The Current State of IT Governance in Education and Training Centers in Iran University of Medical Sciences: A Qualitative Study

IT Governance includes IT management and the way to make IT decisions in line with the related IT processes, resources, and responsibilities. This study aimed to determine the current state of IT governance in education and training centers in Iran University of Medical Sciences. This is a practical qualitative study. In the first step of the study the population centers including the related documentation, and in the second step the units responsible for information technology, computing, informatics and hospital administrators who work in the center were included. Data collection tools in the first step was the data collection forms, and in the second step was interview guide. Content analysis of the documents and all the propositions were extracted. The final step is data processing and interpretations of the results. After interviews were collected, the data were identified, coded and classified. Finally, the sub-topics were combined, the topics were selected, and the thematic analysis was performed. 40% of center's information technology administrators studied computer software at university and 40% of the managers were graduated from medical centers. The results showed that the president, the director, the IT department administrators, and the director of the Department of Statistics and Information Technology in many areas have made their decision in technology-related fields. In some centers also the IT department administrator provided the staff with job description after being approved by the hospital manager. The structure of the studied center's IT departments was vague and complex, so that the trustees, policy makers, administrators and IT operators in hospitals were not exactly clear.