Raoul Freeman: Professor of Information Systems Selected as L.A. County ISC Chair

Raoul Freeman, professor and chair, Information Systems and Operations Management, has been selected as chairman of the Information Systems Commission (ISC) of Los Angeles County for the 13th year in a row. ISC provides counsel to the county's information technology activities.

As ISC chair, Freeman has been involved with projects ranging from overseeing large-scale system development to reviewing the planning of a new telecommunications network. The agenda of the commission includes Enterprise Resource Reporting Systems, e-government and Los Angeles Eligibility Automated Determination Evaluation and Reporting (LEADER), a 10,000 workstation welfare system. Freeman describes the impact that working with the ISC has on his teaching at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

“My participation as chair of the ISC has enabled me to bring examples of high-dollar value, major IT-related problems affecting large numbers of people into the classroom,” he says, “and to show how theoretical textbook solutions need to be amplified to encompass what is necessary in practical and political terms for the implementation of solutions.”

A major part of ISC’s responsibilities is overseeing the county’s e-government systems. While Freeman says that Los Angeles County is among the leading counties in the nation in terms of e-government services, he emphasizes the importance of affording accessibility to all citizens despite e-government’s cost efficiency.

“Since one of the prime functions of government is to deliver services in an efficient and convenient manner to all of the public, a strategic decision has to be made as to the allocation of resources among the various possible channels of delivery,” he notes. “The delivery of e-services is a complex question that should be addressed as part of a broader channel allocation strategy that considers electronic as well as other modes of delivery in providing services to the public.”

Freeman earned his Ph.D. in industrial economics and operations research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served as assistant superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District for seven years prior to his arrival at Dominguez Hills in 1984. He was the founding president of Systems Applications Inc., a computer information systems business, in the 1970s.

- Joanie Harmon