IT Governance and Change Management - Case Study Example

IT GOVERNANCE AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT By Professor Class University City Date of submission Executive summary Most businesses are currently shifting to the integration of IT in the management processes while taking into consideration of certain important factors. The report would be focusing on the case study of the Ultranet that failed after implementing IT governance. Nonetheless, the statistics indicate that the number of project users declined, reflecting about 4% of the targeted people as the users of the system after implementation. From such statistics, it was clear that the project failed to meet the desired needs of the intended population. Reduction in the number of the users reflected is an indication that the system was not user-friendly and failed in delivering functionalities and features, that both the schools and communities expected from the solution. Besides the monitoring the performance of the students in schools, the project also allowed the parents to acquire information relation to the attendance records of their children, feedback from teachers, assignments, and school timetables. Conversely, it is essential to note that the project was rolled out in the government schools to aid in the management roles in conjunction with CSG limited, an IT firm in Australia between 2006 and 2010. The topic was chosen considering the changes in the focus of most businesses to IT concepts. Introduction With the rising levels of competitions, unethical practices, and changes in the desires of customers, most organizations are shifting to the use of technology in ensuring that they satisfy the needs of the customers. The concept of Information Technology Governance (ITG) ensures that the managements effectively and efficiently use IT skills in achieving the needs of both the organization and the customers. In order to achieve organizational goals, it is important to understand the underlying standards and IT concept while considering aligning organizational activities with the desired goals for value provision among the stakeholders. Currently, many businesses tend to rely on IT as their integral part in ensuring their management strategy. In most cases, IT governance is used to ensure that organizations utilize resources responsibly, manages the risks in a sustainable manner, technological uses within the enterprise supports the objectives (IT Governance Institute, 2007, 132). The report would be focusing on Ultranet Project that aimed at using IT governance to avail relevant information to the students, teachers, and parents in Victoria. Even though the project achieved some of the objectives at the initial stage but the quality began to deteriorate due to the poor implementation process. Description of the case study: Ultranet Project Accessibility to relevant information is one of the most crucial and fundamental right to all humanity. With technological changes, methods of availing information also tend to change. The project was formulated to help the residents of Victoria including the parents, students, and teachers to access the required information easily. Moreover, the project allowed accessibility of the students’ performances in schools on time, which enabled easier communication between the parents and school management. Considering the scope of the scope of the project, it was statewide thus allowed accessibility of the information at any place across the country upon connection to the internet. The new online environment allowed easier and efficient connection between the parents and teachers; as a result, it offered Victorian government, especially the schools an opportunity to participate in the learning processes (Calder, 2008, 192). The project allowed the parents to monitor and support the learning processes of their children and in a way helping in building the school. Although the project managed to meet some of its targets, it failed in the end since the project had inadequate features and functionality that it initially intended to achieve. With these factors, the Australian government decided to abandon the project at the end of 2013 and on 19 December 2013, when the Ultranet Project was officially shut down. The shutdown was a disappointment to most of the taxpayers since the project failed to meet the long-term solutions, despite the government investing many resources in ensuring that it meets the outlined goals. Moreover, most of the Victorian parents and schools already began depending on the online platform to acquire specific inform of the students. The project mainly failed due to inadequate planning by the Victorian government, cost blowouts, and continuous failure of the tenders that led to the growth of the operational cost from $60 million to $180 million reflecting the higher cost of managing the project than the benefits. Initially, the projected estimated that about 1.5 million Victorian teachers, students, and parents would benefit from the project. Currently, most Victorian government schools are seeking to resolve these problems through the private sectors in a bid to ensure that they continue utilizing digital learning processes using the software that is web based (Brouwer, 2011, par 7). Apparently, NEC Corporation, which is a Japanese multinational provider of information technology services, suggested assisting individual schools within a duration of six months. However, these schools were to pay for the services. The underlying question is whether the schools should pay for the services that were initially provided by the Ultranet project but failed since its inception. Funding these projects is quite costly. Although the schools are beginning to look for solutions from the private entities, they need to consider how the Victorian government would plan to support and fund these projects. For example, Schoolbox is one of the institutions aiming to cushion encourage digital teaching and learning in Australia. According to the research conducted by the Victorian auditor-general, the Ultranet project was a multimillion-dollar information technology system but resulted in expensive failures cutting-edge most government schools. Moreover, the project resulted in a more than 80% cost over the initially estimated cost (Victoria & Victoria. 