Information Technology Governance, IT Governance or ICT (Information & Communications Technology) Governance, is a subset discipline of Corporate Governance focuses on information technology (IT) systems and their performance and risk management. The increasing interest in IT governance is partly due to appropriate initiatives, such as Sarbanes-Oxley in the U.S. and Basel II in Europe, and the recognition that IT projects can easily get out of control and profoundly affect the performance of an organization.

A characteristic theme of IT governance discussions is that the IT capability can not be a black box. The involvement of traditional board-level executive in the case of IT is to honor all the important decisions for the company's IT professional. IT shows the system of government in which all parties, including the board, internal customers, and especially such as finance departments, have the necessary input in the decision making process. This prevents IT from independently created and then be fully responsible for poor decisions. This will also prevent users from critical and find that the system does not behave or perform as expected, as described in the Harvard Business Review article by R. Nolan:
Definition

There are narrow and broader definitions of IT governance. Weill and Ross focus on "Setting the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage behavior that is expected in the use of IT." [2]

Conversely, IT Governance Institute to expand the definition to include the basic mechanisms: "... with the leadership and organizational structures and processes that ensure that the organization's IT sustains and extends the organization's strategy and goals." [3]

Meanwhile, AS8015, Australian Standard for Corporate Governance of ICT, defines Corporate Governance of ICT as a "system at this time and the future use of ICT is directed and controlled. Evaluating It involves planning and directing the use of ICT to support the organization and monitoring is used to realize the plan. Termasuk strategies and policies for using ICT in an organization. "
Problems with IT governance

IT governance is different from IT management and control IT? The problem with government IT is that often with good management practices and IT control framework. ISO 38500 has helped the IT by the government as a management system used by the directors. In other words, IT governance is about the work of IT resources in the name of the expected return from their investments. Director is responsible for this job will be to see that management is required to implement the IT and control system. While managing risk and ensuring compliance is an important component of good governance, is more important to be focused on giving value and measure performance.

Nicholas Carr has emerged as a prominent critic of the idea that information technology provides a strategic advantage. [5] this line may imply criticism that significant attention to IT governance that is not useful for chasing the leaders of the company. However, Carr also show counterbalancing concern for effective IT risk management.

Manifestation in the IT governance goals through a detailed process control (for example, in the context of project management) is often controversial in large scale IT management. See agile methods. The difficulty in achieving a balance between financial transparency and cost-effective data capture in the IT financial management (for example, to enable chargeback) is the continued discussion topic in the professional literature [6] [7] and can be seen as a practical limitation to IT governance

Reference:

* Lutchen, M. (2004). Managing IT as a business: a guide to life CEOs. Hoboken, N.J., J. Wiley., ISBN 0-471-47104-6
* Mar J., Simon H., Organizations, Blackwell Publishers, 1993 (First ed. Wiley, 1958), ISBN 0-631-18631-X