Research Indicates Only 12 Percent of Companies Have Adequate IT Governance

IT Governance Limited polled opinions of almost 100 technology and compliance professionals on a range of IT governance issues. Results found that only 12 percent of businesses take technology seriously enough to operate full board-level oversight of their IT resources. Despite increasing compliance pressures under Sarbanes-Oxley, the UK Combined Code, HIPAA and other regulatory regimes, boards still appear to be lagging badly in implementing appropriate IT governance measures. IT governance frameworks also appear to be used in less than 50 percent of organizations.

Despite the critical importance of technology to most organizations, only 12 percent said that IT governance was important in their organizations and that board-level IT oversight committees existed. While a further 16.5 percent reported that progress was being made towards achieving this, more than 50 percent indicated that this was far from the case.

Respondents were similarly skeptical about the grasp that board members have of technology’s importance. Less than 7 percent said that board members understood the risks posed to business operations by information and IT systems. In contrast, 49 percent said this was not the case, with over 22 percent stating this emphatically.

Over 57 percent said that directors and officers failed to understand the age and health of the current IT portfolio and the business implications of deferring maintenance. Meanwhile, less than 37 percent said that IT governance frameworks were integrated with their company’s enterprise risk management regime, with less than 7 percent saying that this was achieved fully.

Asked if their companies used standard IT governance frameworks, such as ITIL, CoBIT, ISO17799 or PMBOK, 9 percent said yes, and 19 percent said that good progress was being made towards this. However, over 21 percent said such frameworks were used only occasionally, and fully 30 percent indicated that they were not used at all.

Source: DMReview

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