Designing an information management and control system for Malaria Consortium Uganda (MC)

Abstract

The study was carried out at Malaria Consortium, Kampala, Uganda. The aim of the study was to design an Information Management and control system in order to improve on the current methods used by the organization in order to help patrons get easy access and alerts about new projects’ information brought to the organization at their convenience. The objectives that guided the project were to identify services provided by Malaria Organization, to examine how information services are currently provided at MC, to identify challenges faced if any in relation to information service provision at MC and to design an information management system that would address challenges associated with the current system. The researcher used a case study research design and this sought to describe a unit in detail and context. The total population was 400 from which a sample of 40 respondents was drawn and it included staff, government officials and local natives. The methods used to collect data included interviews, issuing of self-administered questionnaires and observation accompanied by their respective instruments it also involved data analysis and ethical considerations Major findings of the study were identified according to the respondent’s views over services provided by the organization for example current awareness, abstracting among others, Information services provided by the MC for example use of notice boards, display boards and enquiries, challenges faced with the information system service provision for example covering of notice boards with other notices or unpinning notices unnecessarily and language barriers and the benefits of having a web based information service system e.g. getting mobile alerts on users ‘phones. The proposed information management and control system for MC information management department was designed with the employment of ICT knowledge i.e. cascading style sheets and html and it is able to send notifications to users’ mobile phones, websites as well as Gmail accounts and this will be convenient in alerting users about the new information resources. The researcher recommended that Malaria Consortium should adopt and host the proposed system so that it can ease the provision of information updates about the running projects.