IT Governance in the UAE.

Our Services portfolio is being offered broadly at the following levels that can help an Organization attain its business goals.

• Strategic level
  • Providing Guidelines and implementation on IT Governance framework
  • Providing guidelines on alignment of Corporate Governance and IS governance including Information Security Governance
• Tactical/Operational level
  • Providing Performance Measures and Metrics and outcomes according the best practices
  • Providing policies and procedures at Process levels

IT Governance

Note: The Terms IS Governance and IT Governance are used interchangeably. 

The toppling and the fall of business empires such as Lehman Brothers, WorldCom clearly indicates the lack of corporate governance. The lack of internal controls and lack of corporate accountability has lead not only the companies to suffer but the rippling effect of such failures has invariably collapsed many families and individuals too. These kind of failures lead us to the better Corporate Governance systems. What do we mean by Corporate Governance?. There are many definitions some of them are presented below.

Definitions

• "Corporate governance is a field in economics that investigates how to secure/motivate efficient management of corporations by the use of incentive mechanisms, such as contracts, organizational designs and legislation. This is often limited to the question of improving financial performance, for example, how the corporate owners can secure/motivate that the corporate managers will deliver a competitive rate of return", www.encycogov.com, Mathiesen [2002]. Click here to see how this definition can be illustrated as a transaction cost based theory of the managerial agency problem.
• Corporate governance deals with the ways in which suppliers of finance to corporations assure themselves of getting a return on their investment, The Journal of Finance, Shleifer and Vishny [1997, page 737].
• "Corporate governance is the system by which business corporations are directed and controlled. The corporate governance structure specifies the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the corporation, such as, the board, managers, shareholders and other stakeholders, and spells out the rules and procedures for making decisions on corporate affairs. By doing this, it also provides the structure through which the company objectives are set, and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance", OECD April 1999. OECD's definition is consistent with the one presented by Cadbury [1992, page 15].
• "Corporate governance - which can be defined narrowly as the relationship of a company to its shareholders or, more broadly, as its relationship to society -&.", from an article in Financial Times [1997].
• "Corporate governance is about promoting corporate fairness, transparency and accountability" J. Wolfensohn, president of the World bank, as quoted by an article in Financial Times, June 21, 1999.
• Some commentators take too narrow a view, and say it (corporate governance) is the fancy tNbiz for the way in which directors and auditors handle their responsibilities towards shareholders. Others use the expression as if it were synonymous with shareholder democracy. Corporate governance is a topic recently conceived, as yet ill-defined, and consequently blurred at the edges&corporate governance as a subject, as an objective, or as a regime to be followed for the good of shareholders, employees, customers, bankers and indeed for the reputation and standing of our nation and its economy Maw et al. [1994, page 1].

IT Governance

In many organizations where IT is being strategic to achieve the business goals, it is necessary that IT governance is being practiced. In fact IT Governance is an integral part of Corporate Governance system.

Definition

IT Governance is "a framework for the leadership, organizational structures and business processes, standards and compliance to these standards, which ensure that the organizations IT supports and enables the achievement of its strategies and objectives." (IT Governance: a Pocket Guide).

ISACAs IT Governance domains , the pentagonal view of the IT governance structure stands as Building Blocks of good governance practices.

The picture below explains the same.

IT strategic Alignment - It has been the most prominent issue for many years as to whether IT is aligned to the business goals or not. Many a times projects are taken by IT being attracted more by Technological fads and overlook the business alignment . In such cases the strategic alignment would be questioned and becomes the board responsibility to control and monitor the strategic alignment.

Value Delivery - Nowadays IT is being questioned more on the Return on Investment of the IT projects. Board members and the executive members become more and more concerned on the value provided by IT towards the business. This dimension of the IT governance will help the steering committee or board to ensure that the IT value is being realized and that it provides business benefits.

Risk Management - One of the most important aspects is to control the risks of IT assets. Managing the risks is one of the critical success factor for managing IT and in turn providing business results. The failure of this aspect would lead to catastrophic downfall of the business itself. IT risks management is an integral part of Enterprise Risk Management. Again many organizations have islands of risk management approaches and IT has its own RM programs. In such cases it is recommended that organizations adopt a standard approach and then each business unit applies it its own entity.

Resource Management - This aspect ensures that resources are expended in the right direction and towards the right goals. Having a continuous assessment of the resources and training requirements would form the part of the Resource Management area.

Performance Measurement - It is axiomatic to mention that what cannot be measured cannot be improved. This applies to everything in our life. If we want to know whether we are healthy we periodically check our blood pressure, cholesterol level, sugar level etc., similarly if we want to know how our organization is performing we need certain objective measures. Many organizations are mature enough in defining the financial measures. But there are many non-financial measures which would help us to know the healthiness of the organizations. IT is no exception. Performance Measures for IT projects, portfolios, processes need to be defined, documented monitored and controlled periodically.

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