On the governance of information: Introducing a new concept of governance to support the management of information

Information culture and recordkeeping: a case of Chinese enterprises

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to report findings from an investigation on the information culture and recordkeeping in two Chinese companies, exploring the interaction between information culture and recordkeeping.

Design/methodology/approach

On the basis of systematic literature review, this research investigates the information culture and recordkeeping in two Chinese companies by conducting in-depth interviews with the staff of the two companies.

Findings

The attitude of the leadership and the staff towards records and information is different in the result-oriented information culture and rule-following culture. If a company aims to stay innovative and competitive, an information culture that can facilitate the good governance of records and information should be developed, and information professionals can play a key role in working towards this.

Originality/value

As a qualitative study of information culture and recordkeeping in Chinese companies, this paper provides the insight into the interaction between information culture and recordkeeping, demonstrates the impact of information culture on information governance and identifies the factors influencing information culture in an organization.

Information governance and power relations: Reflections on archival education in Québec

Information governance provides a framework of accountability for the effective and efficient use of information to meet organizational objectives and compliance requirements. While information functions are often carried out by separate units that frequently work in silos, information governance is based on an interactive approach, taking into account notions of participation, power, and negotiation. Power and political competencies, and organizational realities are inherent to effective governance. Not all actors, however have the same political weight and the same skills to assert themselves as important players. The implementation of an information governance framework should enable records managers and archivists to position themselves as key players in the organization. Based on a research project conducted in two phases (a statistical survey in 2015, enriched by interviews in 2017–2019 with information professionals and IT professionals), this paper presents the organizational actors of information governance, the influencing factors that allow them to exert some power over each other, and what competencies are required in context from records managers and archivists to play a strategic role. We also examine the integration of these competencies into university-based archival training programs in Québec, Canada.

Supply chain information governance: toward a conceptual framework

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to propose a scalable conceptual framework for governance of supply chain (SC) information flows by re-contextualizing the organizational concept of information governance as an SC concept.

Design/methodology/approach

This study leverages the strategy-structure-process-performance (SSPP) theory base to explain how effective SC information governance relates to improved internal SC performance. Via an in-depth literature review followed by conceptual theory building, the key features of organizational-level information governance are cast into a theoretical framework.

Findings

This study presents the theoretical framework that explains how SC information governance should contribute to improved internal SC performance. The proposed framework provides a theoretical basis for future research on SC information governance and would become a useful first step to extend the concept of SC information governance at the SC level.

Practical implications

SC managers should be aware that information governance mechanisms, rather than the management of basic, information flow-directed processes, to yield the best performance outcomes. Because of the numerous touch points information has in complex SCs, managing the quality of SC information through broader, higher-level governance standards is more important than maximizing connectivity and information flows, and information governance structures/policies across organizations should be designed accordingly.

Originality/value

This study theoretically links SC information governance and internal SC performance via information quality. It also advances the understanding of SC information flow by challenging the implicit but flawed assumption that uniformity of information quality within the supply chain to create the best outcomes.

The new European interoperability framework as a facilitator of digital transformation for citizen empowerment

Healthcare is a highly regulated domain. Seamless, online access to integrated electronic health records for citizens is still far from becoming a reality. The implementation of personally managed health data systems still needs to overcome several interoperability, usability, ethics, security, and regulatory issues to deliver the envisioned benefits. This paper offers a policy viewpoint on how the new European Interoperability Framework (EIF) may benefit the implementation of eHealth systems for the management of personal health information for citizens. Interoperability facilitates sharing of health and illness experiences, coordinated care and research for citizen empowerment and improved health outcomes. The adoption of principles relevant to core interoperability and generic user needs and expectations, as described in the new EIF, in line with European and national regulations are quite essential for the development of safe and secure patient access services to support mobility. An interoperability framework facilitates the creation of the appropriate context in which personal health record applications can be designed and implemented in support of disease specific solutions, such as chronic non-malignant pain, diabetes and cancer. It is evident that no solution will fit all circumstances. However, the new EIF, when adapted for personally managed health data, provides a useful and relevant framework to facilitate implementation and adoption of personal health record systems within a coordinated care environment. Practical implications of this work relate to the need of multi-disciplinary cooperation and European level compatibility and sustainability of the underlying infrastructures required to support reliable and secure access to and sharing of medical data, as well as the readiness to address continuously evolving functional and non-functional requirements for regional, national, and cross-border settings.

