Monitoring Processes to Ensure the Effectiveness of the Information System

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Monitoring Processes to Ensure the Effectiveness of the Information System

1. What this Innovative Practice does and how it works.

In the information technology field there are a vast number of individual processes which are monitored to ensure the integrity and durability of the system. Surprisingly, there are few paradigms for overall measures of system-wide effectiveness. Collaboration between the Information Services and Department and the Institutional Research Department led to cooperation in researching and defining the various key indicators for monitoring overall effectiveness.

Eastern Arizona College's innovative practice was to combine five key over-arching information system effectiveness measures and their associated processes in a comprehensive and easy to read chart. The concepts are not original just their organization. An additional chart delineates how frequently each of the major processes is monitored.

2. What motivated us to develop or adopt this Innovative Practice.

With any information system it is easy to get lost in the matrix of process measurements. We needed to wed effectiveness measures with the processes for measuring effectiveness. Even within the IT literature there have been few efforts to establish any over-arching effectiveness measures. EAC’s matrix of key measures and processes provides architecture for truly evaluating the effectiveness of the information system. Our measures and processes matrix is a work in progress. It combines simple to understand effectiveness measures which can be realistically monitored on a continuous basis.

Not just the reliability of the system hardware carrying information is evaluated but also the validity, clarity, and usefulness of the information. As with most institutions, EAC had many scattered processes for evaluating various aspects of the information system but no unifying paradigm for effectiveness. Our key effectiveness measures in process matrix chart fills the need to visualize the over arching key performance indicators for measuring the effectiveness of our information system.

3. How long it took us to develop and implement this Innovative Practice.

The various processes included in our matrix evolved over several years but the collaboration to create the chart itself was completed within a month.

4. What it cost us to develop and implement this Innovative Practice.

There were no out-of-pocket costs to develop the effectiveness measures and processes matrix chart apart for the research time devoted by the Information Services and institutional research department staff.

5. What resistance we faced in developing and implementing this Innovative Practice, and how we reduced or overcome it.

No resistance was encountered in developing the matrix and putting it in place. The IT staff was positively challenged in identifying the key effectiveness measures for our information system. Our staff was surprised to find out the paucity of constructs out there in the IT industry.

6. What it costs us to maintain and operate this Innovative Practice, and what it saves us.

We are attempting to gather cost information regarding maintenance and operation.

7. How we measure or check whether this Innovative Practice performs the way we intend it to.

Specific time frames have been delineated for monitoring key processes to ensure information system effectiveness. For instance, Help Desk requests and response times are documented on an ongoing basis.

8. Print or web documents available that provide more detail and explanation about this Innovative Practice.

The effectiveness measures and processes matrix for information service effectiveness is accessible on our website under Accreditation. Eastern Arizona College’s systems portfolio is online (http://www.eac.edu) and the chart is part of our systems portfolio in Category Seven, figure 7-7.

9. How our organization currently uses this Innovative Practice.