Did you come across the word Free to Air satellite TV before? Even though you might have never heard of it, you might have seen it. People who adopted FTA satellite TV earlier on, used satellite dishes that spanned several feet in diameter and with the coming of digital video, consumers no longer are restricted to these large dishes.

You can receive Free to Air channels for free and there are hundreds of channels to choose from, it is great for international programming, FTA technology can be used as an educational tool to remote and distant villages where basic educational facilities are lacking with a receiver that can process the information from the satellite.

Free-to-air satellite technology is the most modern way of viewing television for free. One can watch the channels without any subscription fee whatsoever it is. Free-to-air programs are transmitted to satellite dishes, however, the receivers and file supports are necessary.

To be able to enjoy the FTA programs, there are various things you need to know, such as how satellite supports the channel you wish to view, the frequency of that FTA channel etc.

You do not need a huge plate at top of your roof that is bigger than your house; C Band or 6-foot satellite dish would suffice. However the new FTA programs now moved to the Ku Band system which is an FTA receiver with a remote control and a small dish will do.

Depending on the source of the FTA receiver, your file support may become necessary. You will need to ensure that your FTA receiver will provide for file support system that is available on a 24/7 basis. This is only to ensure that should any problem surface, you will be ready and able to control the problem

With the FTA satellite technology, you do not have to pay any monthly fees and your only are required to pay for the equipment, unless you would like to pay for installation as well. It is almost like receiving free local channels from an antenna, except that FTA uses a satellite to receive the digital programming.

Free to Air satellite technology can help you learn more about the other cultures and languages and with the diverse selection of channels you have at your fingertips, there are a variety of things to learn from. There are many channels in English too and many popular home schooling systems use Free to Air satellite technology for consumers to receive the educational channels.

All the programs received via free-to-air channels are unencrypted and it is broadcasted as it is and thus, the language will be the same at it is.

There are some disadvantages of Free to Air Satellite technology, now all of this might seem too good to be true, but free to Air satellite technology does have some issues. Since FTA satellites have been used as a testing ground, some channels are shown only for a limited period of time, typically the test channels are shown for several months.

Space science is the study of everything above and beyond the surface of the Earth, from Earth’s atmosphere to the very edges of the universe. Space Technology refers to the technology in satellites and ground systems used by space scientists to study the universe (looking up) and the earth (looking down), or to deliver services to users on the ground. The vast majority of satellites are launched into space to provide services to people on Earth.

Satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavor. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon. Space is the property of the universe, in which matter is physically extended and objects have positions relative to one another.

In classical mechanics, space was treated as being separate from time and is thought of as one of the few fundamental physical quantities. In Isaac Newton’s view space was absolute, and held that it exists permanently and independently of whether there is any matter in the space or moving through it.

Space exploration is the use of astronomy and space technology to explore outer space. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft. Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries such as the Cold War.

The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 (East 1), carrying 27 year old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961. The spacecraft completed one orbit around the globe, lasting about 1 hour and 48 minutes. Gagarin’s flight resonated around the world; it was a demonstration of the advanced Soviet space program and it opened an entirely new era in space exploration — human spaceflight.

Space Shuttle Discovery (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-103) is one of the three currently operational orbiters in the Space Shuttle fleet of NASA, the space agency of the United States. (The other two are Atlantis and Endeavour.) When first flown in 1984, Discovery became the third operational orbiter, and is now the oldest orbiter in service. Discovery has performed both research and International Space Station (ISS) assembly missions.

Space technology is technology that is related to entering space, maintaining and using systems during spaceflight and returning people and things from space.

Space technology has a huge impact on the everyday lives of people; and something as simple as checking the weather or watching satellite television or receiving a parcel guided by satellite, it touches most people’s lives on any given day.

In the world of globalization, Information system is such where data are collected, classified and put into process interpreting the result thereon in order to provide an integrated series of information for further communicating and analyzing. In a progressively more spirited worldwide atmosphere, Information System plays the role as ‘enabler and facilitator’, which endows with tactical values to the officialdom and considerable step up to the excellence of administration. ‘An Information System is a particular type of work system that uses information technology to detain, put on the air, store, retrieve, manipulate or display information, thereby partisan one or more other work structure’. In totting up to taking sides assessment making, co-ordination and control, information systems may also help managers and workers investigate problems, envisage complex subjects and generate new merchandise or services.

