What is delegation of administration?

Delegation of administration is the act of distributing and delegating administrative responsibilities for various aspects of IT management amongst an adequate number of administrators.

An IT infrastructure of a typical medium and large organization is comprised of thousands of IT assets such as user accounts, computers, files and databases, applications and vital services (name resolution, service location, email and instant messaging, remote access, etc.), each of which needs to be adequately administered. In such IT infrastructures, it is not possible for a handful of administrators to adequately administer all aspects of the IT infrastructure.

Thus, in most IT infrastructures, administrative responsibilities for managing the various IT assets that together comprise the IT infrastructure are distributed (or delegated) amongst an adequate (and typically larger) number of (usually less-privileged) administrators, who are then individually or collectively responsible for managing smaller specific portions of the IT infrastructure.

The act of provisioning sufficient access so as to grant a delegated administrator the ability to carry out designated responsibilities is commonly referred to as administrative delegation.