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Last Updated 02 November 2011 05:08:36 PM

Beekum on IT Governance

The King Code on Corporate Governance, commonly known as King III, stipulates that Boards and Management must provide due care and diligence when it comes to IT.

Benefits of IT Governance

Implementing IT Governance provides a number of benefits for organisations. These benefits cover different areas, the main ones are...

Executive Management
Business Owners

Want to find your companies or clients current IT Governance Status?
GovernIT Toolkit is the software that has been developed to help those who interact with SAICA to conduct assessments for their clients or organisations. GovernIT Toolkit will help to evaluate the level of IT Governance within an organisation.

Implementing IT Governance using a Balance Scorecard

As an organisation starts to roll out IT Governance the sustainability of service delivery is guaranteed. The roll out of IT Governance needs to be measured. To start analysing and seeing the benefits, an organisation can use a Balance Scorecard.

Importance of IT Governance

The importance of IT Governance greatly impacts an organisation's ability to achieve its objectives. IT Governance also helps an organisation reduce their risks and increase its value. IT Governance provides a good base for a risk framework.

IT Governance Frameworks

Over the years, a number of frameworks have emerged, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but also, each with their own focus and purpose. Hardly surprisingly perhaps, many revolve around ISO standards (or are documented by ISO standards), but not all of them.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective IT Governance

Research conducted by A.T. Kearney has shown from various clients around the world, that the most successful companies have improved and matured beyond linking IT strategy and the business to a fully integrated operating environment.

The complex world of IT – Is there an easy way out?

Being a CIO these days is not for everyone. The daunting task of deciding and prioritising between an abundance of standards, regulations and best practices that are available, makes for clear thinking with a defined end goal to survive.

The governance and management coin

I write this article as a member of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) workgroup for governance of IT standards, to debate the definitions for governance and management. Why, you might ask is there a debate? Is it not clear with definitions in abundance!?

Three key IT Governance Frameworks

COBIT - The Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT)
COBIT is now in its fourth revision and it is a publication by ISACA (Information System Audit and Control Association). COBIT was released in 1996 and it is comprised of four domains and 34 processors.

What is IT Governance?

A definition of IT Governance provides many different answers even by doing a quick search on the Internet. Thus there is no single definition for IT Governance. Different organisations and institutes have provided their own definition to the term IT Governance.

What does a governance professional do?

The governance professional can hold different titles, depending on the organisation. You may be called Company Secretary, or General Counsel, or Chief Financial Officer. You may be called Chief Governance Officer or Chief Risk Officer. The title will vary depending on the circumstances of each entity.

Information Technology Management Structure and Governance Framework

Abstract: The IT governance framework addresses management structure, responsibilities and authorities of Heads of Departments and Agencies and their Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in planning, acquiring, securing, and operating and managing IT systems and assets within the agency. Please note the IT governance framework is not inclusive of all duties and responsibilities of CIOs. In order to assure effective management for IT and minimize any disruption during the upcoming transition or any transition of leadership, please review the attached IT governance framework and summarize your agency's current alignment with each element of the framework via signed memorandum.

Corporate governance of information technology

Information Technology Governance, IT Governance is a subset discipline of Corporate Governance focused on information technology (IT) systems and their performance and risk management. The rising interest in IT governance is partly due to compliance initiatives, for instance Sarbanes-Oxley in the USA and Basel II in Europe, but more so because of the need for greater accountability for decision-making around the use of IT in the best interest of all stakeholders.

Problems with IT governance

Is IT governance different from IT management and IT controls? The problem with IT governance is that often it is confused with good management practices and IT control frameworks. ISO 38500 has helped clarify IT governance by describing it as the management system used by directors. In other words, IT governance is about the stewardship of IT resources on behalf of the stakeholders who expect a return from their investment. The directors responsible for this stewardship will look to the management to implement the necessary systems and IT controls. Whilst managing risk and ensuring compliance are essential components of good governance, it is more important to be focused on delivering value and measuring performance.

Activities: Establish IT Governance

At the activity level, IT governance processes help align IT with the business through the decision-making process used to define actions for achieving strategic goals. This alignment happens through trade-off discussions and decision making. As mentioned before, governance is a management process that defines decision rights, makes sure that risk tolerance has been factored into the decisions, and provides a way to set expectations that can be assessed through a compliance process.

