A new Master of Business Systems course has been devised to address a high level of failure in information management projects, and to help organisations to convert information into competitive insight.
Dr Roger Silberberg of Innovation Africa says the two-year, part-time course was designed for business people on a CIO track.
"It will allow the CIO to hold his own on the boardroom table. He can sit there and not be the odd one out while they discuss important business issues like marketing, finance and human resources," he says.
"He'll be playing the whole thing, because he'll be the one person that integrates the whole ops. He'll have a very powerful role."
Silberberg says when he was the head of a university's informatics and computer science department, research showed that people graduating with a degree in computer science or informatics were not being properly deployed.
Shocking
The reason was that most organisations were using an ad hoc approach to IT implementation: "They all say that they follow this technique or they follow that one until you really probe into it, and then you see that a lot of stuff just sort of happens: 'We'll do this, we'll add this thing on.' This is quite shocking," says Silberberg.
Research indicated that the problem was within organisations themselves.
"It is inside the organisation that these graduates, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, willing and ready to do the latest implementation using the latest techniques, get stymied. They can't because there's a philosophy; a concept within the organisation that I would say is old."
He says if people in senior and middle management have IT experience, it will be 10 to 20 years old. "And, therefore, they are not ready to give these guys an opportunity to go ahead and implement these new technologies."
Silberberg says the course, offered through Innovation Africa, focuses on how to convert an organisation's information into insight. "The key to that is at high level - at CIO level, at senior management level. Because, if they do not manage transformation of organisations properly, if they can't understand how organisations need to be changed - handle change management - then most projects will fail.
Failures
Research organisations such as Gartner, Forrester and Butler show there are alarming levels of failure of information management projects, with management being to blame, Silberberg says.
He cites the troubled electronic National Traffic Information System, eNatis, as an example, saying there was nothing wrong with the technology, but with poor project management.
The course consists of two components: a theoretical part that incorporates modules such as knowledge management, business process design, IT in business, and integrative industrial thought; and a practical work-based project aimed at benefiting the organisation through IT.
Registration with Saqa is under way, while the course has already received European Union and Washington Accord accreditation. Silberberg says the course has been endorsed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco).
It is also to be offered in Germany through a university in Wismar.
Silberberg says the degree is a management course, not an IT one, although it teaches students to look at the business through an IT lens.