SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

SEMESTER C

YEAR 2020 /2021

FINAL EXAM

CSIS2003 STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

DATE: 26 JAN 2021 DURATION: 2.5 Hours

DIPLOMA IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

DIPLOMA IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

YEAR TWO

Instruction to Candidates:

Answer ALL questions. All questions carry equal marks.

Answer ALL questions on WORD document.

State your name and student ID on answer sheet.

Save your answer sheet as portable document format (PDF).

Rename it as “CSIS2003_2020C_final_<StudentID>”. For example:

CSIS2003_2020C_final_D123456B.pdf.

Submit through https://southernuniversitycollege-

my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/lc3547_sc_edu_my/EqOU2SuAbrpJkF4SUKyCGasBc1tnIqiU
WZCWdf4gksMV_A

This question paper consists of 4 questions on 5 printed pages.

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CSIS2003 STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Q1. A new inventory management for ABC company could be developed at a cost of
$260,000. The estimated net operating costs and estimated net benefits over six years of
operation would be:

Year Estimated net operating costs ($) Estimated net benefits ($)
0 250,000 0
1 7,000 40,000
2 9,400 78,000
3 11,000 82,000
4 13,000 115,000
5 15,000 120,000
6 25,000 140,000

(a) Define the payback period be for this investment. (2 marks)

(b) Calculate the payback period. (2 marks)

(c) Would it be a good or bad investment? (1 mark)

(d) Provide the TWO (2) reasons for your answer in (c). (2 marks)

(e) Calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) for this investment. (3 marks)

(f) Assuming a 13% discount rate, calculate the investment’s Net Present Value
(NPV). (15 marks)
[Total: 25 marks]

Q2. KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 3): A majority of Malaysians connect corporate laptops to their
home network, according to a recent survey by Tokyo-headquartered American-Japanese
multinational cybersecurity software company Trend Micro Inc.

Trend Micro’s "Head in the Clouds" study surveyed more than 13,000 remote workers
across 27 countries, including more than 500 in Malaysia, to find out more about the
habits of distributed workforces during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The study found that 77% of Malaysian respondents connect corporate laptops to their
home network.

Trend Micro said although these machines are likely to be better protected than personal
devices, there is still a risk to corporate data and systems if users are allowed to install

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CSIS2003 STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

unapproved applications on these devices to access home Internet of Things (IoT)

devices.

Additionally, it said about 35% of its Malaysian respondents had uploaded corporate data
to a non-work application in the past.

Cyberpsychology expert Dr Linda K Kaye said the fact that so many remote workers use
personal devices for accessing corporate data and services suggests that there may be a
lack of awareness of the security risks associated with this.

Source adopted and adapted from https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/majority-

malaysians-connect-corporate-laptops-home-network-%E2%80%94-survey

(a) Differentiate the pro and con of remote working. (10 marks)

(b) Explain THREE (3) issues faced by virtual teams’ challenges. (12 marks)

(c) List THREE (3) remote work tools for remote teams. (3 marks)
[Total: 25 marks]

Q3.

Figure 1 credit: https://www.pwc.com/sg/en/microsite/media/assets/startup-google.pdf

2015

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CSIS2003 STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

(a) Refer to Figure 1, which organisational structure is Singapore tech-based start-up

ecosystem implementing? (2 marks)

(b) Provide THREE (3) reasons to support your answer in (a). (3 marks)

(c) Compare the advantages and disadvantages of your answer in (a). (10 marks)

(d) Describe FIVE (5) major categories of IT decisions. (10 marks)

[Total: 25 marks]

Q4. Dr. Lau is also the founder and CEO of LEAD, a start-up that provides data science
courses both online and offline.

As a chief data scientist himself, he realised he could do something to make data about
coronavirus more accessible to the public.

He explained, “After we used the John Hopkins University (JHU) dashboard, we realised
that it is very hard to gather data for in-depth analysis (for example, time series to
monitor the growth, spread of the virus).”

“The detailed data we want is everywhere. It is also difficult to find localised news
(related to Singapore, Malaysia, or Kuala Lumpur only). So, we built a platform and used
technology to consolidate that information, and a portal to display the information and
make the data accessible to the public.”

A team of over 500 people from all over the world consist:
o Data scientists who follow the OSEMN framework to collect, clean, explore, data,
and run their own analysis and present it using visualisations and dashboards, and
who use Natural language processing to analyse content and identify meaningful
topics,
o Full stack developers to help build the web and mobile applications,
o UI/UX designers to make sure the design is user-friendly, and that information
architecture and flow is correct,
o Medical doctors and domain experts to help validate and verify information,
o The public as testers for constant improvement of the platform.

“We wrote our scraper using Python to scrape data and news articles from websites like
JHU and Tencent, and from news outlets like Reuters and BBC,” Dr. Lau added.

“We polished it, made sure data sources are connected and that news articles are filtered,
to the best of our efforts. And then we launched it on January 27 via a Facebook live
session,” Dr. Lau shared.

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CSIS2003 STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

“We manually select the sources for news articles and data and leave it to the machine to
do its job. We will check it as soon as users report the numbers are not tallied.”
Such a tool is definitely useful, but we also had to ask Dr. Lau how the team ensured that
the sources CoronaTracker uses are reputable.

To that, he replied, “Even trusted sources cannot be 100% sure that their news or their
published numbers are accurate.”

“We have medical professionals and volunteers from government agencies who advise us
on the best practice, and we always discard the information if we cannot get everyone’s
agreement.”

So, rest assured that the team has the public’s best interests at heart, and Dr. Lau even
shared that they will continue to improve it for a couple of days until they have
incorporated all the initial features and handled all feedback from the public.

At the moment, what you’ll find on CoronaTracker are handpicked sources, analytics on
coronavirus, prevention information, information on what coronavirus is, the latest news
on it, and screening centres near you (at the moment, for Singapore and Malaysian states
only).

If you’re reading this on another day, chances are that you might see even more features,
as the platform is continuously being improved upon at an impressive speed.

As for what’s next for CoronaTracker, Dr. Lau said, “I am hoping to hand it over to some
organisations to continue building it. After all, this is an open-source project, so all
source code and publishable data are available on our Github.”

Source adapted from https://vulcanpost.com/687680/coronatracker-coronavirus-updates-

malaysia-global/

(a) List the FIVE (5) ways big data and analytics can help an organisation. (5 marks)

(b) Explain each way listed in (a) from CoronaTracker perspective. (20 marks)
[Total: 25 marks]

This question paper consists of 4 questions on 5 printed pages.