Top 20 IT Governance Best Practices Checklist

1. Use an IT advisory board to oversee IT strategy and policy decisions.
2. Base IT decisions on bureau and City-wide strategic plans.
3. Position the IT director as a strategist who resolves business issues with information technology.
4. Ensure that IT customer service managers possesses excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
5. Inform bureau managers on the rationale behind IT policies and of emerging technologies.
6. Monitor and report on the progress of the IT strategic plan.
7. Focus on optimizing bureau business strategies and IT investments.
8. Wherever possible, standardize common applications across bureaus and use off-theshelf software.
9. Use consistent and methodical processes when consolidating or re-engineering systems or services.
10. Make the Help Desk’s effectiveness a priority.
11. Ensure that IT costs and cost recovery methods are transparent and clearly communicated.
12. Use project management, change management and project review processes.
13. Consider service level agreements (SLAs) a formal contract between the IT department and the bureaus, and report on performance metrics specified in the SLA.
14. Apply principles found in IT best practices guides.
15. Use policies, procedures and clear authorities to manage change.
16. Clearly define the scope of an Enterprise Resource Panning (ERP) system.
17. Develop strong and broad staff competencies.
18. Manage computing assets.
19. Recognize the customer as an important resource.
20. Measure performance and use the results to initiate improvements and change.