The book of IT by my own Lecturer, Prof Zaidi!

 

The first IT book that I'd been reading through was this book title Intranet And Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Usage in Malaysia Port Industry by my own honoured class lecturer, Dr Norzaidi and his coleague Intan Salwani Mohamed. I think since this is the first IT book that I have been reading of, it compulsary for me to review it.


Well, of course the content of IT book its different from fiction books. The content is very straight forward and not like other IT books that normally I glance through when i found at Borders or MPH, the writer using a very simple IT terms that easily to understand and imagine as well! So proud of Dr. Norzaidi that can attract my attention to keep read words by words until the Glossary even im not in the IT field. Congrats sir!

The book specifically discussed about the usage of Intranet and EDI in Malaysia and was implemented by Port Industry. The major players in Malaysia Port Industry such as Port Authority, Marine Department, Terminal Operators, Royal Customs and Excise Department (my department actually, haha) and Immigration Department.

Ok, now lets discuss and being academic for awhile, haha. Intranet consist of browsers, hypertext mark-up language (HTML), hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), transmission control protocol (TCP), internet protocol (IP), firewall and web servers. Dr. Norzaidi and Salwani (2008) has found that the intranet use by the Malaysian Port are in the fifth stage that consist of six stages includes:

First stage      :  Introduction of internet in organisations,
Second stage :  Customised interaction,
Third stage     :  Collaborative interaction and communication,
Fourth stage   :  Process and systems integration,
Fifth stage      :  External and chain integration and
Sixth stage     :  Institutional absorption.

Meanwhile, EDI is the computer-to-computer exchange of business data in an agreed format. It is one of the components in conducting e-commerce. EDI in Malaysia is growing rapidly in order to cater to shipping transactions especially in various goverment and private organisations in the port industry. It easy to explain that EDI used to integrated the transaction systems between government and all the players in the port industry while the intranet mostly used internally within the organisations.

As the result of the findings, Dr. Norzaidi and Salwani (2008) conclude that several actions can be taken by managers to solve the existing problems with Intranet and EDI usage. These include clearer objective of usage, full support from the top management, user participation, effective IT team, proper training and instruction manual.

I'm proudly to tell you that currently I'm working for Royal Malaysian Customs that actually involve directly with the EDI system that discussed in the book. The system used in my office is Sistem Maklumat Kastam (SMK) that specifically a part of the EDI programme. This system generally used by the agent of customs to make the declaration of imported goods by sea mode and air mode as well. The agent basically will register the customs form from their office using the EDI and the information will be registered in SMK automatically. The agent will then come to our office and bring all the supporting documents such as manifest, bill of lading, invoices and OGA permits if the goods is subjected to the permit to value the goods for the duty and tax incurred. After examination and valuation, the agent will make a payment to the counter and the payment directly accounted to the federal account of Malaysia which also use the SMK application. After the payment successfully made, the system will trigger and the authorised officer will release the forms and the goods as well from the port. And one declaration is done! By the way, just to mention that in a port, the declaration forms in a day can exceed of 4000 forms! So, if the process delayed, don't blame the system and us..haha.

So, like I mentioned above, this IT book really informative and I will suggest to my close coleagues and even the top management that i knew to read this book so that they will know that there are some studies had been conducted on our system that should be considered in the future decision making about ICT development.

Thanks Dr. Norzaidi for your contribution!