Scholarship / My challenge: the order to manage the payroll software to meet the latest Government Regulation [4]

Hi.
This question come up from my Scholarship Application.
How have you contributed to solving a challenge and to implementing change or reform? (Be specific and include: what aspect/s of your leadership knowledge, skills and practice you consider to be well established and effective; which people or organisations you worked with to solve the problem; and what creative methods were used.)

And here's my answer. Please give me a comment.
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solving a challenge and implementing a change

As IT Professional, I have had the most remarkable challenge in my career stint when I was working at PT. King Jim Indonesia. I was given direct order from Senior Manager to manage the Payroll software to meet the latest Government Regulation. The software required updates including:

-Add a module to manage special employee's attendance
-Update on overtime & tax calculation module
I was working cross-sectioned with 2 other departments to manage these conditions (PGA Dept, Finance Dept). I invited their representative to discuss this condition in a meeting; in the meeting I explained the requirements before working on software updates. I divided them to do some jobs which is resulting the manuals of man power and salary calculation.

Meanwhile, after I had analyzed the software, I found that the software was developed with unorganized DB consisted with myriad tables with no table relations and normalization. The UI also was also very puzzling for users and did not arranged properly. The worst part, however, there was no source code making it impossible to make any modifications.

My solution for Attendance module was creating a Patch. I analyzed the DB based on data transactions because I needed to know which tables that are affected when a transaction was executed. As a result, I get the DB's Map that I used to develop Patch program. This patch used the same DB as the Main program so they can be synchronized.

The most difficult part was dealing with Overtime & Tax module. Since there was no source code, the only solution to this was Database Programming, an unorthodox approach because usually programmers will put the logical functions on Program. It required high data accuracy to ensure the data was processed correctly. It worked like a cheat that will manipulate data between the processes of application's execution and storing data. Aside from I had to work so hard to do this, the result was satisfying because it can meet the requirements.

Scholarship / The contribution of your study to your future career [3]

Hi,
I'm trying to answer this question from my Scholarship application.
Actually, I'm still not clear with my answer and I require further opinion from reviewer here.
Here's my answer.

==========

my career's zenith

My study in MIS of Health certainly will become a big leap to my career's zenith to sit in Top Management of the Ministry of Health (MoH) especially who runs IT business. Generally, the improvement can be divided into two categories, technical and managerial skills.

On technical side, I will obtain more knowledge of how successful IS can be developed including good programming technique, data processing, until infrastructure arrangement. The courses that I will take clearly indicate this situation. For example, Database Systems & Information Modeling offered by the Unimelb intends the candidates able to relate Database to various fields such as Warehouse and Health Informatics. As a result, it can support me to sit on strategic positions (e.g. Chief of Software Development) in the MoH which require strong capability of technical knowledge.

One of the biggest challenges of IS implementation is managing the system to meet the organization purposes. By combining my previous study with my Master Program, I am sure I will able to understanding more about how to run IT Management in big organizations like MoH. Also, I believe my study will support me to be a person who is involved in policy and regulations making in which requires creative innovation to meet current situation in the field. Some of courses offered by both universities are comprised with a Group Discussion which I believe will increase my brainstorming skills of critical issues in ICT and its relation to Health Management.

Scholarship / My answer to - How did you select your planned program and institution [4]

Hi,
I try to answer the question in my Scholarship Application. The question is "How did you choose your proposed course and institution".
Please give me your opinion & review.
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most innovative university

In 2012, Indonesian government had decided to develop computer-oriented Health Management Information System (HMIS) in order to provide an evidence-based data collection. This idea had been supported by Health Information Systems (SIK) Roadmap 2011-2014 and Government Regulation Number 46 Year 2014 in which mentioned the importance of ICT to improve the HMIS and to reach the successful eHealth system. As mentioned on the Indonesian SIK roadmap, the system must be synchronized from Local until National Governance. I believe the nearest challenge for the next 5 years is developing rigid foundation of computerized IS and merges it with the existing IS. Hence, I assume that we need many competent practitioners to be the successor of this program.

To be a qualified practitioner, I need a course which address important issues in IS implementation for Health sector and must also expound relevant solutions to tackle any possible problems which probably arise therefrom. Moreover, I also have to learn how to deploy strategic decision in this field.

