Posts Tagged ‘ Information technology ’

Definitions and background of IT governance

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Definitions

There are narrower and broader definitions of IT governance. Weill and Ross focus on “Specifying the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behaviour in the use of IT.”[1]

In contrast, the IT Governance Institute expands the definition to include foundational mechanisms: “… the leadership and organisational structures and processes that ensure that the organisation’s IT sustains and extends the organisation’s strategies and objectives.” [2]

While AS8015, the Australian Standard for Corporate Governance of ICT, defines Corporate Governance of ICT as “The system by which the current and future use of ICT is directed and controlled. It involves evaluating and directing the plans for the use of ICT to support the organisation and monitoring this use to achieve plans. It includes the strategy and policies for using ICT within an organisation.”

Background

The discipline of information technology governance derives from corporate governance and deals primarily with the connection between business focus and IT management of an organization. It highlights the importance of IT related matters in contemporary organizations and states that strategic IT decisions should be owned by the corporate board, rather than by the chief information officer or other IT managers.

The primary goals for information technology governance are to (1) assure that the investments in IT generate business value, and (2) mitigate the risks that are associated with IT. This can be done by implementing an organizational structure with well-defined roles for the responsibility of information, business processes, applications, infrastructure, etc.

Decision rights are a key concern of IT governance, being the primary topic of the book by that name by Weill and Ross.[3] According to Weill and Ross, depending on the size, business scope, and IT maturity of an organization, either centralized, decentralized or federated models of responsibility for dealing with strategic IT matters are suggested. In this view, the well defined control of IT is the key to success.

After the widely reported collapse of Enron in 2000, and the alleged problems within Arthur Andersen and WorldCom, the duties and responsibilities of the boards of directors for public and privately held corporations were questioned. As a response to this, and to attempt to prevent similar problems from happening again, the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act was written to stress the importance of business control and auditing. Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel-II in Europe have been catalysts for the development of the discipline of information technology governance since the early 2000s. However, the concerns of Sarbanes Oxley (in particular Section 404) have less to do with IT decision rights as discussed by Weill and Ross, and more to do with operational control processes such as Change management.

Following Corporate Collapses in Australia around the same time, working groups were established to develop standards for Corporate Governance. A series of Australian Standards for Corporate Governance were published in 2003, these were:

  • Good Governance Principles (AS8000)
  • Fraud and Corruption Control (AS8001)
  • Organisational Codes of Conduct (AS8002)
  • Corporate Social Responsibility (AS8003)
  • Whistle Blower protection programs (AS8004)

AS8015 Corporate Governance of ICT was published in January 2005. It was fast-track adopted as ISO/IEC 38500 in May 2008.

References

  1. ^ Weill, P. & Ross, J. W., 2004, IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results“, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
  2. ^ IT Governance Institute 2003, “Board Briefing on IT Governance, 2nd Edition”. Retrieved January 18, 2006 from Board_Briefing
  3. ^ Weill P., Ross J., IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT for Superior Results, Harvard Business School Press, 2004, ISBN 1-59139-253-5

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

2009
11/11
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IT governance
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BETT

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BETT or The BETT show (formerly known as the British Educational Training and Technology Show) is an annual trade show in the United Kingdom that showcases the use of information technology in education. Founded in 1985, it has expanded to fill both the National and Grand Halls at the Olympia exhibition centre in London, England. BETT celebrated its 25th anniversary at the 2009 show.

The show was first held in January 1985 as the “Hi Technology and Computers in Education Exhibition” at the Barbican Centre, central London, in association with the British Educational Equipment Association. As the use of technology in education increased, so did the show, and had outgrown the Barbican by 1993, when the move to Olympia was made.[1]

The show has also expanded from being a purely technology show, and whilst there are stands for companies ranging from multinationals Microsoft and Apple Inc. to small single-product firms, others attending include the Department for Children, Schools and Families,[2][3] and teaching unions such as the NASUWT and National Union of Teachers.[4]

A large number of seminars from well-known providers are held at BETT, which offer training (Continuing Professional Development) opportunities for education professionals.[5]

