Public Admin Case Study

Public Administration

The Role of Management Information System in Decision Making in Public Administration (Case Study on Hungarian Central Statistical Office)

Organizations require appropriate information in the form of proper databases and reports which plays a pivotal role in decision making. The quality of data holds significant importance as the top management of large organizations derives its high level decisions mostly from the available data rather than inspecting the in depth core activity components. This fact is depicted by the analysis of a case study pertaining to the implementation of a Management Information System (MIS) in the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, which has ultimately improved the quality of information flow within the organization. This paper examines how the implementation of an MIS within HCSO lead to the standardization of report formats and operational data collection procedures. Not only this, the paper will also highlight the role played by an MIS in providing the users with current information on the operation of the entire organization and all the monitored fields easily and quickly, ultimately supporting the decision making process.

The Role of Management Information System in Decision Making in Public Administration (Case Study on Hungarian Central Statistical Office)

It is a vivid fact that there exists a natural demand from the top management of an organization to receive up-to-date or at least very timely, relevant information on the operation of the enterprise, which is well-catered through the implementation of an appropriate Management Information System (MIS) within the organization. The core problem encountered within an organization is the requirement of a complex set of indicators, data or reports by the top management. Such content lies with several responsible units within the organization. Thus an "MIS" is commonly used to refer to the group of several information management methods tied to the automation or support of human decision making and integrating different data sources together. So, an MIS supports high level decision making by analyzing the most important information extracted from different data sources within an enterprise.

Public administration in Eastern or Central European countries is suffering from acute problems like fragmentation, insufficient information flow and unclear responsibilities in the hierarchy of the organization. This has manifested the need for an effective tool which can handle operations in a better way and make the decision making process easier and more effective.

Case Overview

Keeping in view the above mentioned problems, the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (HCSO) launched a comprehensive strategy in 2005, pertaining to the establishment of a new information management system within the organization for presenting and collecting different operational data and reports in a standardized way. The HCSO is a large organization comprising of 1800 employees working in 19 different county units. So, the organization required an effective control over different operation through the establishment of a new management information system.

Reasons Leading to the Need for an MIS within HCSO

Several reasons manifested the dire need for the implementation of an effective management information system within the organization. The core reason was the fact that the top management required operational information in a standardized form but the sources providing the information were very dispersed within the organization. The current system in HCSO lacked effective monitoring of the new management techniques introduced for starting projects relating to different development purposes. The organization also faced problems pertaining to the communication and feedback of presidential reports. There existed only a one way information flow within the organization with much less feedback from top to down. Not only this, there existed an emerging demand of forming a more transparent operation on mid-level management which manifested the need for a solution linked with information flow.

Analysis of Potential Demands for MIS Implementation within HCSO

The availability of limited resources led to the implementation of a new management system within HCSO in two phases. The first phase, involved the identification of potential demands of management, collection of MIS requirements and planning of the new system accordingly. The study conducted during this phase highlighted the areas requiring new developments. The study indicated that the managers do have relevant operational information present with them, yet it gets difficult to find that information due to the lack of knowledge of the managers regarding the existence of the information. The findings presented the fact that some groups of information need to be defined in a standardized way and the requirements of quality also varied highly. The current system lacked a single pipeline for submitting information requests due to which managers have to manage information queries at their own.

After the first developmental phase at the HCSO, a paper-based MIS was established due to the availability of limited resources. The paper-based MIS catered the top and mid-level management and they started receiving continuous standardized reports without asking for them at all, ultimately yielding favorable consequences within the organization. During the implementation of the paper-based MIS, the content, the format, the responsibilities and the frequency of the introduced reports were clarified. The implementation phase involved changing the contents of the reports on the basis of feedback provided by the managers and also defined the real owners of the specific data. The president then asked them to fulfill the data requirements. The process took a year in getting the people acquainted with the reports and information. The Planning Department was made responsible for the coordination of the entire process and eventually the department became responsible for the entire deployment of the system and later on launched the IT-based MIS (Karpati 2007).

The Implementation of IT-based MIS and its Advantages

After the implementation of the paper-based MIS, the second phase of the proposal involved implementing an IT-based MIS. This aimed at the automatic creation and publication of reports with unified format and fixed content. The reports were thus specified in a standardized format on one platform to reach the detailed database and analyze it. The implementation of IT-based MIS fostered easy publication of tailor made analyses, provided an opportunity for monitoring key processes in a transparent way and distribute information in a very wide circle (news, documents, graphs, tables etc.) through the portal.

