Utilisation of Data Mining Technology within the Accounting Information System in the Public Sector: A Country Study - Malaysia

This study reports on the readiness to implement and the extent of utilisation of data mining technologies within the accounting information systems in the Malaysian public sector. Few studies have investigated the implementation of data mining technology in Malaysia. These studies have been within the private sector. In the public sector there have not been any. This study assists in filling this gap by exploring the role of technology, organizational, human resources and external issues such as political intervention are explored. The characteristics of those who choose too, or would be keen to adopt this technology as compared to non-adopters is also investigated. A data mining utilisation model is constructed combining information and communication technologies (ICTs), knowledge management (KM), data warehousing (DW) and data mining (DM) for application in the Malaysian public sector and the benefits of adopting such a model are considered. The study is triangulated adopting both mail survey and interview techniques. In the mail survey a response rate of 39% was achieved and 9 semi structured interviews were undertaken. Issues explored included the respondents' views of the importance of and factors significant in evaluating the accounting information system, the level of understanding of, perceptions of and readiness to implement data mining technologies within the public sector. Analysis was undertaken using SPSS, and for interview data, Nvivo7. The results of this study revealed that 25 out of 133 respondents were adopters and had knowledge about the implementation of such technology within their departments. The majority of respondents were not aware of the existence of data mining technology. Results further indicated that while respondents were generally positive about the existing accounting information system they identified improvements and changes that could valuably be made. For both the existing adopters of data mining technologies and non-adopters issues such as technological, organisational and human resources were significant and had played a role in the decision to, or not to utilise such technology. In terms of the non-adopters significant reasons for not adopting data mining technology included a lack of top management support, constraint on available finance to set up the necessary infrastructure, human resource issues including knowledge of the technology. The study found no difference in gender, job function or utilisation groups in terms of readiness to implement data mining technology but did for the level of education and experience in working with the AIS. The ability to use this type of technology was found to be related to the performance of the AIS. It was found the best model to apply data mining technologies within the public sector would include a centralised data repository linked to a well managed data warehouse integrating a number of existing systems with data mining technology.