The criteria of operational  systems and the idata management  systems that support analytically pass through at least four phases: a) Introducing the system  of manipulating the need to promulgate  on going operational Management  system b) development of  the process of acquiring and configuring/installing the necessary hardware, software and other resources c) implementation, the process of making new system operational in the organisation, and d) Operation and maintenance, the process concerned with the operation of the system, correcting any problems that may arise and ensuring that the system is delivering the anticipating benefits. The management of these processes can be achieved and controlled using a series of techniques and management tools which, collectively, tend to be known as Structured Management System. Two important methodologies:  PRINCE (Projects IN a Controlled Environment), and SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methodology),structured by the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), are used widely in the UK public sector and in some Developing Countries, like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal etc. Prior to comment on the application of these methods in the Developing Countries, it would be pertinent to describe brief outlines of these methodologies.

It is a significant fact that PRINCE is a project management method; not system development, which covers the organisation, management and control of projects. Since its introduction in 1989, PRINCE has become widely used in both the public and private sectors and is now the UK’s de facto standard for project management. Although PRINCE was originally developed for the needs of IT projects, the method has also been used on many non-IT projects. PRINCE requires a dedicated team to be established to manage and carry out each project. It therefore aims to provide a supporting framework between the current state of affairs and the planned future state. PRINCE focuses attention on end-products rather than activities, ensuring that the organisation actually gets what it wants out of the project. Quality is seen as a necessary and integral part of the project and the focus on end-products enables the criteria by which quality is to be judged to be specified at the outset of the project. It requires the development of a viable “business case” for the project at its outset and that the business case needs to be periodically reviewed.

In PRINCE a project is regarded as having the following characteristics:

? defined and unique set of technical products to meet the business needs

? corresponding set of activities to construct those products

? certain amount of resources

? finite lifespan

? organisational structure with defined responsibilities

In such Management Structured System, an approach to planning based on products rather than activities and the use of this approach for the benefits. It also emphasises that projects needs to define the ‘ shape’ or manageable phases of a project to promote sound business control. Stages are characterised by the production of specific products. The PRINCE model for projects is based on two main principles:

The project is a joint responsibility between users, the developers and the organisation for whose benefit the end-product is being developed

In order for projects to succeed, a special structure is demanded to manage the project throughout its life – from conception through build to handover. This structure is distinct from normal line management.

By Using these principles, the model defines three levels of activity:

Overall project management and major decision making

Day-to-day management

Production of end-products

These three levels of activity are assigned respectively to the Project Board, to the Project and Stage Managers, and to the Technical Teams. The latest version of the method, PRINCE 2, is a process-based approach for project management providing an easily tailored, and scaleable method for the management of all types of projects. Each process is defined with its key inputs and outputs together with the specific objectives to be achieved and activities to be carried out. In the following diagram, the process-based approach is shown:

Structured Management  Process Model

Such Standard Method  provides benefits to the organisation, as well as the managers and directors of the project, through the controllable use of resources and the ability to manage business and project risk more effectively. PRINCE enables projects to have:

? a controlled and organised start, middle and end;

? regular reviews of progress against plan and against Business Case;

? flexible decision points;

? automatic management control of any deviations from the plan;

? the involvement of management and stakeholders at the right time and place during the project;

? good communication channels between the project, project management, and the rest of the organisation.

There is no denying the fact that SSADM is a highly structured and rigorous method of systems development ,was originally developed by Learmonth and Burchett Management System (LBMS) following an investigation by the CCTA into adopting a standard Information System (IS) development method for use in UK government projects. It was launched in 1981 and by 1983 became mandatory for all the government IS developments. This gave SSADM a large toehold in the IS structured methods market.

It is a prerequisite for SSADM that user commitment and involvement are agreed right from the start. It provides a top-down approach, where a high level picture is drawn up and subsequently refined into lower levels of detail. One extremely important concept in SSADM is the distinction between logical and physical views of system components.

The following purpose are generally fulfilled by such important methods.

? Provide a sound platform for communications between analysts, designers and users;

? Reduce errors and gaps in the specification produced

? Improve the quality of software documentation and the productivity of analysts;

? Reduce potential risks by presenting analysts with a structural framework for the use of techniques, and a standard for documentation end-products;

? Provide techniques for checking completeness and accuracy;

? Improve the maintainability of the new systems;

? Reuse staff and skills on other projects;

? Protect investment in analysis and design, and to allow freedom in implementation techniques.

SSADM consists of three main components:

? The structure or framework of an SSADM project

? A set of standard analysis and design techniques

? The products of each technique

The structure of SSADM might appear a little complex at first, but will make more sense as we began to look at the method in more detail. Following diagram illustrate

s the breakdown of the life cycle into a hierarchy of modules, stages, steps and tasks.Each module represents a SSADM phase, and is made up of one or two stages. Where a module contains two stages, one will be an analysis or design and the other will be a project decision stage. Each stages is made up of between two to seven steps, which provide the framework for applying and controlling the development techniques. The tasks to be carried out within each step define how the techniques should be used, and specify the required standard of the products output from the step. Following diagram shows the breakdown of SSADM’s modules and stages.The major analysis techniques mainly used are as follows:

? Business Activity Modelling (BAM) – explicitly describes what goes on that part of the business under investigation. The activities are defined from purely a business rather than on IS perspective. Recommended approach to be used in the construction of a BAM may be Soft System Methodology (SSM), Functional Decomposition or Resource Flow Diagrams.

