Deck 12: Information Management

Question 1

________________ are designed for problems in which sets of rules exist to solve problems. (A) expert systems
(B) executive information systems
(C) decision-support systems
(D) human portals
(E) formal knowledge management programs

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Managing the criminal-justice system in Iowa was something of a guessing game.For example, when the legislature considered changing the status of a misdemeanor, it was virtually impossible to predict how the change would affect the number of beds needed in county jails.Nor could the state estimate accurately how much it would spend on defense lawyers from year to year.The problem was not a lack of useful data; the data existed, hut they were scattered in court computers around the state-one or more in each county.The system had been built to handle transactions: this person was charged with that crime, he received a sentence this length, and served that many years of it. The situation described in the paragraph above would be best corrected by

A)an expert system.
B)a decision support system.
C)information leveraging.
D)cellular phones.
E)data warehousing.

Answer 2

E

Question 3

The following is a list of statements about human biases in interpreting information.Which one is NOT true?

A)People think that the more accurate the information is, the more informative it is.
B)People seldom think clearly about very unlikely events.
C)People are not influenced by how the information looks.
D)People tend to anchor their judgments on some initial point of reference, whether it is relevant to the task or not.
E)People do not like to appear ignorant.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

What role should the chief information officer (CIO) play in a government agency?

Question 5

In Inside Bureaucracy, Anthony Downs identifies several antidistortion factors in communication: (1) multiple internal information sources and overlapping responsibilities; (2) direct communication through hierarchical levels or elimination of such levels; (3) distortion-proof messages (e.g., summarization of details in nontechnical language with little jargon); (4) external sources of information; and so on. According to the text, few presidents followed Downs's recommendations more faithfully than

A)James Madison.
B)Harry S Truman.
C)Dwight D.Eisenhower.
D)Ronald Reagan.
E)Bill Clinton.

Question 6

According to the analysis presented in the text, the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 was due to a breakdown in what phase of the information management process? (A) acquiring
(B) processing
(C) securing
(D) accessing
(E) presenting

Question 7

Which of the following authors thinks there is a close analogy between what takes place in the mind of a leader planning an action and what happens to the artist at the moment of conception? (A) Charles de Gaulle
(B) Dwight Eisenhower
(C) Ernest Hemingway
(D) Winston Churchill
(E) Tom Clancy

Question 8

To help nontechnical managers avoid information (IT) mistakes, Ross and Weill identify six decisions for which those managers should take responsibility.Explain what those decisions involve.

Question 9

_______________ is data that are meaningful and that alter the receivers understanding -- the data that managers actually use to interpret and understand events in the organization and the environment. (A) input
(B) knowledge
(C) information
(D) a list of talking points
(E) a decision-support system

Question 10

According to the text, which of the following is NOT one of the five characteristics of high quality, useful information? (A) complete
(B) falsifiable
(C) relevant
(D) timely
(E) economical

Question 11

IBM has provided several National Basketball Association teams with software called Advanced Scout that allows coaches to ask "what if?" questions.Advance Scout is an interesting example of how ____________ works in basketball. (A) the five phase information management process
(B) a firewall
(C) data mining
(D) a data warehouse
(E) a virtual private network (VPN)

Question 12

"Every 18 months, the cost of computing will drop by 50% as computing-processing power doubles." The statement is known as (A) Metcalfe's law
(B) Arrows' law
(C) Clark's law
(D) Moore's Law
(E) Santayana's law

Question 13

What are the characteristics of useful information?

Question 14

Compare and contrast the following terms: data, information, and knowledge.

Question 15

With which of the following points would expert presenters be most likely to DISAGREE? (A) Provide handouts after the presentation.
(B) For variety and excitement, used several fonts, music clips, videos, and animation.
(C) Do not place your agency logo in a corner of each slide.
(D) Tell a story with each slide.
(E) Treat your bullet points as headlines.

Question 16

Discuss the strategic importance of information to a public administrator.

Question 17

Which of the following points was not one of the "eight C's of communication"? (A) capability of audience
(B) customer benefits
(C) core competence
(D) call to action
(E) capability of audience

Question 18

According to Ross and Weill, managers leave too many important decisions to information technology (IT) people.Which of the following is NOT one of those questions that Ross and Weill suggest managers address? (A) Who do we blamed if an IT initiative fails?
(B) How good do our IT services need to be?
(C) What security and privacy risk will we accept?
(D) What will be the cost of peer-to-peer support -- that is, IT users helping other IT users within the organization?
(E) What IT capabilities need to be centralized and standardize throughout the agency or government?

Question 19

The examples of Virtual City System in Boston, Optical Imaging Project in Miami-Dade County, and smart e-mail serve to illustrate how new technology can contribute to which phase of the information management process? (A) acquiring
(B) processing
(C) securing
(D) accessing
(E) presenting

Question 20

The table above shows the essence of a formal reporting system used by

A)the U.S.Army in its after-action reports.
B)Texaco's visualization center.
C)Microsoft's senior management.
D)the British civil service in India.
E)New Zealand's Ministry of Treasury.

Question 21

You have friend scheduled to give an important presentation at the end of the week.Being relatively inexperienced in making such presentations, he asks you for some advice.What briefly would you say?

Question 22

Explain data mining.

Question 23

"Reason and instinct do not represent rival views of leadership." Explain.

Question 24

Summarize Schein's views on organizational learning.

Question 25

The text presents three examples of how organizations acquire information: the British Civil Service in India, the Eisenhower White House, and the World Health Organization.What lessons to you draw from these examples?

Question 26

Describe the main characteristics of a "learning organization."

Question 27

Discuss the human biases or weaknesses in interpreting information.

Question 28

Define knowledge management.What are the key features of a knowledge management program?

Question 29

Explain the differences between the following kinds of information technology: executive information systems, decision-support systems, expert systems, groupware, human portals, and intranets.

Question 30

How can public administrator avoid letting bad public relations destroy good programs?