An Exploratory Study of the Key Enabling Factors of IT Projects Governance (ITPG) Implementation in the Public Sector in Oman

Abstract

Projects are considered as fundamental assets for organizations that strive to promote and empower operational and strategic business decisions. IT project governance (ITPG) refers to the policies and practices that intend to promote the efforts of controlling and managing projects across the entire enterprise effectively. The primary goal of the ITPG practices is to improve the various current efforts of management solutions to offer relevant, timely, and high-quality projects. Despite the increasing numbers of studies about projects, project governance, data governance, and IT governance, an extensive review of the literature indicates that ITPG implementations, in general, are mostly seen as informal practices focusing on specific projects repositories of the organization with deficient structure and lacking systematic support of the organization. Besides, and despite the extensive work on ITPG studies in the private sector, there is little attention and much uncertainty on ITPG implementations in the public sector. This study aims to address this gap by exploring key enabling factors of the ITPG implementation program in the public sector organizations in Oman and the impact of ITPG implementation on organizational performance. The study proposes a conceptual ITPG framework that consists of structural practices, management activities, and relational and assessment factors. A quantitative methodology was used to survey IT professionals working for Oman’s government sector. Two studies were conducted using independent samples. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to assess factor solutions of the enabling factors followed by a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to test substantive hypotheses. The findings revealed that project policies and standards, metadata, IT data backup and recovery, strategic communication, and assessment, were significant enabling constructs of ITPG Implementation. As predicted ITPG implementation significantly and positively influences organizational performance. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the implementation of PMO positively affected ITPG implementation. This study contributes empirically to the body of ITPG research in the public sector domain and determines the significant enabling factors of the ITPG implementation for Oman’s public organizations and its outcome to the organizational performance.