International Business Research; Vol. 7, No. 3; 2014 ISSN 1913-9004 E-ISSN 1913-9012 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 101 Developing IT Governance in Brazilian Public Organizations Paulo Henrique de Souza Bermejo 1 , Adriano Olímpio Tonelli 2 & André Luiz Zambalde 1 1 Department of Computer Science, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Brazil 2 Departament of Management, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Minas Gerais, Brazil Correspondence: Paulo Henrique de Souza Bermejo, Department of Computer Science, Universidade Federal de Lavras, Lavras, M.G., Brazil. Tel: 55-35-3829-1545. E-mail: bermejo@dcc.ufla.br Received: January 6, 2014 Accepted: January 26, 2014 Online Published: February 24, 2014 doi:10.5539/ibr.v7n3p101 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ibr.v7n3p101 Abstract This paper presents a method for developing IT governance in public organizations. The method was developed in a deductive way from the confluence of theories of IT governance, participative management, strategic management and planning, and public value. Qualitative data about the method application in five Brazilian public organizations showed that the proposed method allowed these organizations develop IT governance aligned with specific demands of this sector. Based on these case studies, results show patterns of demands for IT and IT governance mechanisms in studied organizations. This work contributes to better understand on how to strategically align IT to public organizations value proposal. Keywords: IT governance, public sector, information systems strategy, public value, information technology, strategic management 1. Introduction The IT Governance has consolidated itself as an important topic for organizations to achieve IT strategic alignment, return on IT investment and value delivery (ITGI, 2007; Van Grembergen & De Haes, 2008; Weill & Ross, 2004). On public sector context, this reality isn’t different. IT governance has gotten increased attention specially motivated by demands to put in effect reforms to modernize public management (Alford, 2002; Ali & Green, 2007; Campbell, McDonald, & Sethibe, 2009; Suomi & Tähkäpää, 2004). As long as the public management modernization efforts advance, governments have each time more attention to points related to performance management, public expenditures transparency, control and efficiency on public services (Almqvist, Catasús, & Skoog, 2011; Jääskeläinen & Lönnqvist, 2011). Inside this context, IT governance become an important component directed to IT utilization as a key resource to aggregate value to public services offered by the State to people. Despite its importance for public management, the application of IT governance models, frameworks and methods have been permeated by limitations and challenges. From the point of view of research on IT governance, few works have been conducted on a way to investigate which mechanisms contribute to IT governance on this type of organization (Ali & Green, 2007). Additionally, the comprehension about how to implement an IT governance on a manner to enable strategic alignment and value delivery to public organizations is still deficient (Ali & Green, 2007; Weill & Ross, 2004). From the point of view of business management, traditionally, models of strategic management, business value propositions and performance indicators applicable to private companies have focused primarily aimed at financial issues involving revenue and profit (Lunardi, Becker, Maçada, & Dolci, In press; Polidano, 2000; Weill & Ross, 2004). However, the profile of public sector organizations points to different proposals of value and performance interpretation (Ferguson, Green, Vaswani, & Wu, 2013; Jääskeläinen & Lönnqvist, 2011). In large part, these questions are discussed in these organizations from benefits such as delivery of benefits to citizens, social welfare, adequate life quality and services for education and health (Moore, 1994; Peyvand & Gupta, 2005; Polidano, 2000). Although models and IT governance practices available in literature (Ferguson et al., 2013; ITGI, 2007; Van Grembergen & De Haes, 2009; Weill & Ross, 2004) dealing with, in most cases, generic approaches applicable to private and public organizations in the conceptualization and definition of IT governance practices. However, researchers (i.e., Ferguson et al., 2013), have pointed that generic IT Governance models can have different perceptions when applied in public sector organizations, and so, adding special features of public organizations