Development of a board IT governance (ITG) review model

Abstract

Information Technology Governance has become increasingly important as countries across the world establish legislation and guidelines on the responsibilities of Boards of Directors (Boards) for ITG within organizations. As a result of organizational dependence on Information Technology (IT), Boards are realizing they must more effectively govern their considerable investment in IT systems and resources or risk potential loss from unauthorized access to their IT systems, poor IT resource management, ineffective integration of IT and business and reduced delivery of value from their IT resources. Despite the clear theoretical motivation for Boards to focus on ITG as part of Board processes there has been a paucity of research which has focused on this issue. This paper makes a key contribution to the research on ITG by proposing a Board ITG Review Model (BIRM) as a mechanism to assist Boards to identify critical ITG issues and the supporting evidence they should review as the ultimate custodians of organizational IT systems and resources. The model is developed around four of the key ITG focus areas identified by the IT Governance Institute (ITGI). To test one of the components of the model a set of potential critical ITG issues was identified from ITG literature. The critical issues were pilot tested with a group of 100 industry professionals to gauge their importance and appropriateness for Board use. The results from this pilot testing process will be used to refine the BIRM for the future. Future research will test and refine the model further using online survey and case study methodologies