Instructions: Complete all the information on this form and submit it to Blackboard for grading as an MS Word .doc or .docx document. Remember to include your name in the filename.

1. Title of the paper:

Information Technology Governance in Online Business

2. Thesis statement:

Information technology (IT) systems need to be governed well to ensure they provide sufficient service to their users. Without good governance the users are exposed to many break downs, users would not be able to achieve their organizational goals. In governing IT the users are able to get effective services in relation to the set stipulations of the service providers. Firms that do not put up a good IT governance strategy do not end up achieving their actual goals since they are satisfied in any minimum achievements since they do not have a set goal to achieve.

3. Discuss the approach that will be used in the paper to support the thesis statement. How will the paper convince the reader of the feasibility of its thesis?

Online businesses provide goods and services to their customers through the internet. People use this platform in negotiating deals to but the products they want. For this online shopping to be made possible there must be internet that is based on information technology. A good understanding of information technology is needed since the platform should be very well governed to meet all technological goals. In online shopping all business transactions such as orders and payment are carried over the internet, this can be very risky since customer information is exposed to the public and it can easily end up to people with malicious intention. To control how this information is used an IT governance strategy is set up to ensure the information only reaches the relevant users.

In online shopping various problems may arise and may include poor report delivery, poor quality of goods being delivered and failure to conform to the actual order. In trying to do the best governance of these online shopping sites there is need for user to establish clearly who he or she is dealing with, safety of payment details, users should be able to avoid scams that may act as genuine messages and be able to understand their commitment on the sites.

In the current world situation there exist a large range of methodologies and frameworks for governance of IT. They help fulfill many functions some of which may be or may not be suitable for all organizations. There are various IT governance frameworks that include ISO 20000 that focus on IT service management, ITIL which is a lower level IT framework, ISO 17799/ISO 27001 that puts major focus on information, COBIT a framework that manages IT risks and Balanced Scorecard which is a framework for measuring an individual company activities in accordance to its vision and strategies.

In controlling and governing of IT there will be a perfect customer and seller relation since they will all be able to understand the role of each other and there will be a set of controls governing how they transact. This also helps protect customers since their personal details cannot be released to the public without their consent.

5. Annotated bibliography in APA format: After each reference describe in a few sentences how the identified source contributes to the paper. Provide at least five (5) annotated references.

Nielsen (2010). Online shopping trends, USA: The Nielsen Company

This clearly shows how different people use internet to operate their online shopping activities. It shows various activities each user does when doing online shopping.

Steve, E. & Sue, F.(2000). Expectations versus reality: a snapshot of consumer experiences with   internet retailing. International Journal of Information Management

This helps understand how to govern user expectations since it shows what the users want to achieve by using online shopping

Stephen, F (2004). A framework for internet channel evaluation, International Journal of   Information and Management

It evaluates how internet has facilitated in various shopping trends