The core difference existing with the IT-based MIS in comparison to a paper-based system was the fact that standard reports were now required through a single pipeline, which was the Planning department. If the top management considered an information requirement to be an important one, it was given the status of a standard report which would be developed and produced regularly from the time it was introduced. This resulted in a drastic decrease in the amount of single, direct information queries from managers to the owner of data. As the reports were made in accordance with a commonly agreed format, HCSO was able to produce time series in specific areas. The implementation of IT-based MIS actually succeeded in decreasing the information distribution via e-mails. Previously the email system was over burdened by sending documents for opinion and approval, and sending large report files with graphs and tables. With the IT-based MIS implementation these files were now stored on an online MIS server, which was easily reachable by everyone in the organization (HCSO Strategy 2005-2008-2005). The users were also orientated to the key topics, as MIS has an own starting page with a clear structure and a headlines-column.

Core Components of the MIS Implemented at HCSO

The HCSO management information system comprises of four core components. The real IT specialist of the entire system is the "Database administrator" who is responsible for access management, operation supervision (log files etc.), updates, patches and hardware-software maintenance. The "MIS Content administrator" actually supervises automatized input processes and is entrusted with the responsibility of semi-automatic data conversion from standard files. His job also comprises of the task of the management of news and documents. Except for the MIS Content Administrator nobody else is entitled to publish something or to insert some changes or new lines in the databases. This job role varies from an IT specialist in the sense that it is related with the support of users on the service and can be considered as a "power user" of the applications. As some parts of databases are maintained directly by separate persons, there are "Subpage administrators" in MIS as well. "Data Owner" is another pivotal part of the MIS, who is not directly linked with the system maintenance. The data owner has the responsibility of checking, or sometimes also sending automatically produced data files or the manually created data table or documents to the MIS Content administrator, who then spreads the data on the portal after properly checking it (Karpati 2007).

Organizational Structure of HCSO's MIS

A standardized nomenclature was introduced by the HCSO for its programs and the different steps of the workflow (activities). Eventually, these nomenclatures were widely and obligatorily used for the identification of human resource and financial data in planning, the electronic working time registration (electronic time sheets), project monitoring and accounting also. The nomenclature codes act as unique identifiers thereby making it possible to survey the different programs from different perspectives. The use of these common identification codes is also depicted by the integration of information belonging to different sources which ultimately forms the basis for the comprehensive presentation of information.

Information is classified in the MIS on the basis of content type and the type of data source. The first class of the MIS is the "standard reports" which have one dimension only which pertains to reference point (time) only. The second class is the one having multiple dimensions which are reached through "dynamic OLAP tabulation query." The third category comprises of the presentations formed by merging two applications. This is depicted in cases of investment monitoring where all partner accounts and project accounts can be monitored at a glance, from the point-of-view of their financial investment requirements. The fourth category is the case where "original document source" is mentioned as there exists certain information which is not worthwhile to be inserted in a database. The fifth category involves the presentation through the embedded services of the portal software as in the case of the business travels. The following figures gives a clear picture of the organizational structure of HCSO's MIS (Karpati 2007).

Case Analysis

The decision of HCSO to implement an MIS within the organization turned out to be a fruitful one, yielding gainful results much higher than the expectations. The core purpose served by the MIS was that, HCSO being a public administration organization is highly committed in giving a transparent overview on its operation for all employees and has no financially confidential information which is the case mostly in the private sector. The president and the managers present in the organization now have a transparent service in their hands which is instrumental in comprehensive analysis of the documents on the basis of their content. We will now focus on an in-depth analysis of the HCSO's strategy of implementing an MIS within the organization, the factors which actually necessitated the need for having an MIS in public administration and the problems which were actually solved by the MIS implementation. The analysis finally highlights the administrative aspect involved in the case and the lessons learned through this case study, which are beneficial to other public administration organizations as well.

Factors Necessitating the Need for MIS within Public Administration Organizations

It is a vivid fact that public administration is an information-intensive activity and information is an indispensable resource which serves as an essential raw material in several policy-making, decision-making and communication processes. Most functions in public administration organization rely heavily on information. The transfer of information that occurs in these processes entails information flows between and among all the members involved in any organization or institution. These information flows essentially require the collection, production, dissemination and exchange of information. This process gets complicated as information is present at scattered sources and it requires a great deal of time and money to gather the relevant data from scattered sources. Thus, a centralized system is needed where all the information is stored and there should exist a single pipeline at which all the information requests could be made. The same situation existed at the HCSO, and the planned strategy of MIS implementation catered information dissemination effectively and integrated the information from scattered sources well through the use of an IT-based MIS. HCSO managers required information in a standardized format for formulating their decisions properly, and since the information was held by disseminated sources in HCSO, the implementation of IT-based MIS served instrumental in improving the decision making process by integrating information into a single centralized database. As mentioned in the case study, HCSO lacked effective monitoring and feedback system for reports prepared within the organization. Moreover, there was an absence of standardized report format within HCSO, and thus a centralized database was required which would store all reports in a standard format and will facilitate all the managers in extracting their required information in a timely manner.

