Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University

BRIEF HISTORY

The MIS Unit was established in 1995 purposely to manage the increasing volume of records of students, staff, assets and finances of the university. The unit is headed by a Director. Table 1 gives the list of current and former directors of the Unit.

One of the statutory responsibilities of the MIS Unit is to develop Database software to help automate records processing.

In an effort to help the university realize this objective, the NUC gave the University a Computer machine with a Student & Staff records processing software (NUMIS) already installed on it. Efforts towards using the NUMIS software however, proved unworkable.

In order to solve this problem, another Students' record processing software (STUDBASE) was developed by the then Director (Dr. M.H. Alhassan). The STUDBASE was further improved to a more versatile application software by the then serving Corp Member (Mr. Bulama Nachamada). There was however, the need for this software to be used in a network environment, hence its improvement to the present status by the current programmer of the unit (Mr. Elisha Mathew Malo). In order to achieve full automation of result processing, a more comprehensive students' result processing software has now been developed by the Unit. The software has the following features:

1. Computing of GPA and CGPA and the generation of results in SENATE approved format.
2. Generation of Students' result Slip and transcripts.
3. Capturing of students' record of registration at programme level for subsequent use in result processing, and the generation of list of registered students.
4. Generation of result Score-sheets.
   

All academic programmes of the university are now required to generate students' result using the MIS result processing Software.

OBJECTIVES

The MIS Unit is charged with the function of providing the University Management with information derived from the analysis of data Captured from various programmes, Departments, Units and Centers of the University. Specifically this includes:

1. Fresh And Returning Students' registration.
2. Data on Students' examination result in all courses.
3. Staff records.
4. Records of the university Assets.
5. Financial Records.  

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

The current Network Architecture used in the MIS Unit is WORKGROUP. In order to improve security requirements and to fit into the Universitys' Intra-network, there is the need for this network architecture to be changed to a Domain Network.

Furthermore, there is the need to develop soft wares that will help the MIS Unit achieve all its objectives as listed in Section 2. These soft wares include:

•  Personnel Software to automate staff records.

•  Inventory software to enable the university management to keep track of all activities in and out of the central store.

•  Assets database to help the Physical Planning Unit (PPU) of the University keep track of all University Assets.