Information Technology Investment Management: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Process Maturity (Supersedes AIMD-10.1.23)

This publication supersedes AIMD-10.1.23, Information Technology Investment Management: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Process Maturity (Exposure Draft), May 2000. In 2000, GAO published an exposure draft of Information Technology Investment Management: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Process Maturity (ITIM). Built around the select/control/evaluate approach described in the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996--which establishes statutory requirements for IT management--the framework provides a method for evaluating and assessing how well an agency is selecting and managing its IT resources. The exposure draft reflected current accepted or best practices in IT investment management, as well as the reported experience of federal agencies and other organizations in creating their own investment management processes. This new version updates the exposure draft to take into account comments that GAO has received; GAO's experiences in evaluating several agencies' implementations of investment management processes and the lessons learned by these agencies; and the importance of enterprise architecture (EA) as a critical frame of reference in making IT investment decisions. Using the framework to analyze an agency's IT investment management processes provides: (1) a rigorous, standardized tool for internal and external evaluations of these processes; (2) a consistent and understandable mechanism for reporting the results of assessments; and (3) a road map that agencies can follow in improving their processes.