The CDIT, under the direction of Director Leon A. Kappelman, is facilitating a series of retreats with VA's senior IT and business management. The purpose of these sessions is to develop a plan that will change the way that IT is managed in the VA and bring the VA's IT practices into compliance with federal requirements. Due to non-disclosure requirements only limited information can be provided about this project at this time but some additional details are available at:

To answer these questions, the research team has conducted interviews with the city manager and assistant city managers, held numerous focus group meetings with employees reflecting all functional areas and governance levels, and collected extensive data through a Web-based survey with more than 300 employees. As of June 2001, the research team is analyzing the data to present the study's findings and recommendations to the city.

The initial purpose of this research was to determine empirical measures useful for developing an IS/IT Research Center typology. The starting point for this work was a typology proposed by Olson and Stohr [1989] and later modified by Becker, Maples, and Hassan [1994]. These measures were used to classify research centers into seven groups. Finally, the research attempted to validate the proposed classification using the mission statements of the participating centers.

Interviews with IS/IT Research Center directors have indicated significant differences in the management approaches for different types of research centers. For example, research grant-oriented centers tend to focus on delivering cross-disciplinary, practice-oriented research.

Dr. Huff reported the findings to the Board of Directors in December, 1997. A paper titled “Validation of the Sitkin-Weingart Business Risk Propensity Scale,” based on this study, was submitted to the CDIT’s Working Paper series (CDIT-WP-19970401). A second working paper titled “Factors That Cause IS Development Projects to Escalate Out of Control” was also submitted to the CDIT’s Working Paper series (CDIT-WP-19970701).

The study involves an investigation of how organizations are utilizing Intranet-Based systems within their corporate information infrastructure, as well as examining how users perceive the usefulness, ease of use, and quality of these new systems. Included in the study is an exhaustive analysis of several commonly used information systems assessment survey instruments aimed at identifying how well (or poorly) these instruments perform in a web-based intranet environment. Results should include clear guidelines for the usefulness and applicability of these instruments for the assessment of web-based intranet systems quality.

Data collection from two participating firms has been completed, and the data analysis is well under way. A small portion of the preliminary results from the data analysis is included in a paper which will be presented at the Fourth Annual Association for Information Systems conference, which will be held in Baltimore in August, 1998. A working paper will be delivered to the CDIT member firms by Fall, 1998.

Phase II of this experiment seeks to isolate the properties of background musical sound that subjects identify following a listening session. This experiment will evaluate fifteen musical selections. The results produced by this phase will then be incorporated into Phase III. Phase III will replicate Phase I using the broader set of musical selections evaluated in Phase II. In addition, Phase III will utilize a broader spectrum of behavioral assessments than previously employed in Phase I.