Managing Information Technology
Date
2011-05-31
Authors
Naidoo, Shannon
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Abstract
South African electricity utilities are spending billions of rand on capital
expansion projects to address an aging electricity infrastructure where capacity
has been outpaced by the growth in the economy. This expenditure will grow
both the asset and customer bases of these utilities, resulting in the need for
additional spending on information technology (IT) infrastructure. Successful IT
projects require an understanding of risk factors and risk treatment strategies.
Managing successful IT projects in an economic downturn requires an
understanding of the critical risk factors that are essential to avoiding disaster.
This research sets out to identify which South African IT practitioners in the
public sector and, more specifically, in electricity utilities determine to be critical
risks in the context of an economic downturn and what the treatment strategies
would be for the critical risks.
A qualitative approach, using in-depth interviews, was followed to collect data.
The analysis of this data led to the extraction of the critical risks and treatment
strategies and key themes in the area of IT risk management.
The key findings were that South African IT practitioners in this sector rate
traditional IT project management risks as more important than newer
technology risks and are still challenged by commercial processes and
governance in the public sector. Furthermore, most IT practitioners agree with
the literature concerning economic related risks, specifically ones that focus on
economic and political contexts. Finally, IT practitioners confirm the literature
about the treatment of these critical risks.
The key message for chief information officers (CIOs) and executive
management is that there is a view on which IT risks are critical in this sector
and, additionally, which ones are related to an economic downturn. Analysis of
these risks will highlight structural problems within these organisations that
need to be resolved to allow IT projects to be successful
Description
MBA - WBS
Keywords
Information technology, Electric utilities