2011, 152). The report also suggested that the project failed due to poor planning and implementation. Besides, the other issues that contributed to serious flaw of the project were problems relating to probity, financial management, procurement, and the tendering process. The failure of the project ignited questions on the labour government that was responsible for the management of the project while on the same count the Victorian anti-corruption agency continues with the probing of all education departments. According to the report, the underlying evidence reflecting the tendering process was the fact that the general manager of the project bought some shares with the CSG Limited before the company was announced as the winner of the Ultranet contract. Analysis of the governance and change management processes of the Ultranet project In order to incorporate management with information technology, it is important to plan and align the objectives with organizational activities. Moreover, transparency and accountability also plays a crucial role. According to the report from the auditor-general, the general manager and some team members failed to ensure that there was transparency in the tendering process considering the amount of share they had with the company that won the tender. Upon receiving the report, the Ultranet Project Board chairperson, Mr. Rosewarne also failed to implement the recommendations, which were mainly disciplinary actions and referrals of those, found to be responsible for the mismanagement of the project to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. Additionally, after the failure of the project, most of the management team immediately joined CSG Limited. According to the evidence from the Australian Supreme Court, there were payments made by the CSG Limited to acquire the tender. All these forms of corruption underlie the foundation for the failure of the project. Every project must be clearly be planned and adequate measures put in place to ensure that proper implementation strategies are in place as well. Consequently, when the project began, the Victorian government intended to rule it out in their entire state with adequate measures in place (Cameron & Green, 2012, 98). However, there were questions on how the future tendering process would carry, considering the possibilities of conflicts of interest. The management failed to ensure there was teamwork as the interests from the project differed from one management team to another. In relation to IT governance and change management, the use of the Ultranet project was to assist in the provision of guidance while making decisions in respect to IT applications, expenditures, when allocating resources. While making IT related decisions, it is important to consider the basic principles that control the quality of project results. Moreover, these principles are mainly related with management issues including management of the resources, performances, and risks. All IT applications in business must aim to bring value to the business; hence, it is important to align the concept of IT with business activities (Grembergen & De Haes, 2010, 188). The level of maturity and acceptance tend to vary from one organization and another. However, most of the views tend to emerge in favour of the IT governance. For example, even though the project failed, most schools are still seeking for solutions within the private sectors reflecting the positive impact that the project had on the management activities. The major driver of IT governance is its alignment with the business. Most of the organizations tend to recognize the alignment due to their quest to deliver quality results that are considered sustainable. Any successful integration of the IT governance and the management have the ability of providing a mechanism of increasing IT effectiveness. As a result, there would be increasing demand for IT across many businesses. Besides, an effective implementation of the IT governance should be transformational. Most organizations are mainly using IT application mainly to reduce the cost of operations and especially with the growing norm that IT resources should be utilized in an efficient and reliable manner. Most research indicates that there is need to utilize technological applications in delivering full value. Moreover, proper governance has the ability to align business strategies in a proper and reliable direction to provide a pool of benefits for the organizations (IT Governance Institute, 2005, 178). While considering the implementation of IT governance, it is crucial to define organizational leadership, structures, relational mechanism, and processes in order to ensure sustainability and extension of the IT strategy to the achievement of the objectives. IT governance standards and frameworks Ensuring sustainability is one of the aims of implementing IT governance within the business entity. Therefore, it is important to ensure that its critical pillars remain strong. IT governance has the responsibility of determining the manner in which IT functions. Additionally, it manages IT demands and value deliverance besides protection against the risks. In most cases, organizations which have inadequate and ineffective IT governance offer suffer due to their low performances, increased exposure to risks, poor resource allocations considered inappropriate, political, and to some extent arbitrary. Business entities are currently striving for models relating to IT governance for risk minimization and increment in returns. When businesses are busy creating their own frameworks and embracing the standards that have been developed and made perfect by integration of experiences of many organizations, other institutions are busy making profits. Through adoption of the IT, business entities tend to enjoy numerous benefits. Essential there are three major IT standards including COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology, ISO 17799 (International Organization for Standardization), and ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library). Published by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), COBIT is currently under its third revision. COBIT framework brings together the high-level control objectives with an aim of helping businesses maintain their effective and efficient control over IT. Even though the standard is meant for larger organizations, the ISACA is in its final stage in developing a special version of the COBIT that would play a significant role in the small and medium-sized businesses. On the other hand, ISO 17799 reflects the Code of Practice for Information Security Management with an aim of focusing on security and helping business entities create an effective IT security plan (Calder & Moir, 2009, 101). Especially with the rising cases of database hacking, there is a great need to ensure compliance with ISO 17799 that follows high levels of grouping activities including security policy, compliance, system and environmental security, asset classification, organizational security, operations management, communications, and business continuity management. Finally, the ITIL belongs to the United Kingdom’s Office of the Government Commerce (OGC). Although most studies indicate that the standard is unpopular in most state, the irony is that it has the highest number of subscribers. More the standard currently consists of ICT infrastructure management, service support and delivery, planning for implementing service management, application management, and security management. The ITIL’s main objective is to help to identify the best practices regarding how to implement and manage IT services. However, it is important to note that COBIT mainly emphasizes on regulatory works and helping business entities increase the value of what they acquire from the IT. Moreover, COBIT plays a significant role in aligning and simplifying the implementation process of the IT governance with the organization. Most business entities have accepted the fact that change