Public sector IT governance: from frameworks to action

Reviewer: Barrett Hazeltine

This is a poster that offers observations about how government entities manage their information technology (IT) governance frameworks. One set of observations deals with IT governance. Authority patterns in government are centralized, decentralized, or fragmented. IT governance must be aligned with government authority patterns; a centralized governance pattern will be difficult to implement if the authority pattern is federated. A major theme in IT governance is assigning design decisions to the proper government level. In state governments, the authority for IT decisions tends to be federated, distributed between a central IT organization and agencies. The central organization focuses on providing services, and on policy and strategy. Four coordination mechanisms are observed: external committees, communities of users, enterprise-oriented offices, and agency liaisons. Raup-Kounovsky et al. interviewed representatives from IT offices in 11 states. These interviews indicate the importance of having clear value propositions, which can inform annual plans and assist in assessing success. The interviews also emphasized the importance of central IT organizations gaining buy-in from stakeholders, building trust by offering training, demonstrating proof of concept, and soliciting feedback. Redesign should not be looked at as failure. The flexibility to respond to changes is important. The observations seem sound and helpful and would benefit the reader interested in setting up or managing IT organizations for state governments. The observations are not developed in detail, but one would not expect them to be in a poster. Online Computing Reviews Service