Breaking Digital Gridlock, + Website

CHAPTER 14Digital Governance

Let me start this section by saying I am not a big believer in creating governance for the sake of saying we have it. I believe one of the great enemies of an innovative and productive culture can be too much governance. That said, I do believe that the right amount of governance done for the right reasons can be very effective and improve every aspect of your organization.

To begin with, let's cover a couple of kinds of governance that people often quote in books like these. ITIL, which is an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a detailed set of regulations or guidances for services such as ACH or Billpay, which are referred to ITSM or Information Technology Services. These are designed to align these services with the business objectives. It's full of checklists, best practices, tasks, and procedures that are not organization specific. It has its roots in BS (British Standard) 150000. It was eventually replaced by ISO 20000, which is an update to the ITIL standard that was revised in 2011. It is a valuable tool for an organization, especially if you are exceedingly large, and by large I mean that your IT department is over 1000 people. If you are reading this and your organization is at this level, then this is a good standard for you to look at—and chances are, if you are that large you already have something like this in place. However, if you are an organization that is more medium sized, then trying to implement something ...