Governance frameworks are generally created to provide new capability for decision-making in organizations. As more and more governments are organizing programs and service areas from an enterprise perspective, it becomes necessary to create new enterprise governance structures. Information technology is one area where governments around the world are adopting enterprise orientations as a way to coordinate activities and to leverage investments.

New York State has made a large investment in information technology (IT) over the years and, as a consequence, found itself in greater need of an enterprise IT governance framework. In this project, CTG brought together key stakeholders within the New York State IT community to work collaboratively on developing an enterprise IT governance framework for the state. The result was the launch of a collaborative and consensus-driven project led by CTG and organized to ensure active participation of key actors in New York State government. The project also drew on insights from current IT governance structures within New York State, IT governance experiences nationwide, lessons from the private sector, and frameworks developed in the academic literature.

New York State government already employed some of the elements of enterprise-level governance at the beginning of this project. Therefore, the project elicited information about the best strategies to enhance these existing practices in order to achieve the desired value from state-wide enterprise IT governance and identified what kind of changes to the existing structures and processes were necessary.

The main work of the project focused on three core design questions:

• What value should the enhanced enterprise IT governance deliver to New York State and its agencies?
• What changes need to occur to make this possible?
• Does New York state government have the capability needed to implement and sustain an enhanced governance structure?

The project culminated in a set of recommendations about New York State's enterprise IT governance structure design and implementation.