Information Age: News, analysis & insight for IT & business leaders

Information technology management has been given something of a makeover. One of the intriguing consequences of the Enron affair has been the attempt by IT suppliers to find a link between the hot new topic of corporate governance and the rather more prosaic issue of day-to-day IT management.

The thinking: that without correct IT management - sorry, 'IT governance' - procedures in place, companies will fail to raise transparency and, therefore, be unable to tighten internal controls.

It is not quite out-of-the-box thinking, but many suppliers are pushing this line to finance directors and chief executives nevertheless. The aim seems to be to plant seeds of doubt in the executive's mind about the effectiveness of a company's corporate IT infrastructure, no doubt playing on his or fears that one day they will go the same way as the former heads of Tyco, WorldCom and Lernout &Hauspie, who all quit amid fraud investigations.

In a recent example, IT systems and services company Unisys commissioned a survey of both CFOs and CIOs on this very subject - with researchers asking questions about both corporate governance and IT governance.

The results were not unexpected. UK companies are taking neither corporate governance nor IT governance issues particularly seriously, it found. Audits of IT processes are seen as little more than box-ticking exercises, while their role in addressing wider issues of corporate governance has been underestimated. "How can the CEO and board have a true picture of their business when IT auditing processes are so inadequate?" asks Brian Hadfield, Unisys's UK managing director.