Ch 13: Can the U.S. Army Reserve Pay Soliders Correctly?

1.) There were flaws that existed in the payroll system that caused some of the soldiers to get paid and some to not. The non-injured soldiers were receiving inaccurate paychecks with too little or too much money. The operations area of the Army was in need of help it was prone to many personnel system problems. There two systems DFAS and DJMS did not work conjunctively, leading to lots of errors such as the above mentioned. The errors were on going due to the fact that manual updates were occurring on a frequent basis. Due to the age of the system changes were out of the question, a new system was what was needed. A GAO study determined that 90% of the soliders that were in moblized units suffered from some sort of payroll issue, clearly something needed to be done!

There is no doubt that changes would be difficult but they were also necessary. The issues were in the organization, management and technical areas contributing to these systems. The areas of impact from these systems were at all levels. The human error was enormous due to the data entry happening at all levels and times. it was noted by the deputy secretary that leadership turnover caused a disconnect in awareness and program goals, this was the basis of many of the issues.

The army was also lacking the ever important organizational skills in their dept of payroll. They didn’t deny that this was an issue when confronted. The many technical and personnel issues aided in the destruction of the Army’s payroll system, these two entities did not work well together. This was due to the fact that the payroll systems were outdated and very hard to manage. The software that was being used was very rigid and sis not allow for easy changes to occur. Their new system, DIMHRS was funded but was three years behind its scheduling. It’s a wonder anyone got paid in the midst of all this mess.

FCP was a new system that was implemented as a interim solution. It used a web based browser to review and update files in the personnel database. There was a fail safe to keep information from being entered in duplicate, this helped with the data enrty errors. Microsoft SQL and Web browser software were needed to review the database documents. This temporary solution achieved a 97% success rate in the payroll dept.

Online medical database helps physicians answer clinical questions.

Web Tool May Help Doctors Make Better Decisions

Press Release 05-206

DynaMed is a Information system that has a huge database that is able to help physicians in diagnoses as well as prescription dosing. According to a study done primary care physicians were able to answer more clinical questions when they used this online resource. With the use of Dynamic Medical Information System, or DynaMed, they were able to be more efficient and accurate with their decisions.

DynaMed was developed with the support of a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research award. DynaMed is a collection of more than 1,800 medical topics and their clinical summaries. Doctors can log in to DynaMed to compare patients' ailments with a peer-reviewed data base.

In a recent study they found that many doctors changed their diagnosis after the data base search. This is a prime example of a good system, it is user friendly and the Dr's are giving positive feedback.

The IS DynaMed is supported by NSF's SBIR program. This program emphasizes high-risk, high-payback innovations that are tied to NSF's mission of advancements in science, engineering and education.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=105636&org=NSF

Can Information Systems Make Your Doctor Better?

#1)
What problems are hospitals and physicians encountering in diagnosing diseases and prescription medications? What management, organization, and technology factors are responsible for these problems?

Physicians are often misdiagnosing diseases and then prescribing the wrong medication to treat the misdiagnosis. This occurs in hospital, Dr's Offices and nursing homes. These mis diagnoses can cause irrefutable damage such as death. Each year more than 1.5 million Americans are injured by drug errors and estimation of more than 7,000 Americans die because of inappropriate prescriptions. Outrageous charges are incurred to patients for faulty medication charges amounting to about $3.5 billion annually.Unfortunately human error is the key item responsible for these issues; handwriting, memory lapses, fatigue and distractions. The proliferation of medications also raises confusions and complexity for doctors in proper prescriptions. Unfortunately some of the information systems used to prevent these errors actually create new errors sue to the mass amounts of work the do.This calamity of chaos between the doctors and patients is leading to doctors second guessing themselves which is never a good thing. someone needs to design and implement a good Information System that could aid in this disaster.

#3)
What obstacles prevent computer systems from improving the medical industry? How can these obstacles be removed?

It has been shown that when hospitals convert to CPOE and DDS comp systems that they are more efficient and organized leading to less errors. These systems have been proven to save time as well as lives. There are however obstacles that need to be overcome if the systems are to be ran properly.
1) Resistance from doctors to change the traditional way of treatment, they complain and say the system is to difficult.
2) Simple glitches in the system increase the likelihood of ordering wrong medications by scattering patient data and drug ordering forms. The program needs to be well designed.
3) They need to be greater geared toward the nursing staff because they are the one’s doing the majority of the medicating.
4) Rigidity of such a system over the traditional paperwork, is an issue and can obstruct it from improving the medical industry.The obstacles can be overcome if: effective communication among the medical staff is achieved. They also need to learn more about the system and trust it. Finally, the system must be designed to have thorough pertinent information regarding each patient.

In order to overcome these obstacles the medical staff would need to have open communication. The company also need to set up multiple training sessions for the Dr’s and staff, so a knowledge and trust can be instated. Lastly the system would need to be designed with each individual patient in mind, so that errors could be caught before a fatal dose is given.

Jumping the E-Gun!

