Nothing polarises opinion quite like a debate over the merits of an internal service level agreement (SLA) between the IT department and the rest of the business.

But whether you believe internal SLAs are an efficient way of ensuring that corporate strategy and technology share the same goals, or a way of creating a bureaucratic nightmare, odds on you will see a lot more of them in the near future.

The thing is that too many senior executives still regard IT as a department that practises black arts, and they are quite simply terrified by all the acronyms and jargon. As talk of improving corporate governance increases, post-Enron, directors are looking for ways to tame the wild beast of IT, and ensure that it is embedded deep within the company fabric in a manageable, productive and accountable way.

The trouble with internal SLAs is that they attempt to define the indefinable. So while business managers may see them as the ideal way to keep tabs on a hard-to-understand department that is becoming increasingly important to the business, the IT department is likely to view SLAs as a pointless exercise in rubber-stamping.

It could be argued that the whole principle of the internal SLA is destined to cause friction between IT and the business. For a start, how do you define what constitutes an acceptable level of service in the first place and what should be covered? Then comes the thorny problem of agreeing the best way to monitor these levels and how often you should review performance.

When handled badly, an SLA can make the IT department feel like an errant schoolboy being punished for smoking behind the bike sheds.

As with any contract, a huge amount of care must go into the drafting of SLAs to ensure that no side feels hard done by.

It is sometimes possible to honour the terms of an agreement without honouring the spirit. In an online retail company, meeting a 99.9 per cent uptime can hardly count if the systems are down in the week before Christmas, when most business is carried out.

In defence of IT departments, there also needs to be a degree of flexibility to ensure that obligations can change to reflect circumstances.

Indeed, the more canny IT directors will start to see SLAs as an opportunity to shine. Agreements with realistic expectations are capable of highlighting improvement as well as deterioration. For the first time, IT directors will be able to go to the managing director with figures on performance that the directors will actually understand, a boon that could help garner more resources as well as a higher salary.

It is a natural thing to protect your livelihood by making it as difficult as possible for outsiders to understand what you do. But the demystification of IT is going to happen because technology is becoming too important to the business to leave it in the hands of a few self-appointed guardians.

From business intelligence, to financial reporting, to forging customer and staff relationships, the tentacles of IT now spread into every area of corporate life.

It's up to IT directors to decide how they prepare for these changes: with a gun to their heads or through a calm and measured approach.

But internal service level agreements actually seem like quite a good bet.