ICSAN MIS

It is intended for candidates progressing through ICSAN's professional examinations towards chartered secretary and administrator status, and for governance, compliance and administration practitioners who need to oversee information systems rather than build them. If your role involves board support, risk registers, IT policy review or records governance, the syllabus maps closely to your daily work.

The paper is delivered as a written examination using essay and short-answer questions rather than multiple choice. That means marks reward structure, relevance and professional judgement as much as factual recall. Confirm the current format, section structure and any rubric instructions with ICSAN before your sitting, since formats can be revised between sessions.

The Institute publishes the current duration, question count and instructions for each session on its official website and in the examination timetable. These details are not fixed permanently, so check the ICSAN site and your entry confirmation rather than relying on second-hand accounts from earlier candidates.

Difficulty is best judged by the writing demand: you must produce structured, referenced arguments across ten broad domains. Candidates with governance experience and disciplined writing habits typically find it manageable. The passing score is set by ICSAN and published by the Institute; do not rely on figures quoted informally, as they may be out of date.

ICSAN sets its own retake rules, including how soon you may re-enter and whether any limit applies to attempts. These are administrative matters confirmed directly with the Institute's examinations department. Ask before results are released so you understand your options and can plan the next study cycle without losing momentum.

Start with foundations and IS strategy, because later domains assume that vocabulary. Then take governance, risk and IT controls alongside development and acquisition, since both concern how projects are authorised and monitored. Follow with enterprise applications, data and business intelligence, then e-business and security. Finish with service management and the legal and ethical domain, which draw on everything before them.

Practise writing timed answers to past-style scenario questions: define the issue, apply a recognised framework, give organisational examples and close with a recommendation. Build a bank of frameworks - COBIT, ITIL, SDLC, CIA triad - and rehearse applying each to a Nigerian company context. Have a colleague mark your scripts for structure and relevance, not just content.

Three recurring causes: answering the question set rather than the one the candidate prepared for; listing definitions without applying them to the scenario; and poor time allocation that leaves a final compulsory question half-written. Weakness in governance and security vocabulary also costs marks, because those concepts recur across apparently unrelated questions on projects, data and e-business.

No. This is independent study material and has no affiliation with ICSAN. Domain names and weightings shown here are indicative and unverified. Download the current syllabus and recommended reading list from the Institute, and use this page only to organise your revision around the topics the syllabus actually requires.