What is IT Governance?
IT governance, which stands for Information Technology governance, is a framework and set of processes that organizations use to ensure that their IT (Information Technology) resources and systems are effectively and efficiently aligned with their business objectives, while also managing associated risks and complying with relevant regulations and standards.
IT governance encompasses various aspects of managing IT within an organization, and its primary goals include:
Alignment with Business Goals: Ensuring that IT strategies, investments, and operations are closely aligned with the overall objectives and needs of the organization. This alignment helps IT support and drive the business's success.
Risk Management: Identifying, assessing, and mitigating IT-related risks. This includes cybersecurity, data privacy, compliance, and other potential risks that could impact the organization's operations.
Resource Optimization: Efficiently managing IT resources, such as hardware, software, human resources, and budgets. This ensures that IT investments provide value to the organization.
Compliance: Ensuring that IT operations adhere to legal and regulatory requirements, industry standards, and internal policies. Compliance can involve data protection laws, industry-specific regulations, and more.
Performance Measurement: Establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to assess the performance and effectiveness of IT operations. Regular performance measurement helps identify areas for improvement.
Decision-Making: Providing a framework for decision-making related to IT investments, projects, and strategies. This includes defining how IT decisions are made and by whom.
Accountability: Defining roles, responsibilities, and accountability within the organization for IT-related matters. This ensures that individuals or teams are responsible for specific aspects of IT governance.
IT governance is typically implemented through a combination of policies, procedures, and organizational structures. Various frameworks and standards can be used to guide IT governance practices, such as COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies), ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), and ISO/IEC 38500, among others.
The specific IT governance structure and practices can vary from one organization to another based on its size, industry, and unique requirements. However, regardless of the approach taken, the ultimate goal is to ensure that IT investments and activities contribute to the organization's success while minimizing risks and optimizing resource usage.
From Gartner, “Information governance is the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archival and deletion of information. It includes the processes, roles, standards, and metrics that ensure the effective and efficient use of information in enabling an organization to achieve its goals.”
The IT sector in India has played a very crucial role in the last three decades making sure that India has a global presence. From Nishanth Sharma a well known research scholar, "Indian IT industry as a whole has helped the country to change itself from a rural & agricultural economy to a knowledge based economy. Information Technology has made possible information access at gigabit speeds. It has made tremendous impact on the lives of millions of people who are poor, marginalized and living in rural and far flung topographies. Internet has made revolutionary changes with possibilities of e-government measures like e-health, e-education, e-agriculture, etc."
"Today, whether its filing Income Tax returns or applying for passports online or railway e-ticketing, it just need few clicks of the mouse. India’s IT potential is on a steady march towards global competitiveness, improving defense capabilities and meeting up energy and environmental challenges amongst others. One of the major contributors of GDP information Technology in India consists of two main components: first is the IT services & the second being BPO that is Business Process Outsourcing".
Though India has not seen much of corporate scandals or to say that IT industry in India was immune to such failures before Satyam. Satyam was categorized as an exceptional case but it will be really early to arrive to any conclusion before undertaking a study of major corporations whether it may be in banking, IT or other sectors. So, good governance is needed for any corporation and without which the IT playing field becomes fragmented.
The IT Governance Institute (a division of ISACA) breaks down IT Governance into five domains:
Value delivery.
Strategic alignment.
Performance management.
Resource management.
Risk management.
How do we plan to help companies?
Oryx360 has experienced professionals who have worked on several projects on IT governance and know how to address these issues either in Finance, Banking, Healthcare , Industrial or in IT Sector. We follow the simple IT Governance framework to address it through multi-tiered and across executive, commercial and operational. Reach us and we will be glad to put forth a plan and work with your company and put in place a good governance plan which will help you to be successful.