the

ability to speak in something approaching a 'language',
The second was the coding of sound into graphic
representations.
The third was movable type which enabled the same
message to exist in many different places at the same time.
The fourth is the links of computing and
telecommunications which has yet again changed the spatial
and temporal relationship of human communication.
INFORMATION ECONOMY

Most writings on the information economy or

an economy of information are concerned with:

 the effect on prices of information

 the need for perfect information for a market
to function efficiently.
 INFORMATION AND NETWORKS

 RECEIVERS
 TRANSMITTERS

Examples: telephones, television, faxes, workstations,

all the authors and readers.

They are all:

producers of information and consumers of information.

They can be at home, they can be at work, they can be on

the move, they're at it anytime and in many places.
INFORMATION AND NETWORKS

 RECEIVERS
 TRANSMITTERS CHANNELS

 traditional hard wiring,

 copper wires
 optical fibers.

SWITCHES
have to understand,
firstly, where something
is going.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Architecture is concerned with:

 the spaces among objects in which humans
engage in social activities,

 the materials and their properties with which those

spaces are bounded and defined.

 Information systems are concerned with the social

practices of people involved in processing
information.
DATA CAPTURING

Information comes in a variety of forms and from many

sources.

Forms of data capturing:

 Keyboard
 Optical character recognition (OCR)
 Touchscreen
DIGITIZATION DIGITALIZATION

 Definition
 Examples
 Contribution

Digitisation means Digitalisation means

‘Doing digital’ ‘Being digital’
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

The result is a PROJECT.

 A project is a general relation between resources and goals.

Example of a simple project:

make a cup of coffee!

Which is the goal?

Which are the resources?
There are several techniques for enabling the
management of more complex projects, such
as PERT, GANTT, Risk analysis, and many of
these have been written into software such
that the primitives and protocols are encoded.