IT Control in the Australian Public Sector: An International Comparison

Despite widespread adoption of IT control frameworks, little academic empirical research has been undertaken to investigate their use. This paper reports upon research to benchmark the maturity levels of 15 key IT control processes from the Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) in public sector organisations across Australia. It also makes a comparison against a similar benchmark for a mixed sector group from a range of nations, a mixed sector group from Asian-Oceanic nations, and for public sector organisations for all geographic areas. The Australian data were collected in a mail survey of the 387 non-financial public sector organisations identified as having more than 50 employees, which returned a 27% response rate. Patterns seen in the original international survey undertaken by the IS Audit and Control Association in 2002 were also seen in the Australian data. However, the Australian public sector performed better than sectors in all the international benchmarks for the 15 most important IT processes.