– May 18, 2009 – Phoenix, AZ –The non-profitOpen Compliance & Ethics Group (OCEG) today announced release of its GRC-IT Blueprint(TM), a guide that defines 72 categories of software offerings that support various aspects of corporate governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) needs. The GRC-IT Blueprint, developed through OCEG’s Technology Council, with input from more than 30 key providers of software solutions as well as end users of those solutions, brings uniform agreed upon definitions to the GRC-IT market for the first time.

“For years, we have been hearing from our member organizations, that they need help clarifying what types of technology solutions they can use to improve transparency and consistency of information within their organizations,” said OCEG President, Carole Switzer. “They recognize that they can greatly improve their management and reconciliation of critical information through an integrated use of the right technology, but they have been unsure how to begin identifying what is available,” Switzer continued.

“More than 800 software providers say that they have GRC solutions,” said OCEG CEO, Scott Mitchell, but until now potential users of those solutions have had no way to know what to expect from a particular product and have had a very hard time comparing different offerings. Our goal, in issuing the GRC-IT Blueprint is to help them compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges,” he continued.

“In addition,” said Mitchell, “by mapping the defined categories to the 32 Elements of the OCEG GRC Capability Model (also known as Red Book 2.0), we are providing a tool that will help organizations define their technology needs while building and improving their GRC programs.”

The GRC-IT Blueprint(TM) is available at http://www.oceg.org/Details/GRCTechnologyBlueprint