ICT Governance and What to Do About the Toothless Tiger(s): Professional Organizations and Codes of Ethics

<body> <table width="100%"> <tr> <td align="center"> This page requires frames. <a href="http://dl.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/viewPDFInterstitial/601/487">Click here</a> for the non-frames version. <p>Non-frames version <a href="http://dl.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis/article/viewPDFInterstitial/601/487">available</a>.</p> </td> </tr> </table> <h1>ICT Governance and What to Do About the Toothless Tiger(s): Professional Organizations and Codes of Ethics</h1> <h2><i>Don Gotterbarn</i></h2> <h3>Australasian Journal of Information Systems</h3> <h4>Abstract</h4> <div>Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been with us for many years and in the past ten years there has been a growing interest in something called “ICT Governance” as a means of reducing information system disasters. There have been national organizations formed, professional organizations have organized sub-committees to address ICT Governance and it has even been called a “discipline”. The unwrapping of this concept, like many concepts, has several inconsistent interpretations and ineffective implementations in industry. In some cases the concept has been modified to meet a particular sectors needs. This broadening of concepts to fit individual needs is not new and sometimes is quite useful. There is however a fundamental mistake in the narrowness of most interpretations of ICT Governance which make it less likely that it will achieve its ultimate goals. I believe this mistake can and should be addressed by professional computing organizations. In what follows I will examine the various approaches to ICT governance, the difficulty it tries to address and I will argue for what I consider its critical limitations. I will than show how professional organizations can address the weakness of ICT governance using tools they already have at hand.</div> </body>