The University of Melbourne is my first institution priority because it is the most renowned university in Australia and Ranked #33 in the world making a clear statement about its global recognition which is very beneficial for students that seeking global experience. I have read the syllabus about my proposed field and I have analyzed courses that are offered on the website. I deduce this institution very promising for me because the offered courses explore thoroughly about skills and knowledge that I need. IS Strategy and Governance is the example of courses that I'm sure will support my desire of study. On my second preference is the University of Sidney because I believe this institution has great education & research quality which is proven with its predicate as #1 in Australia for Asia's most innovative universities. More importantly, this institution also offers course about implementation of IS in health sector.

Undergraduate / Personal Statement - A requirement to get a Letter of Acceptance from University [4]

Hi,
Anyone please help me on my personal statement.
I'm still struggling to figure out how to write it properly.

===================================

Information System is field of study focusing on the use of hardware, software, and people to manage the information. In this field, information are stored, organized, and distributed to meet a certain goal in an organization. I had been able to observe this fact when I was working as IT staff because my company was a multinational scale. As the escalation of my career, however, I wish that I can to be a Lecturer because it is a great job which is perfectly match with my passion and I believe it has great impact for my society's life since education is the foundation of mankind. Because of this, a higher degree in my education is a must and I reckon that an international experience is valuable to support my dream as a superior lecturer in order to improve Indonesia's education.

As a Bachelor of Computer Science, I studied about information system for the last 4 years in my previous university. During my stint in the college I was always interested in subject related to computer programming for example: Algorithm and Data Structure, and Object Oriented Programming because I believe these subjects laid a strong foundation in the development of information system. In addition, I possess technical skills like programming language both for desktop (Visual Basic.NET, Java) and website (PHP). These skills are very useful since a good information system requires person who understand well between user's requirements and technical implementation.

There are two main reasons that support me to choose Health Informatics as my destination. First, I want to increase society's life rate on their health. It is an unquestionable fact that technology is very beneficial in medical devices as well as their information management. Second, I realize there is a lack of qualified people on this field and I hope I can fill this position and encourage more people to study about it. Honestly, I got this idea when I was working on my previous company.

Previously I worked in a multinational manufacturing company from Japan as IT Staff, my job description was responsible to any issue regarding with software and did analyzing (sometimes with developing also) for software requirement that will be implemented in the company. I had to consider about the company's business process, people's behavior, and other boundaries. As a company with multinational scale, indeed, it has big transaction of data and complex workflow which requires rigorous analysis before a decision could be made. Working with people from different cultures & background is also something that I cannot avoid; I had to collaborate with them smoothly in order to finish my job, but instead of obstacle, I took it as a good opportunity to increase my professionalism & teamwork capability. Hence, I am sure this experience will help me to complete my Master degree in Information System.

I think the University of Melbourne can afford my desire because they have eminent quality of education and number one in their research. Moreover to these, the university has international reputation which is much respected in the world. I hope I can broaden my horizon in information system and specialize on information system of health which is offered in your course as eHealth.

Letters / He has sterling communication skill - giving approval for talent of a student [5]

Letter of recommendation from my Dean - Expressing support for student

Hi, I try to create a letter of recommendation from my desk my Dean. Unfortunately he's very busy, and I have to finish this letter before Thursday.

As always, please give me any reviews/suggestions.

=================
To whom it may concern,
I write this letter to support my student (Iwan Bagus Setyawan) in my capacity as his dean. Overall, I recognize him as a hard-working person who has tremendous spirit to pursue his dreams and has positive willingness to dedicate himself for his country especially in developing better education for the next generation.

I have known him since 2010 when he joined the university and became my student. I noticed that he is kind of person who has analytical and sequential thinking. This quality is just perfectly fit with his major that requires people who can do detailed analysis through the system and provide relevant solutions regarding any issues related to the system.

During his study in the college, he played well both as independent player and contributes his utmost as a part of a team. In 2013, he was participating the community service subject as the field coordinator and successfully managed him team to finish the program. While completing his study, he also joined several campus activities including Art Students Community and Assistant of Programming Laboratory. He is kind of a person who is curious about learning new things and knowledge. These capacities have been proved by several trainings that he had joined such as Linux Operating System training, Website Development training, and Java training. In addition, he is also kind of person who likes challenges and always wanted to do his best in every task that he had.

I believe he is a great candidate for your program because he has sterling communication skill which is prominent in his field as the System Analyst. He can transfer the client's requirement into the computing languages. In addition to his personality, he has positive spirit who can affect others and he loved to motivate other student to finish the task completely.

Based on the affirmative reasons above, I am very glad to recommend him in your program. I feel certain if his application is accepted, it will has great impact in his development both in career and education. If you require any further information, please feel free to contact me and I will write it for you.

