Idea Transcript
Planning Support Systems - A Case Study: The University of New South Wales Joan Burns, Planning Services Office, University of New South Wales, Australia
One cannot stumble into the thorny field of any kind of support systems without providing definitions and thereby letting the hapless reader keep track of what is being referred to. It is a necessary evil in an area that has more acronyms associated with it than any government bureaucracy!
Definitions Decision Support Systems (DSS) Rohrbaugh (1986, p 5) defines any system that supports a decision as a decision support system, but goes onto narrow the focus of this to describe a decision support system as the interactive computer-based sets of procedures that assist decision makers use information to analyse possible implications and contingencies of alternative courses of action. He also notes the blurring of boundaries that exist between decision support systems and fields, such as systems engineering, data processing management (DPM), operations research (OR) and artificial intelligence (AI). To these should also be added more recent developments in the field of expert systems (ES) which could probably be regarded as the ultimate in decision support systems in that they become decision making systems. Norris and Mims (1984) take the view that decision support systems “are intended to provide the administrator or manager with direct, flexible, easy to use computer-based support for important non-routine problems and decisions”. Jedamus (1984, p 80) recognises the implications of decision support systems for planning and asserts that this is where their greatest value will lie because “strategic planning ...(involves) a decision making process which is relatively unstructured and relies to a great extent on exogenous sources of information”. Deogun (1988, p 429) describes a decision support system as “a complex man-machine information system that supports managerial judgement and intuition systematically to improve the effectiveness of the decision-making process”.
Management Information Systems (MIS) In a review of the literature in this area from 1981-1985, Cooper (1988, p 73) describes a management information system as an integrated, user-machine system providing information to support operations, management and decision-making functions in an organisation. He too comments on the proliferation of names in the discipline including computer-based information systems (CBIS), decision support systems (DSS), management support systems (MSS) and executive support systems (ESS). Davis and Cooper (1985, p 6) define a management information system as “an integrated, user-machine system for providing information to support operations, management and decision-making functions in an organisation. The system utilises computer hardware and software; manual procedures: models for analysis, planning, control and decision making; and a database”.
They describe the results of a survey in which the abundance of terms describing management information systems is quantified and also included information services, information systems (IS), data processing (DP) and information resource management (IRM).
Executive Support Systems/Executive Information Systems More recent in this area is the appearance of executive systems. Viehland (1990) describes an executive information system (EIS) as a decision support system for the executive and goes on to distinguish the executive information system from other information systems by virtue of the fact the end user is the executive. This definition begs the question in particular as to how to define the executive. Frackmann (1990) discusses executive support systems (ESS) as having a focus on direct executive support by computer and systems’ facilities. One thing however all these authors agree on is the notion these systems (by whatever name they are known) are an aid or support to judgement and will never replace the manager, administrator or decision maker or, as Jackson puts it, “it is going to be a long time before the personal computer or terminal replaces the ubiquitous ‘gofer’ as far as a top-level executive is concerned” (1986, p 17).
Planning Support Systems (PSS) Not having found any definitions in the literature for a planning support system, I would define it as follows. A planning support system is a collection of information used primarily to support the planning processes. These processes include corporate planning, strategic planning and operational planning. It consists of two components, the information itself and a computerised catalogue which provides the essential description and location of the information, which may exist in disparate or incompatible forms and media. In terms of the definitions of other systems above, the planning support system is most like a decision support system because it is defined in terms of what process the information will support rather than who is using it (EIS/ESS) or the means of holding it (MIS). It is unique though in describing which managerial function it supports. This is probably a contentious statement and one contingent upon many other definitions relating to management and administration generally. However, if the description of management by Stoner, Collins and Yetton (1985, p11) is used (management consists of “planning, controlling, organising and leading”), then this statement is true and planning support systems are different to other systems.
