While the number of South African companies implementing formal IT governance strategies is expected to rise within the next two to three years, an industry expert says compliance will remain the biggest driver for formal governance processes.
Analytix MD Johan Botha, author of the ITWeb IT Governance 2005 Survey, believes that a rising number of organisations are embracing IT governance, but there seems to still be a lack of complete understanding of the governance concept.
Botha presented the findings of the survey at the IT Governance 2005 conference, saying it was found that only 30% of respondents` organisations have formally implemented IT governance, and most have indicated that compliance remains the key driver.
"Companies are embracing IT governance and there seems to be a high degree of awareness about this issue," he told ITWeb, adding that the country`s business sector is in an early growth phase in terms of IT governance.
"Within the next two to three years there should be high growth rate among companies that actually launch on-the-ground projects to implement IT governance. I expect to see the figure for companies that have formalised IT governance processes to reach about 50% in the next year or two."
However, Botha says there appears to still be a lack of understanding of the advantages of a formal IT governance strategy among South African organisations.
"Despite this expected growth, the biggest driver will, unfortunately, remain compliance. In other words, most businesses still see IT governance as something that they have to do, not something that can be a strategic advantage," he noted.
However, Botha expects that businesses will eventually come to understand the principles that IT governance is based on. The five pillars of IT governance, he says, are the alignment of IT to the business strategy, value-add, risk-management, performance management and management of resources.
"Organisations will educate themselves and work hard towards formalising governance strategies. We have also seen a rise in maturity levels of IT governance projects, and we expect this trend to continue."
Botha reveals that South African companies, according to the survey, are still lagging behind the international standard of the Cobit IT governance maturity framework, with respondents on average ranking between two and three on a scale of zero to five.
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