Information Technology (IT) governance is known to play a vital role in the corporate governance in terms of the accountability of the organization's Board of Executives to determine that organization's IT promotes to attain the goals and objectives of the organization, through employing various specific methods, processes and procedures for communication and relationship. In addition, IT governance focuses on how IT is delivering value, controlling risks, managing resources and increase performance. The aim of this work is to analyse IT governance practices used in Abu Dhabi public sector. It employs a quantitative research approach to accomplish the goals of this study. The outcomes of this work refer to important findings such as that most known and recommended international standards and IT frameworks as well as non-IT frameworks are employed by the Abu Dhabi public sector. The known frameworks and standards include ISO 9001, ITILv3, ISO 27001, ISO 20000, PMBOK, BSC, and COBIT respectively, are used as per public entities' needs to enhance the performance of public sector organizations and to comply with local, federal and governmental regulations. This work recommends many plans and best practices that can be employed by both IT governance Board and IT practitioners to leverage IT assets and improve IT governance. Ultimately, the enforcement of such recommended measures in the organizations will result in decreasing overall operational cost as well as enhancing service quality, IT governance effectiveness and interoperability between government bodies.
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”.
IT is also of high relevance in public administrations and its usage in the field has increased rapidly in recent years due to its enabling capacity to adapt to change and its role as a driving force for modernization (Greger, Petra & Helmut, 2015). Moon, Lee and Roh (2014) reviewed research themes and methods used in IT in government and e-government research as well as acknowledged the differences in IT in government and e-government, which are not completely understood in public administration.
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 (Rubino & Vitolla, 2014; 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 (Mergel et al., 2014; 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 (Bergeron et al., 2015; 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; Ezziane & Al Shamisi, 2013).