Information Technology Governance in Colleges - Research Paper Example

This paper also aims at contemplating the major challenges and limitations faced by CIOs and senior management when trying to successfully implement IT governance in colleges. General consensus is that IT is now being tried to be made an essential part of almost everything performed within a college with growing awareness that it must be integrated into institutional planning to address the dynamic needs of high school environment. Future research directions and areas in which further development is required in context of IT governance are also included in the paper.

There is a growing body of research related to the application of Information Technology (IT) governance in higher education which suggests that it is high time now for the educational institutions to acknowledge the critical importance of formalized IT governance systems (Lainhart, cited in Brobst and Council, 2005, p. 31). This is because without proper establishment of IT governance, low productivity results along with wastage of already limited financial and human resources. There is critical importance of establishing a framework of IT governance before a self-assessment program or information security plan is written (Custer, 2010, p. 41). Full-blown project planning is worth mentioning here as it is claimed that with this type of implementation, “there are fewer bumps in the road to completion and fewer surprises during implementation” (Armstrong, Simer, & Spaniol, 2011, p. 91). One of the important most goals for employing IT governance practices or framework is to reduce the number of security incidents which continue to rise among colleges and universities “resulting in significant cost” (Custer, 2010, p. 25). IT governance systems are important to implement in colleges because they effectively combat security breaches which increase security