The influence of organizational culture on information governance effectiveness

Purpose

This paper aims to explore the impact of organizational culture on information governance (IG) effectiveness at higher education institutions (HEIs). IT professionals, such as chef information officers, chief technology officers, chief information security officers and IT directors at HEIs were surveyed and interviewed to learn about whether organizational culture influences IG effectiveness. Several IG activities (processes) were identified, including information security, the function of an IG council, the presence of a Record Information Management department, the role of a compliance officer and information stewards and the use of an automated system or software to identify and maintain information life-cycle management.

Design/methodology/approach

This study was conducted using Cameron and Quinn’s (Cameron and Quinn, 2011) competing value framework. To evaluate organizational culture, using the competing value framework, four types of organizational culture profiles were used: collaboration, creation/innovation, controlling/hierarchy, and competition/result-oriented. The methodology included quantitative and qualitative techniques through the use of content analysis of data collected from participants. IT professionals, such as chef information officers, chief technology officers, chief information security officers and IT directors at HEIs were surveyed and interviewed to learn about whether organizational culture influences IG effectiveness.

Findings

Findings revealed organizational culture may influence IG effectiveness positively, especially from cultures of competition/result-oriented and control/hierarchy. Qualitatively, it also emerged that competition/result-oriented and control characteristics of organizational culture were perceived by IG professionals to produce more accurate information. One of the characteristics of organizational culture that became evident in the current study, coming from more than one subject, was the challenge in IG due to the presence of information silos. Trust, on the other hand, has been highlighted as the glue which can enable and drive governance processes in an organization.

Research limitations/implications

The current study was conducted based on HEIs. While the current study serves as a baseline for studying IG in other institutions, its results cannot be generalized for other type of institutions. The results cannot be generalized for other types of not-for-profit or for-profit organizations. Many of the characteristics of the sample data were specific to HEIs. For instance, financial, manufacturing and health-care institutions present challenges inherent in those institutions.

Originality/value

Trust has been highlighted as the glue which can enable and drive governance processes in an organization. Respondents of current study have indicated that trust serving several different factors toward IG effectiveness, including freedom to speak freely in the meeting about impact of organizational culture on IG, wiliness of executives of administration, particularly the CIO, to communicate IG matters to institution, sharing information and being transparent, entrusting help desk staff and technical supervisors so users can communicate with them and share their concerns and perceiving “feeling of trust” in the organization, which would benefit the institution, allowing stakeholders to collaborate and work together to overcome issues when facing IG challenges.

Data governance activities: a comparison between scientific and practice-oriented literature

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current literature on data governance in scientific and practice-oriented publications, and to provide a comparative analysis of the activities reported for data governance. Data have become a key organisational asset and data governance both a necessary and critical activity.

Design/methodology/approach

A comprehensive literature review is conducted in order to identify the published material that reflects the current state of knowledge. A systematic procedure was followed that identified 61 publications that explicitly mention data governance activities. Open coding techniques were applied to conduct content analysis, resulting in the identification of 591 concepts. A critical analysis also identified gaps in the literature.

Findings

The analysis identified 120 data governance activities which are understood as: “action” plus “area of governance” plus “decision domain” (e.g. define data policies for data quality). The authors define and present a data governance activities model based on the analysis. The analysis also shows a higher volume of data governance activities reported by practice-oriented publications that are associated with the “implement” and “monitor” actions of the areas of governance across the decision domains compared with scientific publications, whereas The authors found that the scientific publications focus more on defining activities. The results contribute to identifying research gaps and concerns on which ongoing and future research efforts can be focused.

Research limitations/implications

This paper is of interest to both academics and practitioners, as it helps them understand the activities associated with a data governance programme. Current literature fails to provide a comprehensive understanding of the data governance activities that are required when considering a data governance programme. Therefore, the proposed model for data governance activities can be used to give insights into these activities.

Originality/value

To the knowledge of the authors, this study is the first to explicitly consider data governance activities from both an academic and practice-oriented perspective.

Information Governance in Dynamic Networked Business Process Management

Competition in today’s globalized markets forces organizations to collaborate within dynamic business networks to provide mass-customized integrated solutions for customers. The collaboration within dynamic business networks necessitates forming dynamic networked business processes (DNBPs). Networked business processes need to be supported by high quality information that is exchanged in a trustworthy environment. Information governance (IG) is described as a holistic approach to different mechanisms that support high quality and secure information exchanges. However, dynamism of networked business processes causes IG issues like unsecured information access and low quality information products to emerge. In this paper, a comprehensive list of the IG issues in DNBPs is identified through structured steps. The identified IG issues are characterized within four main categories, respectively, information product quality, information service quality, information security, and metadata issues. For the evaluation of the practical significance of the identified IG issues, a case study is conducted in a business network that provides mobility solutions. In this way, the paper closes the gap between studies on IG, which have mostly concentrated on IG within the borders of a single organization or IG in stable business networks, and studies on dynamic business networks, which have addressed the formation of dynamic inter-organizational interactions without paying rigorous attention to information artefacts that are exchanged.

