Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
New models of the relationship between state and society have been arising with the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), generating opportunities to transform the connection between government and citizens (Cunha & Miranda, 2013). This has brought up the claim for a more efficient state focused on the citizens’ social rights (Bresser-Pereira, 2015).
As the discussion about a new model of relationship between citizens and government evolves, it is possible to observe a gradual change in the government initiatives from tools that improve the services to tools that support the citizen participation (Yildiz, 2007). This set of changes – citizen profile, government positioning and openness – generates new demands for data, information and services whose operationalization depends, evolves or is enhanced by ICT solutions. It may be a challenge not just because the focus is changing from internal to external, but because changes related to technology and process are also necessary. By using ICT in an innovative way, governments have been improving services to citizens and interacting in a more open and transparent way with all stakeholders (Luna- Reyes et al., 2012).
However, the demands for fast reliable ICT solutions that could be accessed from highly available platforms are increasing. Considering this scenario, managing Information Technology (IT) is no longer enough; it is necessary to go one step further in a governance process. Van Grembergem and De Haes (2009) indicate that the differences between management and governance are related to time and business orientation: management involves short term and internal aspects, while governance deals with long term and external aspects. Governing IT, consequently, can assist an organization in meticulous IT decision-making, increasing or maintaining the alignment between IT and stakeholders’ expectations (Wu, Straub and Liang, 2015).
For a public organization, to consider long term and external aspects is mandatory, considering that they are part of a complex network of actors. In this kind of organization, an integrated operation of several actors is typically required to have the concretization of a service. A special challenge in public organizations is to turn the IT decisions perennial and related more to the state than to the government. As shown by Meijer and Bolívar (2016), the demands of the population need to be thought in the long term. IT decisions that are not changed in every administration are more consistent and their implementation is more likely to be kept over the years within an IT Governance process.
IT Governance may be considered as a set of organizational arrangements and patterns of authority for primary IT activities and may include IT infrastructure issues and desirable IT use and management (Sambamurthy & Zmud, 1999). Weill and Ross (2004) claim that ITG is characterized as a set of mechanisms associated with the structure, processes and relationships of IT that defines the decision-making structure, rights and responsibilities for encouraging desirable behavior.
Studies on IT Governance suggest the existence of two main ITG pillars. The first and most common centers on legal and regulatory aspects and involves, according to Van Grembergen and De Haes (2004), the specification of the key IT decisions and every actor’s IT decision rights. The second pillar centers the behavioral aspect inherent to individuals dealing with IT. According to Weill and Ross (2004), Huang, Zmud and Price (2010) and Bradley et al. (2012), the ITG mechanisms should be able to encourage individuals desired behavior regarding IT issues.