ICT Governance Analysis: Frameworks, Implementation, and Impact

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of ICT governance, addressing key aspects such as IT domains, strategic management, benefits realization, risk and resource optimization, and performance criteria. It explores the constraints faced during implementation and the impact of effective ICT governance on outsourcing decisions. The report further elaborates on the relationship between ICT governance and management and discusses the consequences of poor ICT governance. A case study on Netflix's implementation of the COBIT framework is included, highlighting the application of IT governance principles in a real-world scenario. The report concludes with a discussion of issues, concerns, and the expected results of implementing such a framework, providing a holistic view of ICT governance in modern organizations.

Running head: ICT GOVERNANCE 1
ICT Governance
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ICT Governance
Question 1: The IT domains of governance.
1. The IT enterprise governance framework.
For an organization to ensure effective governance, the management of the organization
must apply an IT governance framework. This framework should make use of the industry
principles and the most appropriate practices for the categorical requirement and need of the
business. And its governance model should to be driven at the highest level of an organization
through accountability, responsibility, and roles that are fully elaborated and obligated
throughout the organization (De Haes & Van Grembergen, 2015).
2. Strategic Management.
For a business objective to be effectively supported, the management strategy needs to
drive the IT strategy. The IT and the business strategy are by nature associated, with effective
and well-organized operation as well as the growth of a business lies on the proper alignment of
the two. Balancing scorecard, proper implementation of architecture methodology enterprise and
portfolio management are some of the effective ways and means of alignment attainment.
3. Benefits Realization.
IT governance is of great helping to get optimized business profits through effective IT
management. The IT governance, in this case, aims at ensuring that the IT benefits realization of
plan as well as performance response and monitoring.
4. Risk Optimization.
With the increasingly global digital world, the identification, valuation, extenuation,
communication, management, and monitoring of IT-related industry danger is an integral part of
the enterprise governance activities. Alignment toward relevant legal and business continuity
planning and tolerance methodology are some of the important dimensions used to help with
risk-based judgments.
5. Resource Optimization
For an organization, business demands plus execute other activities. The organization
requires to latest strategic objectives. Resources optimization requires an emphasis on finding
suitable approaches of management, external supplies monitoring, procurement, management of
service level and programs of development and staff training (Bin-Abbas & Bakry, 2014).

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Question 2: Perspectives for performance criteria in organizations
Strategy execution; business strategy in this perspective is viewed as the driver of both
the logic of information science and the choices of the organization design.
Technological potential; in technological potential, the business strategy has vied too as a
driver, however, in this case, it involves articulation of the IT strategy that helps in supporting
the business strategy chosen and specification of required information science that corresponds.
Competitive potential; this perspective of alignment is concern with the utilization of
evolving IT know-hows to influence new services and products that are influencing the main
attributes of the strategy and also in the development of new forms of new relationships.
Service level; this majors on how to build a world-class IT or IS organization within an
organization. This business strategy helps in that there is an effective use of information
technology resources and responds to growth and fast-changing population end-user demand
(Wu, Straub & Liang, 2015).
Question 3: Constraints in implementing effective IT governance
However, how much some companies are straining on improving ICT governance, the
company is faced with some constraints. At the organization level these constrains include;
Basic level computer experience, companies or organizations with employees who do not have
the basic computer experience several challenges in their accounting process. These businesses
end up lacking transparency in terms of finance.
The next constrains is the time available to learn, in some organizations the workers do
not have the time to learn about the new techniques ICT. And lastly is the identification of clear
benefits of information communication technology use. Although most companies use ICT some
of the companies, however, have no idea the importance of information communication
technology in an organization (Currie & Spyridonidis, 2016; Barrenechea, 2011).
Question 4: the impact of effective ICT governance in an organization on its level of ICT
outsourcing decisions.
Effective IT governance is of great importance to an organization as it helps in ensuring
that there is an alignment between the IT and the business goal. With effective governance of IT,
the organization will not suffer from the poor performance of IT resources.
Good IT governance enables the employers to understand what is expected of them in, the
organization and ensure collaboration between the manager and the objectives against which

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their performance will be measured and competence level is required in their role (Wu, Straub &
Liang, 2015).
The management of the IT governance helps in encouraging the managers to carry out
their development plans and ensures that they get the required training developmental
programmers.
The IT governance in an organization helps in trust-building between the employer and the
employees, due to the existence of documents that can account for the finance used. This
transparency helps in trust-building (Van Grembergen & De Haes, 2010).
IT governance also helps in the provision of management succession.in that it creates a
systematic place to keep documents under review.
Question 5: IT Governance
a. Relationship between ICT governance and management
The ICT governance and ICT management have a relationship in that, education
governance is about decision making ad who makes them while governance is about making and
implementing the decisions. An effective ICT governance always tend to answer the following
question:
I. Which useful information’s should the organization have?
II. Who are /is supposed to make these decisions?
III. How will the decision be made and how they will be monitored?
b. Impact to organizations without good ICT governance in place
An organization with poor ICT governance is at risk as this will perpetuate chronic
failure in the line of the IT business enabling projects and seriously impair the achievement of
the business value.
ICT governance may also lead to poor coordination between the IT-led elements of the
project and the associated business manager’s changes. This may also lead to misuse of funds.
c. The questions related to the five key IT decisions
IT governance is all about decision making that helps support the strategy and the goals
of an organization. Governance needs a framework that defines responsibility and roles, policies
and processes and criteria to foster sound decision making. The question to be addressed include:
i. What is the decision to be made? This elaborates the decision at hand.
ii. Whose decision is it? This may be a group or an individual involved in decision making.

