The following blog was written by Priscilla Arling, Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at Butler University.

Executives’ continued lack of confidence in their ability to evaluate information technology staff is related to two continuing and related problems in organizations:

(1) The lack of understanding by executives of how IT adds value and contributes to strategic goals.  When a function's relation to strategic goals is well understood, the value and assessment of staff providing that function is seldom questioned.  Evidence the lack of concern of evaluation of the productivity of marketing or accounting staff.

(2) The failure of IT executives to effectively bridge the divide between IT and other business functions, and create understanding of IT value by documenting and quantifying the benefits of installed technology.

In my opinion, in many organizations, IT has become similar to basic utilities in our home, such as water or sewer.  We depend on it heavily for day to day functioning, but don't really know how it works or how it gets there.  We only think about it when something goes wrong and we don't want to fund improvements for such 'basic' needs, and often have little imagination on how improvements in those utilities could improve our lives.