Assessing the risks of IT procurement policies and procedures in IT governance in government: A case study using the perceived risk theory

• Main Author: Valencia, Peter Laurence V.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2014
• Subjects: Information technology; Government purchasing; Computer Sciences
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/13397
• Institution: De La Salle University

This paper supports the theory that IT procurement influences the success or failure of an IT project and the satisfactory performance of IT services in the organization. Information Technology (IT) Project Procurement is inevitable for governments especially with the promise of IT for a more effective and efficient system for better public service. But with the established Government Procurement Law that presents a general and uniformed procurement which considers the complexities of IT comparable with a common good or service, it has developed a potential impact and risk on achieving the features of IT governance. Using the Perceived Risk Theory as its theoretical lens, this paper shows the risk of having a general procurement process to IT governance. Using a list of selected features of IT governance as variable of the study arranged per risk factor determines the exposure of the risk of an IT project and possible the whole IT operation. This paper presents several findings. First is that the procurement process highly influences all the selected IT governance features. Second is that, looking at the differences in understanding the risks and IT governance with IT projects selected as cases to support the selection, IT department selects Strategic and Psychological Risks as the risk exposed due to the procurement process while the users select Performance Risk and Strategic Risk. The study suggests that there must be an oversight office to focus on the technical component of IT procurement which will provide the legal justification and clearances to make the procurement process flexible enough to accommodate the complexities of IT project procurement but still follows the concepts of transparency and public accountability. It also suggests that there should be a set of knowledge, experiences and skills standards for the persons involved in the construction of technical specifications to lessen the exposure of risk due to the government procurement process.