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DSS News
D. J. Power, Editor
February 2, 2003 -- Vol. 4, No. 3
A Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM
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Check the case "Ertl's Decision Support Journey"
by Power and Roth at DSSResources.COM
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Featured:
* Ask Dan! - What progress was made in building AIS
SIG DSS in 2002?
* ISDSS'03 Call for Papers, Ustron, Poland, July 13-16, 2003
* What's New at DSSResources.COM
* DSS News Releases
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DSS News has approximately 900 subscribers from
50 countries. Please forward this newsletter to people
interested in Decision Support Systems.
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Ask Dan!
by Daniel J. Power
Chair AIS SIG DSS
What progress was made in building AIS SIG DSS in 2002?
It is customary for the chair or president of a group to provide a
periodic report on the most recent activities of the group and the plans
going forward. This Ask Dan! column is written in that context. I know
some readers have been following the development of the Special Interest
Groups of the Association for Information Systems and especially SIG
DSS. For 2 years I have been working to create and establish SIG DSS.
We have made progress and I want to thank all of the many friends who
have helped.
SIG DSS has gone through some changes in the past six months that have
clarified its domain and unified the topics related to decision support
that are its focus. Let me be more specific. In Spring 2002, Michael
Goul and Karen Dowling of Arizona State University proposed to AIS that
a SIG on Knowledge and Data Management should be established. Mike and
Karen had emailed me as they worked on the proposal and I thought they
had identified some topics that SIG DSS wasn't addressing and that
needed more attention in AIS. The issue of Knowledge Management is an
especially broad research area and only some of the research has been
directly related to decision support. Overlap of the proposed SIG with
the domain of SIG DSS did not seem to be a major problem except in the
areas of data warehousing, data mining and expert systems.
The proposal was thoughtful and identified topics that were relevant to
AIS, but the AIS Council was apparently concerned about overlap issues
and some members of the SIG DSS Advisory Board had similar concerns. At
AMCIS 2002, I spoke briefly with Mike and Karen and mentioned the
concerns and overlap issues. At that point it appeared two related SIGs
might eventually evolve. That is NOT the case. I am pleased to report
that we have merged and consolidated our efforts and clarified and
expanded the domain of SIG DSS.
The official name of the group is now the AIS Special Interest Group on
Decision Support, Knowledge and Data Management (SIG DSS). We have
expanded our leadership team and increased our efforts to reach out to
the decision support, data warehousing, data management and knowledge
management constituencies.
In mid-October, Mike and I had a number of discussions about SIG DSS and
the proposed AIS SIG on Knowledge and Data Management (SIG KDM). Based
upon email comments and those discussions, we proposed and the SIG DSS
Board approved the following:
1. Keep the name SIG DSS and change the descriptor to Special Interest
Group on Decision Support, Knowledge and Data Management.
2. Clarify and revise the SIG DSS domain statement to explicitly include
topics like data warehousing, data mining, expert systems, knowledge
elicitation, decision process issues, knowledge management and other
topics in the SIG KDM proposal.
3. Expand our SIG DSS leadership team to include Mike Goul, ASU, as Vice
Chair of SIG DSS and Karen Dowling, ASU, as Program Chair.
4. Develop a set of by-laws for SIG DSS. Mike Goul will draft the
initial version of this document for the next SIG DSS business meeting.
5. Conduct an election among SIG DSS members in Spring 2004. At that
time, we would elect a new Vice Chair for SIG DSS. Mike would assume
the duties of the Chair of SIG DSS at the AMCIS 2004 meeting and I would
take on the role of Past Chair for one year. New elections would then be
held each Spring.
6. Add Professor Henk Sol to the SIG DSS Advisory Board. Henk has been
involved with DSS for many years and he will help insure a broad
representation of decision support and knowledge management ideas as we
go forward. Henk is currently Dean of the Faculty of Technology, Policy
and Management at Delft University of Technology.
7. Coordinate AMCIS 2003 DSS related mini-tracks and investigate other
SIG DSS activities for ECIS, PACIS, ICIS. Karen Dowling is taking on
this major task. We'll all want to volunteer to help with the program
tasks.
Well, the above list covers all of the major SIG DSS changes. The AIS
Council was notified of this change in SIG DSS and the SIG KDM proposal
was withdrawn. Dennis Galletta helped us sort out the procedure issues.
Thanks Dennis.
What about accomplishments in 2002? We had many good sessions at AMCIS
2002. Hemant Bhargava, Merrill Warkentin and I coordinated the Decision
Support Systems and Issues mini-track and Karen Dowling, David Schuff,
and Robert St. Louis, all of Arizona State University, coordinated Data
Warehousing, Data Mining and Data Management mini-tracks. The first SIG
DSS business meeting was held at the AMCIS 2002 meeting in Dallas with
approximately 30 people in attendance. The first SIG DSS newsletter was
mailed in July 2002 and a second newletter in PDF format should be
available soon. Many thanks to newletter editor Bob Greive, Oklahoma
State. We have money in the bank and our Secretary/Treasurer, Ramesh
Sharda, is a good steward of our resources. We have been forging
relationships and cooperating with other groups interested in DSS like
DSI, IAADS, ISDSS, and IFIP Working Group 8.3.
What about the future? We plan to have a business meeting at AMCIS 2003
in Tampa. We will probably host a membership recruiting reception at
AMCIS 2003 or host a pre-ICIS workshop in Seattle, WA in December 2003.
