IT governance in the healthcare sector: A case study of a public and private hospital in Tanzania

Today in many organisations in the healthcare sector the use of IT has become crucial in sustaining and extending the organisations' strategies and objectives. From this perspective the paper provides an analysis of the current state of IT governance practices in two hospitals, one public and one private, located in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. During this research study we found that these hospitals manage their IT resources with a limited awareness of IT governance best practices. Moreover IT governance processes which now are in place are at an initial stage. As a result of this analysis we have found that the major problems facing these hospitals are regarding the lack of IT governance awareness among IT and business executives (that is one of the major reasons for having a lower governance of IT performance) together with the lack of or inadequate IT strategies that have negative consequences on strategic alignment. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.