Governance of IT in the network society

As a result of the rise of the network society, information technology (IT) will be utilised in new fields of application and new techniques will be used. Against this background, the question can be posed of how the governance of IT must be organised in the future and to what extent the current steering methods and instruments can be used to achieve this. In recent years, studies have been made to determine how the management of IT must be organised. However, these studies focused on past experience and took insufficient account of the changes that will occur in the future as a result of the rise of the network society. This paper consists of the second analysis of the suitability of an instrument for the governance of IT in the network society. In the first analysis the Raines rules were reviewed; in this article the Gateway review method is assessed. First, a normative framework is presented to examine the extent to which it is possible to use the current steering instruments for the governance of IT in the future. This framework is based on two developments that should be taken into account and, based on these developments, a set of constraints and principles are described with which steering methods and instruments must comply. This framework is then used to examine the extent to which the Gateway review method is suited to managing IT in the future. When this method is plotted against the constraints described in the normative framework, it becomes clear that the scope in which the method has been applied so far is different from the scope in which the instrument should be used in the future. Based on the principles described in the normative framework, some observations are made regarding how the method could be used in another way. Finally, based on this analysis, a number of conclusions and recommendations are formulated for the development of steering methods and instruments in the network society.

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