Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Barriers in IS/IT Implementation in SSS Davao

Barrier in Information Systems/Information Technology means a factor that had a direct or indirect negative impact on the implementation processes. Based on my adopted company SSS, the barriers in their IS/IT implementations are:

1. Exceeded budget – This barrier is based on the interviews with the SSS IT personnel that the buys any IT hardware assets that is popular in the market like the Cisco Router. The regional offices of SSS have limited recommendation power in the purchasing of IT equipment due to the centralized management of information systems. I would suggest that the regional offices of SSS must have price and cost monitoring program and department of the hardware purchasing. I believe that this department will save the public money and this savings will go to the benefits its members.

2. Lack of specialized personnel. This barrier is come up from of the interviewee that he trained only once in his 5-year work residency is SSS as an IT Support Staff. I recommend that SSS must have a regular training program for their IT personnel. No technology implementation can be successful without proper training, and many people in today’s workforce are very adept at using the technology at hand and seem to derive much more value from the training they receive because of their high comfort level. Yet there are still those who experience high anxiety at the thought of learning a new application or system, but given the necessary encouragement and support, SSS Information Systems end-users can become productive end-users

3. Use of inexperienced staff.- This barrier is risen from the conversations with the SSS IT personnel that there are information systems end-users who are old enough and ready to retire from the service. These people are difficult to teach the new technology and new innovations of information systems of SSS. I would suggest to SSS to hire young professionals to use the functions and features of its information systems. I would also recommend to extend IT education to current SSS employees and Information Systems end-users. To adapt the competence of the personnel to changing demands, two alternative strategies may be applied. One strategy implies that the existing personnel may receive additional training and education in order to improve their own competence and skills. The other strategy means that new personnel categories are hired, complementing the competence profile of the existing personnel.

4. Opposition from leftist group to the new information particularly to the unified ID system – This barrier is taken from the excerpts of journals of interviews with the IT staff from SSS. The unified ID system aims to consolidate the different ID system of SSS, Pag-ibig, LTO and Philhealth. The leftist group opposes to this information system proposal because they believe that this project can interfere with the privacy of individual members of these government institutions. And they also think that this government project points to the surveillance of activities of leftist group. I would suggest to SSS officials to conduct a public forum for them to explain the advantages of the unified id system. Also, the public will know that this project has a great purpose in their transactions with these institutions and to avoid bad humors to this unified id system.


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