The London Ambulance Service Computer Information Technology Essay

The London Ambulance expediency Computer Information engineering science EssayThis paper go forth analyze ane of the most cock-a-hoop computerized governance ills in the past 10 years- the disappointment of the London Ambulance suffice Computer Aided Dispatch scheme-hereafter referred to as LASCAD. Unlike the common genius belongingsal explanations for organization loser that view Information remainss as primarily a neutral skillful artifact ( Klein and Hirscheim, 1987), this paper lead take in charge to explore the more multi-faceted spirit of outlines affliction which is closer to the reality that schema exist in. This digest exit be anchored in the concepts of holism and rising properties as described by Francis and Roland Bee (2005), Managing Information and Statistics, 2005, whereby the approach taken to analysis emphasizes the placementment relationships and processes and results of its interactions. References lead be do to existing frameworks pul monary tuberculosisd to look into clay failure in particular the Sauer moulding Sauer (1993). Details of the description of the form and the failure will be drawn mainly from a paper on Information body failure and risk discernment by Paul Beynon Davis (Computer studies technical report University of Glamorgan, 1994b).From this investigation existing methods of preventing or solving softw be dusts failure will be explored in the setting of the LASCAD form to look into recommendations and lessons learnt to prevent such(prenominal) failures .This will particularly focusing on risk handling as proposed by B.W Boehm ( 1991) and the Goal interrogation inflection by Solingen and E. Berghout (1999).Summary of the LASCAD System Failure Case ingestThe LASCAD system was a computer aided ambulance discharge system launch at the head quarters of the London Ambulance Service. tally to Page et al (1993), the judge functions of the system ar described belowCall winning Accepta nce of calls and adventure expatiateResource Identification Particularly which ambulance to lodge to an incidentResource Mobilization Communicating details of an incident to the arrogate ambulanceResource Management The expressioning of suitably equipped and runged vehicles to minimize chemical reaction timesManagement Information This involves the collation information to assess performance, preference perplexity and planning.This system was supposed to solve the problems related to manual acquit systems including time consuming and error pr wiz identification of the precise incident location, paperwork and maintenance of current vehicle status information.The LASCAD system objective was to automate these manual human intensive tasks by using an events based and rule based approach and integrating a Geographical Information System (GIS) to provide location details. In this system the callers, incident and patient details would be recorded and transmitted to the dispatche rs. Through the use of radio signals and GIS the system is able to determine the ambulance nearest to the patient. After dispatch the ambulance crew was expected to acknowledge the dispatch message and the system would then detect whether the ambulance was headed in the right direction. Finally the system would alert the controller on the ambulances arriver to the scene, hospital and when it becomes free again.Figure1 LASCAD flow chart (Paul Beynon Davis, 1994)This explanation of expectations of the systems functionality is pretty analogue and even simplistic but on closer examination one is able to construe the decomposableities that are involved in delivering such expectations. This will become more apparent in the quest foring section set off the system failure and later on the events conduct to the failure.Between twenty-sixth and 27th October 1992 (Paul Beynon Davis, 1994), the system started to fail. It was reported that as a result of a flood of emergency calls bogged d own the system and this resulted in erratic behaviour of the system involving calls creation wiped off the screen and automatic alerts indicating unacknowledged calls to ambulances.According to the Guardian newspaper, 1992, it was claimed that 20-30 people may retain lost their lives due to ambulance delays. thusly the impact of this failure was tremendous and as expected triggered miscellaneous responses as to what was the cause of the failure. According to Donaldson and Jenkins (2000) in their paper on System Failures An preliminary to on a lower floorstanding what can go wrong, the causes of system failure are complex and interact with each other and in some cases a bingle factor may single out the problem while in others a combination of many small and apparently insignificant factors are to blame. This merely says that it is difficult to analyze causes of systems failure which would only be almost unders as well asd through multi cause analysis stemming from the soft s ystems methodology. It also becomes apparent that e actuallything is not al agencys as it chequerms, a redeeming(prenominal) usage is the Arriane V rocket (ESA Press release Nr 33-96-July 1996) which failed courtesy of its navigation software being inappropriate for the rockets design. This was not actually a software failure as may arrest been though in the outset but a problem with the overall incorrect assembly of the rocket. As it were the software performed to its specification. This is akin(predicate) to expectation failure which Lyytinen and Hirscheim (1987) describe as the inability of an IS system to take on specific stakeholder groups expectations, they signify a gap between an existing incident and a desired situation for members of a particular stakeholder group.This is further enhance by Donaldson and Jenkins (2000) system failure analysis detailing high popular expectancy of computer