Running Head: IT GOVERNANCE AT UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTHEAST 1

IT Governance at University of the Southeast

Name

Affiliation
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IT Governance at University of the Southeast

Describe the IT governance system that was in place at the University of the Southeast

using both decision rights and structure as the basis of governance.

University of Southeast was one of the largest and fastest growing university in United

States which was supported by information Technology. It used IT governance in technology as

well as lecturing capturing tools to facilitate the provision of lectures to its students in different

places making access of lectures by students independent from physical classrooms. This made it

easy for a variety of students to view the lectures in their different locations which are actually

selected by students. The information Technologies and Resources department performed the

task of administering IT and also held the responsibility of providing IT services throughout the

University campus. This same department also worked hand in hand with the President and top

administration of the University being guided by the IT Monarchy approach to make efficient

decisions on the applications to be developed, investments to be undertaken and the IT

infrastructure and architecture to be put in place. Despite the multiple colleges under the

University of Southeast, the college of Business Administration was the only college provided

with the Technology Support Department and its own server, (Stefaneas, 2015). According to

research made, the University faculty did not approve the help provided by the Information

Technologies and Resources specifically the support provided in the use of classroom and

capturing lectures` technology. The IT department was planning to implement a centralized IT

system in favor of the online tutors which it later implemented. Currently, the IT governance

system at University of Southeast is centralized. All decisions made in relation to IT are directly

controlled without any communications to the people concerned and are affected directly by the

choices made. In case an open type of dialogue was used, significant frustrations and other
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problems related to centralized IT system could have been prevented. For the past years, the

available IT system could not allow making of decsions on the users` behalf. The main reason

behind the implementation of such IT system was to ensure reduction in costs of delivering

lectures to students in different locations and make it easy for the university to provide lectures

to large groups of people without need to construct more additional classrooms. Following this

case, it appears that the IT department and the CIO took the responsibility of making decisions as

well as implementing them without consulting the teachers and students. For example,

centralization of all email accounts on one server by the CIO without consulting the lecturers and

students resulted into online tutors failing to receive emails from their students concerning

multiple issue that often happened, (Iimudeen & Malik, 2016).

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a centralized IT system?

There are several advantages and disadvantages of a centralized IT system. Some of the

most significant advantages of a centralized IT system are efficiency and security that the IT

department provides across the school premises. Standardizing the IT system is one way of

maintaining developed infrastructure which increases both efficiency and effectiveness of

provision of lectures to students in different locations. Centralized IT system consists of a

centralized server for receiving emails. This makes it very secure, efficient and reliable to receive

emails and saves the faculty from controlling the preferred email addresses. Additionally, this

type of IT system provides a greater leverage in implementing strategic IT initiatives. It also

makes it easy to recruit and train IT professionals. During negotiations for supplier contracts, the

system simplifies decision making since it only entails two parties, that is to say the CIO and the

IT department. It also makes it easy for the organization to maintain the Information technology

standards and is very consistent as far as data management is concerned. Furthermore,

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Centralized IT system reduces the costs incurred by an organization specifically a university in

building additional infrastructure for the provision of lectures to numerous groups of people in

different locations, (Marume & Jubenkanda, 2016).

One of the disadvantages of a Centralized IT system is the negative effects and problems

that it exposes to the end users. This is mostly brought about by the lack of responsiveness to the

complaints from the administration of the business. This kind of IT system ignores the

intervention of stakeholders in the process of making decisions on the changes to be

implemented. Recently, the project to be implemented was centralizing all the email accounts on

one server which entailed changing all the email addresses without making the faculty of the

University aware of the new changes to be implemented. One of the most disadvantageous issue

about this type of IT system is its failure to fit with the culture of the University. Centralized IT

system is associated with several problems but more significantly is the identity management

problem that it can create even if the centralized server is placed at the University premises.

Additionally, this type of IT system highly costs the organization during the multiple

misunderstandings that it creates between the stakeholders in the University on the people who

have the right to make decisions. Centralized IT system also over centralizes decision making

which is one of the biggest challenges faced by numerous organizations. Decsions rights should

be allocated to different stakeholders in the Organization accompanied with the relevant

information. Although malfunctioning of the system is in most cases thought of as a

communication breakdown, it is actually the misallocation of decision rights that causes such

problems, (Marume & Jubenkanda, 2016).

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References

Iimudeen, A & Malik, B.H. (2016). A Review of Information Technology Governance,

Business Strategy and Information Technology Strategy. Retrieved from

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305082808_A_Review_of_Information_Technology_

Governance_Business_Strategy_and_Information_Technology_Strategy

Stefaneas, P.S. (2015). Analyzing IT Governance Initiatives with Game Theory: A

Systematic Literature Review. Retrieved from

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9c58/d26cf9dfbea5d2d52ba8f5013d2570533c1b.pdf

Marume, S.B & Jubenkanda, R. (2016). Centralization and Decentralization. Journal of

Research in Humanities and Social Science.