New Century Health Clinic offers preventive medicine and traditional medical care. In your role as an IT consultant, you will help New Century develop a new information system.

Background You implemented the new system at New Century Health Clinic successfully, and the staff has used the system for nearly four months. New Century is pleased with the improvements in efficiency, office productivity, and patient satisfaction. Some problems have surfaced, however.

The office staff members call you almost daily to request assistance and suggest changes in certain reports and forms. You try to be helpful, but now you are busy with a major project for a local distributor of exercise equipment. Actually, your contract with New Century required you to provide support only during the first three months of operation. Anita Davenport,

New Century’s office manager, reported that the system seems to slow down at certain times during the day, making it difficult for the staff to keep up with its workload. Also, you increasingly are concerned about system security. A recent article in the local newspaper described an incident where a disgruntled former employee was about to break into the computer system and destroy or alter data. Assignments 1. You are willing to charge a lower rate for ongoing support services because you designed the system.

You want New Century to use a specific procedure for requesting assistance and changes, however, so that you can plan your activities efficiently. Prepare a complete, written procedure for New Century Health Clinic maintenance change requests. Include appropriate forms with your procedure. 2. What could be causing the periodic slowdowns at New Century? If a problem does exist, which performance and workload measures would you monitor to pinpoint the problem?

3. At the end of the systems analysis phase, you studied the economic feasibility of the system and estimated the future costs and benefits. Now that the system is operational, should those costs and benefits be monitored? Why or why not? 4. You decide to prepare a security checklist for New Century. Prepare a list of security issues that the firm should evaluate and monitor. Be sure to organize the items into categories that match the six security levels.