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Top1. Introduction
Implementing information technology (IT) governance frameworks to public organizations is critically important for most of the countries as they need to consolidate infrastructure and IT operations, to get greater efficiencies, make technology more effective and improve information security. Also, it helps to improve the quality of the existing services to public and it assists to develop solutions to meet their needs more quickly, and cuts down on the costs of running and supporting technology.
IT has become crucial for the government agencies to serve and provide their constituents modernized services more effectively, capably, and sustainably, and making IT governance as a priority for the public organizations leaders to seek best practices of IT frameworks for their agencies. Furthermore, Lucas (2005, 5) mentioned that “the key to success with technology is not the technology per se, but the ability to manage it well”.
Moreover, IT is not just essential to a corporate business, but has become fundamental to public sector entities in order to deliver the necessary outcomes for the specific stakeholders. In fact IT has grown to be a vital element in the functioning of the public sector heightens the importance of proper governing of the IT environment and processes of the public sector entity (Nfuka & Rusu, 2009; Woods, 2010).
Implementing IT governance frameworks to the governmental sector help its agencies to share information and other resources as necessary to meet the needs of the citizens and the society (Pardo & Burke 2008). Addition to that, IT governance frameworks are considered to be mandatory for the public sector to create interoperability between agencies and improve the capabilities of government agencies to effectively serve the needs of the citizens and the society as a whole including the private sector and other agencies (Goldsmith and Eggers 2004). Due to the significance of IT systems to organizations, managing the IT risks is no more just a technical problem, but it has become a business problem that can adversely impact the whole business (Spremic, 2011; De Haes & Van Grembergen, 2010). Therefore, the strategic role of information technology in organizations has become a critical factor involving the IT governance and implementing widely applicable Information System (IS) frameworks, best practices, standards and methodologies that are reliable and ensuring smooth functioning of the information systems (ITGI, 2003).
The Government of Abu Dhabi is realizing the importance of IT systems in sustaining future growth, and economic development is investing considerable amount of money in IT systems that can help to transform its oil driven economy to a knowledge based economy (Shane, 2011). Over the last decade due to rapid economic development and to meet the growing IT needs, public sector organizations have adopted a number of different international standards, based on availability of expertise (Abu Talib, El Barachi, Khelifi, & Ormandjieve, 2012).