It Goverance

From the boardroom to the back office, IT Governance (ITG) has the ability to put the right practices, decision-making powers and accountability just where they are needed. This guide examines leading ITG methods and technologies that are now helping companies improve the quality of IT services and compliance across Europe and around the globe. ITG is viewed differently from one organisation to the next. For some people, ITG is little more than high level “management consultant speak” that defines a requirement for more aligned IT — without saying what actually needs to be done. But in this guide, ITG represents a set of specific, field-proven IT management principles that are supported by hands-on tools and granular methodologies.

Information technology 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, 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.

Accountability is the key concern of IT governance.After the widely reported collapse of Enron in 2000 and the alleged problems within Arthur Andersen and WorldCom, the duties and responsibilities of auditors and the boards of directors for public and privately held corporations were questioned. As a response to this, and to attempt to prevent similar problems from happening again, the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act was written to stress the importance of business control and auditing. Although not directly related to IT governance, Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel-II in Europe have influenced the development of information technology governance since the early 2000s.

ITG can be thought of as a framework for intelligent IT decision-making, IT organisation and IT control. ITG improves the way that companies internally share information and make decisions about IT