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For many enterprises, information and the technology that supports it represent their most valuable, but often least understood, assets. Successful enterprises recognise the benefits of information technology and use it to drive their stakeholders’ value. These enterprises also understand and manage the associated risks, such as increasing regulatory compliance and critical dependence of many business processes on information technology (IT).
The need for assurance about the value of IT, the management of IT-related risks and increased requirements for control over information are now understood as key elements of enterprise governance. Value, risk and control constitute the core of IT governance. IT governance is the responsibility of executives and the board of directors, and consists of the leadership, organisational structures and processes that ensure that the enterprise’s IT sustains and extends the organisation’s strategies and objectives. Furthermore, IT governance integrates and institutionalises good practices to ensure that the enterprise’s IT supports the business objectives. IT governance enables the enterprise to take full advantage of its information, thereby maximising benefits, capitalising on opportunities and gaining competitive advantage. These outcomes require a framework for control over IT that fits with and supports the Committee of Sponsoring Organisations of the Treadway Commission’s (COSO’s) Internal Control—Integrated Framework, the widely accepted control framework for enterprise governance and risk management, and similar compliant frameworks. Organisations should satisfy the quality, fiduciary and security requirements for their information, as for all assets. Management should also optimise the use of available IT resources, including applications, information, infrastructure and people. To discharge these responsibilities, as well as to achieve its objectives, management should understand the status of its enterprise architecture for IT and decide what governance and control it should provide. Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT®) provides good practices across a domain and process framework and presents activities in a manageable and logical structure. COBIT’s good practices represent the consensus of experts. They are strongly focused more on control, less on execution. These practices will help optimise IT-enabled investments, ensure service delivery and provide a measure against which to judge when things do go wrong. For IT to be successful in delivering against business requirements, management should put an internal control system or framework in place. The COBIT control framework contributes to these needs by:
The process focus of COBIT is illustrated by a process model that subdivides IT into four domains and 34 processes in line with the responsibility areas of plan, build, run and monitor, providing an end-to-end view of IT. Enterprise architecture concepts help identify the resources essential for process success, i.e., applications, information, infrastructure and people. In summary, to provide the information that the enterprise needs to achieve its objectives, IT resources need to be managed by a set of naturally grouped processes. IT GOVERNANCE FOCUS AREAS • Strategic alignment focuses on ensuring the linkage of business and IT plans; defining, maintaining and validating the IT value proposition; and aligning IT operations with enterprise operations. • Value delivery is about executing the value proposition throughout the delivery cycle, ensuring that IT delivers the promised benefits against the strategy, concentrating on optimising costs and proving the intrinsic value of IT. • Resource management is about the optimal investment in, and the proper management of, critical IT resources: applications, information, infrastructure and people. Key issues relate to the optimisation of knowledge and infrastructure. • Risk management requires risk awareness by senior corporate officers, a clear understanding of the enterprise’s appetite for risk, understanding of compliance requirements, transparency about the significant risks to the enterprise and embedding of risk management responsibilities into the organisation. • Performance measurement tracks and monitors strategy implementation, project completion, resource usage, process performance and service delivery, using, for example, balanced scorecards that translate strategy into action to achieve goals measurable beyond conventional accounting. |