Governance of IT

3 INTRODUCTION TO THE GOVERNANCE OF IT STANDARD ISO/IEC 38500

When the IT department was a small band of computer science specialists sitting around a mainframe computer providing number crunching services to an organisation, it was reasonable to delegate responsibility for IT activity to the key users of the data. However, the role of IT within an organisation has grown extensively and IT is pervasive across all areas of a business, supporting and providing HR, finance, sales and marketing, product and service development and delivery, facilities management, and general information and intellectual property (IP) protection. Directors and senior executives now have a responsibility to ensure the proper use of the organisational IT systems so ...