IT governance 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 as to how the governance of IT in the future must be organised and to what extent current steering instruments can be used to do 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 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 to which steering instruments must comply. This framework is then used to examine to what extent a current steering instrument is suited to manage IT in the future. When this instrument is being plotted against the constraints described in the normative framework, it becomes clear that the scope in which the instrument is applied so far is different to 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 as to how the steering instrument could be used in another way. Finally, based on this analysis, a number of conclusions and recommendations are formulated for the development of steering instruments in the network society.