source of a variety of “extensions” to
everyone’s technology capabilities.
The best example of this is the application programming interfaces (APIs)
published by companies and individuals that make it possible for clients and their providers to extend the
functionality of applications quickly
and cheaply. But are all APIs OK to
use? Governance must extend well beyond the corporate firewall to include
policies and protocols for the use of
externally developed—yet powerful—
APIs and other software widgets that
can be used to enhance functionality. In addition to APIs and widgets,
the crowd can also provide expertise.
We are moving quickly toward a free-agent approach to selected corporate
problem solving. What if a company
must develop a dashboard, a process,
a chemical, or a drug? Should it turn
to the crowd? What if it moved its help
desk to the cloud and paid specialists
when they solved problems? Shared
governance is at least partially assumed by these trends.
Finally, note in Figure 4 the responsible/
accountable/consultative/informed, or
RACI, playbook informed by the survey and interview data. The data suggests the participation scale—from
responsible to informed—has shifted.
Of special importance is the addition
of external stakeholders to the governance process.
The RACI playbook suggests the
enterprise is responsible (R) and accountable (A) for operational technology but less so for strategic and
emerging technology. It also suggests
providers are also accountable (A) for
operational delivery because so much
technology is now outsourced from
cloud providers. Partners and suppliers also play an important role in
operational technology selection and
deployment (As).
Corporate functions and business
units are accountable (A) and responsible (R) for strategic and emerging
technology. This is a major change
from the governance of the 20th
century, when most if not all strategic and
emerging technology was governed by
the enterprise CIO.
Providers, partners, and the crowd
are now direct participants in tech-
nology acquisition, deployment,
and support through their consulta-
tive (C) and informed (I) roles, with
the exception of providers’ shared
accountability (A) for strategic and
emerging technology, due primarily
to the implications of the integration
and support of new technology. This
structure is new.
Conclusion
These findings and analysis indicate
governance is changing, “control” is a
concept morphing into collaboration
and participation, and participatory
governance will replace both the rigid
conventional governance structures
and processes of the 20th century and
even more-open “federated” structures of the early 21st century. Participatory governance acknowledges
expansion of the number of governance stakeholders, commoditization of technology, consumerization,
and the increasing practice of outsourcing operational, strategic, and
emerging technology. The data also
suggests the new business technology alignment opportunity is through
participatory governance.
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Stephen J. Andriole ( stephen.andriole@villanova.
edu) is the Thomas G. Labrecque Professor of Business
Technology in the Department of Accountancy and
Information Systems in the Villanova School of Business
at Villanova University, Villanova, PA.
© 2015 ACM 0001-0782/15/03 $15.00