Flensburg P: Personlig databehandling - Per Flensburgs hemsida

Per Flensburg: Personlig databehandling
held an introductory course about use and development of data systems for about 20
librarians from the region. We applied for development money but this was denied. A
group around the head of the region library, however, continued searching for possibilities,
and after some time (in fact about three years) the proposed system "LIMES"
was a fact (Mundt-Almquist et al 1985). I acted as a start up person, provided some
education and then the librarians carried through the project all on their own.
The salary system
In another area of local government they intended to introduce a new salary system.
Fortunately one of my fellow researchers of the LUIS-group (Siv Friis) became involved
in that project at a very early stage. We have collaborated and held a course
entitled: "How to put requirements on data systems" for all the people in the salary
department. In the course we introduced systems development as an example from
their own work. We developed a rough sketch of a data base model in the third normal
form for their work within the course. However it was not possible to fulfill the
implementation due to political reasons. It was decided by the politicians not to develop
a new salary system.
The employment exchange
Since the year 1980 I have had contacts with the regional employment exchange in
the Malmö region. A certain institute, the "labour market institute" served as a qualified
analysis resource for the local employment exchanges concerning people that
were hard to place on the labour market. For such an institute a similar course was
held. We developed, as was the case for the local government, a data base model in
the third normal form. This database concerned the courses given at a trade school
for unemployed people. But it was not possible to implement this database either,
because computer resources were not available. An effort with another database was
also in vain because there were no people who had time to do the development.
Some other efforts
A similar course was held at a department at the hospital of Lund. At least three researchers
were involved in this project. The nurses and two doctors were educated
but it turned out that it were the doctors that needed a system. Also in this case we
had no machine resources, but it seemed quite possible to obtain such resources in a
couple of months. However, due to very heavy time restrictions both on the doctors
and the researchers, we had no chance to do anything.
Two other cases concerned unions. Since I had learned the importance of having
computers we decided to obtain such first and then start the development project. We
are still waiting. Another case concerned a small company that needed a new bookkeeping
system. The old one was run on a mechanic machine, which was almost a
scrap heap. A new micro was bought with a standard bookkeeping system and we decided
to develop an invoice system after a while, when people had more time. This
has not yet been the case.
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