TABLE OF CONTENTS Only two of the thirteen companies that participated in the study agree that their IS departments are critical to corporate success. The remaining eleven companies all see their IS department as a necessary, but burdensome, cost pit.
Mary Lacity and Rudy Hirschheim, Information Systems Outsourcing, Myths, Metaphors and Realities (1995)
Exploiting the informated environment means opening the information base of the organization to members at every level, assuring that each has the knowledge, skills and authority to engage with the information productively.
Shoshana Zuboff, The Emperor s New Workplace (1995)
The IT function of an organization is involved in the development, implementation and maintenance of numerous systems. These systems aim to meet needs at all levels within the organization. In evaluating the success or effectiveness of the IT department it is normally necessary to evaluate the performance of the individual systems, and then use the aggregate of the performances on the individual systems as an overall measure of the success or effectiveness of the IT department. Especially in organizations where there is a high degree of decentralization of the IT function, the evaluation is not focused so much on the IT department but rather on the users of the information systems.
For the organization s IT function to be managed successfully, management will need to have appropriate instruments whereby it can measure the effectiveness of IT within the organization. In fact, recent surveys reveal that general management consider measurement of IT effectiveness...
