An integrated framework to elevate information governance to a national level in South Africa

Abstract

Purpose As an emerging discipline, information governance (IG) presents a number of challenges to organisations and countries. For example, IG has not yet been clearly defined and current proponents present the concepts as records management, information management, enterprise content management, privacy (data protection), freedom of information, corporate governance, information risk, information security and e-discovery, to mention just a few areas. At an organisational level, initiatives focus on one of these aspects, often conflicting with the other elements, and are initiated because of some immediate business challenge, such as the introduction of the Protection of Personal Information Act (data protection or privacy legislation) in South Africa. This is compounded by the fact that the country creates many fragmented policies and pieces of legislation on the same IG aspects which are conducted in a disjointed manner. This study aims to present an integrated IG framework at the country level, comprising key success factors, required instruments (policy and legislation), principles and a proposed list of elements or disciplines, which should be managed in a cohesive manner. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted the Information Governance Initiative’s pinwheel facets of IG to design an integrated framework of elevating IG to country level. The pinwheel helped to identify different facets of information disciplines and the responsible oversight mechanism for implem…