The quality of partnership between IT and other organization departments can often make the difference between success and failure, both for specific technology implementations as well as the perceived success of the IT department (and CIO) in general. What were once (incorrectly) viewed as secondary connections between certain departments are becoming more critical to the successful operation of the business.
One example is the partnership between IT and Legal departments in companies of any size. This is especially true with the rise of e-discovery, its increased workload for Legal, and new infrastructure/procedural requirements for IT.
A February 2009 study by Recommind showed that the IT-Legal partnership is a problem for many:
…only 37% of respondents reported that legal and IT are working more closely together than a year before. This issue is compounded by the fact that only 21% of IT respondents felt that eDiscovery was a “very high” priority, in stark contrast with the overwhelming importance attached to eDiscovery by corporate legal departments. Furthermore, there remains a significant disconnect between corporate accountability and project responsibility, with legal “owning” accountability for eDiscovery (73% of respondents), records management (47%) and data retention (50%), in spite of the fact that the IT department actually makes the technology buying decisions for projects supporting these areas 72% of the time.
One potential solution to this problem has been the advent of “IT liaison” roles, not always with that specific title, but with the expectation that a person was needed to shuttle requests (often demands) back and forth between business units in order to improve the situation. My own experience has been that in most cases this poor staffer finds himself in a position akin to a messenger between warring armies.
