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Research and Advances Nov 1 1982

The impact of office automation on the organization: some implications for research and practice

Computer technology has recently been applied to the automation of office tasks and procedures. Much of the technology is aimed not at improving the efficiency of current office procedures, but at altering the nature of office work altogether. The development of automated office systems raises a number of issues for the organization. How will this technology be received by organization members? How will it affect the definition of traditional office work? What will be its impact on individuals, work groups, and the structure of the organization? This paper presents a descriptive model and propositions concerning the potential impacts of office automation on the organization and it stresses the need, when implementing automated office systems, to take a broad perspective of their potential positive and negative effects on the organization. The need for further research examining the potential effects of office automation is emphasized.
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Research and Advances Nov 1 1982

Unionization of professionals in data processing: an assessment of recent trends

The needs of management, unions, employees, and computer professionals combined with existing practices of Labor Relations Boards and the various divisions in the Departments of Labor have combined to create a unique array of social conflicts. At the root are management's interest in keeping many skills in data processing and computing out of bargaining units and the union's interest in including as many of these skills as possible. There is also conflict between past strategies guiding labor relations and the structure and function of professional work in modern organizations. Two recent developments are analyzed: (1) The FAA's success in keeping airports operational with the help of computer-controlled air flow procedures; (2) Management's successful bids to exclude professional engineers working in data processing jobs from bargaining units. At the same time, the National Labor and Mediation Boards have rejected attempts to define data processing jobs including highly skilled systems analysts as a separate craft or class for representation purposes while granting such status to engineers in similar employment situations. If this principle of exclusion from unions of licensed and certified professionals who are doing DP work is established in North America, it may lead to increased labor unrest in many highly automated and data processing industries.
Research and Advances Nov 1 1982

Information systems curriculum recommendations for the 80s: undergraduate and graduate programs

The recommendations of the 1972 and 1973 ACM Curriculum Committee on Information Systems programs have been influential in the development of degree programs at the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels. The earlier curriculum has been revised and updated based on advances in the field over the past nine years. The report discusses the continuing need for education related to the definition, analysis, design, construction, and management of information systems in organizations. The structure of both bachelor's and master's level programs are described and courses are defined. Course outlines include rationale for the courase, course objectives, instructional modes, and a list of topics. Each topic is weighted in terms of suggested percent of time devoted to the subject.
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Research and Advances Sep 1 1982

U.S. computer export control policies: value conflicts and policy choices

The formulation of a balanced and effective export control policy for computer products and know-how has been an important and difficult task for both the U.S. Government and the computing community. External pressures force national security concerns to conflict with the values and interests of private enterprise and academic freedom. This paper has two primary objectives: the first is to present the computing community with a reasonably equitable and detailed perspective on this important public policy problem; the second is to present and analyze a range of policy choices.
Research and Advances Jul 1 1982

Authoring systems in computer based education

The idea of a programming system which generates other programs (referred to as automatic programming or metasoftware) has always been a popular one in computer science. Despite the interest, however, few such systems have actually been inplemented and used. An exception is the development and use of authoring systems in the domain of Computer Based Education (CBE). This article surveys the development and characteristics of authoring systems.
Research and Advances Jul 1 1982

Form management

This paper consists of three interrelated parts. In the first part forms are intoduced as an abstraction and generalization of business paper forms. A set of facilities for the manipulation of forms and their contents is outlined. Forms can be created, stored, found, viewed in different media, mailed, and located by office workers. Data on forms can also be processed in a completely integrated way. The facilities are discussed both abstractly and in relation to a prototype system. In the second part a facility is outlined for the specification and implementation of automatic form procedures. These procedures specify actions on forms which are triggered automatically when certain preconditions are met. The preconditions, actions, and specification method are based on forms. The discussion is centered on our implementation of such a specification framework. Finally, in the third part, techniques for the analysis of office flow are specified. An algorithm is outlined for the categorization of forms into classes depending on the local routing and actions on the forms. In this way, we can obtain the paths that forms take and analyze the system for correctness and loading characteristics.
Research and Advances Jul 1 1982

The impact of scanners on employment in supermarkets

A brief review is given of the early estimates of the rate at which scanners would be installed in supermarkets and the resulting labor and consumer responses. The actual situation in 1979 is then discussed and detailed labor savings achieved by one supermarket chain are given. A fully scanner-equipped supermarket is estimated to have a 5 percent lower labor requirement than an unautomated store with the same volume. It is projected that 50 percent of the 23,000 large supermarkets will install scanners by 1984 with the remainder doing so by 1988. At full penetration, scanners will reduce total industry employment by approximately 50,000. Few actual layoffs will occur because of the high turnover in the industry. Furthermore, the stores that install scanners may attract customers from nonautomated stores leaving those stores to handle the job losses.
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Research and Advances May 1 1982

