IT Governance Implementation to the Level of Financial Institutions in Romania

Relatively new in Romania, IT Governance is defined as procedures and policies established in order to assure that the IT system of an organization sustains its goals and strategies. This bundle of policies and procedures, following the best practices in the area, intends to guide and control the IT function in order to add value to the organization and to minimize IT risks. The purpose of the research is to identify the measure in which the IT governance practices are implemented to the level of the financial institutions in Romania. More over, the paper has as goal a comparative analysis of implementing IT governance using data offered by the IT Governance Institute. This institute makes every year a study (IT Governance Global Status Report - 2006) to determine the sense of priorities and the developed actions for implementing IT governance, data which acknowledge ones more the need of any organization for tools and services to assure an efficient IT governance. In this way, the research will analyze to the level of financial institutions from Romania: the most serious IT problems pointed out from the respondents from the last year; the most efficient measures considered top management for resolving problems pointed out; the best used practices in IT governance; the most used frameworks for implementing IT governance practices.This paper was presented at the 18th International Conference of the International Trade and Finance Association meeting at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, on May 23, 2008.