A Study on IT Governance within Latin American Universities

04/10/2014

Red CLARA has conducted a study on governance practices relating to Information Technology (IT) deployed at Latin American universities.

The resulting document includes responses on the governance processes implemented by the 204 institutions from 13 countries of our region that provided information for the study. Institutions can request the full document by writing to tical@redclara.net.

The fact that 204 institutions from 13 different countries of our region participated in the study represents a first achievement of the TICAL community: to date, no systematized information was available regarding the universities’ work within the framework of IT Governance.

The study was conducted between 28 April and 15 May, 2014, and was led by Angela Brodbeck and Jussara Musse, researchers at Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, Brazil) and experts with extensive experience in the field of ​​governance.

Main Findings

For the first time, the study’s results have provided insight on IT Governance in universities throughout the region. These results will allow evaluating joint actions for the transfer of knowledge and experience among members of the community.

With regard to the COBIT assessment tool, even though it has been standardized, reflections on the use of this toolset have made it clear that the questions included for the purpose of characterizing universities must be improved so that they will allow structuring and defining the information more accurately in terms of university size, legal status, and level of technological penetration.

Another relevant contribution of this study lies in the use of a systematic method designed to verify the reality of the organizations so as to define best practices in IT management within universities, through an IT Governance framework.