For those interested in the presentation named “The effect of Critical Success Factors on IT governance performance in public sector organizations in a developing country” that took place on February 2, 2011 in the Open IS-seminar please access the following file: CSFs effect on IT Governance Performance – 2011-02-02
Johnny Flores’s Licentiate Seminar
On January 31, 2011 our colleague Johnny Flores has defended successfully his Licentiate Thesis named: “IT Service Delivery in Nicaraguan Internet Service Providers: Analysis and Assessment”. On behalf of research group in IT Management I would like to congratulate Johnny for his achievement. Some pictures from the seminar and after the seminar are included below.
Open IS-seminar: Lazar Rusu and Edephonce Nfuka
First seminar in the Open IS-seminar series. Every first Wednesday in each month.
February 2, 2011 from 12-13.00 in sal 6405A, BYO (bring your own) sandwich or lunch.
Welcome!
Title: The effect of Critical Success Factors on IT governance performance
in public sector organizations in a developing country
Key word: IT Governance
By: Lazar Rusu and Edephonce Nfuka
Abstract
Today in many public sector organizations, the use of IT has become ubiquitous in every facet of the organizations’ endeavours in supporting and evolving public services delivery. This ubiquitous use of technology have caused a critical dependency on IT, which in this environment involves a complex mix of political, organizational, technical and cultural concerns that call a specific focus on effective IT governance. Accordingly, the success factors for governance over these organizations IT resources must be entrenched and adhered to if they have to increase contribution of IT in achieving their objectives. Several researches have been done on such IT governance and necessary success factors in these organizations. Yet with no focus to such organizations in a developing country like Tanzania, which on one hand is characterized by IT resources, knowledge, and culture constraints and on other hand by the increase of IT investments and applications.
However, recently, based on IT governance focus areas and five organizations from this environment, an exploratory study to address such a gap has been pursued specifically on identifying Critical Success factors (CSFs) for effective IT governance. Although based on such a study it is reasonable to believe that these CSFs have effect to IT governance performance, this has not been confirmed. In this paper we have specifically addressed such a gap by hypothesizing that such correlated effect exists and we deductively examined it.
This was achieved based on a developed research model, survey research method, sample data from Tanzanian public sector organizations and a second generation structural equation modelling technique namely partial least squares (PLS). The result indicated significant moderate to high positive effects to IT governance. The CSF with most significant effect was “Involve and get support of senior management” and the least “Consolidate, standardize and manage IT infrastructure and application to optimize costs and information flow across the organization”. Finally a CSFs model for effective IT governance in this environment was also suggested. The findings provide more focus on CSFs that have a higher impact on IT governance performance in public sector organizations in a developing country and can improve available approaches.
Paper published in International Journal of Information Technology and Management
A paper named “Assessing the Risk Exposure in IT Outsourcing for Large Companies“ and written together with Georg Hodosi has been published in International Journal of Information Technology and Management, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 24-44, 2011. The paper is presenting the design of an information technology outsourcing (ITO) tool that includes a procedure based on transaction cost theory for assessing the risk exposure in ITO. The ITO tool presented in this paper is a useful and effective instrument for the IT decision-makers in support of decisions to outsource IT or not. In the development of the ITO tool, we have approached two large companies in Sweden with more than 20 years experiences in ITO that have helped us in the improvement and evaluation of the usability and effectiveness of this tool. For more information about this paper please access the following link: http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=37760&prevQuery=&ps=10&m=or
DSV is Co-organising BUSITAL 2011
The 6th International Workshop on Business/IT-Alignment and Interoperability is arranged in London the 20th of June, 2011.
Members of DSV staff are involved in various ways in the arrangements. Please consider contributing to the workshop by submitting your research reports.
The Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’11, an important conference) is co-located with the workshop.
Additional info can be found at the workshop site. Info about CAiSE’11 can be found at http://www.caise2011.com/index.php
PACIS Track on IT Global Sourcing and Cloud Computing
DSV Center for Service Science and Innovation (SSI) is pleased to invite your research paper submissions for the track “IT Global Sourcing and Cloud Computing” at the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) 2011.
Please find out more about the conference track here: IT Global Sourcing and Cloud Computing.
For further inquiries, please contact gjs@dsv.su.se.
Seminar on “IT Management Research in DSV: Quo Vadis?”
On November 2, 2010 I have made a presentation in the seminar with senior researchers’ from our department (DSV) concerning “IT Management Research in DSV: Quo Vadis?”. My presentation has approached the main concepts in IT Management and the importance of research in this area, the trends in IT Management and research performed by IT Management group till now in IT Management area. Finally I have presented the results of IT Management research from 2007 (the year when the IT Management group has started his activity) till now and the research plan for the next year. In case you are interested in my presentation please have a look on the attached file: IT Management Research in DSV – 2010-11-02.pdf
Collaboration with IBM in Global IT Management course and in co-supervision of master theses in different topics of IT Management
The Global IT Management (GITM) course is in my opinion one of the important courses that together with Strategic Management of IT course needs to be part of a master program in information systems/information technology. In 2003 I have designed the Global IT Management course (7.5 ECTS) that has run for the first time in 2004 in the master programs in Internetworking and Engineering and Management of Information Systems at KTH. The GITM course is one that is looking to enhance students’ knowledge in information and communications technologies (ICT) support in globalization and companies that operates in a global business environment. In 2004 I had 72 students enrolled in the Global IT Management course and in the next years the students’ number have continue to increase. Now in 2010 I have 86 students enrolled in GITM course that are coming from different master programs at KTH and Stockholm University plus exchange students.
From the experience of former students in Global IT Management course we have found that for most of them this course was an opportunity and challenge to enhance their knowledge in the IT Management area and develop new skills about how to deal with different cultures by working in multicultural teams. As a result many students have mentioned me that the GITM course have been a usefully experience for them. In GITM course the students are doing team projects using as case studies different global companies. The team project is an important assessment component in this course and in 2008 I have performed a research about the contribution of the team project on students’ learning in GITM course. In case you are interested in the results of this research please read my paper published in Springer Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2010, Volume 111, 28-40, http://www.springerlink.com/content/jq774062hn586554/
During the last 7 years I have continuous improved the GITM course in his content and organization. I have also tried in all these years to bring different guest speakers from IT industry in GITM course in order to share their experience with my students. As a result of the positive impact that this course has had in enhancing students’ knowledge in IT Management a former KTH student Robin Zimmermann (who has worked at IBM Sweden and now he is working at Accenture) has offered me the opportunity to establish a collaboration with IT professionals from IBM. The colaboration with IBM will consists in guest lectures offered in GITM course 2010 and in co-supervision of master theses in different topics of IT Management. Furthermore I hope that the present collaboration with IBM will be extended also for the Strategic Management of IT course given in Spring 2011.
In case you are having an interest in the content of the lectures given by IT professionals from IBM in Global IT Management course 2010 you are welcome for attending them. The dates, hours and topics of the lectures are following below.
2010-11-08, 9.00 – 9.45, Sal B, Forum, Abhishek Sinha (IBM India), Lecture: Organizing IT
2010-11-15, 14.00 -14.45, Sal A, Forum, Abhishek Sinha (IBM India), Lecture: IT strategy
2010-11-17, 9.00 – 9.45, Sal B, Forum, Abhishek Sinha (IBM India), Lecture: Outsourcing and Offshoring of IT
2010-11-19, 14.00 – 14.45, Sal B, Forum, Jan Pettersson (IBM Sweden), Lecture: IBM Global Solution Architecture Repository