The New Normal in IT

CHAPTER 6IT Governance: Keep It Simple

While transparency reduces corruption, good governance goes beyond transparency in achieving openness. Openness means involving the stakeholders in decision-making process. Transparency is the right to information while openness is the right to participation.

—NARENDRA MODI¹

IT Governance Defined and Purpose

According to Gartner Research, the definition of IT governance is as follows:

IT governance (ITG) is defined as the processes that ensure the effective and efficient use of IT in enabling an organization to achieve its goals. IT demand governance (ITDG—what IT should work on) is the process by which organizations ensure the effective evaluation, selection, prioritization, and funding of competing IT investments; oversee their implementation; and extract (measurable) business benefits. ITDG is a business investment decision-making and oversight process, and it is a business management responsibility. IT supply-side governance (ITSG—how IT should do what it does) is concerned with ensuring that the IT organization operates in an effective, efficient and compliant fashion, and it is primarily a CIO responsibility.²

Wow. That's way too complicated. Another definition, from CIO magazine (IDC owned), is

IT governance is a formal framework that provides a structure for organizations to ensure that IT investments support business objectives. The need for formal corporate and IT governance practices across U.S. organizations was fueled ...