Business Process Governance in Government‏

ICT governance is the responsibility of the board of directors and executive management. It is an integral part of enterprise governance and consists of the leadership and organisational structures and processes that ensure that the organisation’s ICT sustains and extends the organisation’s strategies and objectives.

Governance Definition:

The act of affecting government and monitoring (through policy) the long-term strategy and direction of an organization. In general, governance comprises the traditions, institutions and processes that determine how power is exercised.

Governance Assumptions:

The Project will be led by the lead agency if a multi-agency project/program;

The lead agency will own the project’s system assets and would manage their depreciation, ongoing maintenance, and replacement;

Cost attribution and service level reporting will be agreed by the management board comprised of agency senior managers;

Management overheads will be minimised wherever possible and meeting management objectives and statutory reporting requirements of all participating agencies;

Governance Principles:

The governing entity of the project operating entity will be a management board;

The membership of the management board will be a representative of each of the participating agencies and others as appropriate to ensure that no single agency gains ascendency over another;

The management board will have strategic linkages with the Government;

Overall responsibility for the Project will rest with the CEO of the lead agency;

The CEO of the lead agency will act only on the advice of the Program Management Board;

Participating agencies will each execute separate IAs to establish agreed terms, conditions and levels of service;

The core measures of service performance would include at a minimum network accessibility, reliability, security, and resilience (availability & backup);

The management board will meet monthly and other times as appropriate to discuss service performance and proposals from agencies that significantly change the scope, reach, and levels of service they required or elected to leave the program;

Variable costs would be attributed to each agency based on their consumption;

Cross subsidisation by one agency to another will not occur;

Network management will use a combination of business rules and workflow automation to achieve minimum levels of intervention to keep costs as low as possible;

Have any of you been involved with similar multi-government agency projects that you can share with me and other readers?