The Role of the Cio in Effective Information Technology Strategic Planning Through Corporate Governance

The Role of the CIO in Effective Information Technology Strategic Planning

through Corporate Governance

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the CIO’s role in effective IT strategic planning as it relates to corporate governance. It will discuss the role of CIO as an enabler of IT governance, comparing IT governance and corporate governance with emphasis their impact on an organization’s strategic IT goals and business value. This paper further reviews how corporate goals are achieved with strategic planning and IT business alignment. In conclusion, the paper will illustrate the success of the CIO as an innovative enabler of corporate governance.

INTRODUCTION

IT best practices must be consistent with any organization’s management style and the way the organization handles risk management and delivery of IT value, the greatest risk and concern to top management today is failing to align IT to real business needs, and a failure to deliver, or be seen to be delivering, value to the business. Since IT can have such a dramatic effect on business performance and competitiveness, a failure to manage IT effectively can have a very serious impact on the business as a whole.

According to Rau (2004), governance refers to the way the organization goes about ensuring that strategies are set, monitored and achieved. As applied to IT, effective IT governance is about the way senior management interacts and communicates with IT leaders to ensure that technology investments enable the achievement of business strategy in an effective and efficient manner. Corporate governance has recognized the crucial role IT plays in improving corporate governance practices as it relates to critical automated business processes. Information required by senior executives to influence significant decision making rely greatly on the effectiveness of IT systems. As IT becomes an increasingly critical function in organizations, the need for effective governance of decisions, policies,...