Estimating and improving the quality of information in a MIS

Most discussions of MIS's assume that the information in the records is error-free although it is recognized that errors exist. These errors occur because of delays in processing times, lengthy correction times, and, overly or insufficiently stringent data edits. In order to enable the user to implement data edits and correction procedures tailored to the degree of accuracy needed, this paper presents functional relationships between three common measures of data quality. The MIS addressed is one where records in a MIS are updated as changes occur to the record, e.g., a manpower planning MIS where the changes may relate to a serviceman's rank or skills. Since each of the updating transactions may contain an error, the transactions are subjected to various screens before the stored records are changed. Some of the transactions including some that are correct, are rejected; these are reviewed manually and corrected as necessary. In the meantime, the record is out of date and in error. Some of the transactions that were not rejected also lead to errors. The result is that at any given time the MIS record may contain errors. For each of several error control mechanisms, we show how to forecast the level of improvement in the accuracy of the MIS record if these options are implemented.
Research and Advances Mar 1 1982

The future of programming

The nature of programming is changing. These changes will accelerate as improved software development practices and more sophisticated development tools and environments are produced. This paper surveys the most likely changes in the programming task and in the nature of software over the short term, the medium term, and the long term. In the short term, the focus is on gains in programmer productivity through improved tools and integrated development environments. In the medium term, programmers will be able to take advantage of libraries of software components and to make use of packages that generate programs automatically for certain kinds of common systems. Over the longer term, the nature of programming will change even more significantly as programmers become able to describe desired functions in a nonprocedural way, perhaps through a set of rules or formal specification languages. As these changes occur, the job of the application programmer will become increasingly analysis-oriented and software developers will be able to attack a large number of application areas which could not previously be addressed effectively.
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Research and Advances Jan 1 1982

Some practical experience with a software quality assurance program

Within a production programming environment, a software quality assurance program (QAP) was instituted to produce standards, conventions, and methodologies for all phases of the software development process. Software language standards and several support processors, in turn, developed. The authors offer a plan which may help others avoid some of the pitfalls they experienced while attempting to construct a meaningful software QAP.
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Research and Advances Nov 1 1981

Problems in application software maintenance

The problems of application software maintenance in 487 data processing organizations were surveyed. Factor analysis resulted in the identification of six problem factors: user knowledge, programmer effectiveness, product quality, programmer time availability, machine requirements, and system reliability. User knowledge accounted for about 60 percent of the common problem variance, providing new evidence of the importance of the user relationship for system success or failure. Problems of programmer effectiveness and product quality were greater for older and larger systems and where more effort was spent in corrective maintenance. Larger scale data processing environments were significantly associated with greater problems or programmer effectiveness, but with no other problem factor. Product quality was seen as a lesser problem when certain productivity techniques were used in development.
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Research and Advances Nov 1 1981

The evolution of user behavior in a computerized conferencing system

Data from 18-month operational trials of the EIES system indicate that the range of features considered valuable in a computer-based communication system increases with the amount of experience gained by using this medium of communication. Simple message systems alone are not likely to satisfy the communications needs of long term, regular users of computerized communications systems. Among the capabilities which long term, regular users find valuable are group conferences, notebooks for text composition, and self-defined commands.
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Research and Advances Nov 1 1981

Documentation for a model: a hierarchical approach

A set of documents and their organization according to functional requirements in order to produce information that will facilitate the use of models are described. The authors discuss the role of models in the policy process and of documentation in the assessment of such models.
Research and Advances Oct 1 1981

Computer information systems and organization structure

A study of Computer Information Systems and Management (CISM) is described and selected results relating to changes in organizational structure in eight organizations are presented. In five of the organizations no changes in formal structure accompanied the introduction of CIS. Where organizational changes did occur, the existing structure of the organization was usually reinforced. These findings suggest that CIS is a flexible tool that is compatible with a variety of organizational design options and not a cause of design per se.
Research and Advances Sep 1 1981

The Cornell program synthesizer: a syntax-directed programming environment

Programs are not text; they are hierarchical compositions of computational structures and should be edited, executed, and debugged in an environment that consistently acknowledges and reinforces this viewpoint. The Cornell Program Synthesizer demands a structural perspective at all stages of program development. Its separate features are unified by a common foundation: a grammar for the programming language. Its full-screen derivation-tree editor and syntax-directed diagnostic interpreter combine to make the Synthesizer a powerful and responsive interactive programming tool.
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