Problems solved by MIS Implementation in Public Administration

The use of MIS in public administration serves instrumental in allowing the information flows to take place with increasing ease, rapidity and repercussions. Information is made more usable and valuable through the implementation of MIS. The core objective of an MIS in a public administration organization is to provide the users with current information on the operation of the entire organization and all the monitored fields easily and quickly, which eventually lends a hand to the decision making process. The interface of a properly configured MIS made it possible to quickly overview the results of the statements. An MIS actually results in systematization of the information flow which improves data reliability, data analysis and presentation. Similarly, considering the HCSO case study, the implementation of the IT-based MIS catered with an effective standardized system which reduced the number of information queries from managers to data owners, which ultimately resulted in the production of time series. Moreover, the MIS implementation reduced burden on the email system too and automatized the monitoring of operational information. MIS in a public administration organization is thus instrumental in improving the information management process and as the managers need proper information for decision making, MIS lends a hand in decision making and makes it more effective and reliable process. Similarly, in HCSO, as the managers need proper information for decision making, the MIS catered with standardized report format which made the analysis of data much easier and yielded highly productive results. The case study mentions at the end that all the managers realized the significance of MIS implementation as it resulted in a transparent overview of the operation of the employees.

Administrative Aspects of the HCSO Case Study

Information dissemination and sharing of information tends to be a significant aspect pertaining to public administration as it is essential in formulating several decisions. The HSCO is a public administration organization which requires relevant and systematic information from scattered sources for appropriate decision. The case study's core administrative aspect is depicted by the fact which mentions the requirement of relevant information and reports by the top level managers for taking significant decisions pertaining to the operational performance of the organization. Another administrative aspect is depicted when the case study specifies the requirement of proper information flow within the HCSO for conducting the operations in a transparent way. Administration involves proper monitoring and controlling of operational performance. Thus another administrative aspect pertaining to the HCSO case study is depicted by the need of the top level managers in evaluating operational performance of the organization.

Lessons Learned from the HCSO Case Study

The HCSO case study manifested the benefits gained from the implementation of an IT-based MIS within a public administration organization. The case study highlighted how MIS can serve instrumental in enhanced level of understanding of the organization and a greater ability of managing organizational resources and their performance. One of the fundamental lessons learned from the HCSO case study is that IT-based MIS implementation in public administration organizations actually leads to faster decision making and control through provision of timely information. As the information is integrated well at a single platform, it gets easy to access relevant information for performance evaluation required at various levels of decision making process by top managers of the organization (Rocheleau 2005). As in the HCSO case study, with the IT-based MIS, top level managers gained access to the standardized reports and information formats instead of sending several queries to the dispersed data owners present in the organization.

Another significant lesson embedded in this case study is that MIS implementation actually lends a hand in better decision making and control through provision of relevant information. As the managers in HCSO could easily analyze the performance criteria by accessing the centralized database and viewing the feedback reports stored within the database.

The case study also highlighted that MIS can also be used for regulatory activities and monitoring and controlling of public service providers. MIS-based decision making uses reports in standard formats so that they can be analyzed easily (Rocheleau 2005). As in the HCSO case study, the strategy of the organization firstly focused on deciding upon a standard report and information format before distributing the files on the basis of their content within the database. This standardization was immensely beneficial in monitoring operational performance effectively and timely.

MIS tends to cater organizations with cost effective solutions of information handling, as it performs several functions more quickly without utilizing a great of human resources. As in the HCSO case study, the monitoring and control process was automatized without requiring the managers to look in to minor details.

IT-based MIS implementation is significant in reducing large bundles of unnecessary paper documents which burden the employees working in the organization. Computerization of reports and documentations is beneficial in quick analysis of the performance parameters. As in case of HCSO, the initial phase implemented the MIS through a paper-based system which was later automatized into an IT-based system for serving a wide variety of services in a timely manner. Not only this, the IT-based MIS implementation also reduced the burden from the email system as it greatly reduced the number of interaction between the managers and the data owners for satisfying their required information queries.