Information governance – beyond the buzz

Purpose

– This paper aims to discuss the still immature concept of information governance (IG) from a records and information management (RIM) perspective and attempts to identify some critical aspects, essential elements and challenges, drawing on lessons learned from corporate experience in a global setup.

Design/methodology/approach

– After a critical consideration of the notion “information governance” the paper reports some issues which turned out to be major barriers to success during IG implementation within a given organisation.

Findings

– Practical experience highlights the importance of carefully scoping IG frameworks in larger organisations; in particular, balancing the representation of all relevant stakeholders (especially lines of business) and targeting investment in initiatives that foster an information management culture. Equally critical to success is corporate communication which truly values information as a corporate asset and highlights the importance of information lifecycle management rather than technology under the motto “putting the ‘I’ into IT”.

Research limitations/implications

– This paper draws on experience from a single case study to discuss some of the cultural factors that influence the design and implementation of IG in general. However, more empirical research is needed in order to broaden the understanding of the impact of IG programmes in real-world organisations.

Practical implications

– When implementing IG programmes in global organisations it should not be limited to an IT perspective alone. The biggest challenge is the fact that no department or discipline alone can achieve the desired results. Success is only possible in an orchestrated scenario with clear value propositions for specific business functions.

Originality/value

– Based on a small selection of professional literature on the IG approach, the paper presents findings about issues and pitfalls when setting up and implementing an IG programme. It is hoped that it will inspire more exploratory research of this kind from members of the records management community to encourage them to raise the need for IG in their own organisations.

IT Governance and Human Resources Management: A Framework for SMEs

Information Technology (IT) plays an important role in organizations, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These firms have a simple structure with less specialized tasks and tight human, financial and material resources, so it is particularly important to use an appropriate IT governance framework (ITG) to such enterprises. This paper shows the results of applying an ITG framework designed for SMEs in a case study focused on IT Human Resources (IT HR) and the lessons learned. Conclusions highlight the importance of the quality of IT HR along with the key role played by related enterprise policies.

Sustaining accessibility of information through digital preservation: A literature review

Today valuable business, scientific and cultural information is created and stored digitally. However, the sustained availability and accessibility of digital information cannot be taken for granted as they are threatened by rapidly changing technologies and the associated risk of obsolete software and hardware. Digital preservation (DP) comprises methods and techniques geared towards securing long-term access to digital information. In this study we undertake a vital step to shed light on the area of DP by conducting a systematic literature review. We analysed 122 publications with respect to various aspects such as drivers, stakeholders or applied research methods. The findings point towards some unsolved organizational issues such as lacking methods to support cost–benefit analysis or DP decision-making. We thus propose a set of research questions based on our findings and suggest a research agenda.

Data governance in predictive toxicology: A review

Background

Due to recent advances in data storage and sharing for further data processing in predictive toxicology, there is an increasing need for flexible data representations, secure and consistent data curation and automated data quality checking. Toxicity prediction involves multidisciplinary data. There are hundreds of collections of chemical, biological and toxicological data that are widely dispersed, mostly in the open literature, professional research bodies and commercial companies. In order to better manage and make full use of such large amount of toxicity data, there is a trend to develop functionalities aiming towards data governance in predictive toxicology to formalise a set of processes to guarantee high data quality and better data management. In this paper, data quality mainly refers in a data storage sense (e.g. accuracy, completeness and integrity) and not in a toxicological sense (e.g. the quality of experimental results).

Results

This paper reviews seven widely used predictive toxicology data sources and applications, with a particular focus on their data governance aspects, including: data accuracy, data completeness, data integrity, metadata and its management, data availability and data authorisation. This review reveals the current problems (e.g. lack of systematic and standard measures of data quality) and desirable needs (e.g. better management and further use of captured metadata and the development of flexible multi-level user access authorisation schemas) of predictive toxicology data sources development. The analytical results will help to address a significant gap in toxicology data quality assessment and lead to the development of novel frameworks for predictive toxicology data and model governance.

Conclusions

While the discussed public data sources are well developed, there nevertheless remain some gaps in the development of a data governance framework to support predictive toxicology. In this paper, data governance is identified as the new challenge in predictive toxicology, and a good use of it may provide a promising framework for developing high quality and easy accessible toxicity data repositories. This paper also identifies important research directions that require further investigation in this area.