The Social and Technical Features Required in Information Networks To support Effective Collaboration
Introduction
Networks occur when more than two computers are connected to each other for the purpose of sharing information. These computers require a network card and CAT5 or CAT6 cables so as to connect and establish a network. In addition, they also require switch which acts as a central routing hub for the sharing of this information. As the organization expands, it is a crucial aspect for the management to implement a computer network which assists the employees to share both resources and information. This will in the long run be a crucial in factor in the development and growth of the business (Sensible Computer, 2008).
Effective social Technical design ought to incorporate the backing of the users during the designing process of the information systems. This process of system design includes the network of users, developers, IT at hand as well as the environment where these systems would be employed and supported. The procedure includes the designing of a computer interface and patterns of a human computer interaction. This process differs with the traditional systems which emphasized on the activities of systems engineers who develop the functions in computation and the system features and who employ the computer aided tools and notations which capture and formalize the outcome of a design process (Scacchi, 2004).
The concept of collaboration is not a new phenomenon; people have, from time immemorial been collaborating in one form or another. Moreover, this concept has neither changed much in the present perspective. However, the original purpose for collaboration has presently moved into document repositories. They are also regarded as effective drivers of a wide range of content to the end users. If really organization development is to be achieved, then essential collaborative tools such as those that facilitate blogging, discussion forums, chats and video will be necessary. Other requirements would include the knowledge in system functionality, including video and audio conferencing, desktop sharing and so on.
Annibell, (2010) posts that all organizations are different but many of them have come to realize the fact they need the aspect of collaboration as ever so as to stay affluent. Therefore, it is expected that mechanisms for unleashing innovative ideas will be very crucial in both the present and future collaboration portals.
The social and technical features required in information networks to support effective collaboration
One of the important considerations in information networks is that emphasis has been expanded in addressing both the technical and social features in the design of an information system within an organization. The conventional focus in designing information systems were based on the assumption that users of these systems had a clear or well defined needs which could be well addressed though proper designing mechanism and the strategy of involvement or participation. In contrast to this aspect, organizations in the present realm recognize that a large set of information systems in complex settings possess the user’s requirements that are placed in a space, that is resource configuration, organizational, social perspectives, time and the market. This is translated to mean that these social and technical requirements are not static but consistently evolving (Truex, Baskerville, and Klein 1999]. Considering that the development of the requirements in information systems are consistently changing, the social and technical are consistently engaging system users in evaluating which of the extant requirements have been changed, what new requirements are in place and which are irrelevant in today’s perspective.
As innovation processes within an organization mature, the necessity for both new and old tools becomes a crucial aspect. For instance, tools that may be necessary in this perspective include wiki tools which are in most cases leveraged by multiple end users for sharing and expounding on ideas. This translated that wikis will be in higher demands as firms continue to grow and become more innovative in their approaches to collaboration. Other elements that would be so useful are crowd sourcing. This would be essential especially in capturing ideas, both internal and eternal and ensuring that only the best ideas are sieved to the top management for implementation. Serious organizations should not overlook the concept of Crowd sourcing as it is poised to empower information technology in many aspects. It will also help the organization in moving forward and therefore, growth.
For organizations to effectively influence perception, their content will need to be increasingly targeted, be dynamic and be measurable by the using analytics. Manual update of static phases is no longer a useful phenomenon in the present perspective. The content management functionality will become crucial in ensuring that, relevant, focused and role specific information is delivered to the end users. External users of information systems visiting public sector sites will also anticipate finding personalization as well. Such visitors will look forward for means of distributing their profile information as the external facing portals transform and the citizen interest and commitment grows. This functionality will assist in ensuring that content is finally focused and effectively disbursed as these external users enter the portal (Annibell, (2010).
Reference
Annibell, B. (2010).”The Future State of Collaboration” The Public Manager. Available on
http://www.sapient.com/assets/imagedownloader/642/POV_Future%20State%20of%20Collaboration.pdf
Sensible Computer Help (2008).” Choosing the best computer network’ Available on
http://www.sensible-computer-help.com/computer-network.html
Scacchi, W. (2004). “Socio-Technical Design” In W. S. Bainbridge (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Human
Computer Interaction. Berkshire Publishing Group, 2004. Available on
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~wscacchi/Papers/SE-Encyc/Socio-Technical-Design.pdf
Truex, D., Baskerville, R. and Klein, H. (1999). “Growing Systems in an Emergent Organization,
Communications” ACM, 42(8), 117-123.
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|