Assessment of the Information Systems Organization: an Empirical Investigation of assessor Perspectives

Assessing the information systems (IS) function within organizations has been identified as a critical issue for both executive and IS management. Unfortunately, despite the importance of the issue, little progress has been made in agreeing on appropriate measures of the contribution of the IS function to an enterprise. There is evidence that this lack of progress in defining measures of IS performance may stem from the differing perspectives of the people performing the assessment. The research described in this paper investigates the relationship between the organizational function of an individual performing an assessment of the IS organization and (1) the types of information selected for the assessment and (2) the assessment outcome. The research results indicate that there are differences in information preferences by executive managers, IS managers, and internal auditors for performing an IS organization assessment and that the people in these organizational roles identify different types of strengths and weaknesses when assessing an IS organization.