Jumping the E-Gun - eBay's system problems are a lesson for other electronic commerce providers - Company Operations - ColumnENT, Sept 8, 1999 by Bill Laberis

In June of last year ebay's system went down for 22 hours, creating the cyber equivalent of a huge "closed" sign on eBay's front door. As a result eBays stock dropped the next day, significantly a $4billion dollar market value drop. In addition to their market loss they lost an estimated $5 million in revenue. Suddenly the convenience was taken away from the seller/customer. Shipments were delayed and auctions were placed on hold, nothing more than a minor bump, or so one would think.The bottom line came down to the fact that eBay was not ready nor did they anticipate a total systems failure. This seems odd since they are a company that’s livelihood depends a functioning computer system and network.

Instead of taking blame for their faulty system they blamed their vendor Sun Microsystems for the outage. Sun released a statement saying it was related to a human error, but all in all it was apparent that eBay was not prepared. This young company that grew fast had lost sight of what needed to be protected their system. This was a major wake up call for many other e-commerce sites.

Stress tests should be ran on systems like the one implemented by eBay. When companies grow rapidly stress tests are often forgot about. The overload of visitors and transactions on these sites needs to get estimated and the sites must be prepared for the demand that they are going to incur. Online transactions put a major stain on a system, therefore a backup is needed. Companies should also pretest instead of using the shotgun approach.

Since e-commerce is fairly new there aren’t very many models to follow, so a lot of it is learn by doing or watching others mistakes and learning from them. Basically the managers of these companies need to be more aware of their risks and plan accordingly.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FOX/is_15_4/ai_55675990

Can eBay continue growing?

2. What are the problems that eBay is currently facing?

a. eBay is facing many problems in this growing market of e-commerce.
According to this case study its growth rates are slowing in the US and Germany its growth rates have slowed in the United States and Germany by increased seller fees, but they have been made up for in the French and Italian markets. EBay has been working hard to gain the Chinese market but it is slower to take off due to the other types of auctions already offered there.
b. eBay has also encountered trouble with the some specific target area markets such as real estate, travel, new-car sales, and expensive collectibles. They have recently launched a new VoIP technology that is aimed to increase the communication barrier between the buyers and sellers. The one problem is that many sellers are not interested in adding this option to their pages.
c. Compliance is also a major issue because of the various laws and regulations when it comes to e-commerce. Ultimately eBay may be liable for its members, when they sell false goods or leave negative feedback to other consumers and customers.
d. By far honesty is eBay’s main challenge. Are sellers being truthful about there items? In my opinion they don’t do a very good job in this area. I have a friend that purchased a high end item from eBay and she paid a pretty cost only to discover upon arrival that it was a replica and that the seller had not been honest. When she contacted eBay they took the sellers side. Also identity fraud and theft have been a major issue.
e. eBay’s main issue is keeping its customers and sellers happy. I don’t believe they have thoroughly tackled this effort.

5. Will eBay be successful in the long run? Why or why not?

Maybe, I think eBay will stay successful as long as another e-commerce site doesn’t start up that offers better security and seller/buyer service.
eBay needs to focus more on monitoring their security and also their sellers merchandise. They need to offer better customer service or eventually the negative word of mouth might catch up to them. I know many people that will NOT shop on ebay, due to horror stories from other friends.
They do have a good advantage due to their recent partnerships with Wiki and MyCollectibles. They will be able to move in on the niche markets associated with the wiki’s and also with people that have a passion for collectibles. As long as people are too lazy to go out and shop for what they need eBay will continue to flourish.

MIT researcher and artist finds inner beauty in computer viruses

Dragulescu is a Romanian-born MIT researcher that also has another talent. He is also an artist and when he was asked to put an image to some common viruses by a computer security company, he came up with beautiful works of art. As he began doing research he found unusual reoccurring patterns which he was able to turn into art. Dragulescu has peeled back the code behind the world's worst tech bugs and rendered stunning images from it.

He used the data to coax pointy green tentacles from the dreaded e-mail worm "Mydoom" and grew pretty peach petals from the epicenter of the spam file "Degreediploma5."


"These types of threats are very smart. Very intelligent in design. Digital organisms, really, that adapt themselves and replicate. We wanted to capture some of that complexity and uniqueness."

He built an algorithm based computer system where he entered his repeat findings in code. These codes were then converted into different types of tentacles and many beautiful colors.

I found this atricle very interesting how he was able to put beauty to such herendous computer viruses. It's also interesting to see the similarities between computer virus "stucture" and human virus stucture, they are very similar. Amazing how such a beautiful and tiny system can infect and destroy so much life!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/358868_wormart14.html

2.) What are Google’s sources of competitive advantage? How does it provide value to it’s users?

Google's IT infrastructure is one of its main competitive advantages it has an estimated 450,000 servers in over 25 locations world wide. They also have a very flexible infrastructure that allows for the speed to stay high. Google also evaluates a page link system and a web crawler. They also implement MapReduce which is a programming model to simplify processing and creating large data sets. They also have WorkQueue, this groups queries and schedules them for distributes processing. These technologies provide value for the customer by creating a fast and efficient search engine.

5.)How successful do you think Google will be in the future?

I think that Google will stay strong for along time as long as they keep up there diligence with respect to their programming processes and they keep their IT infrastructure secret secure. There is a good possibility that a new SE will come along but it will take years to get up to speed with Google so the competitor will most likely always be behind. Google also has brand association and an emotional attachment by it's users, which will be hard for any competition to gain leverage on. I am an avid Google user and have been using it for years, Ive tried new SE's over the years but i have always gone back to Google because it is clearly the best.