technology, Fashion/popularity of systems obscuring its basic objectives and t he varying stakeholder interests creating different perceptions of the system. summary of the LASCAD System failureFollowing the above outline of the system failure and prelude of expected challenges in analyzing system failure this section will attempt to shed detailed insight into the failure. The analysis will follow Sauers model (Sauer, 1993), of investigating system failure which is based on a trigon of dependencies betweenProject organizationInformation systemSupportersThe multi-faceted nature of systems failure alluded to in the introduction would mean that even this triangle is not a closed system but is affected by other contextual factors of which according to Sauer consists of cognitive limits-(e.g. limits of communication), technical process-( constraints from social structured nature of computerized systems or development methodology), environment-(constraints by customers, suppliers, competitors, regulators), Politics, interior get word structure and floor associa ted with previous information system projects.Project organizationIn enlighten of the LASCAD project failure the project organization from inception is very wanting. foremost future(a) a public inquiry report on the failure (Page et al, 1993), it is claimed that the London Ambulance Service (LAS) management put price before case and committed to an over ambitious project timetable. This was evidenced by the survival of a supplier who has no arrest in building ambulance dispatch systems but had significantly underbid a more established supplier. This was make worse by the management place the supplier under enormous pressure to deliver the system quickly.Secondly the project management squad did not follow the PRINCE (Projects in Controlled Environments) project management method bring down for public sector projects.Thirdly it was found that the system was incomplete and shaky and particularly the emergency backup system was untested. This was further compounded by incons istent and incomplete user training.Information systemIn basis of the information system dimension the report of the public inquiry (Page et al, 1993) suggests that the failure was not a result of technical issues since on overall the system did what it was designed to do. It goes further to explain that at the onset the loads on the system were light and the control rung could easily cope with assorted problems associated with ambulance crews pressing wrong buttons, radio black spots, communication hand-shaking problems etc. When these incidents increase incorrect vehicle location and status information received by the controllers also increased resulting in the failure to cope with the load leading to fewer resources to allocate to incidents and subsequent delays in response times.Supporters/stakeholdersAs delineate by Paul Beynon Davis (1995), supporters/stakeholders defined as people sharing a pool of values that define what the desirable features of an information system an d how they should be obtained. The stakeholders have different views and expectations of the system of which such a mismatch in perceptions in this case contributed to the failure. This is visualized belowFigure 2 LASCAD system perceptions fatty pictureLAS ManagementThe London Ambulance Service (LAS) management viewed the system as a way to improve service to patients by putting in place mechanisms that would ensure objective and impartial resource mobilization through automation. The LAS management was also settled by a past experience involving a failed computerized dispatch system project and pressure from organization-wide restructuring that put them under immense pressure to succeedControl room staffThe staff in the control room found the system to be too complicated and did not trust the motives behind implementing a computerized systemAmbulance staffThe ambulance crews were more comfortable with the radio call systems that they had been used to and did not have confidence in the new system as they did not see the get hold of for it and found it too complicatedUnionThe staff labor union found that there were no requisite consultations done before reservation the decision to acquire the system and as such the already strive relationship between management and staff was worsened.Hardware and software suppliersThe system suppliers were not sure how to implement the system in the first place and this was compounded by tight deadlines from what they thought to be a disorganize client.Related to these perspectives are contextual factors concerning political environment courtesy of the overarching influence of the National Health Service (NHS) on the London Ambulance Service which is the LAS lapse body (Beynon-Davis 1994).The NHS is characterized by the lack of a unitary power structure and is made up of a network of different health organizations. The suggestion on a new information system is a very careful political balance in the impact the impact the system will have on the relationships in this network (Checkland and Scholes, 1990).As posit by page et al, (1993), the LASCAD project was greatly affected by internal tensions in within the NHS which had commissioned major reforms in the London Ambulance Service including restructuring that resulted in the reduction of middle management from 263 to 53. It is take a crap that this resulted in combative relationships and an environment of mistrust and obtrusiveness when it came to any changes, which affected the LASCAD project.So far what is clear is the multifaceted nature of the failure that results from various causes of the failure that is common in computerized information systems, which Paul Beynon-Davis describe as web-like in nature. It has been reported that 92% of all system failures involved failures of technical interaction with cognitive / organizational factors (Mackenzie, 1994).This as it were it is essential to trace the true causes of the system failure. One w ay of doing this is through multi cause diagrams as mentioned in the section above or Petri nets which use state and event oriented graphs.The LASCAD project failure is depicted below using a multi cause diagram to explore the events and states on why the failure occurredFigure 3 LASCAD system failure multi-cause diagramIdeas, Recommendations and Lessons LearnedAs expressed above using Sauers model (Sauer, 1993) of investigating system failure, the dependencies between the project organization, information system and its supporters have come out very clearly. Using the information system dimension the failure is not attributed to technical issues at all, which goes against common place failure attribution of computerized information systems. This begs the question, what constitutes a system failure? Lyytinen and Hirschein (1987) categorize system failure into fourCorrespondence failure There is a disjoint between the design objectives of the system and what is practically being me t by the system. abut failure This is characterized by runaway projects that either do not provide a workable system or overrun budgets and time.Interaction failure This focuses on utilization of the system i.e. a highly utilized system is considered a success and one that is hardly used is a failure. foresight failure As stated earlier this is the inability of the system to hurt a specific stakeholder groups expectations. The LASCAD system falls into this kinfolk as it appears it did not meet various stakeholder group expectations. Donaldson and Jenkins (2000) talk slightly a 3 dimensional picture where a system on the whole fails, partially fails or temporarily goes down.In the case of LASCAD it is taken as a partial failure resulting from a number of flaws that are maintainable and as such this is not a total failure.The rectification will mainly involve a reassessment of the entire project fetching mainly focusing on the role of risk assessment. Risk is the fortune of a blackball outcome. Negative outcome is in essence a relative concept as Wilcocks and Margetts (1994) suggest the risk of a negative outcome only becomes a salient problem when the outcome is pertinent to stakeholder concerns and interests. Different settings and stakeholders will see different outcomes as salient.The proposed framework to use in risk assessment follows Wilcocks and Margetts (1994) who put across the following categories to be used in analyzing the development, introduction and use of information systems, these are memoir Past experiences with information system development.Outer context The environment in which the organization is operating e.g. economy, markets, governmentInner context The characteristics of the organization e.g. structure, systemContent For utilization project size and difficultyProcesses For example project management and staffingOutcomes Planned and anticipated results.The proposed risk assessment framework would be implemented through out th e development, introduction and use of information systems. This will be used to complement an overarching software management methodology such as the Goal Question Metrics (GQM) mentioned in the introduction and the cogency Maturity Model which outline good practices in project management to ensure project success. In the context of LASCAD the GQM will particularly consider the aforementioned failure characteristics in the analysis section through the following stages in developmentSetting specific goals in light of decide perspective and environmentRefine goals into quantifiable easy to understand questions hit requisite metrics and data to answer the questionsThere are various methods that can be used in preventing or solving computerized system failure the Capability maturity model and Goal Question Metrics mentioned above are by no means exhaustive nor are they prescriptive. Organizations are different contextually and individual projects also vary in size and complexity and as such would require approaches the methodologies to be customized and scaly for specific organizations and projects. The Capability Maturity model is a prime example that targets improvement in software processes toward a specific target- maturity aim that the organization is working toward.On the other hand there is need to put emphasis on risk management outside of the one dimensional technical orientation to encompass the complexities of computerized systems as seen through the electron lens of Wilcocks and Margetts (1994) risk management framework.ConclusionThe LASCAD system is a good example that portrays the reality of the complex and multi-faceted nature of systems failure. The different perspectives of the system and congruent expectations even off even the very definition of the failure unclear. This particular case highlighted the political and social causes of the failure, what has been described as contextual factors. References to various frameworks have been mad e in the analysis of the failure -Lyytinen and Hirscheim (1987), particularly expectation failure and dependencies in the 3 dimensional Sauers model (Sauer, 1993). The failure analysis provided the distillment of the system failure characteristics which describe the true causes of the failure. This was done using rich pictures to accommodate varying perceptions and expectations and multi cause diagrams to explore the various causes of the failure.Lessons learnt and future restitution of systems failure is centered on risk management and project methodologies ensuring good practice in the development, introduction and use of information systems. As recommended in this paper these should take into consideration contextual/ organizational issues apart from technical aspects of the system.