Introduction > Overview of IT Governance

Overview of IT Governance

Control within an entity comprises of the policies, procedures, practices and organisational structures designed to provide reasonable assurance that the use of IT will enable the achievement of business objectives and that undesired events will be prevented, or detected and corrected.

A Control Objective is a statement of the desired result or purpose to be achieved by implementing control procedures for a particular IT activity.

IT Governance is the structure of relationships and processes to direct and control the enterprise in order to achieve the entity's goals by adding value while balancing risk with the return on IT and its processes.

IT Governance can also be dscribed as the leadership and organisational structures and processes that ensure an entity's IT sustains and extends the entity's strategies and objectives. Typically this is addressed as Objectives, Goals and Performance measures.

Various stakeholders of an entity have an interest in IT Governance because of the benefits it can deliver:

1	Shareholders and Executives
	-	Lower cost, higher profitability and increased market share.
2	Customers and Staff
	-	More functionality at lower cost and greater ease of use.
3	Society
	-	Greater accountability of executives in private and public sector.

By adopting an IT Governance framework, particularly one such as CobiT, management are better able to focus on the important IT issues, ask the right questions and measure the results. CobiT's framework enables management to adopt any one of a number of perspectives on IT, and thereby are able to focus on issues of interest to any group of stakeholders.

Typical IT Governance Activities are:

	-	Become informed of the role and impact of IT on the enterprise.
	-	Set direction and expect return.
	-	Determine required capabilities and investments.
	-	Assign responsibilities.
	-	Sustain current operations.
	-	Make transformation happen.
	-	Define constraints within which to operate.
	-	Acquire and mobilise resources.
	-	Measure performance.
	-	Manage risk.
	-	Obtain assurance.