Criticised in the past for perhaps marginalising teachers due to the increasing business nature of the show,[6] the producers (EMAP) have introduced a number of teacher friendly events such as TeachMeet to tackle this.[7]

Links

References

  1. ^ “History of BETT“. EMAP.
  2. ^ “BETT 2004 webcast“. Teachernet. Department for Children, Schools and Families.
  3. ^ “DCSF Company Profile“. BETT. EMAP.
  4. ^ “BETT 2010 Exhibitors“. BETT. EMAP.
  5. ^ “BETT 2009 Seminar Programme“. eLearning Industry Association of Victoria.
  6. ^ Davitt, John (2008-03-18). “Are teachers getting a fair deal?“. The Guardian. Guardian Media Group.
  7. ^ Usher, Ian (2009-02-02). “TeachMeet09Bett“. TeachMeet.

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

2009
10/13
CATEGORY
Education
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IT companies

Infosys campus, Bangalore, India

List of information technology companies by market capitalization:

As shown in MacObserver[1]:

  • Microsoft – $264B[2]
  • Google – $208B
  • Cisco – $189B
  • Apple Inc. – $162B
  • IBM – $159B
  • Intel – $155B
  • HP – $112.57B [3][4]
  • Dell – $45.09B[5]

References

2009
09/03
CATEGORY
IT companies
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Outline of information technology

Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is “the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware.”[1] IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and retrieve information.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to information technology:

Different names

There are different names for this during the ages or through fields. Some of theses names are:

  • ICT:- Information, Communication and Technology;
  • IT:- Information technology;
  • DCT:- Data Communication & technology;
  • CDT:- Creative digital technology;
  • DT:- Design & technology;
  • IDCT:- Department of information & software technology;
  • Infocomm:- Communication technology;
  • TelCo (phones) & CompBusiness (HW+SW) & development (SW):- sets of professions as referenced within Human Resources departments; and many more…

Branches of information technology

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology – Refers to the application of computer science, that is, its use by mankind.
  • Information and Communications
  • Computer engineering

Links

  1. ^ http://www.itaa.org/es/docs/Information%20Technology%20Definitions.pdf | p30, Accessed March 3 2008

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

2009
08/27
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Information technology
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IT governance

Information Technology Governance, IT Governance or ICT (Information & Communications Technology) Governance, is a subset discipline of Corporate Governance focused on information technology (IT) systems and their performance and risk management. The rising interest in IT governance is partly due to compliance initiatives, for instance Sarbanes-Oxley in the USA and Basel II in Europe, as well as the acknowledgment that IT projects can easily get out of control and profoundly affect the performance of an organization.

A characteristic theme of IT governance discussions is that the IT capability can no longer be a black box. The traditional involvement of board-level executives in IT issues was to defer all key decisions to the company’s IT professionals. IT governance implies a system in which all stakeholders, including the board, internal customers, and in particular departments such as finance, have the necessary input into the decision making process. This prevents IT from independently making and later being held solely responsible for poor decisions. It also prevents critical users from later finding that the system does not behave or perform as expected, as explained in the Harvard Business Review article by R. Nolan:

A board needs to understand the overall architecture of its company’s IT applications portfolio … The board must ensure that management knows what information resources are out there, what condition they are in, and what role they play in generating revenue… [1]

Inline references

  1. ^ Nolan, R. and F. W. McFarlan (2005). “Information Technology and the Board of Directors.” Harvard Business Review (October 2005).

Other references

  • Lutchen, M. (2004). Managing IT as a business : a survival guide for CEOs. Hoboken, N.J., J. Wiley., ISBN 0-471-47104-6
  • March J., Simon H., Organizations, Blackwell Publishers, 1993 (First ed. Wiley, 1958), ISBN 0-631-18631-X
  • Van Grembergen W., Strategies for Information technology Governance, IDEA Group Publishing, 2004, ISBN 1-59140-284-0
  • Georgel F., IT Gouvernance : Maitrise d’un systeme d’information, Dunod, 2004(Ed1) 2006(Ed2), ISBN 2-10-050241-7
  • Renz, Patrick S. (2007). “Project Governance.” Heidelberg, Physica-Verl. (Contributions to Economics) ISBN 978-3-7908-1926-7

Links

Institutes and associations
Background

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

2009
06/06
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Web design

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Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media delivery via Internet in the form of Markup language suitable for interpretation by Web browser and display as Graphical user interface (GUI).

