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IT Audit Platform

What Should an Organization's Information Technology Be Measured Against?

In the previous article, we raised a fundamental question:

  • Is the picture we have of information technology across the organizations and companies under our supervision truly accurate?

But if the answer to this question is “no,” managers face a more important question:

  • To understand the real state of an organization's information technology, what exactly should we measure?
  • Does having new servers and suitable network equipment mean that information technology is in a desirable state?
  • Does an organization that spends more on information technology necessarily have a higher level of IT maturity?
  • Can the number of systems, the number of IT staff, or the number of completed projects be a suitable criterion for comparing two organizations?

Probably none of these indicators alone gives us a complete answer.

An organization may have suitable infrastructure but face serious information security risks. Another entity may have deployed numerous systems, yet its users may be dissatisfied with them. A company may have a capable IT team but lack an appropriate structure for governance, planning, and project management.

Therefore, for a ministry or a large holding company, IT assessment cannot be limited to examining equipment, systems, or budget.

Information technology should be assessed as an interconnected whole.

From IT governance and management to security and risk management, infrastructure, services and support, information systems, digital transformation, data and analytics, and the way technology projects are managed.

Only when these dimensions are seen together can the important question facing senior management be answered:

Which organization is truly in good shape, which organization faces risk, and, more importantly, where should improvement begin for each of them?

This is where the concept of “information technology maturity assessment” becomes important.

Maturity assessment is not meant merely to give each organization a score or to rank companies in a table. Its main purpose is to create a common language for understanding the state of information technology across entities that may differ completely in size, mission, and type of activity.

Feedora grew out of this perspective, so that ministries and holding companies can assess the information technology of the organizations under their supervision against a defined framework, see strengths and weaknesses, track changes over time, and, more importantly, turn assessment results into real improvement plans.

Because the purpose of assessment is not simply to know the score; it is to know what the next step should be.