intro of an automated clearance system at the Malawi Polytechnic

POTENTIAL OF AN AUTOMATED CLEARANCE SYSTEM AT THE MALAWI POLYTECHNIC

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

Submitted to:
Mr. K.C Gondwe
Department of Computing and Information Technology
Faculty of Applied Sciences

By

Group 3
Bester Mangisoni (BIT/10/NE/006)
Temwanani Zimba (BIS/09/PE/024)
Dora Nyirenda (BIS/10/NE/017)
Gift Sukali (BIS/10/NE/018)
Dorothy Mbewe (EST/10/NE/020)
Samuel Chiponda (EST/10/NE/006)
Macphalem Kalondoloza (BIS/10/NE/009)

JANUARY 28, 2014
Table of Contents
1. INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background 1
1.2 Problem Statement 1
1.3 Research Questions 2
1.3 Goals and Objectives 2 1.5 Justification 2

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2
2.1 Automated systems by Michael Domeich 2
2.2 Automated Assessment of Office skills 2
2.3 Implementation of Intrusion Detection System for Automation Network 3
2.4 Cheque Clearance System By Malswitch 3
2.5 Banks to Begin to Shift to Online Cheque Clearance 3

3. METHODOLOGY 4
2.1 Population of Interest and Sampling methods 4
2.4 Automated Assessment of Office skills 4
2.5 Data Collection Methods 4
4. MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCES 5
2.1 Bugdet 5
2.6 Work Plan 5
5. REFERENCES 7

POTENTIAL OF COMPUTERISED AUTOMATED CLEARANCE SYSTEM AT THE MALAWI POLYTECHNIC
By group 3
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
At the end of each academic year, all students at the Malawi Polytechnic are required to undergo a clearance process before they leave. It involves filling clearance forms signed or stamped by various authorities at the college before they leave. It is done to ensure that no student has anything that belongs to the school when they leave.
Each student is given a printed clearance form which has details that the student is expected to fill in. Details include Student’s name, postal address and year of study. The form also includes details that need to be filled by authorities from different areas of the school with appropriate information which has the purpose of showing clearance; it indicates whether the student has anything that belongs to the school. The different authorities involved include the Cafeteria, the Sports department, the Accounts department, the Accommodation department, Library and the Student’s Program Department. Each student is expected to visit all the areas mentioned above for signing by authorities in order to be cleared; whether they are holding anything of the college or not. Failure to do so leads to the student being considered as not cleared and this has the consequence of the Student not having access to his or her end of year exam results and is not allowed for registration in the next academic year.

1.2 Problem Statement

The current clearance system is time consuming. It requires students who do not do any sports to go to the sports administrator for clearance. It requires non-residential students to go to the hostels administrator for clearance. It also requires students to go to the cafeteria for clearance even if they haven’t stepped foot in the cafeteria the entire semester.

The current clearance system is also tiresome to both students and staff. In the case of the students, they have to go on ventures to various departments and stand on long lines waiting to get there forms signed by the various authorities. In the case of the staff, the clearance process results in volumes of paperwork to be processed manually by the staff.

1.3 Research Questions
Would an automated clearance system be better than the current manual system?
What would it take (in terms of cost and construction) to implement such a system?

1.4 Goal And Objectives
i) Goal
To convince the Polytechnic Management to implement an automated clearance system. ii) Objectives
To assess the perceptions of students and staff on the introduction an automated clearance system.
To come up with a design of the proposed clearance system.

1.5 Justification

We are conducting this research in order to justify the introduction of a new automated information system that will eliminate the problems of the old clearance system. This is so we can replace the old system with a new system that is more efficient.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Automated systems by Michael domeich.
“as automated systems are evolving, they are becoming more capable of making substantial decisions”(Domeich, 2013).in his report Michal continues elaborating on how allowing the automated systems to have more responsibility and security can improve the safety and performance as whole.
The automated systems have been used in all most all fields from manufacturing fields, engineering fields, health and education just to mention a few. The automated systems have the ability to assess their own situation and take initiative. Automated systems can do even more from human interaction with the systems and relationship between human and systems.
Various researches have been done that show that introduction of automated systems results in such tremendous improvements to manual systems regardless of the associated finances that come along. Some examples have been briefly summarized below.