The intent of web design is to create a web site — a collection of electronic files that reside on a web server/servers and present content and interactive features/interfaces to the end user in form of Web pages once requested. Such elements as text, bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs), forms can be placed on the page using HTML/XHTML/XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web page by using HTML/XHTML tags.

Improvements in browsers’ compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance and usage of XHTML/XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements and objects. Latest standards and proposals aim at leading to browsers’ ability to deliver a wide variety of media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins.

Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic.

Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a human (web master/programmer) manually updates the page.

Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on end-user’s input/interaction or changes in the computing environment (user, time, database modifications, etc.) Content can be changed on the client side (end-user’s computer) by using client-side scripting languages (JavaScript, JScript, Actionscript, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML). Dynamic content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (Perl, PHP, ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex applications.

With growing specialization in the information technology field there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design and web development.

Links

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

2009
05/13
CATEGORY
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Engineering Informatics

Engineering Informatics is a discipline combining information technology (IT) – or informatics – with engineering concepts; It is an interdisciplinary scientific area focusing on the application of advanced computing, information and communication technologies to engineering.

Engineering Technology Areas

It emcompasses engineering technology areas in

  • Distributed Engineering and Business Services
  • Sensing, Monitoring, Control and Structural Dynamics
  • Human and Social Modelling for Design Simulations
  • Computational Engineering
  • Networking computing for Engineering
  • IT Applications in Engineering
  • Systems and Network Technologies
  • Interactive Media and Internet Development
  • Logistics Management

Universities and Institutions offering Engineering Informatics

Engineering Informatics is a field of undergraduate study in university and Polytechnic

Publication

Research

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

2009
05/06
CATEGORY
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Information technology

The Global Information Technology Report 2008-2009 cover

Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is “the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware.”[1] IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information.

Today, the term information technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term has become very recognizable. The information technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as the management and administration of entire systems.

When computer and communications technologies are combined, the result is information technology, or “infotech”. Information technology is a general term that describes any technology that helps to produce, manipulate, store, communicate, and/or disseminate information. Presumably, when speaking of Information Technology (IT) as a whole, it is noted that the use of computers and information are associated.

The term information technology is sometimes said to have been coined by Jim Domsic of Michigan in November 1981. Domsic, who worked as a computer manager for an automotive related industry, is supposed to have created the term to modernize the outdated phrase “data processing”. The Oxford English Dictionary, however, in defining information technology as “the branch of technology concerned with the dissemination, processing, and storage of information, esp. by means of computers” provides an illustrative quote from the year 1958 (Leavitt & Whisler in Harvard Business Rev. XXXVI. 41/1 “The new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology.”) that predates the so-far unsubstantiated Domsic coinage.

In recent years ABET and the ACM have collaborated to form accreditation and curriculum standards for degrees in Information Technology as a distinct field of study separate from both Computer Science and Information Systems. SIGITE is the ACM working group for defining these standards.

References

  1. ^ http://www.itaa.org/es/docs/Information%20Technology%20Definitions.pdf | p30, Accessed March 3 2008
  • Adelman, C. (2000). A Parallel Postsecondary Universe: The Certification System in Information Technology. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.
  • Allen, T., and M.S. Morton, eds. 1994. Information Technology and the Corporation of the 1990s. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Shelly, Gary, Cashman, Thomas, Vermaat, Misty, and Walker, Tim. (1999). Discovering Computers 2000: Concepts for a Connected World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Course Technology.
  • Webster, Frank, and Robins, Kevin. (1986). Information Technology—A Luddite Analysis. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Further reading

This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

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Video: Global Information Technology Report 2009 – Irene Mia

2009
04/24
CATEGORY
Information technology
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