Building Culture for Sustaining Information Governance

Introduction

What is governance; why is it important? Governance is a set of rules regarding how decisions are made that help an individual to continuously act in the best interests of the company. Governance, when done well, can improve the performance of the company by enabling the organization to become stable, productive, and take advantage of opportunities. It can reduce risk, facilitate quicker approaches to company growth, and protect the organization from dangers. Selecting an appropriate governance framework can strengthen the organization from the business process perspective and should be selected based off the industry, specific needs, and nature of the information technology operations being performed. Information governance is an indispensable part of the responsibilities for every organization conducting business in today’s competitive and security-centric setting. The question remains: “Why do so many organizations struggle to implement an effective governance program, if they even have a program at all?” In the technology industry, the benefits of culture, emotional intelligence, and soft skills are often overlooked because the focus is on analytical skillsets. These same skills are equally important when it comes to sustaining a governance program. The program is only successful when the program incorporates both analytical and soft skills. The analytical side of the program must focus on data or information. Information and data governance are terms that are often used interchangeably but have subtle nuances. Information governance is the management of data resources or assets through the lifecycle by exploring data through acquisition, creation, transportation, storage, use, curation, and the deletion of data utilized by the organization. Data management follows a hierarchal higher-order construct and progresses from low-level operations towards more managerial functions; this is seen through overarching concepts like information governance (Vojvodic & Hitz, 2022). It would be advantageous to thoroughly explore how the industry can realize the benefits of a thriving culture to supplement the adoption of a viable information governance program. Organizations must actively take part in purposefully building the environment appropriate for their business; this includes cultivating customs and values as part of a cultural development strategy. Effective governance provides value to traditional information management by expanding its span vertically—through alignment with business stakeholders, and horizontally—through cross-functional handling of data issues (Vojvodic & Hitz, 2022). Information technology is essential for organizations’ support, viability, and expansion; despite the increasing significance, its usage for benefits and control in the business world remains a problem for corporate management and stakeholders (Singh & Alhulail, 2023). The main purpose of an effective governance program includes accuracy, integrity, safety, compliance, availability, and value addition obligatory for a healthy corporate environment to succeed in this fast-paced global economy.

Strategy and policy are just words on paper. The documents mean nothing if employees do not understand the significance, importance, or the intended outcomes of these items. Both are ineffective if corporate culture does not support the meaning of the initiative. The question to ask is how organizations can help employees understand the necessity and the value of addition of policies that can sometimes make their work more difficult. We must help employees understand why it is important to them, but we must also help them to care about it. If the individual is not directly involved with the strategy and policy setting, it removes them from the sense of ownership that allows an individual to feel naturally integrated into a process. Obviously, not all employees can be involved in the policy setting activities, which simply would not work.