IT Governance from Theory to Practice: The importance of accountability

Dr Marie Griffiths,Dr Hesham Al-Ammal,Leena Janahi

doi:10.14236/ewic/bcsiit2014.10

Dr Marie Griffiths, Dr Hesham Al-Ammal + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/bcsiit2014.10

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Publication Date: Mar 1, 2014
Citations: 2	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Salford, University of Bahrain

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that Information Technology (IT) Governance is extremely complex and at the same time equally critical when organisations endeavour to maximize their IT investments. IT Governance provides the means for decision making required to ensure that IT enables the organization to excel in its mission. IT systems are often viewed as monetary drains rather than seen as fundamental bases underpinning the strategic direction of organizations. IT implementations often do not meet requirements, fail, are over budget and the media is littered with headlines that corroborate these perceptions. IT projects are now so big, and they touch so many aspects of an organization, that they pose a singular new risk as according to Harvard Business Review Magazine that a $5 million project leads to an almost $200 million loss (Flyvbjerg and Budzier, 2011). Every organisation will have experienced complications of an IT implementation and this is why IT Governance is becoming a crucial factor to business survival no matter how large or small an organisation is. This interpretive study of IT Governance provides an opportunity to from both theoretical and practice-based perspectives using multiple case studies from public sector organisations based in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

Highlights

Information Technology (IT) Governance has been viewed from diverse perspectives and is still considered as a subject of debate since the late nineties when attention was given to Corporate Governance as a response to the Enron and WorldCom collapse (Denise Ko, 2010)
The maturity level for each organisation is calculated through adopting a number of functions to facilitate the calculation of the maturity level for each organisation, the data was exported to Microsoft Office Excel
This is based on the COBIT4.1 framework and how the scale was distributed on each maturity level for each process (0-5 scale distributed on scenarios and divided into different statements for 18 processes); TABLE 2 illustrates a sample of results for all levels of process P03

Summary

Introduction

IT Governance has been viewed from diverse perspectives and is still considered as a subject of debate since the late nineties when attention was given to Corporate Governance as a response to the Enron and WorldCom collapse (Denise Ko, 2010). Information Technology is fundamental for sustaining business growth and has acquired a critical role in improving Corporate Governance practices. IT managers must be aware of the critical IT risks and its controls for significant decision-making over IT. The importance of IT Governance can be viewed from the focus of IT cost and value. In this scope the authors in (W.Ross, 2004) state that “IT value depends on more than good technology”. (Webb, 2006) state the example that “IT baseline costs are significant and rising. Organisations need to protect information assets from any disasters and increase accountability through empowering decision making authority to take proper actions

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