Planning at the University of New South Wales In describing the planning support system that has been developed at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), it is useful to describe the planning function within the organisation and its structure. Its function is (hopefully) obvious, although in these days of dwindling government financial support, universities are often in conflict over their nature as education providers and educational enterprises. However, that is another debate! The role of the Planning Service Office (PSO) within the University will also be described, but equates well with that of the Institutional Research Office (IRO) in the United States.
UNSW Structure and Function UNSW, a relatively young institution, is just over 40 years old. It has a very devolved management structure and a strong consultative and democratic decision making process. The deans receive a one-line budget from the Vice-Chancellor. The University has a Deputy Vice-Chancellor with responsibility for central administrative functions. The Deans, Deputy Principal and Bursar, and the Deputy Principal and Registrar all report to the Vice-Chancellor through the Deputy Vice-Chancellor. There are two Pro-Vice-Chancellors, one of whom has a particular brief for the oversight of activities associated with
research and external funding and the other has a particular brief for academic and policy matters and planning. This represents a reasonably high profile for the planning activity in an Australian university. The University has a strong commitment to corporate planning a process which was led, as any strong corporate planning activity needs to be if it is to be successful, by the Vice-Chancellor. There is an integrated planning and budgetary process. The budget is a phase in the implementation of plans, not an annual sharing of resources based on historical proportionalities. A Budget Advisory Group, consisting of the Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and the Deputy Principal and Bursar, develop income plans and set broad budget parameters. Senior administrators, including the deans, are interviewed and asked to demonstrate the relevance of their plans to the corporate plan. In other words, the budget is plan driven and the direction the University looks is forward to where-it-wants-to-be rather than historical and where-it-was.
Role of the Planning Service Office This description is given to explain what has driven the need for a planning support system in this institution. The mission of the Planning Services Office is to provide initiative in the development and maintenance of corporate planning and the provision of information to support planning and decision making within the University. The Office also provides information to meet the requirements of external bodies. In the light of this, the Planning Services Office could be said to be providing executive support, management support, decision support, planning support, information management and executive information. Because of this I have developed the concept that a Planning Support System is a WINning system because (W)hat’s (I)n a (N)ame? It is referred to as a Planning Support System because its orientation is to planning support rather than information systems as such. But this difference in orientation has also resulted in a difference in approach to the task of providing the senior executive and administrative and academic managers of the University with planning information and support.
The Nature of Planning Information Planning is a strange activity in that it often looks backward to look forwards! The importance of historical information to planning and institutional research activities is evidenced in time series and trends analysis and in developing projection models, which include elements such as progression, completion and attrition rates. With the rapid and continuing expansion of information technology, the unfortunate planners are left, unassisted, to confront the fact that much of the information they will deal with will be in incompatible formats. The importance of this point in relation to institutional self-study (which all universities in Australia have been particularly concerned with since the release of the Federal Government’s White Paper on Higher Education in 1988) is discussed by Howard, Nichols and Gracie (1987, p 81). It was also a major design factor in the development of the planning support system at UNSW. Because of the emphasis given to planning and because of the University’s devolved management structure, the Planning Services Office experiences a high demand for planning information from a wide variety of sources for many different purposes and finds itself having to cater for a diversity of needs in relation to planning information. The need for a planning support system was evident from the amount of information being sought from the Planning Services Office from within the University community, but also from outside the institution. In particular, the nature and amount of information requested by deans and faculty administrative staff in the preparation of their enrolment plans, unit plans and for budgetary purposes contributed to the need
for a system which would provide planning information more so than straight financial or personnel reporting. The other factor to consider is that the information released by the Planning Services Office is taken as the definitive information on staff and student data because the other major activity undertaken by the unit is the provision of information to the Department of Employment, Education and Training and it is then used by the Federal Government in their decisions about funding for the University. In other words, the information is census data. Howard, Nichols and Gracie describe the importance of census data in environmental scanning, but lament that “functional models have yet to be developed which allow the results of environmental scanning to be quantitatively incorporated into the university’s data bases and made a part of decision/planning support systems” (1987, p 83). It is suggested the model described here can go some way towards addressing this problem.
