An Innovation-driven IT Governance Framework for Benefits Realisation and its Application to Public Sector

Information and communication technology (ICT or IT) provides benefits to an organisation. However, a large number of IT projects fail. The research literature shows extant governance frameworks are not adequately protecting against project failures and are not as effective on many of these IT projects as they should be.This thesis developed a new IT governance framework using an agile benefit management approach, aimed to achieve benefits realisation for any scale of IT projects, particularly for projects in the public sector such as Defence. The framework objectively targets digital transformation and technological agility, however, is shown in the thesis to assist in other enterprise challenges with IT acquisition and through-life management, such as cyber-resilience.The framework is based on many theories, principles, and practices, such as: Transaction Cost Economics Theory, Prospect Theory (Decision-Making Under Uncertainty), Reference Class Forecasting, Stratification and the Incremental Enlargement Principle and Fuzzy Logic. The framework is shown to be effective primarily through better informed decision-making.Benefits realisation is critical for information technology project success. The framework provides a systematic methodology on how to define economic benefit, technical benefit, and strategic benefit. It provides benefit realisation measures through fuzzy inference system, and it provides decision support based on the benefit performance measures and dis-benefit risk management. When compared to industry-based frameworks for IT acquisition and sustainment this new framework is unique because it includes all internal and external stakeholders such as users, providers, industry, and academia to continuously collaborate for innovating, iterating, and evaluating technology for realisation of benefits to achieve the organisational goals and objectives. The proof of concept has been conducted through a detailed case study in the Defence public sector, and