Why IT governance is the great enabler

After all, it is a known fact that all corporate governance does is add to the expenses bill, especially the IT costs. What is more, it does not help the business grow or survive, so the same must be true for IT governance, mustn’t it?
I believe that the urban myth surrounding all governance is inaccurate and far too defensive a stance. Even history proves it to be inaccurate. In the early days, IT was conducted without any standards, controls or methodologies. The pioneers were allowed to do their own thing, which worked well for years until computing became more pervasive and mission critical.

Why IT governance should fall to the board

IT governance is often wrongly delegated to the CIO. That situation must change if it is to meet the principles defined in corporate governance, says Julie Short. A collapse of trust in business management over the past 10 years has led to regulations to make good corporate governance mandatory. With the recent financial crisis, corporate governance has again received close attention.

The Game of CobiT

Trying to introduce IT governance to an enterprise without the benefit of an established framework upon which to base your own structures and processes can be problematic and unnecessarilly time consuming and painful. Proprietary frameworks exist but most enterprises are likely to make use of no cost public access frameworks such as CobiT and Val IT (usually alongside service management frameworks including ITIL). These frameworks are sometimes misunderstood and incorrectly categorised solely as 'audit' methodologies. Whilst there is no doubt that auditors do make use of, in particular, CobiT as an assessment tool for auditing IT related business processes and governance, its potential for enhancing corporate success through the application of technology is far greater when it is embraced directly by the IT function and the business.

Promoting IT Governance at the CEO Level

Many internal auditors use compliance with different laws and industry regulations, such as Europe's Risk Management Basel II Accord and the U.S. Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as a way to make IT governance a priority among senior managers and executive boards. Unfortunately, getting the attention of executives may not be as easy as it seems. It's not that internal auditors and executives don't want the same results — they do. Auditors and executives simply express their goals differently.

15 IT best practices

The traditional IT department has entered a period of massive transformation and CIOs are having to completely rethink the way they lead, strategize, and manage their careers. That was the message from Gartner analyst Ken McGee at arguably the boldest and most honest session at Gartner Symposium 2011.

Why CIOs must adopt IT governance

Among other things, they will need to improve returns on investment, increase service levels, and enhance security--all while maintaining flat budgets and head count. But just how are they supposed to meet these objectives while still living within imposed fiscal restrictions?

Measuring and Improving IT Governance Through the Balanced Scorecard

The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act has brought about an enhanced attention to enterprise (corporate) governance. Consequently, IT governance is also on the agenda as corporate governance and IT governance focus on related issues, and IT governance performance greatly impacts the organisation's ability to achieve its objectives. In their publications on measuring the performance of corporate boards, M.J. Epstein and M.J. Roy state that "governance concerns relate to practices of both corporate boards and senior managers" and "the question being asked is whether the decision-making process and the decisions themselves are made in the interest of shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders or whether they are primarily in the interests of the executives." This can be translated into specific IT governance issues. IT governance concerns relate to IT practices of boards and senior managers. The question is whether IT structures, processes, relational mechanisms and IT decisions are made in the interest of shareholders and other stakeholders, or primarily in the executives' interests.

IT Governance Concerns

The attention of both the public and corporate management has increasingly been focusing on the topic of IT governance in recent years with discussions about corporate governance, good corporate management and compliance. IT governance concerns the organisation, steering and control of IT within a company to bring IT processes into consistent alignment with the corporate strategy.

Why focus on governance?

Although it is difficult to imagine today, there was a time in the not-too-distant past that the term “governance” was not used so often or so freely. Based on Latin and Greek words referring to the steering of a ship, governance was a concept primarily restricted to the CEO’s office and the boardroom.

Why is IT governance so difficult to implement

As an IT leader, do these statements sound familiar? Demand for IT capacity far exceeds the ability for the IT team to deliver. Everyone who makes a request considers theirs to be a priority and wants it done as soon as possible. There's considerable frustration from requesters that their work is not getting addressed or has been put on-hold to address other priorities. The IT team is highly stressed, lacks direction, and morale is low.

IT Governance Doesn't Have to Cost an Arm and a Leg

Since 2002, IT governance has been a hot topic. Little by little, IT governance concerns have found their way into medium to small businesses. Ironically, most of the CEOs and CFOs of these organizations have at best a minimal knowledge of what IT governance is all about. Like the commercial where Jessica Simpson proclaims, "I don't know what that is, but I know I want it," corporate executives must believe that it is important--well, that is before they find out what it costs.

Keeping in touch

Please state If you have any further queries or would like to contribute to GovernIT webpage, please feel free to contact Abdul Ahmed at SAICA.