Information Policy Diebold discusses the concept of information policy. He points out that the development of a corporate information policy is necessary to “shape a unified outlook for dealing with the acquisition, standardisation, classification, inventory, dissemination and use of information” (1985, pp 40-47). He adds “when successful, a corporate information policy can help orchestrate the users and use of information ... into a workable system to aid management in targeting and fulfilling corporate goals” (p 48). In the development of the PSS, and in particular, in the design of CIPSS (Catalogue of Information on the Planning Support System) the need for an information policy covering the retention, storage, disposal, location, and access to information was recognised. It is quite broad but also rather detailed. A copy appears as Appendix 1. One of the real advantages of the PSS is that the Office does not need to be obsessed with the security of information provided since most of it is aggregated or fairly public information. Although the Office reports to DEET at the individual staff or student level, it does not actually hold that information. It is drawn off other databases which have their own security and access rights. Thus, by taking account of the nature of planning information, many problems normally associated with information systems are avoided and so a Planning Support System lends itself to not having to worry about the types of issues which probably confront other types of management, executive or decision support systems.
Conceptual Development of the PSS Instead of looking at the information itself and trying to devise a database that would be able to accommodate the diversity of that information and data that fall under the umbrella of planning information sufficiently, the major task was to develop a database or set of data elements which would be sufficiently flexible to describe the information enough to let the user decide what it was, whether it was useful and how it could be accessed. As Jackson (1986, p 7) points out, “gone are the days when information systems planners thought of, and tried to implement, a corporate-wide database consisting of a large pool of corporate data in which an executive-level manager would go fishing and extract data which would then be used as an integral component of the decision-making process”. One of the real advantages from an organisational perspective that follows on from this is that effort or resources are not being duplicated in trying to hold information. If it exists elsewhere, the system points to it rather than try to hold it in some alien form and keep it both secure and accessible. Those decisions and responsibility are left with the generator or manager of that information.
What the PSS then represents is an efficient system of information provision which lets the organisation and its managers and administrators get on with the task of carrying out the organisation’s mission efficiently and effectively. What more could any planner want?
Description of the UNSW Planning Support System The concept is relatively simple. It consists of two components: 1.
a library of information with two elements, a physical library and an electronic library;
2.
a catalogue in the form of an electronic database associated with the library information,
The PSS is located on the Planning Services Office’s fileserver on the Administrative Local Area Network. This, in turn, is accessible through the University’s campus wide network. Users log onto the PSO fileserver as guests and may search the catalogue, download files held or place a requisition for information from the physical library. The catalogue is set up in dBase 3+. The PSS electronic files are held on the LAN in a directory corresponding to the first key word. Files may be downloaded to any compatible PC. The physical library consists of books, journals, manuals, reports and printouts, all hard copy material. Floppy disks are also held as are magnetic tapes. None of this is new or original but what may be unique is the notion that the information drives the system to the extent no attempt is made to alter or change the information in any way to conform to a system or database configuration. Rather, it is recognised information has, does and will always exist in different forms, in different locations and for different reasons. Instead of attempting to design a database which would contain all the information in a set format, the effort has gone into providing a detailed and accurate description of the information. Its accessibility and provision are therefore governed by its nature, source and location. Thus, the Office concentrates on providing the information in whatever form it exists. This fits in well with the Office’s philosophy as a unit to open up information and resolve debate and controversy by readily providing information to managers and administrators which is reliable, definitive and not distorted in any way and particularly, not by making it conform to a database element configuration.
CIPSS, the Catalogue of Information on the PSS The catalogue description of each unit of information consists of up to 30 elements. These include a unique catalogue number, title, up to four keywords (which also assist with locating electronic files), unit type (which describes the nature of the information, for example a report, program, book or table). Other important elements include a contained indicator, meaning that the information is contained in some other publication or report, a dates-held field for time-series data, a location field which can be a physical location or a directory path for files held on the PSS, a disposition field which describes the disposition of a unit of information from its creation, a file type describing the software the file was created in. Appendix 2 contains a detailed description of the catalogue structure and the data elements. The catalogue can be searched in a variety of ways including by catalogue number, title, key word or unit type. Here is another advantage of this PSS. Unlike traditional databases, the PSS can take advantage of advances in computer and information technology. A text and graphic scanner is already attached to the system. CD-ROMs are a logical next addition. The need for key words can be dropped when a free-text-retrieval program is added.