Scholarship / Objective Study for Scholarship Admission - in reference to questions about myself [6]

Draft of scholarship application

Hi everyone.
Currently I am trying to make my objective study of my scholarship application.
This essay should address these questions:
1. Give your reason why you want to study in US
2. Describe the kind of program that you expect to undertake
3. Explain how your proposed field of study fits with your:
a. educational background
b. professional background
c. future objectives
d. future involvement in community development

and here's my draft.

I want to continue my study in US because I believe this is the best place offering the possibility to expand my knowledge for my future goals. In my view, US is the heart of the latest development of technology especially computer, this is obviously can be seen in several facts such as Silicon Valley, Microsoft™, and apple™, all of them are situated in US. Moreover, US also has the best campuses of Information Technology (IT), Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, and Stanford University are the examples of which already born the most influenced people in IT field nowadays such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs. In Indonesia, in fact, we also have several prominent people which are graduated from greatest US universities; they are Nadiem Makarim (Founder of Go-Jek) and Ridwan Kamil (Mayor of Bandung), both of them have had remarkable achievements and have created extraordinary impacts for Indonesia's development. Along with condition, the education quality in US is also tremendous for students who want to pursue their dreams and I feel certain studying in US offers the chance to meet with great people which can lead to broaden my knowledge about life perspective.

I want to continue my study about Information System and specialize on the implementation of Information System to support Health sector which also known as Health Informatics. I choose this subject because in my previous study I was taking Information System so I am already familiar with this subject and currently I hope can expand my knowledge about this field.

During my study in the university, I have several experiences that improved both of my soft skills and hard skills; one of them was when I became to be a leader of the team in software engineering course in the fifth semester. As the team leader, I had to understand the whole business process of the client's and coordinated the team so it can be synchronized each other and well communicated. The main challenge was to make sure there were no misunderstanding between Analyst and Designer, Designer and Programmer, and tested the program to guarantee the client's requirements were fulfilled. After graduated from the university, I started to work in a company as IT staff in the early of 2015 until the August 2016. In my position as the person who had responsibilities about IT, I was given job description to coordinate the software division which is aptly fit with my educational background.

I have two main goals in my life, first is my personal career and the second is my social devotion for my country especially for my hometown. On career side, it is my dream to be a Lecturer, but not only average lecturer, I want to the remarkable one. I really want to dedicate myself for education because I feel certain that the main foundation of great country is started with their education. Based on this reason, I want to work in my university and focus teaching about Information System of Health. On the other side, I really want to contribute for the local society with my capabilities. In my village, there are not many children who go to the college because their parents think that education is not really important. Surprisingly it is not because they cannot afford their children to go to the college but it is because they are trapped in their orthodox mindset since many of those parents are wealthy farmer. In fact, if I were accepted in this scholarship and got a chance to pursue my study in the US, I would be the first person who has obtained Master degree from international institution. This condition leads me to think about the possibility to build a school for children in the future because we live in rural area and fortunately I have met with a friend who shares the same spirit as mine. We really hope this school can be a place that can build a children's character and in a bigger scale we wish that this school can be a part of our national's development.

Please feel free to give comments/suggestions.
Any point of view are welcomed.
Thanks.

Letters / Statement of Purpose - My Motivation to Join Information System in University of Melbourne [9]

Hi, I am trying to write my Statement of Purpose in my admission of Master Degree.
Since it is my first experience of writing this type of essay, I have no idea how it should be written.
Please give some suggestions and advices.

My aim is to join the Master of Information System in University of Melbourne, my educational background is linear with the major that intend to join. Hence, I believe I have a strong foundation to join this course but I don't know how to write it in my essay.

Here is my Essay

Statement of Purpose for master degree

Dear Madam/Sir,
I would like to express my current interest to study in University of Melbourne, majoring Master of Information System. I am a bachelor from Information System, University of Jember, with 2 years working experience in related field. I have already read your syllabus on the website and after scrutinized the courses that are offered, I am strongly sure that it is the major which I am looking for. Along with the core subject, I am also particularly interested in elective subject eHealth which I believe can be rigid foundation for my future career.

I was born 24 years ago in January 30 in a small city named Jember, an eastern city in Java Island, Indonesia. As a result of my house which is located in rural area of my city, I had very limited knowledge about modern technological devices like computer when I was an infant. It was 13 years ago when I was in the first year in my junior high school, I had my first introduction with computer. It was IBM brand with 256MB of RAM and CRT monitor. This stuff somehow made me stupefied and triggered my sense of curiosity to study about it which leads me to join Information System major later on.

