Information Governance

Question: Discuss about theInformation Governance. Answer: Introduction: Due to changes occurring in technical environment and globalisation of business environment, almost every organisation needs to focus on the management of information through use of highly advanced DBMS and information processing software. The governance of information is important for the firms to manage the information and data base of an organization in a way that comply with future regulatory, legal, risk, environmental and operational requirements (Guetat and Dakhli, 2015). In this concern, the report critically discusses two journal articles related to the information governance. One of the articles is Guetat and Dakhli (2015) and the second article is Wu, Straub and Liang (2015). Analysis Guetat and Dakhli (2015) provide that many researchers use information governance and data governance interchangeably. The companies need effective information governance system to achieve competitive advantages in the market. Guetat and Dakhli (2015) define the information governance as the set of rights and responsibilities of an organization that are related to the management of data as the assets of the firm. But, on the other hand, Wu, Straub and Liang (2015) describe that information governance plays an important role in business success, because it effectively impacts on the value generated by the investment in IT. Information governance helps the companies to provide required information and data related to the particular situation in quick time. Further, Guetat and Dakhli (2015) provide that information governance provides accountability framework, which helps the firms for setting basic principles, rules, management structure, and management methods for accessing the required information. At the same time, it is also analysed that firms have to set and follow effective information governance for meeting legal, ethical, economic and political requirements provided by the government of country, in which they operate (Baesens et al., 2014). Companies need to establish better and effective information governance system that can spread the information throughout the organisation. Similarly, Wu, Straub and Liang (2015) describe that information governance is a critical element for success of todays organisations, as it supports them to enhance their performance and achieve competitive advantages. Through use of effective information governance, firms can develop their IT strategies, which help the firms to make the effective relationship between IS strategy and business goals. But, at the same time, Wu, Straub and Liang (2015) also exhibit that IT governance impacts on the IS strategic alignment. The researchers used Resource-Based View (RBV) to define this impact. Due to the control of the board of IT governance, executive and IT managers are enabled to implement the IT strategies in better ways to provide benefits to the entire organisation. Guetat and Dakhli (2015) confirm Wu, Straub and Liang (2015) findings by pointing out that information governance has wider scope in the organisations in terms of making the business and market strategies and managing these strategies in different business departments. But, at the same time, Guetat and Dakhli (2015) describe that information governance is not independent of corporate governance. Through the combination of corporate governance and IT governance, IT department effectively manages the information. In the other words, it is analysed that information governance is a part of the corporate governance, which allows the IT department to manage the information assets significantly. Wu, Straub and Liang (2015) focus on the IT governance mechanisms in order to enhance the effectiveness of IT governance. In this, the researchers described that it is essential for the IT department to communicate IT policies throughout the firm. For this, the use of communication approach can be effective for the IT and business executives to communicate and make sure that their roles and responsibilities are clearly understood by everyone. At the same time, Wu, Straub and Liang (2015) exhibit a formal process of IS strategic planning, which consists of the three steps. In the first step, CIO needs to understand the business needs then, CIO and TMT need to reach common goals and objectives through better organisational planning and after that needs to facilitate the better alignment of IS strategy with the business strategy (Hermalin and Weisbach, 2012). This process helps the firm to develop and implement better IS strategies to provide better growth to the firm. From the study of Guetat and Dakhli (2015), it is analysed that urbanised information system governance plays an important role in the information governance planning for improving the content of IS planning. They believed that an organisations information assets are divided into many information areas such as business administration, product administration, business intelligence, shared information, party management, and inbound/outbound flows management (De Haes et al., 2013). These areas help the IT department to collect the information and develop an effective IS planning process to provide benefits to the firm. From the research articles, it is also analysed that there are various drivers for promoting the IS strategies in an organization such as IT governance structure, process and communication. These drivers help the firm and IT department to make an effective IS strategic alignment. These drives also help in establishing better communication linkage between corporate-level management and IT executives to share information and to develop the effective IS planning to achieve competitive advantages in the market. In similar way, Guetat and Dakhli (2015) facilitated an information architecture model to access, manage, security and integrity of information across the organisation. This model has three layers for information access and management such as access and usage layer, a content layer, and infrastructure layer. This model helps the firms to design the information contents and communicate them to different stakeholders to maintain the integrity of different decisions in the organisati on. The information architecture model presented by Guetat and Dakhli (2015) is as follow: Figure 1: Information Architecture Model (Source: Guetat and Dakhli, 2015) It is analysed that the above listed eleven architectural dimensions help the firms to gather, access and govern the information with the support of standards and rules, which are set by the information system architecture blueprints and guidelines. In the similar way, Wu, Straub and Liang (2015) exhibit the process of constructing the IT governance mechanism by focusing on the three main elements such as structure, process and communication approach. These three elements help the firms to develop the effective IT governance practices through integrating the business and IT goals significantly. Conclusion From the above discussion, it can be concluded that information governance is one of the critical elements for success of an organisations, but it needs much consideration of organizational policies, infrastructure and mechanisms. Information governance and IT governance are two different terms but, information governance needs effective IT system to gather the information and communicate this information to the related departments (Reuer et al., 2013). IT governance is effective in enhancing organisational values and achieving guidance on the strategic alignment of IT governance to improve the organisational performance. It can also be concluded that the IT governance structure, process and communication are key drivers that promote the effective and strategic IS alignment by establishing linkage between top management, executives and corporate-level business. Due to this, effective strategic information system is required throughout the organisation for efficient governance of business information. References Baesens, B., Bapna, R., Marsden, J.R., Vanthienen, J. and Zhao, J.L. (2014) Transformational issues of big data and analytics in networked business. MIS quarterly, 38(2), pp. 629-631. De Haes, S., Van Grembergen, W. and Debreceny, R.S. (2013) COBIT 5 and enterprise governance of information technology: Building blocks and research opportunities. Journal of Information Systems, 27(1), pp. 307-324. Guetat, S. B. A. and Dakhli, S. B. D. (2015) The Architecture Facet of Information Governance: The Case of Urbanized Information Systems. Procedia Computer Science, 64, pp. 1088-1098. Hermalin, B.E. and Weisbach, M.S. (2012) Information disclosure and corporate governance. The Journal of Finance, 67(1), pp. 195-233. Reuer, J.J., Tong, T.W., Tyler, B.B. and Ario, A. (2013) Executive preferences for governance modes and exchange partners: An information economics perspective. Strategic Management Journal, 34(9), pp. 1104-1122. Wu, S. P., Straub, D. W. and Liang, T. P. (2015) How Information Technology Governance Mechanisms and Strategic Alignment Influence Organizational Performance: Insights From a Matched Survey of Business and IT Managers. MIS Quarterly, 39 (2), pp. 497-518.