2.2 Automated Assessment of Advanced Office Skills

Kovačić and Green (n.d) in there research titled “Automated Assessment of Advanced Office Skills” basically talk about how an automated grading system helped improve the assessment system at the open polytechnic of New Zealand. They say that due increasing numbers of tertiary education students at their school, manual assessment of students became less feasible as there were so many students which made marking exams a lengthy process and also resulted in slow feedback after assignments. So by introducing an automated grading system the workload of lecturers is greatly reduced and students are given feedback of assignments almost instantly.
Now the same way an automated system led in such good result with a grading system, we hope that the same thing happens by automating our clearance system.

2.3 Implementation of Intrusion Detection System for Automation Devices within Virtual Automation Network

Kuchta, Kadlec and Vrba (2009) did a research that was basically about implementing an automated firewall system to improve the security of automated networks. They discuss that automation devices are still more and more based on computers and they have the same weak points like standard computers. The necessity of the remote connection to the automation networks covers all security vulnerabilities and risks which originate from the Internet. Analogically the automation network can be secured by the conventional way through firewalls and VPN tunnels. For this reason new automation firewall device was designed. This led to the improvement of security in the automation networks and is another way that shows the improvements that come along with automation.

2.4 Cheque Clearance System By Malswitch

The electronic cheque clearance house (ECCH) introduced an automated system for the clearance of cheques. It is owned by Bankers association of Malawi (BAM) and is hosted and technically administered by Malswith under SLA. This has eliminated many manual procedures that are involved. This has resulted in maximized coordination, data integrity and efficiency of operation.

2.5 Banks Begin To Shift To Online Cheque Clearance System
(By George Ngigi,13 April,2011,Business Daily ,Nairobi)

Banks have started issuing new cheque books to customers, marking the start of a shift to automated clearing of transaction that is expected to halve the number of days to process payments. Some of the banks adopting the clearance system in Kenya are; Equity, Standard Chartered and NIC. They are issuing cheque books whose clearance will be automated.

3. METHODOLOGY
3.1 Population of interest and sampling methods
The research will deal with only individuals from polytechnic. Our sample shall include staff and students from second year to fifth year. The first years are excluded because they have not experienced the clearance process yet.
The sampling method is a blend of purposive and stratified sampling. Our sampling frame will be developed by visiting all the departments at polytechnic to have access to all the student’s names and registration numbers from each program of every department. When the sampling frame is obtained a specified number of students from each program will be chosen randomly to come up with the sample.
The sample size will be 10 percent of students and all the staff members that are in relation with the clearance system.
3.2 Data Collection Methods
i) Questionnaires
These will be distributed to the students
The questionnaires will have both open ended and closed ended questions. ii) Interviews
These will be performed on the staff members.
3.3 Data Analysis
The primary data obtained from questionnaires and interviews will be analyzed using SPSS and Microsoft excel software packages.

4. MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCES
4.1 Budget
QUANTITY
ITEM/ACTIVITY
UNIT COST IN MWK
TOTAL COST IN MWK
3
Reams of A4 paper
2200.00
6600.00
10
pens
150.00
1500
7
notebooks
280.00
1960
200
Questionnaires(printing)
60
12000.00
7 researchers
Catering for meetings
10000.00
10000.00
1 supervisor
Supervising
40000.00
40000.00
2 copies
Printing proposal
120
240.00
SUB TOTAL

72300.00
Contingency
15%

10845.00
GRAND TOTAL

83145.00

4.2 Work plan
The sampling procedure will take two weeks to be completed.
Planning for our entire research will take a week.
Data collection
Questionnaire distribution will take a week’s duration.
Interviews will be performed for a week.

Data Entry and Analysis
Data Analysis will take a week’s duration.
Data entry will also take a week’s duration.

References -Kovačić, J and Green, S .undated. Automated Assessment of Advanced Office Skills

-Michael C. Domeich,Michael D. good, John E. Deaton, C.shawn Burke. Automated systems(2013)
-George Ngigi(2011) Banks Begin To Shift To Online Cheque Clearance System. Bussiness daily.(45 (1) 13-23.

References: -Kovačić, J and Green, S .undated. Automated Assessment of Advanced Office Skills -Michael C. Domeich,Michael D. good, John E. Deaton, C.shawn Burke. Automated systems(2013) -George Ngigi(2011) Banks Begin To Shift To Online Cheque Clearance System. Bussiness daily.(45 (1) 13-23.