IT governance to fit your context

Abstract

Creating effective information technology (IT) governance is an important, yet difficult undertaking that has taken on global significance. Despite the amount of literature and experience available, the complexity of establishing a governance framework continues to present a challenge to public sector officials. Systematic examinations of these efforts are providing new insights to assist officials in anticipating challenges and creating context-specific frameworks that enhance the public value of IT. This paper presents case studies of two U.S. states with centralized and federated IT governance structures. Drawing on a research project at the Center for Technology in Government that included an environmental scan and interviews with state-level IT leaders, we describe how these two states approached the creation of IT governance frameworks from different contextual perspectives. The cases highlight how despite similarities in terms of political support for IT governance, cultural and organizational factors in each state led to the adoption of quite different, yet seemingly appropriate, IT governance frameworks. Despite significant differences across the two states, we are able to capture design advice that spans across both centralized and federated IT governance frameworks.