Data governance has to spread to the grass roots, if governments want to provide an optimum cyber security and maximize information assets for their citizenry, according to one IT services expert.
“Most municipal entities don’t have information governance (IG) programs, and consequently lack institutional, enterprisewide understanding of their information assets,” Jeffrey Morgan, president of e-Volve IT Services, wrote in a recent
CIO.com article.
More often than not, he said, there are departmental managers within the organization “who do understand their own information universe, but those individuals rarely carry enough clout to influence the decision-making processes at the enterprise level.”
Morgan said that challenges often arise because municipal IT organizations suffer poor alignment with the business divisions to which they provide support.
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Thus, he explained that IG involves the “policy-based control of information to meet all legal, regulatory, risk, and business demands.” Morgan said that IG goes beyond records management, but is more focused on “security, control and optimization of information,” according to a definition by Robert Smallwood.
To outline an IG policy within a municipality, Morgan recommended “creating an ecumenical view of (the) organization’s information assets and aligning that view with …business requirements at every level of (the) organization.”
Such an approach will enable the establishment of a “superstructure” that allows information management and strategic planning; information security and cybersecurity; and information technology service management.
These functions cover the whole gamut of tasks that include auditing, risk management, records retention, the creation of a security culture in the organization, and the alignment of IT services with business requirements.
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