RDSMS – A South African Research and Development Survey Management System

Annual R&D surveys are conducted by the South African Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII). To improve the current system supporting their business processes for the completion of surveys, the Research and Development Survey Management System (RDSMS) was designed, developed and implement following a design science research approach. The new system provides a novel survey management system which consists of the ability to create unique complex questionnaire layouts, plan and conduct surveys, perform data commutation and imputation actions, and extract data reports. In addition, functionality to perform trend analysis over the results of various surveys is provided. A unique database schema facilitate and support the ability of the system to allow for multidimensional table questions. It is suggested that the system provided by this research is novel and performs better than other survey systems in terms of its ability to create complex questions, its business processes supported.