ISO 38500, AS8015: Infonomics - Plain Language about Corporate Governance of IT.

The Infonomics Letter on Corporate Governance of Information Technology contains news and discussion of developments in the marketplace.

From September 2008, Infonomics uses Constant Contact to manage its mailing list.

Constant Contact provides us powerful tools for managing our mailing list and for analysing what happens with our mail.

To subscribe, just enter your email address in the box at the top right of this page.

The Infonomics Letter

June 2009 Edition:

Last month’s Infonomics Letter generated a great deal of follow-up discussion. It’s great to know that readers are taking a keen interest in the debate, especially considering that the international working group formed by the joint technical committee of ISO and the IEC has completed its first meeting and is getting under way.

There are many ways to expand the discussion and debate, and I am delighted to publish the views of other well-informed commentators and innovators. London based Chris Ogden is a widely experienced consultant and executive coach, who has independently developed his views on the evolution of IT use in business. In “IT Governance – Redesigning the Board’s Role”, Chris proposes that the emergence of the internet has been the watershed that drives the need for a much greater degree of board oversight and supervision of IT use.

Thanks to the ubiquity of the internet that Chris discusses, I was able to transmit last month’s Infonomics Letter from Bad Homburg in Germany, where I spent two days explaining ISO/IEC 38500 to 24 delegates from Germany and other parts of Europe. My host for this event was Dr Gisela Boendgen, of Serview GmbH. Gisela and her colleagues did a superb job in organising the two full day masterclass sessions, and it was a great pleasure to deliver the content in their purpose-built residential education centre, complete with Irish Pub!

There are significant developments in the wings for the Infonomics education agenda, and these will be announced in the near future. But right now my major priority is to finalise and publish the book that I know many are patiently awaiting. It’s nearly there, and details of availability will be in the July Infonomics Letter.

Click here to read The Infonomics Letter

May 2009 Edition:

Debate about the distinction between “IT Governance” and “IT Management” is building. For years now, we have seen the IT industry using the words interchangeably, or trying to distinguish between higher and lower levels of management by referring to the higher level as “governance”.

Calling something governance without any further explanation does nothing except create confusion. Distinguishing between governance and management requires an understanding of how governance and management mesh together to provide effective overall control and oversight of an organisation, with respect to how it uses IT.

This challenge was discussed at the inaugural meeting of the new ISO/IEC Workgroup on Governance of IT in London in May 2009. Mark Toomey's paper to the workgroup meeting is reproduced in the May 2009 edition of The Infonomics Letter.

The Infonomics Letter Archive

April 2009 Edition:

Australia has decided to build a new “National Broadband Network”, or NBN. We look at what the project is really all about, how we can recognise and measure success, and who is responsible for that success.

Web 2.0 has the press excited about new ways of delivering information technology. In “The Path of No Fear”, we explore some governance issues around using Web 2.0.

March 2009 Edition:

Governance of IT in Government looks at the perceived poor track record of government with IT initiatives.

Has “IT Governance” Failed explores why the first generation of “IT Governance” has failed.

CobiT and ISO/IEC 38500 looks at the relationship between ISO/IEC 38500 and CobiT..

February 2009 Edition:

Draws parallels between the human behaviours in governance of IT with the behaviours observed relating to the Black Saturday bushfires Victoria and the ditching of a crippled Airbus.

December 2008 / January 2009 Edition:

"Making the right decisions..." factors relating to reducing spending on, and personnel allocations for, IT activities.
"Is Value Required?" how governance tasks and principles guide decisions about the value that should be derived from IT expenditure.

Special Edition 20 November 2008:

International Working Group on the Corporate Governance of Information Technology announced;
New downloads - presentation slides from recent briefing sessions - ISO/IEC 38500 Case Study and ACS discussion of The Gershon Review

______________________________

November 2008 Edition:

Making the right decisions for the present and the future.
Driving Business Value from Investment in IT.

______________________________

October 2008 edition:

Governance of IT in difficult times;
The Gershon Report
Why ISO38500 is exciting for business;
How ISO 38500 works with frameworks such as CobiT.

History: The Infonomics IT Governance Letter

The Infonomics IT Governance Letter began as a promotional tool for Infonomics. The first edition was published in August 2005, just eight months after the launch of AS8015. The mailing list was small - around 300 people.

Over the next three editions, the Letter and its subscriber base grew. The October edition ran to 20 pages, and the subscriber numbers had grown to around double the original. With some sort of prescience, the October edition contained a short article on the then imminent launch of the Australian Customs Service Imports module. We said:

"It will be interesting to see what happens this week, as the system goes into full production".

Actually, we had some idea of what was going to happen next - there had been too much noise around the project for comfort. But nobody could have imagined a situation that would embroil the government and bring enormous chunks of the national supply chain to its knees.

No wonder then that Customs was our main focus in the November 2005 edition, which was picked up and quoted by the national press, by respected journals, and by commentators and bloggers the world over. Without a shadow of doubt, Customs had done for us what nobody else could do - and Infonomics was firmly planted on the world stage. The subscription base for the Letter quickly broke through the 1000 barrier.

But other pressures were looming. Producing a 20 page journal on a monthly basis became onerous, and then impossible. While still drawing a very strong level of interest, the Letter succumbed to the pressure and went into hibernation after ten editions, and a year after its launch.

Notwithstanding its temporary demise, it has been most pleasing to hear from many subscribers that they had enjoyed it and were looking forward to the next instalment.

So it is with great pleasure that today, September 30 2008, Infonomics is relaunching The Infonomics Letter.

Archive

The ten original editions of The Infonomics IT Governance Letter are always available. Just click below to retrieve the PDF versions of each one.

August 2005