Information Technology Governance is a subset of Corporate Governance which focuses on Information Technology System
. It deals with the strategic decisions and IT management of an organization. It brings to the fore the importance of IT related matters in an organization and emphasizes that IT decisions should be taken by the board rather than the IT chief as an individual.
The prime goals of IT Governance is to see if IT investments are generating value to the firm or not and if there are any risks associated then how to alleviate the intensity of the risk. One needs to understand that it is necessary for everyone to understand IT Governance irrespective of their job profile, be it IT related or Non-IT related.
IT Governance can be defined as a bunch of processes that can allow a company to manage all its functions and processes associated with IT towards meeting the goals of the organization. There has been a great deal of thought which has to be put across to make sure that IT department is very much integrated in a firm. A more integrated IT firm has more responsibilities as well as accountability and have the capability to unify the employees of the firm. It is a board-led management system to make IT an integral part of the organization.
In today's corporate environment where importance of intellectual asset is visible and significant, it becomes very important for the board to extend the core governance to IT. A board needs to take special measures to command IT agendas. The first step in working with the IT Governance is to design it properly and if it is a small firm then more and more effectiveness can be achieved.
Another important side of IT Governance is to Monitor. Many companies are caught unsuspected by IT issues is because they were not vigilant enough. A company needs to take out time and look upon what is required to make their IT Governance more effective.
The key importance of IT Governance is that it increases the competitiveness of the firm. Without the integration of IT department in any firm, survival of information economy is very difficult and success could not be achieved.