Strategic planning for information systems: A survey of Canadian organizations

This paper is an empirical study of what is being done in Canada with respect to strategic/long-range planning for information systems. It is based on the work of McLean and Soden, undertaken in the United States in the mid 1970s. The data were collected by means of a survey questionnaire mailed to a sample of MIS/EDP executives of large Canadian firms (those with over $10 million in annual revenue and more than 100 employees). Replies were received from 138 organizations, a 32ë5 percent response rate. Less than half of the respondent organizations undertook strategic IS planning. The authors found this surprising given the substantial literature that stresses its importance. Among those who did plan, their behavior was reasonably consistent with that recommended in the literature, the findings of McLean and Soden, and what one would expect with a reasonable knowledge of organizational behavior. In general IS planning is done with an IS rather than a corporate perspective. As a case in point, 30 per cent of the IS groups that could have based their plan on the corporate strategic plan did not do so, despite a literature which emphasizes the value in establishing such a linkage.