If we can find the resources, we may do both. We plan to expand the
resources at the SIG DSS Web site. I am hoping AIS will clarify how
they want to handle SIG electronic resources, but feel free to suggest
possibilities to Vijay Sugumaran, Oakland University, our Resource
Chair. Vijay is maintaining a temporary SIG DSS web page at
http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/sugumaran/sigdss/index.htm . We are
still in a learning mode. Perhaps we can get some photos at AMCIS 2003
for the site and we will try to put a draft of our bylaws on the SIG DSS
site for comment. The original plan was a SIG DSS members-only site with
a bulletin board, course syllabuses and reading lists for specialized
DSS courses. We will try to leverage the DSS resources that are already
in place on the Web. Quality resources and sustainability is what is
important.
Communication in a distributed group like SIG DSS is still a major
challenge. We have tried a SIG DSS bulletin board and that was not
successful and we are about to begin a SIG DSS LISTSERV ... we'll see
what works.
We have made progress in developing SIG DSS in 2002, but we need to
increase our membership. SIG DSS is a big tent for information systems
academics and practitioners interested in contributing to our
understanding of decision support, knowledge and data management.
Registration for AIS SIGs is now in progress. Currently, the annual dues
for SIG DSS are USD $10 for AIS members. To become a Charter member of
SIG DSS you will need to be a member of the Association for Information
Systems (AIS) AND you'll need your AIS member number. If you've lost
your AIS membership card or want to join AIS, contact
membership@aisnet.org. For more information about SIG DSS or to
volunteer, contact Dan Power (Daniel.Power@uni.edu). Michael Goul
(Michael.Goul@asu.edu) or Ramesh Sharda (Sharda@okstate.edu). The AIS
SIG page is at URL http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta/sigs.html.
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ISDSS'03 Call for Papers, Ustron, Poland, July 13-16, 2003
The 7th International Conference of the International Society for
Decision Support Systems (ISDSS'03) will be held in Ustron, Poland, July
13-16, 2003. The theme of the conference is "DSS in the Uncertainty
of the Internet Age". The Conference Chair is Prof. Tong X. Bui,
University of Hawaii and the Conference Co-Chair is Prof.
Henryk Sroka, University of Economics in Katowice, Poland. The deadline
for submissions to ISDSS'03 is Feb. 28, 2003. The official ISDSS'03
Conference Web site is www.ae.katowice.pl/isdss
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What's New at DSSResources.COM
01/31/2003 Posted Power, D. J., "Decision Support Readiness
Audit Questionnaire". Check the new resource channel, DSS
Consulting Resources that is under construction.
01/31/2003 Posted Power, D. J. and R. M. Roth, "Ertl's
Decision Support Journey". Check the case studies page.
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Send your Ask Dan! questions to askdan@dssresources.com
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DSS News Releases - January 20 to January 31, 2003
01/31/2003 Call for Papers: 7th International Conference of the
International Society for Decision Support Systems (ISDSS'03), "DSS in
the Uncertainty of the Internet Age", Ustron, Poland, July 13-16, 2003.
01/30/2003 Retirement Software study leads the way to better planning
for baby-boomers.
01/29/2003 GEHA selects Fair, Isaac Payment Optimizer to enable
pre-payment fraud and abuse detection.
01/28/2003 Gartner announces Business Intelligence vendor ratings for IT
buyers and technology investors.
01/28/2003 SYSPRO announces real-time business monitoring software.
01/27/2003 IBM outlines plans to bring next generation of collaboration
to millions of new users; Lotus Software portfolio increases customer
choice.
01/27/2003 SAS enables Stanwell Corp. Ltd. to operate in real time;
intelligence from real-time data access to real-time analytics enables
quick, accurate business decisions.
01/27/2003 Correlate Technologies announces K-Map solutions to meet the
challenges of document-intensive business processes.
01/27/2003 Sagent wires John Wieland Homes for Business Intelligence.
01/23/2003 Intuit QuickBase offers powerful project management
enhancements to meet today's tight budgets and demanding deadlines.
01/23/2003 PlanAnalytics unveils free online tool for advisers comparing
section 529 College Savings Plans.
01/23/2003 Grange Insurance deploys MicroStrategy Business Intelligence
platform enterprise-wide.
01/23/2003 SGI Altix 3000 Supercluster wins "Best of Show" honor in
product debut at LinuxWorld 2003.
01/22/2003 Major Italian utility deploys Ascential DataStage as
foundation of new data warehouse.
01/22/2003 Linux transforming business industry by industry; IBM
customers PGA Tour and VeriSign use Linux across an e-business
infrastructure.
01/22/2003 Red Hat Enterprise momentum continues to accelerate.
01/22/2003 StaffSmart(R) 7.0 includes enterprise staffing features --
increases focus on customer experience improvements.
01/22/2003 CPM study indicates predictive segmentation 80 percent more
effective than traditional method.
01/21/2003 Malaysian Department of Survey and Mapping to implement
Intergraph's integrated GIS, cartographic, and photogrammetic solutions
for fast mapping system.
01/21/2003 U.S. Army deploys Convera's RetrievalWare to provide
knowledge management and information sharing in support of military
operations and training.
01/21/2003 Experian announces Decision Solutions workshop schedule for
2003.
01/20/2003 RedDot's Content Management System integrates with Plumtree's
Portal Server.
01/20/2003 China Orient Asset Management Corporation selects Sagent to
boost business efficiency.
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DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2003 by D. J. Power. Please send your questions to
daniel.power@dssresources.com.
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