Information technology governance is a subset discipline of corporate governance focused on information technology (IT) systems and their performance and risk management. The rising interest in IT governance is partly due to compliance initiatives, but more so because of the need for greater accountability for decision-making around the use of IT in the best interest of all stakeholders.
Accountability is the key concern of IT governance.After the widely reported collapse of Enron in 2000 and the alleged problems within Arthur Andersen and WorldCom, the duties and responsibilities of auditors and the boards of directors for public and privately held corporations were questioned. As a response to this, and to attempt to prevent similar problems from happening again, the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act was written to stress the importance of business control and auditing. Although not directly related to IT governance, Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel-II in Europe have influenced the development of information technology governance since the early 2000s.
ITG can be thought of as a framework for intelligent IT decision-making, IT organisation and IT control. ITG improves the way that companies internally share information and make decisions about IT