Research

Overview

The Department of Information Systems has a dual mandate: to bring the best of IS knowledge to the classroom for dissemination to students and to assist in the production of IS knowledge through active research and publication.   

The research reported in these pages is a collection of publications at conferences, formal theses and reports from post-graduate course work. The people involved in research and publication in the Department of Information Systems are mainly full-time staff members and post-graduate students. 

A few publications are loaded on the web server. Most publications are not, mainly due to copyright restrictions. If you wish to obtain one of the latter publications, check the reference or, alternatively, contact the author.

Research Areas

The main research focus of the department is the role of ICT in National Development. This entails looking at the relevance of current information systems issues in the context of both the first-world and developing context within South Africa as well as the rest of African. In particular, the following specific research areas have been identified by the staff as areas of strength.

• Education: Educational technologies for previously disadvantaged SA students; teaching educationally disadvantaged students; e-learning; IS staff and skills shortages; IS careers; perceptions of IS in work and study; computer literacy.
• Management of the IS function: IS planning; strategic aspects of IS systems; management information systems; systems thinking in IS; enterprise IS architectures; management of IS professionals; enterprise computing; computer supported cooperative work & EMS.
• Knowledge management: indigenous KM systems; modelling; data mining.
• System development: methodologies of IS development; teams and project management; OO approaches to systems development; system development approaches.
• Electronic commerce and business: e-markets; SME's; mobile computing; e-business models; e-government.
• Development and cultural issues: IS and culture; the digital divide; IT implementation and 1st world technologies in 3rd world environment; gender issues in IS and women in IT; IT government policy; open source software; IT adoption.

The following are the areas of specialization of the various IS staff members

• Associate Professor Irwin Brown: strategic IS planning; IS theory development; systems thinking in IS; IS effectiveness; end user technology adoption; global IT (cultural issues, national development, digital divide)
• Dr Wallace Chigona: community informatics; use of ICT as a tool for national development; and information accessibility for illiterate adults
• Dr Eric Cloete: computer architectures and software; information systems management; image processing; electronic commerce
• Mr Mike Eccles: teaching educationally disadvantaged students; object-oriented analysis and design; information systems controls and security; e-learning; education and IS
• Professor Mike Hart: strategic use of IS; key management issues in IS; perceptions of IS and the digital divide; data mining; knowledge management; customer relationship management; contact centres
• Mr Kevin Johnston: ICT strategy and alignment; use of ICT in business; ICT management issues; OSS
• Ms Salah Kabanda: requirements engineering, project management, networks and telecommunications
• Associate Professor Michael Kyobe: strategic IT planning; IT alignment; computer security and utilisation of IT to leverage knowledge management
• Ms Jane Nash: computer literacy; teaching IS; technology acceptance; IS staff retention
• Mr. Michael Pollock: Systems development, IS education, IT adoption
• Ms Elsje Scott: object-orientated programming and methodologies; efficient teaching methods for programming concepts; IS project management; with the specific focus on student group projects
• Mr Kosheek Sewchurran: problem structuring and sense making devices to support IS provision; strategic planning for IS technology implementations; IS project and program management; information and knowledge architectures
• Dr Lisa Seymour: Enterprise IS; education and IS
• Professor Derek Smith: information systems personnel management; project portfolio management; project teams
• Mr Adrie Stander: data communications; database design; human-computer interaction; culture and information systems
• Associate Professor Jean-Paul van Belle: adoption of information technologies; appropriate ICTs; e-commerce and m-commerce; conceptual foundations of IS; enterprise IS architectures; conceptual modelling

Proposed Journal Ranking List

You can download the proposed journal ranking list for the IS Department here

Centre for Information Technology and National Development in Africa (CITANDA)

CITANDA is housed within the Department of Information Systems at the University of Cape Town and is the vehicle through which research in the department is conducted. It aims to bring together researchers, projects, funders, and programmes focused on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the service of national development. For more information, you can visit the CITANDA website.

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