While I was studying in the university, I have some fascinating experiences. First, I have learnt to master programming languages which is very useful in my career now. The languages that I have learnt are ranging from Website Based languages like PHP until Desktop Based such as Java and Visual Basic.NET. Second, I got my first experience as a teacher along with my position as Assistant of Programming Laboratory, I taught my junior about programming and database. Third, my soft skills were lifted up during the stint. I used to be a leader in several subjects that I enrolled in such as Field Study, Community Services, and Software Engineering. In addition to this, I also found the balance between being idealist and realistic person.

At the end of 2014, I graduated from the university and started working in a multinational manufacturing company from Japan as IT Staff, my job description was responsible to any issues regarding with software and did analyzing (sometimes with developing also) for software needs to be implemented in the company. I had to consider about the company's business process, people's behavior, and other boundaries. As a company with multinational scale, indeed, it has big transaction of data and complex workflow which requires depth analysis before a decision could be made. Working with people from different cultures & background is also something that I cannot avoid; I had to collaborate with them smoothly in order to finish my job, but instead of obstacle, I took it as a good opportunity to increase my professionalism & teamwork capability. While I realized that working in the company had many benefits for me, however, I chose to resign from the company because I want to do something for my long-term vision in my life.

It was about one year ago in the early of 2016 when I was still working the company. I felt stuck with my job and started to think my life goals. I thought deeply about something called "passion", something which is believed as the key of human happiness. I tried to find my passion, I also made some job applications in another companies because I believed maybe my passion was out there. However, after several months, no one of them convinced me and it made slightly frustrated because I did not really know what I want to do in my life. Fortunately, I have had a best friend and discussed about this problem with him. After conducted discussions, I realized something that I missed, something that actually I have done since I was student in the university, something that I love, sharing my knowledge with others, and it is being a Lecturer.

Since I want to be a Lecturer, I decided that I have to be a great one and I believe it is all started with preparing the best education. I did a research on the internet about my destination universities and finally I chose the University of Melbourne because of some reasons. As we all know, the University of Melbourne is the best university in the Australia so I think it will be a great step for me if I can study there. Likewise with their academic quality, I heard many stories about how livable Melbourne itself and very supporting for overseas students. Furthermore, I want to get in touch with the culture and study about their modern live with a hope that perhaps I can implement it in country.

Information System itself is my current educational background and I have already familiar with this field. Hence, I really hope can join the Master of Information System program because it will give me a chance to broaden my horizon about Information System. Based on the courses that are offered in your website, I also they were divided into two categories: core and elective. On the elective courses, I notice that your institution provide the possibility to learn about eHealth. I am really into this course because I always interested to make IT Consultant Company focused on health issues.

Thank you for your help

Letters / Letter of Recommendation from Supervisor - expressing support for a student [5]

A promising programmer who likes challenges

Dear Admissions Committee,
I am very pleased to recommend Iwan Bagus Setyawan P in his admission in The Master of Information System (MISM), Carnegie Mellon University Australia. I hope this letter can help describe his quality as well as expressing my deepest support for him.

On academic side, he impressed me during his study in the college. In the first year, he was struggling in Algorithms and Data Structure, subject that I taught. However, his respond to this problem was really exceptional. While many others gave up to this subject; he had a different view and took it as a challenge for himself. I noticed that he pushed himself, practiced regularly, and conferred with his seniors to get extra mentoring. As a result of all his endeavours, he turned his score into the A point in the subject and other related subjects regarding to programming such as Object Oriented Programming, Database (SQL) Programming, Object Oriented Database, and Cryptography with a great result. Along with this condition, he became the Assistant in my laboratory (Programming Laboratory) for three years and he did it very well.

I was also supervising him in his thesis about Human Computer Interaction entitled 'The Implementation of User Centered Design (UCD) in the development of Website's User Interface through Soft System Methodology (SSM)'. I found this thesis very interesting and fascinating because it was quite uncommon from prevalent thesis topics in his field. During the progress, I can conclude that he was an open-minded person and accepted for criticism and suggestion very well. Furthermore, I used to give him extra materials from international journals. Although it was quite difficult for him to understand the materials at the beginning, he showed his strong desire to learn about the topic because he wanted to increase his thesis quality. After several extensive consultations with me, he completed his thesis and passed the final exam successfully.

To sum up, I would like to restate my greatest support in his application of Master Degree. Please do not hesitate to contact me for any further information, I will be glad to write it for you. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Mr. Somebody