? Logical Data Modelling (LDM), representing system data, is applied throughout the life cycle to provide the foundation of the new system;

? Work Practice Model (WPM) maps business activities onto the organisation structure defining user roles to the underlying business activities.

The key important thing is the end-product. Each step has number of tasks associated with it, most of which lead to the creation or enhancement of standard SSADM products. At the end of an SSADM project the new system will be described by the sum of these products. Products can be divided into three basic groups: Processing, Data and System-User (or Human-Computer) Interface.

By way of substantiating the Information System in developing countries is a complicated virtual process, specially in the public sector. With the growing needs in the information age, and by the pressure from the international donors , big and ambitious projects has been undertaken by the public sector in developing countries . But due to the lack of standard procedures and methodologies for IS development caused many projects to combat problems in the implementation stage. Many projects failed to attain their business needs, as they were too large and highly ambitious. Basic reasons for the project failure in the developing countries can be characterised as the following:

? Solving wrong problem;

? Technology led, not business;

? Lack of major stakeholder involvement;

? Experts lead, rather than facilitate;

? Lack of commitment and hidden agenda;

? Benefits not identified and quantified at outset.

Nowadays, the developing countries are applying both PRINCE AND SSADM methodologies, the project management development techniques, specially designed for IT projects, that are funded by the UK Department for International development (DFID).

4.2 In Bangladesh , private sectors are advancing with IS development , but it is not the identical situation in the public sector. The reasons behind this may be the poor salary structure in the public service, which never give confidence to the prospective talents and system designers to join the public services. Most of the IT projects are donor funded; domestically financed IT projects rarely experience success like the donor projects.

4.3 However, RIBEC (Reforms in Budgeting and Expenditure Control) project, funded by DFID, has been considered as the most successful project in Bangladesh.

At the early stage of RIBEC project (Phase 2), it was observed that, the project was design to develop and modernise the budgeting and accounting system of the government of Bangladesh. The experts mainly dominated that phase, including lots of things to cover. There was lack of stakeholders’ involvement; problems were not recognised at the initial stage. Only a range of high-grade staff in the relevant field was given a general IT training. There was no follow up; no visible product was seen. Benefits were not identified. No system was developed to automate the budgeting and accounting system. So this phase 2 had experienced a massive failure. Having awful experience, the following phase (2A and 2B), a downsized project with specific output targets came up with analysing user requirements. This phase focused on sustainability and proved successful with sustainable solutions especially in the software development for budgeting and accounting Substantive training had been offered to the users of the systems. Stakeholders have been involved in the software development process and the local vendors who will be easily available in the future, developed the systems. Following PRINCE and SSADM as methods for project management and system development, RIBEC project is now considered as a model for other projects which implies the potential scope for applying these methodologies.Financial Management Project for HMG Nepal has been designed to establish a reliable database to ensure user friendly and reliable financial information and to computerise budgetary system. CCTA guidelines for IS strategy including PRINCE and SSADM were followed in developing the system.  In Pakistan, Lahore WASA project experienced badly as the original proposal was too big and not phased project; no analysis of business needs, solution was technology led, benefits were not identified at outset, high risk strategy, questionable long-term sustainability, lack of training facilities and computing skill within organisation etc. So, 2 years’ costs and effort were wasted.

By taking into consideration the UK approach of project management, Lahore WASA claim to be successor and benefits are realised especially in the billing from bimonthly billing to daily billing and reduction in bill production cycle. The main project management approach in the new proposal includes: redefinition of purpose, identify business benefits, prioritise outputs, involvement of stakeholders, DIFID played the role as the facilitator not doer, ownership of solution by stakeholders, use of local consultant etc, phased development, distributed system.

In view of the above it is evident that ‘Information technology and Information systems for what they really are – powerful and valuable tools, but not magic. When applied thoughtfully, these tools can bring important benefits for individuals, organisations, and customers. When misapplied, they can waste tremendous amounts of time, effort, and money’.The USA, a Progressed and well structured country that is economically and technologically advanced, designed PRINCE AND SSADM, to meet their own requirements. It cannot be expected that these structured methodologies would equally suit the resource scarce developing countries. But the above discussions surmise that there is potential scope and rationale for applying PRINCE AND SSADM that would facilitate the developing countries for better project management and system development. But again, these methodologies need not be considered as the “ final conclusive critics”, rather these structural criteria should be used thoughtfully, tailored to manage projects efficiently and to develop effective information systems to cope with the challenge of change Management virtually.