An Exploration of IT Governance in University: Its Drivers, How it Maps to Theoretical Frameworks, and the Committee Structure Characteristics

The Information Technology (IT) governance in the universities is relatively new. Each university has established its own IT governance. This article studies the IT governance of multiple universities. This research is done by reviewing the publicly available information from the various university websites on the IT governance. This article describes the background of IT governance. It describes three prominent IT governance frameworks, which are Information Technology Governance Institute (ITGI) framework, Weill and Ross framework, and Grembergen and De Haes framework. It studies the common drivers to form IT governance in the universities. It studies how the IT governance in the universities maps to the guidelines of the three frameworks, as noted above. Finally, it discusses the characteristics of the IT governance committee structure in the universities. This research finds that a large number of universities has now established the IT governance to aid with university’s strategic IT decisions on how to allocate the funds and resources, the IT governance in the universities adheres to the guidelines of the IT governance theoretical frameworks, and committees are formed to make decisions on the areas of teaching, research, administration and core IT.