1.1 Introduction
Online government project tracking is a software used to access information concerning anything about a particular government contract awarded on the Internet. Government Project Tracking is essentially a job-costing system designed for businesses who want to analyze their costs, revenues, or both, for a job or a project. Because of Project Tracking’s unique design, any key business indicator you wish to analyze separately from your general ledger can be considered a project. Project Tracking can be used for more than simply reporting the overall costs and revenues of each job or project. Project Tracking can give individuals specific information about revenue and costs across a wide range of projects. A housing developer may want to see not only the profitability of each house, but also how much is being spent on specific expenses, such as paint or concrete, for all houses or, for all houses within a specific development.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Since Project Tracking is not tied to any fiscal or calendar year, the mortgage broker can close the project or the general ledger at any point in time. And yet, reporting can be specified to an exact time frame by general ledger posting date or document date range to create weekly, monthly or quarterly reports. Many other reports and configurations are possible. The level of detail you will be able to obtain from Project Tracking reports depends on how you set up your user-defined fields and breakdown codes. Not all Project Tracking user-defined fields are equal. There are seven transaction-level user-defined fields tied to each transaction distribution line that can be used for project analysis.
A unique feature of Project Tracking is the ability to keep information across fiscal years. For example, a mortgage broker opened escrow on a property in December but the escrow closed in January of the following year and the broker’s fiscal year ends on December 31. Information system (IS) refers to a system that comprises of persons, data records and activities that process data and information in an organization and it includes the organization’s manual and automated processes. In a narrow sense, the term information system refers to the specific application software that is used to store data records in a computer system and automates some of the information-processing activities of the organization.
Since the first wave of computerization in the 1970's, the implementation of information technology within policing has been questioned and often met with resistance. The development of an information technology strategy must be viewed in the context of increasing expectations and pressure for reform within organizations. The term information technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term has become very recognizable. The information technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information database.
Project level user-defined fields are much more restricted in their usage. There are 41 project-level user-defined fields available which hold one value per field per project. For example, a housing developer may want to keep track of the square footage of each house (project) that is built. This value will remain constant for the entire life of the project and applies to the project not to individual transactions. Therefore, the developer will use a project-level user-defined field (numeric value) to track square footage. Project level user-defined fields can be in date, numeric, check box, or text format.
1.3 Statement of Problem
Investigation revealed that keeping record of government approved project has been a big task for the management. It is also a big security risk as there is need to maintain an automated record of approved project task in case security issues arise. Online tracking is an illusion and not what determines project success. Plans are living documents that changes as the environment of the project changes. In the new world of information technology, success is dependent on strategies, resources and people.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement a Computerized Federal Government Projects Information Tracking System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Track the details of project manager that executed government approved projects;
- Store, process and activate information about all the projects awarded;
- Serve as an electronic register to keep record of government approved project;
- Provide password to prevent unauthorized users from accessing and manipulating information.
- Maintain a centralized database system for the purpose of information sharing; and
- Retrieve previous project information from the system easily using structured query language.
1.5 Significance of Study
The relevance of this study is tremendous as it will go a long way in making great impacts on our state pride and social tolerance. However, this will ensure that accurate information is kept and this application will be capable of making our sate transparent in her profit dealings. This therefore goes a long wall in encouraging the stability of project execution and can also be used by the government to attract more federal government projects considering the high sense of good project tracking system in use.
This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.6 Scope of Study
The scope of the research is focused on the Design and Implementation of a Computerized Federal Government Projects Information Tracking System.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Establishment Policies: Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this project work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this institution to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Contract Tracking: This means software used to retrieve or gain information concerning anything about a particular contract awarded.
Registration: This means to keep records received from the management for reference purposes.
Management: It is the co-ordination of all the resources of an Organization through the process of planning, Organization, directing and controlling
