Dear Reader,
If you are a regular reader of The IT Governance Letter, you will have noticed that both the April and May editions failed to materialise. If you are new to our 800 strong mailing list, welcome. We hope that you will continue to enjoy our forthright and independent views on how organisations can improve their performance and reduce adverse risk through better governance of their use of information and communication technologies.
We could say that the gap in publication was caused by circumstances beyond our control. We could blame short weeks in April and multiple conferences in May. But we’d rather explain our reality: it’s the Mule that did it!
I’ve been focused on governance of IT since late in 2000. Back then, it was not just an unpopular topic – it was virtually unheard of. Opportunity was sparse, and against a backdrop of a shrinking IT sector, it was more than difficult to convince the people at the top of organisations that they should invest in better control of their IT agenda. The mule was stubborn!
That all changed sometime in the past few months. I can’t put a finger on the exact point in time, but it seems that the factors came together around the final quarter of 2005 to transform that stubborn mule into a wild thoroughbred stallion. Suddenly, we’re no longer dragging the mule every reluctant inch. Instead, we’re hanging on for the ride of our lives, as Governance becomes the new “holy grail” of success with IT. Not that everybody’s coming along for the ride – there are still plenty of sceptics out there who think this is just another fad that will pass, and that IT really should not be a concern for the boardroom. And some of the scepticism is fair. One reason is that the marketing machines have moved into hyperdrive and attach the G word to everything they can think of – overusing it and driving everybody to distraction. The other, of much greater concern, is that organisations will, as is so often the case, under-deliver on their IT Governance efforts, focusing on software rather than people and process, and missing the point that implementing good governance is just as much about people and their behaviour as it is about the tools they use.
For Infonomics, the impact of the transformation has been dramatic. We are working on IT Governance Assessments and Governance Improvement Programs for several significant organisations. We are assisting several software vendors in their efforts to develop market appreciation of the opportunities to use software tools as underpinning infrastructure for their efforts to uplift their governance capabilities. We continue our long term efforts to contribute to Australia’s world leadership in governance of IT through development of standards, and we continue to contribute and learn through participation in relevant industry conferences.
During May we attended two major conferences – the annual Company Directors Conference held on the Gold Coast, and more recently the IQPC IT Governance Summit, held in Sydney. Both conferences produced significant value, which we share with you in this and following newsletters.
Late in April, we joined forces with Melbourne Boutique Board Advisory firm Oppeus to conduct a Breakfast Round Table for Non-Executive Directors, C-level executives and CIO’s. Ben Scheltus reports in this edition on the outcome of that breakfast, for which the guest list included leaders such as prominent non-executive director Cathy Walter, TAC’s new Chief Executive Paul O’Connor, and Bob Shedden, Group General Manager of IT at Spotless.
Ben also shares further thoughts on off-shoring, posing several questions that directors might ask when presented with a proposal for off-shoring of IT and business process.
The past few weeks have also seen several significant publications of interest. The June 2006 issue of Company Director has an interesting article entitled “Coming to grips with IT”. And on June 9, the Australian Customs Service released the Booz Allen Hamilton report on the troubled Integrated Cargo System. Time and space precludes our detailed discussion of these in this edition, but you can be sure they will have significant attention in the July edition.
Finally, we are delighted to announce for the first time in this edition, our partnership with RMIT University in the research arena. We have joined forces with the RMIT School of Management to develop a proposal for ARC funded research into the economic impact of investing in IT, across entire industry sectors. This proposed ground-breaking research recognises that IT is increasingly being used to drive change in industry-wide process, as illustrated by the way that the Australian Customs Service used IT to underpin its Cargo Management Re-engineering initiative.
As always, we hope that you find this month’s edition interesting, and that you will stay with us as we ride the wave of interest and build Infonomics reputation as the leading independent advisor on corporate governance of ICT.
Mark Toomey
12 June 2006
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