ISO/IEC 38500:2015 provides guiding principles for members of an organization's governing body, including owners, directors, partners, senior executives, or similar roles, to ensure the effective, efficient, and acceptable use of Information Technology (IT) within their organization. The goal of ISO 38500 is to offer a framework of principles for top-level management to assess, guide, and monitor the use of IT in their organization, thereby enhancing IT performance and acceptance.

ISO 38505 is a series of international standards focused on data governance. The standard ISO 38505-1 provides detailed guidance on how to effectively apply the ISO/IEC 38500 standard for data governance within an organization. It includes the importance of data governance, guiding principles, implementation models, and key characteristics, and offers a clear framework for an organization's data governance tasks, executive direction, and application.