Cascading ISO/IEC 38500 based Balanced Score Cards to improve board accountability

Abstract

On one hand, with the standardization of Information Technology (IT) governance through ISO/IEC 38500, in the last decade, a good number of organizations have implemented IT governance (ITG) frameworks, although it is not a fully extended practice, yet. On the other hand, the use of Balanced Score Cards (BSC) on ITG is not an unknown practice, either. However, what has been given less importance is the application of BSC in the implementation of ISO/IEC 38500, since it normally appears as just examples of good practices. This work not only explains why the BSC’s applicability to align IT with business in ISO/IEC 38500 implementations is not included in the standard, but also justifies the importance of BSC to report to the board or senior executive team in a clear way, without the details of the particular implementation framework of the standard.