Information Management System and the IT Steering Committee - Essay Example

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM The IT Steering Committee plays a major role in the allocation of resources and funding for IT projects. The management of these resources by the IT steering committee must follow certain principles. First, all It projects considered must support the long-term business aims of the department. This means that business and IT must work hand in hand. Second, the new IT initiative must be supported by a business case tackling the main concerns as determined in the informatics strategic and operational plans.

Furthermore, all IT projects are subject to the governance process, as well as those related to application improvement, infrastructure adjustments, key projects and/or procurement of hardware or software (Ditsa 153). There are a number of roles that the steering committee plays including overseeing the work of the project team. Overseeing the project team involves a number of duties and these include ensuring that the project remains on schedule. This ensures that the project is completed in due time and all the team members do not slack in their duties and perform them to the latter.

The steering committee also ensures that the project remains within its budget. This is an essential part of their job ensuring that the resources assigned to the IT project are reasonable and well used. If there was an oversight in any of the planning and the project requires more or less resources the steering committee would make recommendations to the management (Lucey 79). Lastly, the steering committee also ensures that they keep the project in sync with the business requirements it is meant to address.

In the course of monitoring the IT projects underway, the steering committee resolves any problems related with the IT project. There are a number of ways to manage investments in corporate IT when the rate of change in the underlying technologies dictates that new systems are obsolete almost as soon as you can get them implemented. It is imperative for any institution to develop rational and viable financial strategies to accommodate technological change for effective information technology management.

Due to short life cycle of many technologies, management need to determine the wisdom of investing and managing new technology systems. Management must recognize the economic life cycles of new information technology (Oz 212). Management also needs to know about asset management. This helps them to evaluate the risk of using new Information technology that may lose its life cycle in a short time. Furthermore, management needs to evaluate the financial pressures that come with new technology.

This is because institutions expect that investing in information technology should bring about continual improvement in their returns. In order to be competitive in the market, institutions need to invest more of their budget in information technology today in hopes of better dividends tomorrow (Ditsa 152). To make well-informed decisions as regarding new information technologies decisions, investment ought to be viewed as an expense matter. In truth, it is a cost/benefit matter whose main goal is to improve the IT system.

This is the business side in investing in new information technologies. The management also needs to assess the competitive economics of the new information technologies (Lucey 19). This means evaluating the potential impact of the technology on inter-institution competition. Work Cited Ditsa, George. Information Management: Support Systems & Multimedia Technology. Chicago: Idea Group Inc (IGI), 2003. Print. Lucey, Terence. Management Information Systems. New York: Cengage Learning EMEA, 2004. Print. Oz, Effy.

Management Information Systems. New York: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print.