One of the banner programs of my organization is focused on lowering cases of teenage pregnancies in our locality. This is because in the survey which was conducted by the provincial government, my locality ranked first in the whole province with the most number of teenage pregnancy cases. I believe that the decision of our local chief executive to prioritize programs to decrease teenage pregnancies has been based on relevant information as a product of “business intelligence”.
Business Intelligence (BI) refers
to platforms, processes, applications, and technological infrastructures that collect,
store, process, evaluate and translate data into meaningful information which are
easily understood by executives and managers thus enabling them to arrive at sound
decisions. It is important to my
organization, especially in terms of allocating its resources and delivery of
basic services.
Business intelligence enables real-time
information and fast analysis of data thus assisting my organization to set
priorities based on the demands of the moment, allocate for programs, projects
and activities crucial to the development of the community and hasten the implementation
of development projects. Without
business intelligence, my organization will be investing in programs and
projects that are not responsive to the needs of our community like barking on
the wrong tree as they say. Our organization
cannot invest in nutrition without relevant information about malnutrition and
it cannot appropriate without available funds. Business intelligence helps us
visualize these needs of our locality.
Good local governance is about
delivering an excellent state of development; it is about a performance that is
informed and data-driven. Its delivery is made manageable with the
optimal use of business intelligence.
IT systems have brought lots of benefits to the world of business especially now that the pandemic has made major changes in their operations. IT systems enable the organization to produce real time data crucial to decision making, facilitate operational efficiencies and cost reduction and help better communication and customer services among others. But organizations cannot just sit tight with these benefits because IT has its own vulnerabilities and has been subject to security breaches and cyber threats. So companies has to ensure that IT security is among their priorities because these malicious threats may far greater affect their businesses than the value they get from IT.
IT Security is a set of cyber security strategies that prevents unauthorized access to organizational assets such as computers, networks and data (CISCO(n.d), What is IT Security retrieved from https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/what-is-it-security.html).
As technology advances so do IT systems and
cyber criminals so IT must be handled by experts and periodically reviewed and
updated to ensure that it is steps ahead of cyber threats. So I believe that IT security should be
outsourced by organizations especially those that lack the structure and
competency to handle IT security.
Outsourcing however has its challenges
also. Issues on quality of IT security,
cost of outsourcing, legal issues that may arise during the contract
implementation and breach of IT security by service providers themselves accompany
outsourcing of services.
These issues can be mitigated if the
organization will craft a plan/strategy that will effectively address this
outsourcing project to include risk management.
Careful evaluation of the capacity and integrity of the service providers
and the provisions of the contract is crucial to making the outsourcing project
a success. Routine performance
evaluation and monitoring of the IT security and service providers are also activities that the organization need to ensure that risks associated with outsourcing
are limited or avoided.
note: guns used in the picture are toys(for presentation purposes only)
