A Framework and Guidelines for Assessing and Developing Board-Level Information Technology Committee Charters

Abstract

ABSTRACT IT governance is important to the success of most business enterprises. One form of IT governance is the use of board-level IT committees. This study examines committee charters, which are the basic foundation for an effective committee. Based on prior literature and theory, we develop a framework and six propositions for assessing IT committee charter components including committee characteristics, member characteristics, and roles and responsibilities. We test the propositions by exploring the IT committee charters and information from other sources for 23 Fortune 500 companies. We find that most IT committees have more members and meet more often than required by the charter. All but one committee has at least one member with IT expertise as defined in our study. Also, most roles and responsibilities are focused on the five IT governance focus areas prescribed by the Information Technology Governance Institute. However, the roles are not consistently specified in all charters. Suggestions for future research and guidelines for practice are provided.