Managing Project-Based IS Initiatives in the Vocational and Technical Education Sector of Developing Asian Countries: A Soft Systems Approach to Identifying the Role of Information and Information Systems

This paper is set against a background of national IS initiatives implemented in the Vocational and Technical Education (VTE) sectors of developing Asian countries through donor agency funded projects, which can be seen as Project Intervention Processes (PIPs). This research is based on a seven year research study of IS initiatives implemented through nine VTE sector projects covering Laos, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The research was undertaken through empirical investigations and a review of secondary data. The IS initiatives studied focussed on aiding strategy formulation and management in the VTE sector as opposed to classroom based training. The research reveals that the process of managing IS initiatives through PIPs using traditional IS theory, which is based on hard approaches, is problematic in terms of generating desirable outcomes from the IS initiatives to address perceived VTE problems. Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is based on a learning/enquiring cycle and is often used to manage problem situations that are poorly structured. The paper presents two key findings: a SSM based conceptualisation on the information requirements of VTE and a SSM based conceptualisation on the nature and role of information systems (IS) in VTE.