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InfoQ Homepage News Article: We Need to Create Information System Ratings

Article: We Need to Create Information System Ratings

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Pierre Bonnet is the founder of the "Sustainable IT Architecture" (*) and "MDM Alliance" communities and co-author of the book "Sustainable IT Architecture" (now available in English).

In light of the current financial crisis, Pierre provides his answer to the question:

Why an organization can loose the control of its operations so quickly and with such magnitude, undetected?

First he observes that:

an organization operates in a highly complex environment at a speed higher than its ability to measure the reality of its operations

and explains:

The complexity of [the] products indexed on the opacity of the information systems that support their operations makes it nearly impossible to evaluate and refine the risks with enough precision.

He adds that this problem is compounded by IT's leadership:

Too often, the Chief Information Officer has become the Chief Information System Officer. Then he or she resigned from this mundane role to focus exclusively on the company strategy...Executives seem content when IT costs less as long as the key operational metrics are green.

His proposes that:

The CIO must return to his role of Chief Information Officer and once more focus on Information Technology;

  • Put the value of the technology and application portfolio at the center by enabling IT assets to align with business capabilities.
  • Focus on the management of core IT assets such as master data, business rules and business processes (ACMS)
  • Establish a ranking of the information systems themselves by defining a metric that expresses the confidence of audits.

In the second part of the article, Pierre provides an approach to deploy an Agility Chain Management System (ACMS).

In 2009, Pierre will launch an initiative that aims at defining guidelines to rate information systems as he sees this metric as a key governance indicator.

(*) Members of the Sustainable IT Architecture community include: Agile Solutions, Atos Origin, Awa Consulting, Axiad Conseil, Information Builders, Genicorp, ILOG, Informatica, Khiplus, Logica, Micropole Univers, Objecteering, Orchestra Networks, Praxeme Institute, Progress Software, Software AG, Softcomputing, Softeam, Sun…

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