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.,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 implementation in South Africa. The study relied on data obtained through content analysis of policy documents, legislative frameworks, and literature review regarding the identified facets of IG in South Africa.,The study established that only some aspects/domains/facets of IG are legislated and driven by policy in South Africa. These domains are at different levels of maturity and different stakeholder groups are responsible for each domain; for instance, the National Archives of South Africa is responsible for records management and the State Information Technology Agency is responsible for information technology, while the newly established Information Regulator is responsible for freedom of information and data privacy. There is generally no over-arching structure responsible for overall IG in South Africa as the elements are fragmented in various oversight mechanisms and institutions. As a result, domains compete for limited resources and often lead to “knee-jerk” responses to legislative, legal or risk drivers.,It is concluded that if IG is not regulated and modelled at a country level, it is highly unlikely to filter down to organisations. Implementing IG at country level will go a long way in helping to filter it down to an organisation level.,The study is useful by presenting a framework to ensure that IG is implemented at the country level with a single coordinating body established for oversight mechanisms such as the Information Regulator (which currently has a narrow scope of privacy and freedom of information, although with limited resources).

中文翻译：

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将南非的信息治理提升到国家一级的综合框架

作为新兴学科，信息治理（IG）给组织和国家带来了许多挑战。例如，IG尚未明确定义，当前的支持者提出了以下概念：记录管理，信息管理，企业内容管理，隐私（数据保护），信息自由，公司治理，信息风险，信息安全和电子发现，仅提及一些领域。在组织层面上，举措着眼于这些方面中的一个，通常与其他要素冲突，并且是由于一些直接的业务挑战而发起的，例如在南部引入了《个人信息保护法》（数据保护或隐私立法）非洲。事实是，该国在相同的IG方面制定了许多分散的政策和立法，这是相互交叉的。这项研究旨在提出一个在国家层面上的综合性IG框架，其中应包括关键的成功因素，所需的手段（政策和立法），原则以及拟议的要素或学科清单，应以统一的方式加以管理。信息治理计划的IG的风向标，旨在设计一个将IG提升到国家级的集成框架。风车有助于确定信息学科的不同方面以及负责在南非实施的负责任的监督机制。该研究依赖于通过对政策文件，立法框架，这项研究确定，在南非，只有有关IG的某些方面/领域/方面是立法和驱动的。这些域的成熟度不同，每个域负责不同的利益相关者群体。例如，南非国家档案馆负责记录管理，国家信息技术局负责信息技术，而新成立的信息管理者负责信息自由和数据隐私。由于各个监督机制和机构中的要素是零散的，因此在南非，总体上没有总的IG负责的总体架构。因此，领域争夺有限的资源，并经常导致对立法，法律或风险驱动因素的“下意识的反应”。结论是，如果未在国家/地区级别对IG进行监管和建模，则极不可能将其过滤到组织中。在国家级实施IG将大大有助于将其过滤到组织级别。该研究通过提出一个框架来确保在国家级实施IG，并为监督机制建立了一个单一的协调机构，这是有用的。作为信息管理者（尽管资源有限，目前隐私和信息自由范围狭窄）。