An international comparison of information in adverse events.

Purpose: Aims to describe the growing importance of information and its governance within public services. The paper starts by considering how scandals in three national public health systems have focused public attention on information issues. It describes a theoretical framework for improving information governance, and its practical implementation as a management tool. The paper concludes with a discussion of the benefits of the approach, and the consequences of not improving information governance.

Design/methodology/approach: The framework brings together a number of existing methodological approaches, principally the maturity model approach to process improvement, first described in the Software Engineering Institute's capability maturity model, and the novice-to-expert approach to competency.

Findings: The paper describes how these approaches can be synthesised into an integrated framework to manage organisational change and how that can be used to improve information governance within public sector organisations.

Research implications: The paper compares the framework and its practical implementation with existing solutions, arguing that existing solutions provide only partial solutions.

Originality/value: Considers how plans for future service improvements will be restricted unless information governance issues can be addressed.