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iii. What are the methods for the decision making? This involves the strategies put into place
for decision making.
iv. When is the decision made? This clarifies the timeline for the decision to be made.
v. How will the decision get communicated and whom will it be communicated to? This
question provide a view of how the decision will be communicated and whom it will be
communicated to.
Question 6: A case on implementation of ICT governance framework.
a. Background and justification of the organization
The organization focused on in this section is Netflix Inc. Netflix is an American
organization which provide its subscribers with media services. It is located in Los Gatos in
California. The organization is being headed by Reed Hastings as the CEO. The primary
business of Netflix involves subscription based streaming services that provide its customers
with the opportunity to stream videos online. Netflix provide almost all their services online. As
a result, the organization have an active information technology IT department.
The organization serves over 150 million subscribers worldwide. With such a huge
population, it is not a secret that such a digital business has to adopt a fast moving and secure
information technology operations. Netflix IT engineers are tasked with implementing thousands
and thousands of programs every time through IT process automations. Netflix’s nature,
especially the population it holds makes it vulnerable to information security attacks. As such,
like every other significant online business, having automated monitoring systems is not always
enough, hence it is also essential to consider security controls.
b. Application of ICT governance framework
Given the background information about Netflix, what the organization need is the
implementation of a robust and closed-loop security management system that handle all kinds of
cyber security risks. This involves the implantation of various security management policies with
the aid of a comprehensive policy framework. Control Objective for Information and Related
Technology COBIT is the framework recommended for IT governance for the organization.
Like every other information security governance frameworks, COBIT framework helps
in aligning the business goals with the goals of the information technology (Mataracioglu &

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Ozkan, 2011; Ula, Ismail & Sidek, 2011). This is achieved by establishment of the link between
the duo and enabling a process that bridge the gap between information technology and
departments. COBIT, specifically focus on risk management, information security and
governance.
The main target groups involved in the implementation process include management of
the organization, information system auditors and chief executives, information security and
information technology practitioners and IT management. The implementation process include
various phases (Mangalaraj, Singh & Taneja, 2014). In the first phase, the implementers
identifies and analyze the key drivers of change. The second phase include identification of the
business status. In the third phase, the business outlines its goals where improvement targets are
set. The business then identifies what needs to be done in the fourth phase and then formulate
plans and visualize how to get there in the fifth phase. The sixth phase involves the evaluation of
the results and lastly, the business reviews the overall success of the initiative.
c. Issues and concerns
However, COBIT may promise a robust information system policy framework. The
framework is associated with some few issues and concerns. Some common issues and concerns
are associated with costs. Failed IT initiatives. There might also be failure in IT enabled changes
to meet the business requirements for instance budget overruns. The members in the target group
may be reluctant in engaging with the process (Arora, 2010).
d. Results
The implementation of the COBIT framework for Netflix information security
governance would result to the following.
There will be improved IT governance standards in the organization. The COBIT
framework will ensure that the risks that are associated with the information security are
reduced. It also leads to effective measures and controls to ensure that all business processes
related to IT within the organization are monitored.
The implementation will lead to strategic alignment. COBIT leads to alignment of the
information technology goals of the business with strategic goals set for the purpose of review. It

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would also result to improved efficiency effectiveness in the organization. Additionally, auditing
will also improve the information security within the organization. Lastly, adopting the
framework will result to adherence to quality standards by Netflix organization.
References

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Arora, V. (2010). Comparing different information security standards: COBIT v s. ISO
27001. Qatar: Carnegia Mellon University.
Barrenechea, M. J. (2011). U.S. Patent No. 8,037,106. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
Bin-Abbas, H., & Bakry, S. H. (2014). Assessment of IT governance in organizations: A simple
integrated approach. Computers in Human Behavior, 32, 261-267.
Currie, G., & Spyridonidis, D. (2016). Interpretation of multiple institutional logics on the
ground: Actors’ position, their agency and situational constraints in professionalized
contexts. Organization studies, 37(1), 77-97.
De Haes, S., & Van Grembergen, W. (2015). Enterprise Governance of IT. In Enterprise
Governance of Information Technology (pp. 11-43). Springer, Cham.
Mangalaraj, G., Singh, A., & Taneja, A. (2014). IT governance frameworks and COBIT-a
literature review.
Mataracioglu, T., & Ozkan, S. (2011). Governing information security in conjunction with
COBIT and ISO 27001. arXiv preprint arXiv:1108.2150.
Pereira, R., & da Silva, M. M. (2012, September). Towards an integrated IT governance and IT
management framework. In 2012 IEEE 16th International Enterprise Distributed Object
Computing Conference (pp. 191-200). IEEE.
Ula, M., Ismail, Z., & Sidek, Z. M. (2011). A Framework for the governance of information
security in banking system. Journal of Information Assurance & Cyber Security, 2011, 1-
12.
Van Grembergen, W., & De Haes, S. (2010). A research journey into enterprise governance of
IT, business/IT alignment and value creation. International Journal of IT/Business
Alignment and Governance (IJITBAG), 1(1), 1-13.

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Wu, S. P. J., Straub, D. W., & Liang, T. P. (2015). How information technology governance
mechanisms and strategic alignment influence organizational performance: Insights from
a matched survey of business and IT managers. Mis Quarterly, 39(2), 497-518. How
information technology governance mechanisms and strategic alignment influence
organizational performance: Insights from a matched survey of business and IT
managers. Mis Quarterly, 39(2), 497-518.
Wu, S. P. J., Straub, D. W., & Liang, T. P. (2015). How information technology governance
mechanisms and strategic alignment influence organizational performance: Insights from
a matched survey of business and IT managers. Mis Quarterly, 39(2), 497-518.