As you may have noticed by now, IT Governance is something of a professional passion for me (I also have two dogs but that’s not a professional passion!).Â
ZDNet, who feature regularly in these pages, ran an article recently on ‘Do Boards get ICT?‘.Â
I left a comment on the board about this topic, which I reproduce here:
“In looking at the issues raised in your commentary, ‘Do boards get ICT?’ I note that you are saying that boards often remain focussed on ‘cutting the costs of IT’ rather than ‘what can IT do to achieve efficiency’.
An interesting effect of ‘cutting the costs of IT’ is often an increase in overall costs to the business – IT can’t undertake Department X’s project (because it cut costs) and Department X does without or finds a hollow log to cobble together an external solution.
The topic really is one of IT governance – corporate governance of the IT business function. You should note that a Director of a listed company has to comply with the corporate governance requirements of the ASE, and although these aren’t specifically IT they do discuss the need to recognise opportunity to create value and riskiness of the situation. There is also AS8015-2005 from Standards Australia which outlines a best practice model here.
Australia’s leading accounting body, CPA Australia (I chair the IT Centre of Excellence), released a very good and practical guide for Company Directors and Business Executives in October 2005 – see http://michealaxelsen.com/blog/?p=46 and https://www.cpaaustralia.com.au/cps/rde/xchg/SID-3F57FEDF-79F61B28/cpa/hs.xsl/1017_16305_ENA_HTML.htm.
The point is, a board does in fact need to understand its business approach to ICT, and put in specific governance mechanisms particularly where the business is very reliant upon ICT. The CPA Australia publication gives a practical approach for any board that wants to fulfill its duties and legal requirements.
I am happy to discuss with anyone on the topic.
Thanks:Â Micheal Axelsen”
Just to maintain it for posterity, really…