Information Governance: Paving the Way to Digital Institutions and Organizations

Abstract

Advances in ITCs features have been putting our institutions and organizations under sustained pressure for several years. Based on concrete examples, this article first recalls the nature of the issues at stake and raises the importance of reconsidering our ways of organizing our bureaucracies based on the central role of information. The main responses provided so far are analyzed in the light of this shortcoming in the processing of information, which is often overlooked. Then, democratic principles and values are discussed as guidelines to be respected to avoid a techno-centric drift. Finally, the importance of understanding the meaning and implications of the digital transformation, the need to consider the organization from the perspective of information processing, and the implementation of information governance are addressed as the three cornerstones of the digital transformation. The text concludes with a series of proposals to be considered to achieve this.