Managing Computers in Large Organizations

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Managing Microcomputers in Large Organizations http://www.nap.edu/catalog/167.html About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. MANAGING MICROCOMPUTERS AND END-USER COMPUTING SOME CRITICAL ISSUES not previously available. Internal security is ultimately still a matter of auditing and personnel policies, not technology. The final set of issues are those that, I believe, can be resolved in most organizations by normal administrative procedures and proper computer-user interfacing. These issues are the effects of bad data, data integrity, the problem of transferring end-user-developed programs, and the question of who pays for added computer capacity, the wasting of resources, and the proliferation of languages. Poor Data. Are decisions supported by computer-based analysis deficient because of poor data? This may be an important question where data from outside sources are used. The quality of outside data must be checked just as the quality of received parts or materials is checked. (In a few places it may be advisable to check the quality of the internal data as well.) Data quality really involves two questions. Is the decisionmaker better off with no data or with data that may have some errors? If flawed data are used will the power of the computer-based analytic tools in some way amplify the errors? There are several responses to this problem. Obviously, care should be taken to prevent bad data whether micros, terminals, or adding machines are being used. In each case the end user is more likely to know the data and therefore be better able to catch errors than corporate staff or others. In fact, the power of the computer may help the end user find errors by performing various consistency and trend analyses. Thus, end user access to data may have an additional benefit of making the data more accurate. Further, the kind of decision-support analysis we are discussing may be insensitive to occasional data errors. Of course, management should always be aware that recommendations and analytic results may be based on poor data. End-user computing should not aggravate this situation if administrative procedures are followed to keep the data as clean as possible and to remind the staff to check the data and the reasonableness of the results. Data integrity. Can the end user affect the operational data in corporate files? If so, can the integrity of the data be assured? Can the changes made by an end user be audited? The only way to insure the integrity of data is to maintain all the controls that data processing has painfully learned: good editing, effective audit logs and procedures, and good recovery processes. 89 Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Managing Microcomputers in Large Organizations http://www.nap.edu/catalog/167.html About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. MANAGING MICROCOMPUTERS AND END-USER COMPUTING SOME CRITICAL ISSUES There is no reason to relax these for the benefit of end users. The only way master files should be updated is by the normal, well-controlled transaction processing system. Transfer of data and programs. What about files that a user maintains independent of the mainframe systems? Should the data and programs developed by an end user be considered private, scratch pad material or should some mechanism be installed to allow sharing of this material? If the end user is working on a mainframe the data and programs are at least accessible, even if they are not properly structured and documented. But data and programs developed on a micro may be as inaccessible as those on paper. Some organizations are in fact taking the attitude that the data and programs developed by an end user on a micro are the same as material on paper. If the user leaves, the new occupant must develop his or her own routine and data. Peers who need to do similar processing must develop their own tools, perhaps with the informal help of the first end user. The results of the end user's analyses are submitted in reports (with appropriate appendixes) in the usual way. The data and routines not included in the appendixes are no longer of interest; they are throw-away materials. If the organization decides that it does want to capture programs or data that are on a micro and judged to be valuable, administrative procedures must be instituted just as they are for data processing professionals. These will not be easy to enforce, however, because there are many decentralized end users who have little interest in data processing's problems. The only other alternative is to prohibit the development of “systems” on micros and allow such development only in a mainframe context. Resource use and charge-back. If we provide many end users with the opportunity to use computers, and especially if we make it easy for them with effective languages and other software, the demand for computer capacity will soar. The issue is whether additional capacity is a good investment. If end users are helping to make decisions that significantly increase the effectiveness of the organization, the service it provides, or its profits, the cost of the computer resources may be well justified. But only management can justify this resource use. To do this, it should know what the end user is doing and how that work contributes to the organization. The data processing people, who normally have to justify the increase in capacity, do not know the 90 Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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