HCA 610 Technology planning

Sample Answer for HCA 610 Technology planning Included After Question

The key to planning technology is the investment in a strategic plan that encompasses not only where an organization is headed, but also defines the organization’s current position. The plan, in essence, outlines the pathway between the two. Making it successful depends on how the market is defined, and whether or not the right questions are being asked. To determine the long-term cost of operation and potential revenue generation for each piece of equipment, what factors need to be considered?

Technology planning is a process that takes time and resources in order to understand what is appropriate for staff and the organization. Program directors and their management staff may use this resource to further their understanding of what is involved in technology planning.

Establish leadership and support
Assess your resources
Define your needs
Explore solutions
Write the plan
Get funding
Implement the plan

Effective technology planning is an involved process. It takes a commitment of time and resources from senior managers and other staff. In order to make good decisions, an organization also needs to understand key aspects of technology.

But through technology planning, organizations can make significant gains. Sound technology management leads to greater productivity, increased staff morale, and improved service to clients through having machines that work, networks that give access to information, and applications that are appropriate for an organization’s mission.

Information can transform organizations by giving them the tools to understand the environment they’re working in, to measure the effectiveness of their actions, and to counter opposing information from other groups and policy makers. Technology is uniquely positioned to harness the power of information.

Technology planning is a process. TechSoup has broken it down into seven phases.

Establish leadership and support.
Assess your resources.
Define your needs.
Explore solutions.
Write the plan.
Get funding.
Implement the plan.
Establish leadership and support. Setting up a technology team and ensuring management and staff buy-in will allow you to get started with the whole organization behind you.A tech plan isn’t written in a day. The process behind the writing is the most important part, and the process is all about how staff work together to find the best solutions.
- Technology Team. It is crucial that the technology plan be a product of the whole organization, not just one staff person’s brainchild. Nonprofit technology experts all recommend that you set up a technology team to lead your technology planning process, if you do not have a team already. A technology team should be made up of a wide range of staff members. It is very important to have your executive director or another person in management involved. Your team might be composed of a board member, the executive director, a project manager, an administrative assistant, an accountant and a development director, as well as your system administrator, if you have one. Set up a regular meeting schedule to review progress on the plan. Make sure to distribute responsibilities and set clear expectations so that each person is involved in the process.
- Lead Person. It is crucial to have one person who is designated to lead the technology team and coordinate the whole process. That person need not be someone who is already in a management position, but should be someone with leadership capabilities and relative comfort with technology.
- Management Support. It is next to impossible to do a technology plan and carry it out without active support from management. Management is key to financial support and funding for the plan. It also makes a huge difference if you can convince your management to stand up and talk to staff about the plan. One strategy for convincing management is to describe the current costs of not doing a plan. Let them know how many hours of staff time are wasted, and how much money is lost trying to make the current system work. If your organization requires a major technology overhaul, management will appreciate a plan which is broken into implementation phases, so that they are not faced with funding the entire initiative in one budget year. For a set of general talking points, see the TechSoup article Why a Technology Plan? Even if management is reluctant, they should be consulted and informed at every major step.

Assess your resources. The first step in planning is to assess your existing technology. What do you have in place? How well is it working?The first step in developing a plan is to assess where you are. Sound philosophical? The key is to spend some time asking yourself what is working, and what needs improvement. What technology do you have in place in your organization? What technology skills does your staff have? Who does your organization rely on for technology support?One part of assessment is taking a basic inventory of the computers and software in your organization. A hardware inventory worksheet can give you a sense of the overall capacity and range of workstations in your organization. A software inventory worksheet can give you an overview of the software resources and how they are distributed on different computers.By taking this step, you can help avoid buying redundant technologies or incompatible technologies, and you can help assess whether any of your current technology is obsolete.

In the hardware inventory worksheet, you will want to write down the following items for each computer:
- User
- Brand
- Model
- Serial Number
- Monitor type
- Processor type and speed
- RAM
- Hard disk capacity
- Available hard disk space
- Operating system
- Modem or network card (if any)
- Ports available (USB, FireWire, SCSI, etc.)
- Floppy, CD, or DVD drive (Be specific: indicate the type of floppy drive or whether you have a CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, or DVD-RAM drive)
- Any additional equipment attached to the computer
- Other equipment such as network printers, switches, firewalls, modems, etc.
In the software inventory worksheet, you will want to mark down major software packages that you use, along with their version numbers.

There’s more to an assessment than listing your hardware and software. For example, you need to document your network set-up, access policies, and protocols; document your services, including centralized databases, email, and groupware; and document your management practices, from staffing to written policies.

The most important part of assessment is to ask yourself some questions about how well your systems are currently working. The worksheet below will give you an idea of the issues to look at in different areas of technology assessment.

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Lopes Write Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to Lopes Write, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.

Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.

Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?

Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
Include in-text citations in your response
Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
Follow APA-7th edition
Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
Follow APA 7th edition
Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
Here are some helpful links
Student paper example
Citing Sources
The Writing Center is a great resource

HCA 610 Technology planning