Overview
Introducing changes into education system is not an easy task, since it involves not only the reconsideration to the role of technology in the learning process, but also a complete reassessment of the coordination between the work of different departments, changes in the process of information sharing and, most importantly, changes in the curriculum. Despite the threats that the reconsideration of the information management strategy in the UAE Academy involved, the introduction of innovational principles will be quite welcome within the academic setting, since it will allow for improving the quality of communication within the departments. After taking a closer look at the key stages of the Academy evolution, one will see that the given change is the next logical step in the Academy progress.
The UAE Academy has a long and proud history of academic thought evolution. Founded by in 1989, and providing ample opportunities for people to acquire the information and skills that will help them enroll in any college easily, the Academy has been providing its services in tutoring ever since. However, the UAE Academy is known not only as the center for students to acquire the skills that will help them be accepted into ca college; in addition, the courses offered by the UAE Academy encourage both professional and personal evolution of its visitors. In other words, the UAE Academy offers students the chance to become lifelong learners and evolve both spiritually and intellectually (UAE Academy, 2013). Moreover, the Academy claims that even the most underrepresented students will be able to become a college material.
Like any other organization, the UAE Academy has a very basic structure, including a leader (Dr. Abdullah Abonamah, CEO and the President of the establishment, his assistant, Dr. Subaran Roy, and the heads of departments, which are accountable and subordinate to the leader (UAE Academy, 2013a). The chart below shows the method of roles and responsibilities distribution within the organization:
It is remarkable that the organization is split into three key parts, i.e., the company CEO and the management, the departments of Public Relations, Marketing and Finance headed by the Technical Manager, and the departments dedicated to training and consulting the newly accepted members. The responsibilities are delegated from the company CEO to his assistant, and both are entitled to provide the Technical Manager with instructions regarding the actions to be taken. The Technical Manager, in his turn, provides his subordinates with tasks and supervises them. The physical plant layout of the organization is provided below:
Problem Definition
Despite the fact that the UAE Academy has achieved impressive success over the course of its development, in the XXI century, with the advent of new technologies, it has become increasingly difficult to provide information security within the organization. Because of the dated system of information management and the refusal to comply with the shared knowledge principle, the UAE Academy seems to have been facing problems regarding the security of the company data. To be technically accurate, the facilities provided by the technology support staff are restricted to the Internet-based electronic mail for the entire faculty to use.
Despite the fact that Internet connection is provided in the entire Academy, security policies have not been technically defined yet. As a result, the Academy is constantly under a threat of being attacked by a hacker, a malware or even simply a Trojan. Even with an impressive increase of responsibility among the users of the Internet within the Academy, the very fact that the organization is jeopardized in terms of its information safety demands that preventive measures should be taken to secure the UAE academy properly.
It could be argued, though, that the problem concerning the information security has been exaggerated. Indeed, the possibility of having a virus attack is very high even with decent security settings; the very fact of having Internet connection presupposes a certain amount of insecurity. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that the UAE Academy does not even have the secured connection to the Internet – quite on the contrary, there is no password protection whatsoever, and the only protection is provided by the NAT services, which can be viewed as a token safety measure.
Therefore, it is clear that the time to rearrange the company’s strategy of information management, especially regarding the technical aspects of the issue, has come. It is obvious that the UAE Academy needs to use advanced methods of protection against the threats to its information. However, apart from online safety, the concept of information management should be reinvented completely. It will be necessary to create several password protected databases for each of the faculties and arrange the information according to its relevance.
In addition, it is crucial that the principle of information sharing should be included into the new information management policy, since, with a large number of passwords and new rules, it will be quite complicated for the UAE Academy members to get instant access to the required information. As long as reasonable principles of information safety are established in the Academy, it will be possible to improve the processes of information acquisition, distribution and storage a few notches.
Reference List
UAE Academy (2013). About us. Web.
UAE Academy (2013a). Staff. Web.
Work structure (n. d.). Web.