Glossary term
IT Governance
Subject: Technology, Cyber and Data, IT Resilience and Third-Party Risk
Also known as: Information Technology Governance
IT governance is the structure of decision rights, policies and oversight through which leaders direct technology so that it supports business strategy, delivers value, and keeps its risks within acceptable limits.
Explanation
Technology spending is large, and failures are costly, so boards need a way to steer it. IT governance supplies that. It sets who decides on investments and priorities, often through a technology steering committee with business and IT members. It defines accountabilities for projects, architecture, security and vendors, and it sets measures that show whether technology is delivering. Frameworks such as COBIT and ISO/IEC 38500 give common structures. A central point is separating governance from management: governance decides direction and checks results, while management plans and runs day to day. The subject also links to risk management, internal audit and information security, which assess the same systems from other angles. Regulators in banking and insurance expect board-level involvement in technology, and many incidents trace back to unclear ownership rather than a technical fault. Boards use it to decide which projects to fund, stop or send back, and to see who answers when a system fails.
Example
A manufacturing group finds that three divisions have bought separate inventory systems that cannot share data. The board sets up a technology committee that approves major spend, requires a business owner for each system, and reviews quarterly reports on project delivery, outages and security findings.
Not to be confused with
- IT management
- Management plans, builds and runs systems day to day; governance sets direction, assigns accountability and checks that management delivers.