IT in the modern organisation

In the modern competitive world, it is impossible to think of life without information. The whole world depends upon how quickly the information is conveyed from one person or place to another. To keep the system up to date, we need to gather information from various sources like newspaper, radio, magazines, televisions, internet etc.

Information is significant to a business. It is vital for managers, scientists, and for practitioners in any business organisation to take decisions, to prepare plans, to control activities, to pursue research at advanced level, to provide services, etc. The organisation structure must be capable of managing this information throughout the information lifecycle regardless of source or format (data, paper, documents, electronic documents, audio, video, etc.). Information, formal or informal, is however to be managed.

Timeliness refers to that the information should be available when needed. If information is provided to early, it may no longer be current when used. If the information is supplied to late, it will be of no use.

The term information technology is widely used nowadays. It refers to the subjects related to creating, managing, processing and exchanging information. It defines an industry that uses computers, networking software programming, and other equipment and processes to store, process, retrieve, transmit and protection information.

In this area of Information technology, computer science used in almost all walks of life. Computers of widely used in several fields, such as education, communication, entertainment, banking, medicine, weather forecasting and scientific research. We can use computers to perform a variety of tasks, such as drafting letters, performing calculations, maintaining records about students, creating question papers, analysing exam results and even creating attractive pictures. In spite of the field of working, today every person need to have basic knowledge of computers to excel in his or her respective field. IT proficiency allows a person to be an active and effective participant in the emerging information for knowledge society. To be successful in today's information on knowledge age, we must have knowledge and understanding of computers and their uses.

Managing information technology in organisations 

A modern organisation possesses the following amount of information resources:

Hardware: These are the peripheral devices like monitor, processor, printer, keyboard and mouse etc. used to perform input, processing and output activities.

Software: These are the program for set of instructions that allowed the hardware to process the data for producing useful information from the data.

Data bases: These are the Sadiq collection of associated files for tables containing related data. A database represents an organised collection of facts and information in the form of table.

Network: A computer network is a system in which multiple computers are connected to each other to share information and resources. The connections between the computers are established using either cable or wired media or wireless media. The best known computer network is the internet.

People: The most important element in Computer based information systems. Every Computer based information system needs people if it is to be useful. It can be developer of Computer based information system or the persons who operate and maintain the Computer based Information systems such as managers and technical support staff.

Procedures: Procedures include the strategies, policies, methods and rules used for combining the above components to process information and produce the preferred output. 

It is very difficult to manage Information technology resources because all the above mentioned resources are scattered throughout the organisation; some of them change frequently.

It is very important to manage information system properly because the acquisition, operation and maintenance of these systems involve a great amount of money. The information system department and the end users take the responsibility of management of information resources. The information system department is responsible for corporate level and shared resources, in the end users are responsible for departmental resources. In other words information system department will the system and the end users operate and maintain them.

The role of information system department is to manage information technology in organisation through following ways:

a) Designing strategic information systems

b) Infrastructure planning, development and control

c) Incorporating E-Commerce into the business

d) Incorporating internet, intranets and extranets in organisation for system integration

e) Educating the non information system managers about information technology

f) Supporting end user computing

g) Partnering with the executive level that runs the business

h) Actively participating in business process reengineering

I) Actively analysing innovative ideas about information technology

j) Making business alliances with vendors and information system departments in other organisations.