I have been involved in ISACA for some time in various roles from member to committee member and am now a member of the ISACA board of Directors. Fundamental to each of these roles has been my involvement in ISACA frameworks and their development. For some time ISACA staff and volunteers have been developing the strategy for the future of the ISACA COBIT 5 framework. This week is a significant one with the first external deliverable available, the "COBIT^® 5 Design Paper Exposure Draft" for review and comment by the community.

COBIT 5 is the next evolution of the ongoing development of the ISACA frameworks and standards including COBIT, VALIT, RISKIT, ITAF and BMIS and will look to both consolidate and integrate these, but more importantly the resultant framework will be easier to use and extensible. COBIT 5 will take into account recent global governmental and market-driven enterprise and IT governance initiatives, such as sustainability and green IT, will be easier to use and will deliver guidance on how to implement including migration from previous versions. Of special interest to me personally will be the focused guidance on functional responsibility and organization views to allow practitioners to focus on specific domain and how COBIT can assist them in their role. 

I personally plan to provide feedback on the use of practical components including aspects such as KPI's (Key Performance Indicators), maturity models, integration with other frameworks such as ITIL, PMI and standards such as ISO\IEC 38500:2008 and the applicability and application against compliance requirements.

I encourage you to download the exposure draft and to complete the online questionnaire, providing input and validating ISACA assumptions. This is a rare opportunity to be involved at the ground level so I encourage your involvement and make a contribution.