The Post Office

The grade blot The affix bunk is a group of three core businesses that form the UKs theme postal system. It bleeds as a public corporation and is owned, but non managed, by the Government. Its businesses are empurpled ship the letters business, Post contribution Counters Limited, the retail Business and pamphlet force, the parcels business. It alike runs Subscription Services Limited, which admits a portfolio of function to UK businesses. The group as a whole has recorded a turn a profit for the last 19 years, and is one of the few national Postal administrations to operate without government subsidy. In 1994, following a review set up two years in the first place, the Government published a discussion story that set out proposals for the future of The Post Office. Following a prolonged and intense public debate the Government decided, in 1995, to drop plans for royal stag Mail/ big bucks force privatisation from its then current legislative computer programme but i n the following year announced it was relaxing well-nigh of the financial restraints to allow The Post Office businesses to compete for revolutionary business. A brief history of the Post Office The origins of the Post Office apprise be traced back to 1482 when couriers carrying pacquets (royal messages) were granted the power to requisition horses and guides. By 1660 oblige of The Post had passed from the monarch to Parliament with the creation of the post of Postmaster General. From the introduction of the unvaried penny post in 1840 the Post Office grew and took on new responsibilities until by the 1950s about 1/3 of all civilised service staff were employed by the Post Office. In October 1969 the Post Office ceased to be a government department and became a corporation. The business for the day to day management passed from the Postmaster General to the board of the newly effected corporation, although the new Minister for Posts and Tele conferences still retained contro l of the Post Offices budget. gain reform followed in 1981 when post and telecommunication were separated and The Post Office Corporation was divided into The Post Office (responsible for postal services and field of study Giro Bank) and British Telecom (responsible for telephones and telecommunications). Again the argument behind this trade was that it would make the Post Office more suited and responsive to the ineluctably of the commercial modern world. The Post Office delivery services sufferd the trade privatisations of the 1980s. However, British Telecom was privatised in 1984 followed by the National Girobank in 1989. Although, The Royal Mail is the letters division of the Post Office, It is obliged to provide a universal service at a uniform price. This is achieved through scratch subsidisation of more pricy services by less costly and a monopoly on deliveries of letters costing less than 1.00. The Royal Mail has a electronic profit of approximately 100,000 post box es and employs approximately 80,000 postmen. Post Office Counters Ltd is a mesh of approximately 20,000 sub post-offices. They are mostly in private owned and run by agents (sub-postmasters), m both are also shops. They merc plentyise stamps and provide otherwise services such as pensions, etc. Parcel force is an separate division of the Post Office that operates without a monopoly and in direct competition with a offspring of private sector companies. Parcel force employs approximately 13, 00 staff, has 165 depots and a fleet of approximately 9000 vehicles.The ca utilize to tell this intact story to explain the changes went through in this musical arrangement by the term requirement. comment of nature of information systems A topical anaesthetic commonwealth Network (LAN) had been introduced in the Newcastle upon Tyne postal district 18 months earlier and was intended to touch base together different locations in the Newcastle area and to provide a gateway to other Pos t Office LANs nationwide. Initially wont of this system was restricted to senior (board level) managers but with the impending restructuring and expected privatisation use of the LAN was extended to other levels in the organisation. At the initial time of the interviews there were 37 terminals in the Newcastle area and 6 at removed sites. The Newcastle LAN could also be used to link to another 20 Post Office LANs in different parts of the country. The system unified elements of personnel, administration, recruitment and selective information on human resource utilisation with data on costing and the volume of business transactions. What is a engagement? A network is a generic term for whatsoever computer found communications system that links together a number of computers and other devices. A network may be called a LAN (Local Area Network) or a WAN (Wide Area Network). LANs are networks that connect several(prenominal) devices, usually through a single cabling system, within a all the way defined area such as a single mental synthesis or a group of adjacent buildings. WANs on the other hand are networks used to distribute data around sites that may be scattered across or single country or the entire world. WANs may be composed of interlinked LANs and may use a number of different communications links (e.g. satellite and telephone lines) to join their persona parts. Networks may take many forms although, conceptually, they only consist of two parts. Description and analysis of functional use of information systems The networking software defines the logical building of the network it controls and co-ordinates certain activities in a group of otherwise independent processors (network stations). At the heart of apiece network is the shootserver. The fileserver treats the network stations as if they were storage peripherals (e.g. disk drives) while the network stations treat the fileserver as if it were a hard disk reading from it and writing to it as required. To each(prenominal) machine it appears as though the data had just now come from a disk drive. Communications software and the physical link both the network stations and the fileserver run communications software to send data to each other through the physical link. The physical link, i.e. cabling system, defines the physical structure of the network while the communications software carries the data along the physical link together these two things act as a medium for the communication mingled with fileserver and network station. However networks heap facilitate communication amongst people as well as machines. Electronic mail, diaries and teleconferencing facilities put forward be used as a medium for communication, control and co-ordination between people. For example, e-mail allows asynchronous communication between individuals or groups and also enables the businesslike distribution of text based memos or messages to a group, or groups, of recipients. soun d judgement of current use of information systemsSecurity and ease of management Networks, by their nature, impose restrictions on certain actions by certain users at limited times (e.g. two users cannot write to the like file at the same time). This greatly simplifies file management and can provide several layers of supererogatory security, e.g. passwords and or access only via dedicated terminals. Networking software can also provide alarms and audit trails to assist dealing with security problems if they do occur. resilience Networks are virtually unaffected by local damage. If a network station breaks down it can be simply removed without any disruption to the other users. If the data has been plump for up then no data need have been lost the user can simply move to another network station. The fileserver on the other hand is the hub of the network if this ceases to function the whole network stops. However, once again, if all the data has been backed up and good recovery p rocedures exist networks can even survive a fault at the fileserver. Efficient use of resourcesNetworks make a more efficient use of resources as they allow the apparently concurrent use of one application by several users. The most unequivocal example of this is the shared use of programs such as word processors and spreadsheets. These leave alone only need to be installed once on a file server and can then be used on any number of machines. Networks also allow the cost of expensive but infrequently used items, such as specialist printers or tape drives, can be shared between a large numbers of users. as well old, unusual or otherwise obsolescent equipment can also be made use of in this way.