Socio-Technical Issues in Using GIS

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The paper explains the socio-technical issues associated with the effective utilisation of GIS technology in an organisation. Studies of technology in organizations have demonstrated the value of treating information technologies as human artefacts with social constructed meanings. Simultaneously, the human agency has the potential to revise both the information systems and the social context within which the technology is used. The argument is that creating a successful used of GIS technology must be seen from a socio-technical rather than just a technical perspective. It is aimed that the utilisation of GIS technology is embedded within the social and technical processes of the organisations and the relationships between individual, organisational and technology. The study identified five set of socio-technical factors that governed the effective use of GIS technology in organisation. They are the organisational context, the personalities of the individual involved, the impact of change and instability, centralisation and decentralisation of computing technology in organisation and the state of computing development. The paper combines an overview of socio-technical issues and their relationship to GIS with examples of strategies adopted by organisations to handle this aspect of system development. The overview provides framework from the subsequent literature concerning the implementation of information technology in general and applying this to the utilization of GIS. Therefore, the paper provides a more interesting and insightful perspective of the utilization of information such as GIS in organisations

Stream: Technology and Applied Sciences

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

I am Malaysian working as a lecturer at the Department of Landscape Architecture. My PhD research was on the investigation of the utilisation of GIS technology in the local government planning department. This research examines the important issues associated with the effective utilisation of GIS in local authority planning departments in Malaysia. As an academician, my future interests are basically to do more research and the publication of articles besides teaching.