What's your board doing with IT?
Thursday, November 20th 2008 @ 2:55 PM (not yet rated)
Originally posted - April 10, 2007
Did you ever wonder why so many IT projects end up in trouble? Apparently, the statistics available and highlighted by IT blogger, Ann All at IT Business Edge in her article “IT Governance (Not) on Board” shows that most Boards of Directors do not have adequate IT visibility on their agendas, and many also lack the expertise to address IT if it was on the agenda.
The data Ann All refers to comes from surveys by Deloitte and also by researcher Steve Andriole. OK, so Boards are not involved in IT projects. Is that a big surprise? Probably not. But if you think about it, as Andriole says, “Our dependence on IT has never been greater.” Wouldn’t that make it a strategic issue to be addressed by the Board of Directors? Why are there so few IT-aware executives on most businesses’ Boards? As IT Governance author, Alan Calder says, most of the board members are old fogeys who have their assistants print out their emails for them.
It almost goes without saying that companies need more visibility for Security at the Board level as well. At this level IT Governance and Security are as closely related as Parenting and Household Rules. Imagine if parents cared nothing about the amount of time spent sitting in front of screens, and the types of video games their kids were playing in their rooms. What kind of kids would we expect to end up with?
Let’s go beyond Alan Calder’s call for more IT-aware executives, and demand some Security-aware executives on the Boards of our companies. And while we’re at it, why not put all capital IT projects over $25K and IT Operations groups with annual capital and expense budgets over $100K on the agenda, along with their risk management plans and statuses?
These dollar value thresholds are arbitrary examples. They should depend on the size of the business, but anything significant should have visibility to a competent board to make sure shareholder value is being maintained. There’s no excuse for having an IT-ignorant Board of Directors any more.
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