CS 578Information Technology Architecture

Lecture 3-4HCFA Case Study

March 12, 2002March 18, 2003

Shafay Shamail, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Spring 2002, Spring 2003

Lahore University of Management Science

Information Architecture

A Case Study

Health Care Financial Administration (HCFA)

Information Architecture

• Information Environment– External factors

• Business and technology trends• Legislative activity• Public expectations

– Internal factors• Overall business situation• Existing technology investment• Geographically dispersed workforce

Information Architecture• Information Needs

– Major Program Needs• Knowledge about beneficiary characteristics, needs and awareness• Comparative data, benchmarks and quality indicators• Cost and financial data• Outcome and assessment data• Knowledge of customer expectations and satisfaction

– Needs Related to Public Responsiveness• Integrated health information• User empowering, internet based access to information assets

– Needs Related to Management of Human and Technology Resources

• Workforce skill, training needs, satisfaction, required competencies, industry trends in HRD and HRM

• Knowledge of IT trends• Best practices

Information Architecture

• Information Architecture Strategic Direction– Having well managed enterprise databases

within the core, accessed through standardized interfaces

Information Architecture

• Definitions– Data

• A representative of facts, ideas, or instructions in a formalized manner suitable for communication, interpretation, or processing by humans or by automatic means

– Information• Data that has been transformed to have business relevance through the

analytical behaviour of a human; data in a meaningful association or context

– Knowledge• Information that has been given business value through the interpretive

or reflective bahaviour of a human

– Meta data• Other data; all kinds of recorded information

Information Architecture

• Data Architecture– Provides a set of data management policies and

operating procedures for defining how data will be managed and structures throughout the enterprise

• Information Architecture– provides a framework of strategies, principles,

guidelines, standards, and models that describe major types of business information and guide the management of information assets throughout the enterprise.

Information Architecture

• Major Goals– Insulating operational (transactional processing)

systems from large ad hoc queries

– Providing access to data not always available in operational systems (summary, historical)

– Providing a cross-functional view of data and information

– Enabling better end user access through standardized data access methods and business intelligent tools

Information Architecture

• Target Information Architecture– Transactional data stores– Unstructured data and information– Metadata stores– Staged data– Analytical data stores

Information Architecture Features

Information ArchitectureDecision Support Data Flow