Making IT Governance Work in a Sarbanes-Oxley World

Experts agree that making IT governance work in a Sarbanes-Oxley world is a challenging yet essential undertaking for companies."Successful corporate leaders must strive to do the right thing in disclosure, in governance, and otherwise in their businesses. And they must instill in their corporations this attitude of doing the right thing. Simply complying with the rules is not enough. They should make this approach part of their companies' DNA. For companies that take this approach, most of the major concerns about compliance disappear." -William H. Donaldson, former chairman U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission"Making IT Governance Work in a Sarbanes-Oxley World means first of all that the privacy of the managerial hierarchy must be displaced by distributed information flows that are visible, accessible, and comprehensible to all. When everybody knows everything you're doing, it's just not possible to remain insulated and self-serving. Second, it requires new practices that radically increase community. This means taking on the male cronyism that dominates Wall Street and corporate America and feeds the us-versus-them mentality. It means eliminating boundaries between inside and outside, men and women, producers and consumers. Ironically, if the settlements drive firms in this new direction, it will strengthen their ability to compete in an emerging economy in which economic value is no longer created inside organizations." -Shoshana Zuboff, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School"Making IT Governance Work in a Sarbanes-Oxley World is about stable leadership. Unless top executives are willing to invest the effort to decide how they wish to shape the fundamental roles of information governance for at least a decade ahead, they will almost certainly be wasting the careers of at least three CIOs in rapid succession." -Paul A. Strassmann, author of The Squandered ComputerBloem, Jaap is the author of 'Making IT Governance Work in a Sarbanes-Oxley World ', published 2005 under ISBN 9780471743590 and ISBN 0471743593.