IT directors across Europe face a raft of compliance
requirements but many lack confidence in their ability to meet
them, a survey of 400 European IT directors has
revealed.
The study, conducted by Illuma Research and sponsored by software
tools supplier Compuware, compared IT directors in the UK, France,
Holland and Germany.
It revealed a lack of confidence in the ability of IT departments
to meet regulatory requirements. Among UK users, 37% admitted they
were not confident that the IT function would meet compliance and
internal governance deadlines, compared to a European average of
29%.
The survey identified a lack of sophistication in their own
management processes as one of the main challenges hampering IT
departments.
In the study, 33% of users polled admitted that they did not have
an IT governance framework in place to meet internal and external
regulations, and 34% said they were reliant on paper-based reports.
A further 43% of IT directors relied on face-to-face or conference
meetings with managers.
According to Compuware, the findings revealed that 77% of users
were not effectively tracking efforts to complete important
projects, such as compliance.
The survey found that UK IT departments played a lesser role than
their European counterparts in compliance programmes. Just 32% of
UK users questioned said their IT departments were permanently
represented in the business' compliance programme, compared with
43% in France and 47% in Germany.
UK users said the biggest internal barrier to achieving regula-
tory compliance was management complacency. French IT directors
said difficulty in collecting all the required information was the
biggest barrier.
German IT directors considered poor co-ordination between the
functions involved in compliance as their biggest concern.
Ayman Gabarin, vice-president of IT governance, EMEA at Compuware,
said, "It comes as no surprise that companies are having such
difficulties in navigating these challenges when so many are
reliant on manual methods to keep up-to-date with the status of
their IT work."
The biggest external barrier to achieving regulatory compliance,
according to 72% of those polled, was poorly defined rules from
industry regulators.