Corporate governance of IT: a case study in an Australian government department

Harnessing the power from Information Technology (IT) has been a focus of research and practice for many decades, yet statistics show that many organizations are yet to fully realize the value from investment in IT. Whilst numerous frameworks and standards have been published to help organizations achieve value from IT investment, research demonstrating whether newer standards have manifested success is scarce. Thus, the objective of this paper is to investigate, through a case study, how Corporate Governance of IT (CGIT) is practiced in a large, complex, not-for-profit setting like the Australian Federal Government. In doing so the study assesses the relationship between the governance practices deployed in a large scale IT project in this setting, and the ISO/IEC 38500 standard that deals with CGIT. Findings indicate the presence of governance practices, but the need for more, particularly in ISO/IEC 38500’s monitoring task. The study also demonstrates the practical value of using an IT governance standard in a real world setting, and in this way contributes to Design Theory.