Chapter 5 Case Study.docx

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Chapter 5 Case Study

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Management Information Systems

September 10, 2013


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In San Jose, California has the smallest officer-to-resident ratio that is one police officer for

925 residents (Oz, 2009, P. 190). However this city is considered one of the safest larger cities in

the US (Oz, 2009, P. 190). This implied that the city offices were efficient and productive and

were using the right and better technology and software tools to manage city police, fire

communications and dispatching functions. The Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system is a

highly specialized application that is designed to facilitate coordinated communication,

assignment and tracking of Police and Fire Department resources in response to calls-for

service. (Michael, A. Smith .2004-2005, Santa Clara County Civil Grand jury report)

In 2004 City replaced all text based CAD system with new Windows based touch screen

system by spending $4.7 million (Oz, 2009, P. 190). However the new CAD system was plagued

with problems such as non-user friendly user interface, software bugs, user issues of adapting to

new technology, inadequacy of user training, increased difficulty in issuing the Code 99

commands, patrol officers needing longer time to find out whether a person they have stopped

has a violent criminal and system crash just two days after the system went live. According to the

case study and the Santa Clara County Civil Grand jury report none of the above issue (that

cause the failure of the new CAD system) were due to hardware but majority of them were

directly related to the application software and the design of the system. (E.g. code 99 command

issue, system crash, non-user friendly interface etc.) The other major issue was relating to the

lack of user involvement during software design, implementation and inadequacy of user

training. That is why Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury recommended that in future IT project

developments City of San Jose management should mandate that representatives from all levels

affected by the IT project be included in every stage of specification, development and

deployment. (Michael, A. Smith .2004-2005, Santa Clara County Civil Grand jury report)


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References;

Oz, E. (2009). Management Information Systems. Boston, MA: Course Technology Cengage Learning

Michael, A. Smith (2004-2005) Santa Clara County Civil Grand jury report, retrieved from:http://www.911dispatch.com/info/cad/rfp/sj_cad_invest.pdf

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