is inevitable and very fundamental to IT. Although those with proficient in IT management understand that change is important to ensure the sustainability quality of services offered, most organizations tend to resist the change and find it difficult to understand why IT operates in a manner that it does. As a result, most business entities tend to struggle with the footprints of standards. Feasible and suitable governance approach to remedy governance shortcomings Even with the implementation of IT governance in the business, businesses would continue experiencing risks and poor resources management unless they ensure that they integrate both organizational structure, management, and IT. From the case study, the Ultranet project failed to enforce corporate governance that considers different aspects of human resources. Although, with the rise of technological, most people are losing their jobs to the technologies, there is still need to incorporate human efforts in management especially in relationship to leadership skills. Moreover, corporate governance takes into consideration the ethics, responsibilities, risks, and morality of those involved in the management process (Kim & Nofsinger,  2007, 127). This practice ensures that there is teamwork, which helps in enhancing accountability among the management teams. In every profession, it is important to uphold integrity and ensure that principles of good governance are considered in every stage of management. With the underlying corruption from tendering process and management team having the shares with the CSG, market the beginning of corruption and failure of the project. In every corporate governance, it is important to focus on principles that govern IT ascendancy. These approaches include ethical approach, balanced objectives, commitment, effective decision-making process, equality, accountability, and transparency. Most the activities that transpired in the management of the projects were unethical and less transparent, hence a causative to the project failure. Furthermore, with less accountability, transparency, and unbalanced objectives, the project was bound to fail. Congruency of the goals is quite important whenever an organization considers a project successful. Every member of the management should ensure commitment in the responsibilities assigned in order to ensure that the planning, monitoring, and evaluation process of the project is effective and reliable. While incorporating IT governance into the business, it is crucial to consider the strategic management as well as this would help to ensure that the organization meets its desired value. Proposed change management process for a new system The purpose of every single business enterprise is to maximize the returns while minimizing the amount of resources utilized to realize these returns. If the Victoria government were to implement another IT governance project without considering the factors that led to the failure of the Ultranet project, then other projects would fail as well (Betz, 2007, 160). Therefore, it would be important to focus on the certain areas including: Strategic alignment It is significant to ensure that the business activities and IT are linked so that they work together. However, proper alignment would occur only of the management team effective communicate with the both the business and IT leaders in relation to the operational costs and impact of IT on the business activities. Value delivery The IT governance should not be incorporated into the business to only make a profit or make works easier, but also to ensure the functions of the whole concept aims at accelerating value proposition while growing. Resources management The major way of ensuring that the resources are managed effectively is to ensure proper organization of the staff members. IT requires skills; hence, organizations of the workers should be based on skills rather that line of business, as this would allow the organization to dispense employees upon demand. Performance measures The Ultranet project failed to monitor its performance. One method of measuring the application of IT performance is to institute an IT Balanced Scorecard that would help in examining the contributions that IT governance is yielding to the business. While assessing the performance, it is important to consider both qualitative and quantitative measures. Conclusion While conducting a project, it is crucial to that IT governance ensures that the needs of the stakeholders, conditions, and available alternatives are evaluated in order to determine the balance. Therefore, the major responsibilities of the IT governance is to help in the evaluation, offering direction, and monitoring organizational activities and ensuring that they meet the required standards. However, it is important to note that IT governance brings together all aspects of Information Technology in the management process. Poor alignment of the practice with organizational goals might lead to failure of any project due to exposure to several business risks and poor strategic planning. Any organization charged with the responsibility of overseeing several groups of projects should implement IT governance. However, effective implementation would depend on the initiative and experience put across by the management team. While implementing the Ultranet Project, it failed due to the failure of the management team to work together since they had different interest at hand. Some of the management teams anticipation is to achieved the desired goals while others focused on activities that could benefit the individually. The level of corporate governance also determines the extent to which the management would go to reconcile or address conflicts. References Betz, C. T. 2007. Architecture and patterns for IT service management, resource planning, and governance. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann. Brouwer, G E 2011, Own motion investigation into ICT Enabled Projects, Victorian Ombudsman in consultation with the Victorian Auditor-General, viewed 11 September 2015, . Calder, A. 2008. ISO/IEC 38500: The IT Governance Standard. Ely: IT Governance Pub. Calder, A., & Moir, S. 2009. IT governance: Implementing frameworks and standards for corporate governance of IT. Ely, UK: IT Governance. Cameron, E., & Green, M. 2012. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the tools, models, and techniques of organizational change. London: Kogan Page. IT Governance Institute. 2005. Governance of the extended enterprise: Bridging IT and business strategies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. IT Governance Institute. 2007. IT governance implementation guide: Using Val IT and COBIT Rolling Meadows, IL: Author. Grembergen, WN & De Haes, S. 2010, “A Research Journey into Enterprise Governance of IT, Business and Value Creation”, International Journal of IT/Business Alignment and Governance, Vol. No. 1, 2010, pp. 1–13. Kim, K. A., & Nofsinger, J. R. 2007. Corporate governance. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Victoria, & Victoria. 2011. Own motion investigation into ICT-enabled projects. Melbourne: Victorian Government Printer. Read More