The major drawback of the system is the maintenance of the catalogue system and the physical maintenance of the library, a small price to pay for the ability to locate relevant information quickly.
References R Cooper, “Review of Management Information Systems Research: A Management Support Emphasis” Information Processing and Management, vol 24, pp 73-102, 1988 G Davis and M Olson, Management Information Systems, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, Singapore, 1985. J Deogun, “A Conceptual Approach to Decision Support System Models” Information Processing and Management, vol 24, pp 429-448, 1988. J Diebold, Managing Information: The Challenge and the Opportunity, Amacom, New York, 1985. E Frackmann, “Executive Support Systems in Higher Education - Is Top Management Computing an Important Issue for Higher Education Institutions and Institutional Research?” paper delivered at Inaugural Australasian Association for Institutional Research Forum, Rockhampton, Australia, 1990. A Howard, J Nichols, and L Grade, “Institutional Research Support of the Self Study” in J Muffo and G McLaughlin (eds), A Primer on Institutional Research, Association for Institutional Research, Florida, 1987. I Jackson, Corporate Information Management, Prentice-Hall, Sydney, 1986. P Jedamus, “The Case for Decision Support Management” New Directions for Institutional Research, vol 44, pp 77-85, 1984. J Rohrbaugh, “Institutional Research as Decision Support” New Directions for Institutional Research, vol 49, pp 5-13, 1986. J Stoner, R Collins, and P Yetton, Management in Australia, Prentice-Hall, Sydney, 1985. D Viehland, “Decision Support for Executives: Executive Information Systems”, paper delivered at Inaugural AAIR Forum, Rockhampton, Australia, 1990.
Appendix 1: Information Policy The development of a PSS and the establishment of a PSD Library have necessitated the development of policy with regard to information and access. Retention of information on the PSS or PSD Library is governed by the unit type, origin and form of the information.
Information Retention/Disposition The PSS has disposition policy for every unit type described on CIPSS. This can be influenced by the origin of the information. The length of time a unit type is held may be different depending on whether or not it was generated by PSD. Similarly, the form of the information influences its retention and disposition. Electronic data is generally held for a lesser period of time than hard copy.
Access The PSS will be accessible through the campus wide network (CWN). It does not follow, however, all users who have access to the CWN will have access to all information in the PSS. Much of the information regarding students is confidential. For example, hard copy of aggregated statistical data (not individual results) or examination results is held but is not available to students through the PSD. Information held on the PSS is screened by the PSS Manager. Information of a sensitive or confidential nature will not in general be held on the PSS. Collaboration will be sought from the Freedom of Information Act Coordinator on campus to develop access guidelines.
Copyright Information held on the PSS will be subject to any copyright law that would normally cover that information.
PSD Library- Holding Policies Electronic data: n current year held until present year available n in general held for one year only on PSS n hard copy may be obtained and retained longer if arranged by request Print-outs: n current year together with two years previous (selected prints to Records Administration storage for seven years then destroyed) Regular publications, such as faculty handbooks: n current year together with two years previous Serial publications, such as Focus and Uniken: n current year only UNSW publications, such as annual reports and statistics bulletins: n generally retain permanently PSD reports: n retain permanently Other reports: n retain permanently
Correspondence: n hard copy, retain for three years n electronic, retain for one year SAS programs: n one year (if possible) or retained permanently as archives DEET collections: n retain permanently Time series data: n retain permanently Annual statistics: n held permanently as microfiche (to be arranged with CSU/Student Records) These holding policies will be reviewed within 12 months or by request.